Miss Grace of the Spades, Chapter 1

It’s a cold and cloudy early December day.  The steel gray sky promises precipitation.  There are signs everywhere.  Squirrels are busy foraging in the brown leaves and yards looking for food to feast on in hopes of surviving the eminent storm.  The smoke from a nearby chimney creeps down the roof, alongside the house, and wafts eastward, and the aroma of the seasoned oak simmering inside the fireplace permeates the air around the yard.  Fifty year old Nicholas Olson is on what looks to be his last run of the fall season before another snowy Wisconsin winter forces him inside to run on the treadmill until spring.  As he runs past the squirrels, his quickened gait and footfalls scatter them like fallen leaves in the wind.  His breath matches the density of the drifting smoke as he fights to keep the pace which warms him just to the point of perspiration.  Thoughts of finishing his run and warming by the fire while relaxing with a good book fill his head while he waits for the family to return from a Saturday afternoon event at St. Vincent Church.   His daily run is three fourths done; he has at least another mile to go before he finishes.  There’s at least a quarter of a mile along Milwaukee Boulevard before crossing the Turtle creek bridge.  He’ll pick up the Turtle Prairie Trail that runs along the west side of the creek.  The trail is a popular respite from the city life, but is now mostly silent; the dirt path is littered with the fallen leaves of the birch, maple and other bushes that prosper in the wetlands around the creek. The most scenic part of the trail comes next, as the trail climbs slightly into an old growth forest with a grove of one hundred year old oaks and hickory trees.  Ascending further away from the creek is the trail he’s blazed that meanders back and forth between the tall oaks that stand like sentinels forming a natural gate to the eastern most side of his property on Brookside Lane.    The fireplace and latest novel wait.  As he quickens his pace, rogue flurries begin to fall from the eastern sky.  Going for a daily run has become his salvation; it relieves his stress and keeps his physician happy. 

At the half century mark in his life, he’s struggling to find anything in life that makes sense.  Coming up on his twenty-third year as a junior high teacher at North Beloit School, finding happiness is something that’s evaded him for years.  At first teaching was fun, but lately there’s nothing fun about it.  The kids don’t listen to him; he has become a disliked teacher amongst the kids and his peers. If it wasn’t for the fact that he’s accumulated seniority and a decent salary, he thinks he’d be much happier mowing lawns or shoveling snow.  Anything would seemingly be better than teaching students about adverbs, fractions, and social studies.  They don’t care anymore about learning and most of the parents whose kids he’s failed blame him for their lack of parenting skills.  And forget about any student that’s not white.  They will all wind up either being drug dealers or gang bangers, so why waste his time?  Not only has Nicholas’ passion for teaching dwindled, but lately his marriage has had everything but passion.  Once the love of his life, his bride Teresa now finds that she’d rather spend time with their three kids, David, Christian, and Lilliana.  She especially spends most of her free time with their daughter Lilliana, who just turned thirteen this past October.  The boys used to idolize Nicholas, but lately they despise him.  David, the oldest at twenty, is a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville where he is majoring in Criminal Justice.  Sixteen year old Christian is always busy with theatre, academic bowl, or chess club. Christian did try running with his dad, but since he is not the athletic type, he gave up after only running two miles.

The snow begins to increase its intensity and the ground is starting to change from the drab brown and gray to white.  The weather man hit the forecast on the nose.  Nicholas began to run a little quicker in hopes of getting home before the trail became too slippery.  At the rate the snow was falling, it wouldn’t be long before there would be the forecasted six inches on the ground.  As the endorphin inspired mood begins to turn melancholy, the reality of spending his exercise time on a boring treadmill hits Nicholas harder than the snowflakes that are now stinging his eyes.

                As he nears the entrance to the Eastgate cemetery, a blue and white city bus approaches its stop at the west side of the entrance.  There is a shadowy figure that’s moving toward the front of the bus, and slowly the figure emerges from the bus and steps onto the narrow sidewalk.  She is an elderly black woman that appears to be in her eighties.  She appears to be fragile, thin and is wearing a black woolen overcoat, a white knitted hat that covers most of her gray hair.  In her left hand she is holding a large plastic bag from Wal-Mart, three fresh cut red roses, and a small black leather purse.  Peeking out from the top of the bag are the ears and eyes of what appears to be a stuffed bear.  In her right hand, she’s firmly holding on to a black cane, that’s keeping her steady as she shuffles along. With a determined look on her face, she slowly walks away from the bus, which has now continued east towards town and its next stop.  As the city bus passes Nicholas spewing its toxic diesel exhaust towards him, he holds breath as the dark gray black cloud engulfs him momentarily.  He emerges from the putrid cloud a second later, exhales, and as he looks down to his IPod to change the song, he looks up in time to see the woman two feet in front of him.  He tries to side step around her, but it’s too late.  She’s looking at her feet taking each step carefully, and is oblivious to his presence until Nicholas has barreled in to her left side, knocking her down before he falls to the hard, cold and snowy concrete sidewalk.  As he lunges forward, he thrusts out his left hand to stop the fall, only to have it buckle under his weight.  Coming to a stop eight feet from the site of the impact, he feels pain shooting up his left arm from his quickly swelling wrist.  Cars continue to pass by on the boulevard, and no one stops.

