The day the church disappeared wasn’t the beginning of the strange things that had been happening around town. In fact, people had been reporting and photographing oddities for months. Social media feeds were riddled with questions and silent gasps along with crudely snapped cell phone photos of things that were out of place for a while now in the town of Addington. It wasn’t a big town to begin with so small news was big news, but in this case there were truly strange things happening. The church was just…gone.
Jess Whitmore knew exactly why it had all been happening, but she didn’t realize how far it would go when she first discovered what was causing these events.
Three months ago, she was wasting time on a lunch break. There was a lot of that in her life, because it would be considered a gourmet meal if she were to sit at a table to eat during those breaks. Most of the time lunch, though you could barely call it that by most people’s standards, consisted of something out of a wrapper that could be contained in a vending machine. She decided today, that she would walk the paved path inside of the city park. She missed the woodland trails that used to be there, but they had been gone now for over a year. The newly minted St. Mary’s Cathedral had taken their place. Nonetheless it was the least populated area of Addington, and the closest natural reprieve in the middle of the town, so she went here to gather her thoughts. If she were being honest with herself, though, she would admit that it was just to have a place to have no particular thoughts at all.
Walking along the back side of the park at about the quarter mile mark of the concrete path was a tree stump. It was what remained of a large and gnarled old red oak tree that had been cut down last year. All that remained was a two foot tall stump with a hollow near the roots. Quite a departure from its previous state of gnarled grandeur. Before it had been cut down there were at least 4 rope swings hanging from its branches that she could remember swinging from as a young girl. In those days the tree was still craggy and snarled, its branches inconsistent from one side compared to the other, and to her imaginative mind she always thought it looked like a hand curled up toward the sky. The hand would have been arthritic, but it was a hand to her young mind nonetheless.
It had been cut down last year as construction had commenced on the new cathedral. The official reason that the town had stated that it, along with a multitude of other trees and wooded paths must be removed, was that the branches endangered the roof of the building-to-be and they deemed it a “public hazard”. There was some complaining from the citizens about the church being built on what was previously the city park grounds of course. The park had been established decades ago, back in 1963 when the land was donated by several people just for that purpose. The town was growing at the time, and the post war boom of children found that there were many new ones each year that occupied their quaint place of residence. Many of those residents were now the elderly and they had taken personal offense to the removal of the park where so many memories in their lives had been made.
It turns out none of that really matters when half of the city council are members of the congregation, and the largest contractor in town is related to the priest. You can find similar chains of events in any small town Jess assumed. Cronyism at its finest, and nobody really gets what they want by voting if somebody more important that you wants the opposite. Back door deals are always more successful than a good public outcry. Jess couldn’t remember a time where she felt that the tree was dangerous. To her, it was just a reminder of a time long since passed from an age of innocence and wonder. This left her with a bitter taste in her mouth every time she visited the now neutered city park.
Regardless, the stump had become her new favorite lunch break spot. She could still smell the clover blooming in spring that was heralded by birdsong, or she could hear the snow making the soft tinkling music as it fell to the ground on a quiet winter’s day. Lunch wasn’t during any sort of church service since she worked Monday through Friday, so she didn’t have to worry about the growl of the church bell heralding the town during the times that she wanted to sit there in silence. The bell was the real nuisance when the goal was quiet. It echoed down every street blaring from its tower above the new building. A cacophonous reminder of what used to be.
Today, as she was making her way up the path to her makeshift stool made from the vestige of the once grand tree, she realized that she wasn’t alone. Kneeling at the foot of the stump, right about where the hollow would be at ground level was a woman in a neon track suit. It looked like something that should be accompanying teased and hair sprayed blonde hair in 1991. It would have been in style then, but it was decidedly not in the present day. A remnant from a past that had a decidedly alternate sense of style compared to the present. Instead of the teased blond hair with large prominent bangs that one would expect to accompany the outfit, there was a straw sun hat akin to something a farmer would wear, and a pair of worn leather sandals on her feet. In those sandals was a pair of mismatched socks. One black and one white. Next to her was a shopping cart full of an indeterminate collection of random things. Jess stopped in her path and took in the curiosity from a distance, partly out of annoyance that someone was where she didn’t expect them, and partly out of curiosity. The woman’s back was turned to her and it looked like she was digging in the ground before she stood, dusted off her hands on the front of her pants, and then turned left toward her shopping cart. She caught Jess out of the corner of her eye and smiled at her and nodded. Her face was time worn and craggy, and her hair under her hat was a mixture of frizzy brown and gray. Despite her aged guise, Jess could see that her eyes, bright blue and nearly twinkling, stood out. Between the ageless eyes and a crooked toothed grin she showed an odd sense of friendliness as she waved and walked away pushing her rattling shopping cart.
Jess stood there for a few moments before she realized that she hadn’t smiled back and her right eyebrow was raised the way that it does when she is confused or judgmental. She mentally kicked herself for being rude, but tried to excuse herself by thinking that the woman didn’t present herself as being approachable. In fact the remnant of a long lost decade in the form of a strange woman made her immediately think that she was someone to stay away from. As the woman meandered through the trees on the paved path until she disappeared from view, only then did Jess approach the stump. Nothing seemed particularly amiss except for some rummaging in the leaves until she looked closer. Inside of the crook of the tree, deep within its natural hollow was a tiny figurine of a squirrel holding an acorn. It was ceramic the best that she could tell, sitting on its hind legs and clutching a tiny acorn in its front paws. It was worn a bit with some chips in the paint, but it was obvious what it was.
