Rescued by that New Guy in Town

by J. L. Salter

  It was so peaceful out there, at least while the neighborhood kids were in school. During summer months, bored and unsupervised boys sometimes became a bit too mischievous, but such was probably standard with that type of neighborhood. Still, much better than a noisy apartment complex with people constantly stomping on the stairs and cars moving in or out of tight parking spaces.

  I phoned Reda Cowan to learn when she could open the armory door or loan me the key. No answer, so I left voice mail. In a few minutes she called back. She was in Bowling Green visiting her hospitalized uncle!

  "I'll be back at work tomorrow, Kris. Swing by when you get a chance. But don't tell anybody I'm loaning out that key."

  So, it would be Monday before I could get into the armory. But at least I could have my wheels in the meantime. About nine o'clock, I phoned my former good friend Ellen and didn't begin with any pleasantries. "Why did you leave me out there… locked inside a wooden cage in total darkness?"

  "Huh?"

  She'd better not pretend she didn't know who was calling.

  "Oh, you're kidding about being locked in, right?"

  My silence conveyed the answer.

  "Serious? I didn't see you and I asked Karla if your brother had been reached. She thought so, but I wonder if she had too much of that spiked punch — she was positively loopy. Anyhow, I guess I should've gone back and checked myself." Ellen had that annoying ability to fuss at herself.

  "Yeah." I was using restraint. Karla was an idiot. The moment she'd phoned Eric, or tried to, my plight was likely out of Karla's mind. But it was not like Ellen to forget to check on me. She'd been a much-needed big sister since my life crumbled after the Wally debacle.

  "Kris, I'm sorry. I didn't realize…"

  We batted that around for a bit. She beat herself up sufficiently that I only needed to add a few cuss words to reinforce it. I explained how I finally got out.

  "A pirate?" Ellen immediately shifted from guilt to amazement. "Cool." My friend was an amateur novelist always looking for good characters. "But that's funny with somebody else locked in, too. If I tried to write that twist, my critique partner would say it's 'improbable'."

  "Well, it happened. Truth is stranger than fiction."

  Ellen mulled that over. "So, who was he? In real life, I mean."

  "I didn't see the probably fake I.D. he showed the cop…"

  "You were arrested?" Ellen's guilt returned.

  "Not completely booked, but we were cuffed, patted-down, and stuffed in the paddy wagon." I embellished a bit.

  "Oh, my! I'm so sorry." Ellen was one of those soft-hearted souls who really was sorry when she said so. She was a counselor at the Verdeville Middle School. A couple years older than me, she'd been married for seven years to a bronzed hunk named Mack Coffey, who was precisely the color of dark, rich coffee. "Why didn't you call?"

  The most factual reason: I'd left my phone in my vehicle. But my explanation to Ellen involved the darkness, my panic, needing a restroom, the door locking behind me, et cetera. It satisfied her. Of course, Ellen probably wouldn't have answered her phone at one in the morning anyhow.

  "So how'd you get out of going to the real jail, if you were already cuffed and stuffed?"

  I explained, with a few enhanced details.

  "Wow. You found a pretty savvy pirate. I thought all they could do was swear and spit and say 'Aarrgghh'." She repeated an unanswered question. "So, who was this guy?"

  "Ryan, uh, Hazzard."

  "Aaah… that's a great name for a pirate! I might use 'Hazzard' for one of my characters." Ellen squeezed her manuscripts out of very limited spare time. "Hazzard. Wait a minute! Is he a tall guy?"

  I nodded into the phone. "Pretty tall. Know him?"

  "Know him? He's that new assistant to the County Assessor!" I could hear Ellen licking her lips. "He's a dreamboat. Don't you ever go to the courthouse?"

  I'd been to the courthouse as little as possible since my horrid bankruptcy case. Evidently I was missing all the dreamboats. "He's not from around here, apparently."

  "I'm not sure where he came from but I know he hasn't been in town too long. Maybe September or so."

  Hmm. Assessor's Office. That might explain his coolness under pressure but not the calluses on his hands. And it didn't even touch his advertised but unexplicated "long story" about why he was alone and drunk at the festival. "I don't guess you happen to know his, uh, status."

