The Ace of Spades

Chapter 1

     History has been carved into the wood of this house, the score marks on the walls, the nail holes on the beams, and like chocolate the mahogany floor has whitened with age. The windows appear to be struggling to breathe with their frames pinched in at the waist, and all the doors must have been exhausted as they've yawned themselves off their hinges.

     The further you drive down the town's most perverted alleys, the more the houses turn gray. So, it is most peculiar when the moving van arrives, like a white steed atop the road of red dust. You see, it is in this small town of Idaho where flowers bloom through winter; the jewel-toned beauties that peek from the snow like drywall and nails, where even the house has whispered its warnings into the air. "Do not live here," croaks each groaning stair.

     A horror story in itself, the yard held the forgotten cadaver of a garden hose, which lay skeletal in the quilted shades of dying yellow. As my feet scuffed themselves contemptuously down the dimpled sidewalk, the cold expanse of the barren white fence grew longer and longer, until the journey to the door was all but impossible, and my heart was beating in the soles of my shoes. Ever so hesitant, even the iron door-knob, once reached, let out a squeak in protest.

     Granddaddy always told Mama she could have been a star, with her feet gnarled like an oak, and her calluses that scream of years spent story-telling in pointe shoes, to music of old jazz. There was always a spark in her eyes when he said that; sadly, her kindling was doused useless with alcohol years ago. It was always at the bottom of her fifth bottle, when she would grow a little brighter in the eyes.

     During the drive down here, when Mama had opened the car windows to let the night in, the sky seamlessly blending with the unnamed stains on the cloth seats, the silver sheen of the moon reflecting off her showgirl cheekbones, and her legs that whispered ballet, she told me

     Daddy was among the stars. I waved to him before I started the parade, each box carried under an emaciated arm, through a door that seemed to hang like a jaw from its hinges.

     In this apartment building of blood and bone, each red brick a different hue, there is a peculiar staleness to the air— reminiscent of cigars smoked in decades past. It is through the main entrance, a foyer away, that the hall begins, the paint sloughing from its sides like the walls themselves were molting. In other places, the plaster has crumbled away, coating the floor like a fine layer of snow, and sticking to your shoes like a stage-three clinger. Past these doors, others are visible, closed and barred; as it seems the very bones of this house appear unwelcoming.

    Curiosity is a silent beast, but dread is a writhing snake, coiled and heavy in the pit of one's stomach. It is for that reason that the hollow of the room is left unexplored. It is in the boxes, vaults of memories, water stained and forgotten-- that I find her dance shoes, battered and worn. Shoes preserved from the time when hope flourished unfettered.

     You see, Daddy was a man who spoke like a book read, each word holding hands with the other, each syllable elongated and pronounced; and every person--from freshly birthed to newly bed-bound, heard the scream when the town's famous nightingale lost its wings--for it was the same day the town's dancer disappeared. . .

    "129...requesting assistance on East and Main... possible overdose...African American male...early thirties...singing at a nightclub south of the gas station..." whispers the scanners.

     Groaning beneath arthritic strain, the unchristened floors hold Mama as she begins to dance again. For even if she danced with a cup of hesitancy in her step, or twelve ounces of fear in her eyes, she still hummed his tunes as she twirled with the splintering mop.

     So, for you Mama--I've hid the shoes beneath the bed.