               “What the HELL, old woman!”  He yells at her.  “You need to watch where you’re going.  Damnit, I think I sprained my wrist!”  Realizing now that maybe it was his fault too, he asks her in a calmer tone of voice, “Are you okay, here let me help you up.  Man, where do you think you’re going on such weather as this?”

The woman just looked up at him, offered her left hand as he lifted her up.  “Got bidness, and it none of your bidness” she replied.  “You better get me dem flowers.  Maybe you better watch where you goin’ mistuh.  I got jus’ much right to be here’s you.” Her voice is raspy, steady and low. 

Now feeling like he was not going to win this confrontation, Nicholas quickly gathered the gray plastic bag, the roses and the old woman’s purse, handed it to her, mumbled something under his breath and continued his westward run.  His right wrist hurt like hell, and hopefully it wasn’t broken, just severely sprained.  It did feel swollen, but he wasn’t too excited about taking his glove off to see what it looked like.  If it was throbbing now, once he got home and in the warmth of the house, it would only hurt worse.  Most certain that there would be a major interrogation from Teresa, who already hated the idea of him running in this weather anyway, he began to think of what he could tell her.  Undoubtedly if they found out that he knocked that stupid old woman to the ground, he would not get any sympathy from her or the kids. It’s hard to believe that they would worry more about some old hag, no less a black old hag, but he knows how his so-called beloved family is. Hopefully, no one he knows saw the incident take place.

Continuing along the sidewalk and just before crossing the bridge, Nicholas looks back toward the cemetery entrance, and can barely make out the black shadow figure of the woman as she crosses the arched gateway into the cemetery.  Good place for her, he thinks, she’ll be residing there soon enough.  He crosses the boulevard, picks up the trail and descends the slight embankment and is now running along the creek.  Ice has started to form along the water’s edge in the calm areas of the creek.  Soon the creek will be completely covered with ice, and a blanket of snow will cover it until spring.  Only the tracks of rabbits and deer will be seen, and the area will take on a tranquil quietness. Within minutes, he reaches the path that leads to his house.  The path is now covered with snow, and is becoming slippery.  He carefully jogs between the sentinel oaks, and runs up to garage door at the front of the house.  The white aluminum overhead garage door is open, and he sees Teresa and the kids getting out of the minivan.  They’ve just returned from a church function, and seem to be cheery and excited about the snow.  Nicholas feels his mood starting to sour, and realize now that his wrist hurts like crazy.

 

“So how was your run”, Teresa inquires.  “Are you still feeling grouchy?”  “It was okay until the snow started.  The trail got slippery pretty quick.  Luckily I made it back in one piece, except for hitting this slippery…”