  "Still single, I think. Maybe divorced. Not sure." Ellen called out a question loudly — not to me, but it hurt my ear. "Mack, who's that icy lawyer in the prosecutor's office?" Her husband's reply was muffled. "No, the tall one. Fake blonde, fake chest." Another inaudible response. "Yeah. Thanks." Before she'd completely re-adjusted her volume, she returned to addressing me. "Vanessa Karlov."

  "What about her?" I'd heard the name and seen the attorney fitting that fairly general description, but that was about the extent of my awareness.

  "She's dated him, more than once." Back to Ellen's normal phone volume.

  "The blonde and the pirate?" I was suddenly and surprisingly jealous.

  "Yeah."

  I searched my memory bank. No, I definitely hadn't seen Vanessa at the festival. No doubt that ambitious attorney was an integral component in Hazzard's long story. "He implied he was alone at the armory before he drank too much spiked punch." Interesting.

  I finally asked Ellen for a ride to the armory to get my car.

  But her mind was still on the lawyer. "Maybe he had another date with Vanessa, but she stood him up so he drowned his sorrows." Ellen was good at writing plotlines. "So what are you going to do?"

  "What do you mean 'do'?" Actually I'd already guessed what she meant.

  "Wait. I need to hear this in person. Oh, did your pirate have a hook? No, hold that thought. I'll be there in twenty minutes. You can tell me while we're getting your car." Ellen loved her drama face-to-face.

  "Make it fifteen and we'll grab an egg-n-biscuit on the way." I was starving. It might take two orders to fill my tummy.

  ****

  It didn't take me long to dress: five-button henley-style shirt with long sleeves, plus jeans and sneakers. Wally always said my favorite leather flight jacket made me look mannish but I didn't care what he or anybody else thought. My deceased father had flown an F-4 Phantom in Southeast Asia. Though not Dad's actual jacket, it reminded me of him.

  After I got some cash and my extra car key from the small desk's drawer, I unlocked the front door for Ellen. That reminded me of the house key Hazzard had plock-der-rop'd on the floor just inside my entrance. I filled a sauce pan with water and put it on the stove. Then I grabbed my hotdog tongs and tried to clutch the key. Ever tried that? Gave up on the tongs and took a sheet of typing paper from my printer. Laid it on the floor and nudged the key with my shoe until it slid onto the page. Curled the paper and carried it to the kitchen. Dropped it into the water, already quite hot. The key made a "ploop" sound and splashed my forearm. Ow!

  Ellen arrived and let herself in. She heard me in the kitchen and hurried over. After examining the contents of the saucepan, she pinched my elbow. "Why are you cooking a key?"

  "Long story."

  "Well, assuming it fell in the toilet or something, why not just spray it with disinfectant?"

  My friend always had logical suggestions right after I'd already begun distinctly illogical procedures. "Worse than toilet — spider."

  "Oh." Ellen totally understood my phobia.

  I thought about stalling five more minutes until the water came to a boil, but I was too hungry. "You still have my extra house key?"

  She nodded. "In my purse."

  "Okay. You can let me back in." I turned off the burner. The key soup would have to wait. "Let's go eat."

  ****

  On the way, I told her everything, including how both of those males had ogled me. Ogling was bad and not-so-bad. Most women don't like the uncomfortable feeling of being stared at. But it's gratifying that somet
hing about you interests a man. Of course, it depended on the man. No ogling from perverts, slashers, convicts, inmates, or that creep who often pestered me at the bank.

  "Well, you were dressed like a hooker." She was merely factual, not at all jealous. Most men turned their heads for Ellen, who rather resembled a slightly darker Halle Berry even though she acted like she didn't notice her own beauty. Her husband Mack certainly noticed and he looked strong enough to maim anybody else who did likewise.

  "Not a hooker. That was a witch costume."

  "More like a hooker pretending to be a witch. Whatever." She asked several more questions about Hazzard. Even though Ellen knew him in real life, she wanted every detail about his secret pirate identity. I told her everything I knew, including when he had me intimately pinned against the wall of my porch. Well, actually, I embellished that part too.

