Read Online Shadows Burned In by Chris Pourteau - Free Book Online
Authors: Chris Pourteau
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noticed.
The house.
A smile came across his face as he realized the sound he’d
heard. The kids playing had been the whisper of memory. He put the car in park
and stepped out and up on the driver’s side doorframe to peer across the
slightly stirring tall grass. Needs mowing , he thought. The Spanish moss
around the cracking, gray porch swayed lightly in the breeze. He squinted,
trying to look through the windows but saw only darkness.
Someone’s probably boarded up the old place from the
inside as a hazard to children , thought David.
And that made the smile fade from his face. He thought back to
when he and Theron Taylor had come to the house on Halloween on a mutual dare
to see if they could spook Old Suzie. She was a big woman then, and somewhere
in the back of his mind David recalled she’d later died of something that makes
other people just shrug and say, “Well, she was old,” before going on with
their day.
But not back then. Back when he was a kid, Suzie was in her
mid-fifties, a big woman of . . . well, must’ve been 250 pounds. She wore her
husband’s old clothes after he’d run out on her. She’d literally stepped into
his shoes, his pants, his shirt, and his cowboy hat and begun working the
half-acre of vegetable gardens they had around back of the house. She drove his
truck to the store every Friday afternoon and carried her own groceries back
from there, even after David and his buddies were off in college and she was
collecting Social Security, even after ordering groceries over the Web and
paying a little extra for the convenience of having them delivered became the
standard way of doing things.
She was a hard woman , David remembered, feeling a
fear in his bones from that night long ago. Leaning on his car roof, he stared
at the slouching house and remembered how much she’d scared two little boys.
Suzie was a recluse who only came out to work or “get supplies,” as he’d once
overheard her say in the grocery store, or to rent old DVD movies from the
7-Eleven because she couldn’t afford the satellite-based view-it-on-demand
service that killed cable television. He remembered seeing her riding atop an
old John Deere tractor in December, preparing the ground for seeding in
January, bouncing up and down and manhandling the steering wheel.
When she wasn’t working the land or buying supplies in town,
the only other time he really saw her outside the house was when she mowed that
big front yard of hers. On the odd cool evening between October and March,
she’d sit out on her porch swing and watch the evening pass her by. Her thick
legs pushed and pulled the swing lazily, its rusty chains creaking and
twanging. And she’d just sit there looking out over the front yard, listening
to the chirping of the crickets or the twittering of the birds and the distant
(always distant, if she was on the porch)
sounds of children playing down the street and cars
passing on Elm Street as folks made their way home from work. When the Web made
possible the work-at-home standard everyone enjoyed today, there was much less
of that, and Old Suzie seemed to spend more time on the porch then. She’d rock
and drink something out of a glass
( “It’s baby pee, it’s baby
pee!” Theron Taylor swore back then)
that was probably lemonade, now that David thought back
on it. She’d listen and watch, and about the time the sun would go down, she’d
call it a day and go inside.
All the children thought she was a witch. David wondered at
that now, how children come up with those crazy ideas and torment other
children (and adults) mercilessly to play them out, just to give themselves
something to do and keep their own little lives from becoming too boring by
making others miserable. Or was that the human condition in general? Maybe
adults had learned how to be more subtle about it, less obvious. Yes, they’d
been convinced she was a witch all right, growing all those herbs and vegetables
in her garden to
The house.
A smile came across his face as he realized the sound he’d
heard. The kids playing had been the whisper of memory. He put the car in park
and stepped out and up on the driver’s side doorframe to peer across the
slightly stirring tall grass. Needs mowing , he thought. The Spanish moss
around the cracking, gray porch swayed lightly in the breeze. He squinted,
trying to look through the windows but saw only darkness.
Someone’s probably boarded up the old place from the
inside as a hazard to children , thought David.
And that made the smile fade from his face. He thought back to
when he and Theron Taylor had come to the house on Halloween on a mutual dare
to see if they could spook Old Suzie. She was a big woman then, and somewhere
in the back of his mind David recalled she’d later died of something that makes
other people just shrug and say, “Well, she was old,” before going on with
their day.
But not back then. Back when he was a kid, Suzie was in her
mid-fifties, a big woman of . . . well, must’ve been 250 pounds. She wore her
husband’s old clothes after he’d run out on her. She’d literally stepped into
his shoes, his pants, his shirt, and his cowboy hat and begun working the
half-acre of vegetable gardens they had around back of the house. She drove his
truck to the store every Friday afternoon and carried her own groceries back
from there, even after David and his buddies were off in college and she was
collecting Social Security, even after ordering groceries over the Web and
paying a little extra for the convenience of having them delivered became the
standard way of doing things.
She was a hard woman , David remembered, feeling a
fear in his bones from that night long ago. Leaning on his car roof, he stared
at the slouching house and remembered how much she’d scared two little boys.
Suzie was a recluse who only came out to work or “get supplies,” as he’d once
overheard her say in the grocery store, or to rent old DVD movies from the
7-Eleven because she couldn’t afford the satellite-based view-it-on-demand
service that killed cable television. He remembered seeing her riding atop an
old John Deere tractor in December, preparing the ground for seeding in
January, bouncing up and down and manhandling the steering wheel.
When she wasn’t working the land or buying supplies in town,
the only other time he really saw her outside the house was when she mowed that
big front yard of hers. On the odd cool evening between October and March,
she’d sit out on her porch swing and watch the evening pass her by. Her thick
legs pushed and pulled the swing lazily, its rusty chains creaking and
twanging. And she’d just sit there looking out over the front yard, listening
to the chirping of the crickets or the twittering of the birds and the distant
(always distant, if she was on the porch)
sounds of children playing down the street and cars
passing on Elm Street as folks made their way home from work. When the Web made
possible the work-at-home standard everyone enjoyed today, there was much less
of that, and Old Suzie seemed to spend more time on the porch then. She’d rock
and drink something out of a glass
( “It’s baby pee, it’s baby
pee!” Theron Taylor swore back then)
that was probably lemonade, now that David thought back
on it. She’d listen and watch, and about the time the sun would go down, she’d
call it a day and go inside.
All the children thought she was a witch. David wondered at
that now, how children come up with those crazy ideas and torment other
children (and adults) mercilessly to play them out, just to give themselves
something to do and keep their own little lives from becoming too boring by
making others miserable. Or was that the human condition in general? Maybe
adults had learned how to be more subtle about it, less obvious. Yes, they’d
been convinced she was a witch all right, growing all those herbs and vegetables
in her garden to
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