Nicholas was interrupted by the sound of a car pulling up into the drive.  It was their neighbors, Bob and Nancy Neumiller in their gray four door Ford Fusion.  They were decent neighbors, but usually always wound up sticking their noses into other people’s business where it didn’t belong, like most retired people.  They kept their house and yard immaculate; the perennial and annuals gardens around the house were always blooming and always weed free.  There was never a weed growing in the grass, not even a stray dandelion.  In the summer months, both Bob and Nancy could be seen working in the yard �" Nancy was always bent over, backside in the air; her white and pink flowered plastic work gloves on, hair tied back, sun visor on.  Nicholas used to joke with David and Christian when they were younger that he’d love to have a sling shot and sling a rock or something at Nancy’s backside when she would be bent over weeding.  One day he made the mistake of saying his desire when Teresa was in the van, and she slugged him in his right bicep while both boys erupted in laughter.  Hearing the boys laughing as they got out of the van, Nancy stood up, waved and had a huge smile on her face.  The boys and Nicholas laughed even louder.  Bob, a mechanical engineer, recently retired after 35 years at Beloit Industries.  Bob knew Nicholas’ father and uncle, who also worked at BI.  An avid golfer, he can be seen at the Parkview golf course most mornings during the summer doing eighteen holes at least three days out of the week.  He takes great pride in raising picture perfect vegetables from his backyard garden, located just behind his garage, where his small shop is located.  It seemed to Nicholas like Bob would always be tinkering with something that had a motor on it.  Nancy retired from North Beloit Hospital as an RN in the pediatric wing.  She took pride in caring for many newborns in the Beloit area, and at one point cared for all three of the Olson kids when they were born.   When she’s not working in her yard, Nancy spends her time entertaining four other retired nurses who play bridge on Wednesdays, and volunteers at the local food pantry and plays piano at the Beloit Lutheran Church services Sunday mornings.  It just bothered Nicholas to know that they were the type of people that had to know what was going on in everyone’s lives.  Teresa always told Nicholas to just relax, that they were probably just being observant and were looking out for the best interest of everyone in the neighborhood.  It just always seemed like whenever Nicholas seen Bob talking with Ralph Sans, the neighbor across the street who pretty much kept to himself, Bob would always be making hand motions, moving his hand from right to left as if to say that he’d move this bush over there and take that tree out of that side and plant this tree over there while the two of them were looking at Nicholas’ yard.  Perhaps he was just jealous of perfect life in retirement the Neumiller’s seemed to have, but Nicholas wished they’d just move to Florida.

As the car pulled all the way in the driveway,  Bob’s driver’s side window lowered and he called out to Nicholas.  “Hey Nick, we saw you take a nasty spill out there on the sidewalk by the cemetery, are you okay?  You want Nancy to take a look at it?” 

Great he thought, so much for hiding his fall and encounter with the old hag from Teresa and the kids.  Now there would be a major investigation and interrogation from her and he would have to think fast of what to say.

“Yeah, I’m okay. Just goes to show you that messing with the I-pod and not paying attention can lead to trouble.” He replied.

  “You sure knocked that poor old woman for a loop.  Was she okay?” Bob asked.

“Oh, sure, you know, uh, she was fine.  I think it just scared her more than anything.  No harm done.  Got her up and she was on her way.”

“So where was she going?”

 “Hell if I know, but I did turn around when I crossed the boulevard and saw her walk into Eastgate.”

“Oh.  Kinda bad weather to be out there, especially walking, don’t ya think?”

“You didn’t ask her?” Teresa inquired.  “How old was this dear lady, and what in the world was she doing out there on an afternoon like this?”

“Hell if know, and hell if I care! She’s just another old black hen probably on the way to her grave! Because of her I messed up my wrist.”  Nicholas angrily replied.

“NICHOLAS OLSON!  How can you feel that way about an old woman out in weather like this???”

“Well, we’d better get going.” Bob said with a half smile on his face.  “You take care, Nicholas; we hope your wrist is okay.”

“Uh, Yeah, gee thanks Bob. Have a good night now, see you later.”  Nicholas felt like telling him to mind his own damn business.  If Bob only knew how Teresa and the kids would react to him knocking some old woman down, he would have kept his mouth shut and kept on going home.  Hopefully Teresa would forget about the whole thing and they’d be able to spend a relaxing evening at home together.  Fat chance of that, he then thought.  With that, Bob and Nancy waved goodbye and back out of the drive and drove off.

“What?”  Nicholas caught the glare in Teresa’s eyes and the look on her face was exactly what he expected.

“So just exactly what did you do to this poor old black woman?”

“ You know what, I really don’t care.  If she was out there with weather like this, she deserves what she gets.” Nicholas’ tone of voice clearly showed he was getting upset now

.

“How can you say that?  Don’t you think you should have asked her if she needed help?”

“I DID, and she told me her ‘bidness was none of my bidness’, so as far as I’m concerned, it’s case closed.  I really could care less what happens to her.”

“Well we need to go see what’s happened to her.  What if she’s fallen again or is hurt?  Come on kids, let’s go look for her.  Are you coming or not, Nicholas?”  Teresa was clearly agitated and upset now, and even Lilliana gave Nicholas that look.   Thinking that if he wanted any sympathy for his now swollen wrist, he figured it would be best to satisfy her desire to look for the woman.  Nicholas sighed heavily, muttered something under his breath and reluctantly got in the van with Teresa and the kids.  Riding in the passenger seat, he felt steam rise off his body, which caused the rider’s side windows and windshield to begin to fog up.  Realizing that complying with their wishes was the only solution to this mess, he told Teresa exactly where to go and pointed out where the original confrontation between him and the old woman occurred.   Turning right into the entrance to the cemetery, they entered the drive that encompasses the entire property, forming an oval loop, dissected by four single blacktopped lanes between the outer oval drive.  As they drove around the south side of the lots, old gravestones of Beloit’s elite stood proudly and boldly bearing the names of the families buried beneath the granite.  Nicholas looked to his left and right, but saw no one walking amidst the stones. 

