Summertime June

Part 4: The Stranger

The following night my mother had a reoccurrence of one of her episodes. This one was terrible, and it left both my father and Elsie shaken. We had all been affected, hearing mother scream and cry for hours. My father then made the difficult decision to send my mother away temporarily to an institution that was supposed to be better able to handle her illness. He made this decision based on the recommendations of the doctors who had treated her previously, and I know in my mind he truly believed he was doing what was best for her. It wouldn't be until much later that we discovered how wrong he was. I won't waste your time explaining the depth of my sorrow or the complete sense of loss that I experienced over the next few weeks. Suffice to say that it was relentless. June became my constant shadow after that, or maybe I became hers. We went everywhere together and spent nearly every hour of the day in each other's company. Our lessons were abandoned in favor of spending time in the little remaining summer sun. Elsie would attempt to call us in and make us attend to our studies, but these were always half-hearted attempts with middling success at best. My father withdrew into himself, becoming even more focused on the running of our farms than was normal for him; I rarely saw him at all during those days. I cannot say that it particularly bothered me then, because I had not forgiven him for sending my mother away, and I think he must have felt my anger towards him.

When June and I weren't outside of the house walking the grounds, we spent a lot of our time in the kitchen with Mamie. Mamie had been with my family since before I was born; she was old enough to be my grandmother. It was she who stayed with me through the night when I was ill, and she mended all of my hurts whether large or small. Mamie was slight for a cook, her grey-haired head reaching barely to my shoulder even before I had hit my growth spurt. She was warm and always smelled of the products of her kitchen, with undertones of her perfume mixed in. I remember the way she smelled on one day in particular. She'd been baking apple pies for the church, so she smelled like cinnamon and sweet dough. Normally, I wouldn't have been able to tell you what Mamie had made from one day to the next, but I remember this specific day because it was the day that June and I first met Caleb. If life weren't exceptionally cruel in my case, this would have been a day like any other; a day that would disappear into the recesses of my mind, only to be recalled vaguely as a fond memory of our times with Mamie in the kitchen of my childhood home. This was not to be the case, however. On this particular day, the wind blew cold and the sky had turned a deep blue-black; the color of twisters and their unforgiving energy. The air seemed to buzz all around the house, making it seem as though the very earth on which it stood could swallow it whole without a second thought. As a strike of lightning shook the windows in their frames, a knock sounded on the heavy oak door that guarded the back entrance to the kitchen. Mamie looked up from her kneading, her gaze speculative.

"Who on earth would be coming to call in this God-forsaken weather?"

She spoke only to herself, her soft southern accent drawing the words out to their full conclusion. She knew that neither June nor I would have been expecting any callers, especially in a storm like that one.

Mamie wiped the back of her hand on her brow and walked briskly over to the door to remove the bar that kept it secured in the evenings. As her back was turned, I swiped a small piece of the dough that she had left on the counter and popped it quickly into my mouth. June rolled her eyes at me and giggled softly into her hands. The scraping of the door as Mamie dragged it open across the stone floor pulled my attention back to the unexpected guest.

"Yes, how can I help you?" she questioned to the as yet to be seen and mysterious guest. A soft murmur was her reply. I strained my ears to hear over the crackling of the fire in the hearth, but I could not.

"Well," I heard Mamie sigh "I don't usually hold with beggars, Lord knows we have too many of them already, but you seem young. Definitely too young to be knocking on this door begging for food. Come inside and warm yourself by the fire, and I'll fix you up something to fill your belly."

As she spoke she opened the door further and the light from the fire revealed a boy of about seventeen standing on the doorstep. His hair was disheveled and the coat he wore was tattered and threadbare. As he moved further into the kitchen, the shabbiness of his appearance was thrown into full relief. His appearance marked him as a tramp; anybody who saw him would have thrown him into that category without a second glass if it hadn't been for his eyes and the aristocratic tilt of his chin. His eyes were violet as lavender and the way he carried himself bespoke a pride that no man forced to beg would ever have been able to carry. I watched him as he took in the room, his wide-sweeping gaze finally coming to rest on June and me. He inclined his head just barely in our direction and walked over to the sideboard next to the stove to await his meal without a second glance. I felt perturbed and uneasy for a reason I then could not have understood. I glanced at June to gauge her reaction to the stranger, but her attention was not on me. Her eyes were fixed on the stranger, her face the color white that I associated with freshly starched linens. I tugged gently on her arm, trying to turn her attention back onto me; to take away the haunted look I saw across her features.

"June, what's wrong?" I whispered urgently.

She shook her head and put a finger to her lips to silence me. 

Slowly as a cat stretching in the mid-afternoon Sun, June slid off the stool where she sat and silently backed out of the kitchen and into the pantry that lay at its rear. Not knowing what else to do, I followed her. As soon as my feet crossed the threshold of the pantry, I felt her hand reach out to cover my mouth and the press of June's body as she tried to make us as small as possible. 

"Don't make a sound," she whispered, her voice barely a breath in my ear. The fear in her tone was infectious; my heartbeat began to sound inside of my head and the little bit of dough I had eaten earlier danced inside of my stomach. 

"That boy out there. I've seen him before.  Only I can't place where. I know him, Ava. I must know him. Something is wrong." June's words came out in short, clipped breaths. I attempted to angle my body sideways so that I could see her face. 

"June?" I queried softly. 

She looked as though she was about to speak and then.....a sharp intake of breath. Stinging pain in my arm as her nails bit into my skin. The rush of electricity like lightning that seared the air around us. Lavender. That's the last thing I saw before the world went dark.