If I Fall...

by Jennifer Christy

  Mr. Blackwell left the door open and strode across the weatherworn threshold into a wide, high-ceilinged room that ran the width of the building and nearly the length. Though it was gloomy inside, it wasn’t so dark they couldn’t see what the room held. The first thing JD noticed was the graffiti covering every square inch of the interior walls. Fifty years’ worth of graffiti.

  Mike loves Lois.

  Daniel was here.

  USA!

  Class of 1973.

  Wild Bunch!

  It was like a museum dedicated to the art of graffiti.

  Bird droppings covered the floor and was smeared on the walls, the reason was evident from the dozens of nests tucked in the overhead rafters and corners of the high windows.

  “Are those bullet holes?” JD asked, as she noticed pock marks in the sandstone block walls.

  “Yup,” Mr. Blackwell said. Rick and JD exchanged apprehensive glances, before following Mr. Blackwell across the degraded floor. His heavy cowboy boots thudded in the empty room as he made his way to a makeshift staircase leading to the second floor, constructed of two long, twelve-inch wide boards with slats nailed across them. The boards were pushed up against the wall and led through a hole in the upper floor.

  Mr. Blackwell gave the rickety old stairs a wary glance and shook his head as he explained, “Not safe, but the original stairs had been located outside, but were recently removed for safety concerns. There’s nothing up there but more stuff like this,” Mr. Blackwell indicated with a sweep of his arms.” JD and Rick both nodded and then continued their tour of the first floor. There were two smaller rooms on the east side of the building that would be demolished so as to be able to excavate a basement to house the furnace and water heaters. Mr. Blackwell restated his concern about the engineering for the excavation process. Rick assured him he had used California’s seismic codes to design the basement. To placate Mr. Blackwell’s unease, Rick asked JD for the blueprints. She handed him the long, black tube. Rick pulled out the set, unrolled the paper, and laid them on a cleaner patch of floor.

  These were perhaps the finest set of blueprints JD had ever drafted. She wanted to frame them they were so beautiful. From the rendered 3D elevation views and cut-aways showing how each wall was to be constructed, to the detailed notes that explained which type of nails, screws, and fasteners to use in every construction process to use, JD was very thorough and precise. Rick’s intense scrutiny of the plans revealed nothing wrong with her drawings. They were flawless.

  Mr. Blackwell and Rick squatted to look over the plans as she peered over Rick’s shoulder. She practically had the plans memorized. She could walk through the building as it was with her eyes closed and tell exactly where everything was and would be nine months from now.

  As Rick explained the engineering aspect of the basement design and answered all of Mr. Blackwell’s concerns, her attention wandered to what she knew about the building itself.

  Completed in 1916, the building had served as the small town’s local schoolhouse, dance hall, church, and general meeting facility. During the 1960s, it had been condemned and boarded up. In 1996, it was scheduled to be knocked down as it posed a safety risk. But Mr. Robert Blackwell stepped in, right at the nick of time, and bought it. He contacted Gramps, his old college buddy, to help him with the conversion plans. They had gone back and forth for four months to get the design, and engineering, and every other little detail just right before Mr. Blackwell gave his approval. Then Rick spent two more months going through the approval process with the building officials of Wayne County before they, too, permitted it.

  The schoolhouse was enormous and quite solid, with two-foot-thick walls which allowed for cooler temperatures in the summer, but retained heat in the winter. The original builders had intended this building to last a long time so it was going to be an amazing work of art in its newest incarnation as a bed and breakfast once JD was finished with it.

  Mr. Blackwell stood and interrupted JD’s daydreaming by saying, “Well, it should be fine. I will be back in a couple of weeks to check on things.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “I’ve got a meeting in an hour. Can I drop you off somewhere, Rick?”

  “That’s all right. I’ll ride with JD. I want to show her around a bit,” Rick replied as he shook Mr. Blackwell’s hand. Before JD had a chance to offer her hand, Mr. Blackwell turned abruptly away. His cowboy boots thudded across the floor again toward the door. He stepped over the threshold and disappeared without a backward glance. A few moments later his truck roared to life and he left the parking lot as abruptly as he had left the building.