  "Wonder why he didn't have a hook?" Ellen had a faraway look in her brown eyes like she was writing a new scene in her head. "I've heard that's pretty kinky."

  ****

  We ate our breakfasts inside the golden arches, rather than on the highway. Coffee tastes better when it's not splashed into your gullet by road seams and potholes. Then Ellen drove me to the ex-armory.

  From where Ellen stopped, I saw something white on my windshield under a wiper blade. "Don't tell me some half-wit cop gave me a ticket!" It would be hard enough to scare up the money for whatever the presiding judge tossed at me on Wednesday. No way was I going to pay a ticket for illegal parking at an abandoned armory! I got out of Ellen's car and stomped over to mine. I peered at the paper without touching it.

  "How much?" She called through her window.

  "Huh?" I was distracted.

  "What's the going fine for parking out of town in an empty lot?"

  I lifted the wiper blade and carefully examined the piece of paper. "It's not a ticket." I slowly unfolded the single sheet from a five-by-seven tablet.

  "Well, what is it?"

  "A note." I walked back toward Ellen's car as I read the extremely brief text.

  "Policemen leave notes now?" She turned off her engine.

  "No. Not a cop." I flipped it over to see if anything was on the back. Nope. I stared at Ellen blankly. "It's from the pirate."

  "What does it say? Let me see!" Ellen practically snatched it from my hands.

  "Just one word. Doesn't make any sense." Not to me anyway.

  Ellen read the single word out loud, slowly separating its three syllables as if that would clarify the meaning. "Pye-wac-ket." She flipped it over. "Well, at least he signed it.

  Yeah. His first name only — Ryan. "Pyewacket. What's he talking about?"

  "Maybe it's the Latin term for he's gonna raise your property taxes. Ha!"

  "Wouldn't bother me. I'm just renting from Mister Harold." I shook my head. "No, it's got to be something else. Presumably related to me."

  "Or your car." Ellen clearly enjoyed teasing me.

  "This word means something."

  "Obviously guy-talk; he has the hots for you, Kris."

  Hmm. That was a distant memory.

  "Or maybe he likes pies and it's pig Latin or something."

  "Naw, that would be 'eye-pay'." I whapped her shoulder. "Besides, guys don't use pig Latin."

  "Well, Ryan Hazzard is all man. At least Vanessa seems to think so."

  Why'd she keep bringing up that icy attorney? "Yeah, he's a guy, if that chiseled chest covered in a tight pirate shirt means anything." I reclaimed the note.

  Ellen giggled. "Well, you've seen more of him than anybody else, except Vanessa, that is."

  "You think she's seen him naked?"

  My friend's face suddenly got serious. "You're jealous! You spend a few minutes cuffed to this pirate in the back of a cop car and you're jealous of the lawyer who most likely nailed him." She thought a second. "Or he nailed her. Whichever."

  "I think 'nailing' is usually attributed to the man, but it doesn't matter who nailed who." Yeah, I know, grammar. I folded the paper carefully and slid it into my rear jeans pocket. "How long has that lawyer been dating him?"

  "Don't know. Ask your buddy in the Mayor's Office. She knows everything that goes on in the courthouse."

  Reda! Yes, she would certainly know. All the best Verdeville gossip swirled in that outer office. "Well, if the subject comes up when I see her tomorrow." I guarantee that subject will surface. "So what do you figure this word really means?" I leaned forward with one forearm on her window sill. I was almost too warm in my leather jacket. Denim would have been sufficient. Even pirate denim.

  "Search me. Check on the Net." Ellen reached down to start her car. "But if I was you, I wouldn't focus so much on what the message 'means' — if it has any meaning at all." She nodded sagely. "The significant part is that the pirate left you a note."

  Yeah, he sure did. "Okay. I guess." I turned toward my vehicle again. I knew Ellen would wait until I got it started before she took off.

  ****

  On my way back home, I stopped at the Verdeville Grocery for two cheap pot pies, a bag of baked chips, and another six-pack of lite beer. Even though I never remembered drinking much of it, I couldn't keep beer in the house. I'd begun to suspect Elvis was tippling after I went to bed. The twenty I'd brought from my mad money at home barely covered it. "Pyewacket." I didn't realize I'd spoken out loud until the pimply checkout clerk looked at me strangely.

