A Bright House

This mad world of leaping particles, ghostly sub-particles, statistical probabilities and interacting energy fields, all in a state of null time, is the loom from which reality is woven. - J. Randles

Jenny sat in her little yard until the dying of sunlight. She tilted her head back against the trunk of the giant maple tree, closed her eyes and gently rocked side to side, feeling the rough bark and knowing a strange comfort from it. Something real, rooted, not apt to vanish overnight. The one visual that kept playing across her eyelids was this man’s face... this Ray Townes. She pressed her skull into ridges of tree trunk, saw his features, then his hands, then his eyes. This came attached to no readily identifiable emotion; no wondering about him sexually, no overt arousal of interest, but a simple replaying of his appearance there at the diner table. The many consecutive years and seasons of being self isolated, imposed in the exile of extensive recuperation, had finely tuned Jenny’s intuitions.

She was a student of her own thoughts, observing them critically and quite often removed. Her body was distinctly separate from her essence. She felt and knew it for the vessel that it was. Removing the killing ache of missing Scott and his touch had meant shutting herself down from the body inward. Skin first, then deeper into the tissue, the bones, clear through to a perfect stasis. Her disconnection was breached, of course, several times per month when sudden triggers were pulled. This was the way of things, and it was accepted. To say that Jenny was unhappy would be inaccurate. Her participation in life had been streamlined into the simplicity of finding pleasure within calm. Small moments. Pain free moments. She watched movies to remember the part of herself that had been fully blossomed and at risk... to keep that tiny thread of connection to her lost love, her lost self, her lost vulnerability.

If pointedly asked whether she had completely given up hope of ever loving again, or more importantly, trusting... Jenny would have averted her pretty eyes and drew a thin line across her mouth.

And so, with the glass of apple juice finally emptied, the evening draping itself from horizon to horizon, she found herself mildly amused by these scrolling mind pictures of the ruggedly attractive, almost feral looking man who had casually entered her place of employment and then stared directly into her core. Within the one identifiable emotion on that Friday evening, even as she knew she would not be calling his number, was a curious feeling of anticipation. Her Saturday shift was a shortened one, from seven until four. Jenny had no doubt whatsoever that mister Townes would be returning.

A beautiful golden retriever and his human friend are moving deeper into the expanse of open land beyond the ring of forest that surrounds their village. The teenage boy is walking atop the train tracks, passing his previous best distance without falling from the rail. He looks straight ahead at the heat shimmering horizon and feels his balance and weight in perfect harmony with the narrow surface upon which he places his moving feet. The dog, a gentle eyed life adoring creature, trots a few yards ahead, tongue lolling happily as he looks back from time to time at his companion. The sunshine is warm, little humidity, no wind, as insects rizz the air. Grasshoppers disguised as grey rocks leap to and fro ahead of the dog, their wings opening up for the short bursts of flight. School is out for summer. Time, for a young man of fifteen, is an ally, a tantalizing possibility ever unfolding. His senses are heightened by the molecular-deep buzz of freedom. These are the years before love, career, family. This is the epitome of full throttle experiencing, and for a simple rural kid it would be a self completing loop of seamless moments.

For his mind flow, no seams in wanting to drive dad’s car, kiss Denise and lose his virginity with her, go to Europe as soon as possible like his older cousin, spend the whole summer swimming and fishing, learn to play the guitar he’d gotten for his birthday, be accepted by and allowed to drink with the elder students at the old abandoned pulp mill, kiss Denise and lose his virginity with her...

his dog barked but once.

More of a yelp, in the telling of it later.

The beautiful canine, named Whisky by the boy’s father and doted on by all family members, had lengthened the gap between them without it being noticed. Whisky’s abrupt bark that ended in a yelp suffix caused his human to misstep on the rail and look up just prior to falling sideways with a violent twisting of his left ankle. The blurred visual was of the dog making a sprint toward a tree line that consisted of mostly tall Spruce and thick ground cover. Insects formed a rising cloud as Whisky dashed through the high brown grasses. The boy fell into a hard landing on his left side, an elbow lacerating against rough gravel and two large bolts holding the ties into place. For a few seconds he lay, stunned, then looked to the blood flowing freely from his opened arm. His ankle and nervous system crescendoed the orchestra of agony, but still he scrambled to a sitting position to look for his dog.

The veracity of children is often questioned, being as it may their as yet undiminished capacity for wide open imagination. The veracity of an adolescent young man may be even more enthusiastically challenged, for reasons not clear given the approach to the sobriety of adulthood. Many times, they who question this truthfulness lose sight of the flip side of the coin; a child is a most honest being. They more often than not will choose the straight path when sharing an experience, foregoing the embellishments of adults. In the case of this young man who suffered two hours of physical and emotional agony when limping home along the same field and forest that had earlier infused him with blissful feelings, what logical assumption could be made to support a doubting of his story?