  JD glanced at Rick but said nothing. The look on her face was enough to convey to him how upset she was. “I guess I should have told him,” Rick said softly as he rolled the plans and stuffed them into the black tube. She drew in a deep breath as the first sting of tears touched the back of her throat, then her vision blurred. Maybe she was just tired or a bit too sensitive today, but it hurt to be judged incompetent just because she was a woman. JD couldn’t let Rick see her cry. That would just prove she couldn’t handle a simple little thing like rejection. She turned hastily and was out the door before Rick could say anything more.

  Once outside, she looked up into the searing blue sky to blink back the tears and let the hot breeze dry her eyes out. She felt she had succeeded in covering her momentary lapse of control by the time Rick joined her outside.

  “Hungry?” he asked. She wasn’t. She had consumed an entire bag of fig bars during the last thirty minutes of her trip. “Sure,” she said anyway.

  Chapter 4

  “You’ll have plenty of time to explore the Park,” Rick said over dinner, referring to the National Park that lay just outside of Torrey. “There are thousands of trails all through this area and a favorite spot for campers and bikers. God, this country is gorgeous.” Rick took a bite of food, and then as he was chewing, held up a finger to indicate he had more to say on the subject. “Rumor has it that Butch Cassidy hid a load of gold somewhere in the Park,” he added conspiratorially.

  “Butch Cassidy?” JD was only vaguely familiar with the name and associated it with the Wild West days Gramps liked to read about in his western paperbacks.

  “This used to be the famous outlaw’s old stomping grounds. After years on the run, Butch changed his name to William Phillips. There is a story about him that during the great depression, lots of folks around the area were hurting and losing their farms to the banks. There was a family with ten kids that were about to lose their farm. They were good people and the mayor of Torrey hated to see his citizens lose all their hard work. So, he sent a wire to a Mr. Phillips who lived in Washington at the time, asking for help.

  “Mr. Phillips instructed him to tell the family to call the bank and set up a meeting at the farm. They were to tell the bank that they had the money to pay off the rest of the mortgage owed on the farm and to bring the title to sign over to them. Mr. Phillips wanted to know the exact day and hour of the meeting. So, it was arranged, and the bankers came out and met with the family. Another man, unknown to either the family or the bankers, arrived with a large bag of gold coins and paid the bankers. The bankers then signed the title of the property over to the family and left with their gold. The bankers didn’t get too far before they were stopped by masked robbers who relieved them of the bag of gold and sent the bankers on their way. This happened a few times around the county with different bankers and no one was ever the wiser.” Rick chuckled, clearly amused.

  “Pay them off and then steal back the gold? Wow, can’t get away with that nowadays,” JD commented.

  “Maybe not,” he agreed.

  After a bit, Rick reached out and touched the back of JD’s hand. “I want to apologize about Mr. Blackwell’s behavior this afternoon. I should have at least told him you were a woman. I guess I thought he was more open-minded about women in construction.”

  JD shrugged. “Cat’s out of the bag now. What’s he going to do about it? Fire u
s?”

  “Well, let’s just make sure we don’t give him a reason to,” he said quietly, then looked around for the waiter. Rick’s comment turned JD’s stomach sour, for she heard in his remark that he was worried that she might fail him, fail Gramps, and worst of all, fail herself.

  After dinner, JD drove Rick to his hotel at the edge of town. He was heading to St. George in the morning for a practice run in preparation for the marathon in October. Before Rick stepped out of her car, he said, “You’ll do great, JD. Everything will be fine.”

  “Thanks again, Rick, for, you know, talking Gramps into letting me do this,” she said.

  “Hey, you’re ready for it. He would have given it to you. He just needed a little push. Take care. I’ll see you in a few months.” Rick smiled, gave her a wink and shut the door. He waved as she pulled away.