  "Uh, try Aisle Five with the baking stuff."

  I just shook my head. "I'll get it next time. In a hurry now." I didn't feel like explaining anything complex to a teenaged boy.

  I continued to puzzle over the mystery word as I drove toward home. Just as I turned north onto Adams, I startled the occupants of the only other vehicle at that light when I yelled "Pyewacket!" I don't normally verbalize my frustration in public, but I hadn't noticed that other car with both windows partly open. Must be smokers. The gray-haired passenger whacked her driver husband and probably inquired, "How do you know that woman?"

  I could picture Mr. Gray Hair trying to explain.

  ****

  Back home, I logged on to my laptop to check e-mail and social media. Blah, blah, blah. I couldn't believe people wasted so much time on that nonsense. I took the note from my jeans pocket and examined it closely. Nothing but "Pyewacket" and "Ryan".

  I researched Pyewacket.

  "The name comes from a 1647 account, 'The Discovery of Witches', by Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins, who was investigating instances of witchcraft in… England. One of the suspected 'witches' confessed, after being deprived of sleep for four nights, to having several familiars, one named Pyewacket."

  Hopkins also named nine other familiars, including a "kitling", a spaniel, a mutant greyhound, a black rabbit, and a polecat. Pyewacket and four others were described simply as "imps," but "the name Pyewacket has come to be associated with cats." Hmm.

  Among my other search hits, I learned that Pyewacket apparently became a popular name for cats just after release of the movie, Bell, Book and Candle. I had actually seen part of that film once on the late show. It was at least fifty years old.

  Well, unless Ryan's note was a rude request for me to feed his cat, there must be another meaning and I'd probably have to watch that movie before I could start any intelligent guesswork.

  Chapter Eight

  Monday was back to my grind at the Mall Branch of Verdeville Bank & Trust. We didn't open until nine o'clock, but the tellers had to be there by eight-thirty to count our cash drawers, get the windows set up, and whatever other unspecified reasons the miserly Miss Zachery came up with.

  Our branch had two lobby tellers — Aynette and me — and a college student who worked all her afternoon hours in the drudgery known as drive-through window. I'd been with the bank since I finished college, except for nearly a year of work at the local library. That was part of my long story. For the first four of my six banking years, I was at the main building downtown. Had I realized what a pain Miss Zachery
was to work with, I would've remained downtown. Nothing pleased her; she seemed to spend every minute trying to find something we'd done — or not done — to gripe about.

  I was on time as usual, but had to knock at the rear glass door because I still didn't have my keys. Miss Z, who took her time opening the door, looked like she'd been sucking on a dill pickle for the past hour. After all those years, her lips seemed frozen in a perpetual sneer, which often preceded a sharp rebuke. The best days of my two years at Mall Branch were those rare occasions when Miss Z was sick, had a long doctor's appointment, or was forced by the headquarters suits to take at least the minimum number of vacation days.

  Miss Z nodded ever so slightly as I entered, so I explained where my purse and keys were. Without a word, she went straight to the vault to get my drawer. Our morning ritual had a Victorian feel, as though we were in a Dickens' novel. Please, M'am, may I start my shift? I counted in her presence and she thrust forward a ledger I had to sign. Then she stared at it briefly and — reluctantly, it seemed — added her own signature. Finally, she released my drawer — all without a word, but displaying scowls a-plenty. I often wondered if she disliked money, hated bank work, or simply despised tellers. Presumably she'd been a teller herself, way back during the Civil War. We three tellers had a running pool about what year Madame Zachery would finally retire. My guess was that she'd stay until age ninety when the bank would force her out, notwithstanding any applicable age discrimination laws. There were ways around every law. Problem was, nobody at our level knew how old Miss Z actually was. She looked at least eighty already. If she could ever relax that wrinkled sneer, she might appear only about seventy-five.

  Obviously, Aynette was the only branch person I confided in. While we set up our drawers in the adjoining lobby windows, I asked about her weekend. I didn't really care (her weekends were always dull), but it was the quickest way to get around to my own story.