In her bed, Jenny felt the not unpleasant buzz of dry red wine and body fatigue. It formed a hybrid sensation when intermingled with the belly flutter of thinking about this intriguing new character, Ray Townes. At this point, that first Friday of the rest of her life, she wasn’t able to attach the word “attraction” to what she perceived within. The walls had been built too high, too well, the mortar perfectly mixed and applied.

Jenny had learned the hard way about expectation. Those first two years after Scott’s disappearance had been nothing but that... and prayer. Prayer to the supreme and silent One. The telephone acquired its own cruel new persona, sitting daily as mute as the God she had been taught was a loving entity. Because Scott’s family had never taken to Jenny and blamed her for him leaving his home town to relocate in Toronto’s morass, she couldn’t even turn to them for comfort when she most needed to.

Her own parents, the biological ones, were never known to her. Jenny was a foundling. Unbelievably, or perhaps all too, someone had been detached and evil enough to leave her stark naked and only ten months old, in the sand dunes of the beach at Grand Bend. With hundreds of locals and tourists enjoying a wonderful July day, the thinning of the crowds at sunset had reduced the noise of power boats and cavorting children. Jenny’s tiny weakened cries had been heard.

This was the genesis of her world. Her experiential take on life, unalterably shaped by a single act of despicable cruelty. Abandonment would be, therefore, Jenny’s most vulnerable place. In her bed, eyelids growing heavy on that Friday night, she held the Ray Townes business card up to the light of her small table lamp. She ran her thumb across the raised font of his name, slowly, left to right and back again... couldn’t help but to place the card below her nostrils. She detected the barest hint of fragrance.

Deodorant or essential oil, but masculine and muted. Her eyes locked onto the phone number, and she knew she wouldn’t phone him even as the feeling that it was important to do just that... insinuated itself behind her drooping eyelids... she yawned and attempted to refocus on his name, which though new to her felt incredibly familiar... had she seen him on television? In the newspaper? Before her sleepy brain could sift through the possible answers, Jenny fell asleep holding the card. It was a precise mirroring of the man at that point also sleeping across town, his fingers clutching the handle of a well worn teaspoon borrowed from a diner he had never before set foot in.

It is 1991, three years after the strange car accident near Allenford Ontario. A weary and slightly intoxicated constable Will Pritchard, off duty for the evening and about to be forced into retirement after a decision by town council, is sitting in his kitchen alone. He is more than a little upset at the just decided upon news that a young hotshot cop from nearby Owen Sound is to be his replacement. At a still robust 66 years old, Pritchard has no idea what he will do with himself at the end of the fiscal year. He watches through the old eight panel window as the snow lashes the panes. One whale of a storm blowing in off the lake, and he has to get the oil tank topped up soon. Thick fingers fumbling, he makes a quick note of reminder on the back of an unpaid phone bill. Right on cue, the phone rings. It is one of the old rotary dial models from the 70s and the volume of the jangle makes Will lurch in surprise.

He slurs his “hello” slightly, picking up on the third ring.

The voice on the other end of the connection belongs to his old buddy and fellow cop, Jimmy Wentworth, who works for the town of Kincardine.

“I’ve got a real weird one for you here, William” is what he first hears, followed by a bizarre tale involving a vanishing dog that disappeared a year and a half prior, only to return from out of nowhere on Christmas eve at the front door of the Kincardine family who had given him up for dead. “You don’t remember me telling you about this case?” Jimmy asks, pausing for a few seconds.

“The kid? The teenager with the crazy story?” Pritchard mumbles, rubbing his eyelids with a free hand.

“Yeah, that’s the one. The dog’s owner. The one who claimed that he saw his dog carried off by a huge eagle or some such nonsense.”

Saturday morning in a Days Inn room in Toronto found Ray Townes awakening with a start on the unfamiliar bed.

For long moments he remained still, thinking, remembering. He felt the teaspoon in his hand and placed it gently on the mattress beside his leg. He had fallen asleep in his clothes.

The memories wanted back into the forefront. Those layered visuals with their potent emotional attachments; they wanted to reclaim his focus but he resisted. He pushed back in the way that he had learned to master over the decades of living within the mind of a seer. This was a busy day for Townes. He had arrived in the city with only a small piece of carry-on luggage. His plan was to spend a few hours wandering the downtown, wallet at the ready, to purchase not only a pair of jeans and a shirt but an affordable suit to wear to Sunday’s funeral service. Spending those moments on the bed that morning, thinking of what he had to accomplish along the lines of practicality, he was surprised at the insistent power of the memories as they bounced around his mind. He had been blown completely away by the blurry impressions of the pretty, sad Jenny. Just thinking her name that way, however briefly, opened the door enough for some of the crushing weight of her isolation to come pouring back. Something else, on the tip of his tongue... an old movie... yes, “A Portrait Of Jennie”... followed by the nausea of last night after he allowed himself to go to her. Shortness of breath. The want of tears to spill, hot and heavy.

Ray’s stomach growled. It rumbled like distant thunder. In his gut he felt the boiling acid of neglected appetite. Then, a surprisingly keen disappointment when the cell phone supported his crystal clear assumption that the haunted, and haunting, Jenny... was not going to call.