“So what was this lady wearing?” Teresa asked. 

“She was wearing some black type overcoat and I think a white hat.  Oh, and she had a cane, a big plastic bag, and some roses in her hand."  With the snow continuing to fall, at least an inch had now accumulated on the ground.  No tire tracks, no footprints were visible anywhere in the snowfall.  As they reached the back half of the outer drive, they were now convinced that no one but them were in the cemetery.

“I think you were hallucinating, dear,” offered Teresa.  “I just don’t see where anyone can be out here.  We’d have seen footprints or something out here by now.  There was nothing.”

Nicholas himself started to almost believe that maybe she was right, but when he rubbed the palm of his hand across his mouth, the shooting pain in his left wrist reminded him of the fall and the feeling of the cotton from the old woman’s coat as he tried pushing her away from him as he started to fall.   How can it be?  It didn’t make any sense to him. 

“Yeah Dad, I think you’re just imagining things �" like maybe you were having a runner’s high,” chimed in Lilliana.

With that, Christian burst out laughing which irritated Nicholas even more. 

“That’s enough you two,” he angrily shouted at his two kids in the back of the SUV.    As they approached the eastern side of the loop, Lilliana was the first to spy the blood red color of the three roses against the white blanket of snow.  One rose was placed on each of three small plain gravestones.

“Mom, stop the car!  There are the roses!  Dad was right!” she said excitedly.  Feeling somewhat relieved that he wasn’t losing his mind, Nicholas suggested that they get out and look for footprints.  As they all got out of the car, Lilliana also noticed the snow covered fur of the teddy bear near the middle of the three stones.  Indeed it’s the same three roses and the teddy bear the woman was carrying, but something doesn’t add up.  Looking around the area, Nicholas noticed something wasn’t right.  There are no footprints, no tire tracks, nothing.  He looked at his watch and calculated that no more than 45 minutes could have gone by since their confrontation near the entrance to Eastgate.  If it had taken her at least 5 minutes to walk from the bus to the entrance to the cemetery, it most certainly would have taken her at least 25 minutes or more to walk here and back to the entrance to catch the next bus, unless of course someone had picked her up. 

“Hello!!” he called out loudly as his voice echoed through the pines and cedar trees of the cemetery.  No response.

“Hello, Ma’am? Anyone here” inquired Teresa.  Both Christian and Lilliana were shivering, and were starting to get nervous. “Mom, Dad, this is getting freaky.  I �" I don’t think there’s anyone here.  Can we go home now?” asked Lilliana.

They could not see anyone or anything moving. Convinced there was no one else alive in the cemetery but me, they climbed back into their car and turned left on to the small road that dissected the outer loop.  As along slowly with their windows down, they still could not see any footprints or tire tracks in the snow.  Surely she must still be in the cemetery somewhere, once again thought Nicholas, as there’s no way she could have walked this far at the pace she was shuffling along.  The larger stones in the back of the cemetery were now fading into the gray and white as darkness began to creep in across the cemetery.  Even if she was still walking out, they would not be able to see her unless they drove down every road of the cemetery.  Given the fact that it was now getting dark, she could be anywhere, if she existed at all.  Back at the entrance, Nicholas told Teresa to stop the car.  He got out, looked around once again.  The cemetery was silent but for the sound of the wind rustling through the pin oak tree leaves, and the rhythmic sounds of the cars’ wipers intermittently clearing the accumulating snow on the windshield.  Now filled with doubt, he wondered if he really did see a woman get off that bus.  Was his mind really playing tricks on him?  Hallucinations inspired by his so-called runner’s high?  Not for a second would he believe that; after all the roses and teddy bear were there.  And the nosy Neumiller’s had seen her as well.  She had to have been there, but where was she now?  It’s as if she had simply vanished.  As he took one last look across the cemetery, chills crept up his spine.  His shoulders and arms shook; his wrist throbbed.  He got back in the car, and they drove back home. 

 

Reviews

[Catherine Frain]

Nicely done. It is awesomely written. : D