  JD returned to Torrey where Rick had secured lodging for her in a tiny apartment above the General Store. It sat right on the edge of Highway 24 that shot straight through to the Park. Large cottonwoods lined both sides of the entire length of Torrey’s mile-long stretch of Highway 24.

  Two suitcases and a backpack were all she had brought with her. She climbed the rickety wooden stairs to the apartment and fumbled with the key and the door lock. The door swung open on creaky hinges. She was met with the strong odor of cleaning chemicals and fruity room freshener. It was stifling hot.

  Stepping inside, she took a quick inventory of what would be her temporary home for the next nine months. The apartment consisted of a small living room with a matching orange and blue chair and sofa, a small coffee table, and a TV propped up on a shelf in the corner. A kitchenette was tucked into a corner behind the bathroom and was stocked with cooking pots, pans, and dishes−everything she’d need, except food. A tiny table butted up against the wall next to the kitchen door. Just off the living room were two bedrooms. JD selected the bedroom on the left to sleep in and set her luggage on the bed to unpack later. The entire apartment was hardly bigger than the college dorm room she had shared with her best friend, Missy, who was still her roommate in Los Angeles.

  Returning to the living room, she clicked on the TV out of habit and began an inspection of the room looking for the air conditioner control. She found it hiding behind the curtains bracketing the window that overlooked the parking lot. She turned it all the way down to 68 degrees Fahrenheit, a preference that had caused Missy to voice frequent loud complaints, especially first thing in the mornings.

  Surprisingly, JD felt a pang of homesickness while thinking of home and Missy, and she realized that for the first time in her life, she was alone in a strange town without friends or family nearby. The thought both terrified and excited her.

  JD pushed aside the deep blue curtains and gazed out over the gravel parking lot below where a few rental cabins stood opposite the General Store. Beyond that, she spied the steeple of a church. A tiny, pink house stood behind the church. There were three churches along the main road in Torrey, she had noticed earlier and it amused her. She had never seen so many churches in one place before, especially for a town as small as Torrey. Perhaps they attract a lot of religious tourists, she mused. Personally, she didn’t see the use for religion. If there was a God, then he’d know she had a good heart and good intentions toward others. Why did she have to go to church to prove that?

  At any rate, she was glad that the apartment was within walking distance of the schoolhouse. She could walk to work if she wanted to. But until her new office trailer was delivered, she’d work from the apartment.

  Rick had told her that Torrey came alive between the months of April and October, but that it was practically a ghost town during winter. Mr. Blackwell wanted the Bed and Breakfast opened in time for tourist season the first of April.

  There was a lot of work to do. JD wouldn’t have an assistant for this project, as it was considered a small job, but there was still a lot of paperwork to do. It was a good thing she had Missy back at the office to assist with that. In addition to being her friend and roommate, Missy was also the facilitator for the project managers. Missy made sure their paperwork was in order and documented everything sent to her, including background check forms, certificates of insurance, correspondence with the contractors, and on and on.

  Although today was Friday, JD intended to get as much work done over the weekend as possible, so come Monday, she could e-mail a preliminary report for Rick’s review. She realized then, that she hadn’t checked her e-mail since leaving Los Angeles.

  She dug into her zebra striped purse to get her cell phone. It wasn’t there. She checked again and then her pockets. Panic struck because she was not one to lose things. She always knew where everything was. “A place for everything, and everything in its place.” Gramps had drilled that into her since she was a child. But her cell phone wasn’t in its place.

  Perhaps this was a symptom of how much anxiety she had about this whole project. “I’m not stressing,” she told herself. She retraced her steps in her head but couldn’t remember where she was the last time she used her phone. She had important contact information in it that she hadn’t yet stored on her laptop, or copied into her planner. JD tore through her luggage, heedless of where she flung her clothes and other belongings. Nothing. She sat on the edge of the bed, placed a hand over her churning stomach and felt dizzy.

  Breathe, she told herself. In, out. Don’t stress. She practiced some meditation Rick had taught her once, something he did before each race. JD half-closed her eyes and counted her breaths to ten−slowly. Then it came to her. She had left it in the car on the dashboard when she had called Rick’s cell earlier that day and left a message to let him know she had crossed into Utah. She nearly laughed with relief.

  Darkness had settled softly over Torrey when she stepped outside onto the landing of the staircase. The wind had died down and except for the occasional passing car, it was quiet. Used to the lights and noises of L. A., it was unsettling how the quiet seemed so loud in the tiny town. Even so, she still checked the shadows for lurking dangers. Missy called her paranoid, but JD was just being careful. Carelessness landed people in the hospital, or made them dead. She wasn’t going to let herself become a victim, even if this was a small town. She was alone, a woman, and a perfect target.

  The streetlights gave enough light for her to see her way to the car which she had parked under the stairs leading up to her apartment door. JD observed her surroundings carefully, dashed down the stairs and opened her car quickly. She snatched the cell phone off the dashboard, locked the car again, and hurried back inside before locking and bolting the apartment door. Her heart hammered against her ribs as she imagined all sorts of dangers that could have been lurking out there, like snakes and coyotes. I am not paranoid, she reassured herself. I’m just being careful.

  She took a deep breath and sat down on the sofa in the front room. She needed to hear a friendly voice. JD flipped her cell phone open and dialed home, only to realize the signal was non-existent. That would explain why Rick hadn’t answered his phone when she had called. JD closed the phone and tucked it back into her purse. Useless.

  Digging her laptop out of her backpack, she looked around for an Ethernet jack. She thought she could at least check to see if Missy was online and wanted to chat. She looked around in the obvious places for a connection. There was no Ethernet jack. JD tried her wireless adapter. Nothing. She closed the laptop and sighed, hanging her head as she realized she was totally cut off from her life in L.A.

  Then, she spotted an old-fashioned, cream-colored wall phone next to the kitchen entry. She picked it up and heard a dial tone. At least Torrey has come this far in technology, she thought sarcastically. She checked her cell phone directory for Missy’s number then dialed it. The old-fashioned phone had a round wheel with holes in it that revealed numbers. She stuck her fingers in the numbered holes and turned the plastic wheel around till it stopped. She made a mistake and couldn’t figure out how to undo the number she had diale
d. Hanging up the receiver, she tried once more. Carefully turning the plastic wheel until all numbers had been turned in before the line rang.

  The voice mail greeting chimed. “Hi, this is Missy. You know what to do. Bye!” JD flipped open her cell phone to see what time it was. It was only 8:00 pm in California and it was Friday. Missy would be out with her boyfriend, Mark Somebody or other and wouldn’t care to be interrupted. JD sighed.

  “Missy, call me. My cell phone doesn’t work. Call me back on this number, whatever it is.” She hung up and went to the window overlooking the street below. There was absolutely no traffic−not a soul to be seen. What do people do here on the weekends? Unable to think of anything to do in such a small town where she knew no one, she retreated to the bathroom and took a long, hot shower.

  Afterwards, dressed in her knee-length, black-and-white penguin nightshirt (a gift from Missy), she plopped down on the cheap sofa and idly flipped through the TV stations hunting for something to hold her interest until bedtime. Old movies, news, talk shows, nothing particularly interesting. Finally, she clicked it off, brushed her teeth, and went to her room.

  JD grabbed her laptop, cell phone, and the Yellow Pages from the nightstand before climbing into bed. Flipping through the phone book, she made a list of local contractors to invite to the bid meeting the following Wednesday.

  A plumber, an electrician, a carpenter, a roofer, a mason, and myriad other contractor’s phone numbers and addresses were entered into her contacts spreadsheet. She didn’t know how long she worked on her list, but when the letters on the screen started to blur, JD decided she was tired enough to go to sleep at last. She dropped the phone book on the floor next to her bed and laid her laptop on the nightstand. The alarm on her cell phone was set to go off at 6:00 am. JD bunched up the pillow, pulled the thin blanket over her head, and fell asleep.