The strange thing, she thought to herself, is that it seemed to belong there. She knew that it hadn’t been there before, as she had knelt in the same spot as the old woman had before to peer into the darkened hole in the tree’s base. She can remember pretending that fairies lived in holes like that when she found them as a child, and her curiosity of them had never diminished since. She couldn’t pass one by without looking inside.
Almost reflexively she looked back down the path for the woman with the shopping cart but she was gone. She took a seat upon the stump without disturbing the figurine as she sat in silence. After that she didn’t give much more thought about the strange encounter for the rest of her lunch break as she thought very purposefully about nothing in particular. Just the way she liked it.
~
The next day as Jess was watching the hours slowly tick by at work, she was as usual waiting for her lunch break. Only so many hours under the fluorescent lighting and air conditioner hum could be tolerated. The clock struck noon, and she was already on her way out the door eating a bland bag of leftover potato chips as she navigated out of the door of Suite 12 and toward the building’s exit. The building was only two floors, and she was on the second. As she was walking down the single flight of stairs and toward the front door, she finished her chips and discarded the now empty back into the trash. Lunch of champions as usual. Pushing open the glass front door of the building and activating the monotone door chime, she looked across the street and the tell-tale teal and hot pink colors of a wind suit contrasted against the dull gray of downtown Addington. There she was again, walking away from her onto 4th Avenue with her straw hat laden head bobbing along and pushing the same squeaking wheeled shopping cart. Crossing Main Street and stepping onto the sidewalk that ran along 4th, she was following the woman before she had given it much thought. Her curiosity was subconsciously peaked and driving her into motion without her having much say in the matter.
What kind of woman leaves miniature statues just lying around in random places? She had thought about the little squirrel, and even considered taking it from the hollow in the stump. The more she thought about it, though, the more she remembered gleefully watching their real life counterparts in the same park as they chattered at passers by and collected their winter stores. So she left it in its newfound home. She opined that the mystery woman felt the same way.
Intentionally staying several paces behind the decidedly ill dressed shopping cart woman, she rounded the corner at Peachtree Street just in time to hear an old-fashioned door bell, the actual bell kind that the door nudged every time it was opened, jingle as the woman walked into Anna’s Thrift Store. Being one of Jess’s favorite places to pass the time, she took it upon herself to continue her pursuit. Any excuse would do if it meant that she got to peruse the ever changing shelves of discarded junk. As a bonus, she hoped to satiate her ongoing curiosity about this woman she had only just met. At that moment she realized that met wasn’t exactly the right term. What she had been doing was more like casually stalking. At the same time that she was mentally chiding herself for being creepy, she also surmised that this is exactly how small town people gained the reputation of being nosy and simultaneously being rightly accused of knowing everything about their neighbors, good or bad.
Looking up from her thoughts she noticed that the woman’s shopping cart was empty aside from a bag of what she assumed were pastries from Dylan’s Bakery, since being 9am in the morning they hadn’t started the daily drool-inducing bread baking that sent its tantalizing scents wafting down Main Street. The white bag with a simple red “D” logo was instantly recognizable though. The shopping cart being empty didn’t last long. She watched as the old woman picked up item after item, gave it a thorough glancing over, and then added it to her cart. First was a ceramic figurine of a couple holding hands. Second she picked up, admired, and then added to her cart a carved wooden statuette of a Native American smoking a long pipe. Third she chuckled as she acquired a wooden mask replica of some sort of native tribe. Could’ve been African or Australian, but it was gimmicky and cheap looking and would’ve easily looked at home at a tourist trap tiki bar at the beach. There was a statue of a dolphin cresting a wave, a cheaply framed reproduction map of the Carlisle River Basin, a painting of a shepherd corralling his sheep in from a rainy field, a crocheted plaque that read “Home Is Where The Heart Is”, and an ongoing and ever expanding list of one dollar baubles.
As Jess was curiously pondering the randomness of the woman’s newfound acquisitions, she looked down and picked up a what-not of her own. It was a seated figure made of clay reading a book. It looked as if it was meant to be a young girl invested in whatever was on the pages of her mock carved book. It was chipped and worse for wear, but she smiled as she looked at it remembering she once had the same one as a girl sitting on the shelf above her childhood bed. A gift from a long lost aunt or something similar to remind her of her reputation for being a bookworm and a daydreamer. She had loved that statue.
The memories of that distant time of innocence were warming to her heart, and she was lost within them as she was startled from her daydreaming. “It’s amazin’ to me looking at these things on these shelves. Always makes me wonder how somethin’ can go from being somethin’ somebody loved and put on a shelf to being cast away in a store for a dollar. Now, don’ get me wrong, I appreciate that these places are helpin’ charity an’ all, but it still makes me wonder.”
The old woman was smiling a crooked but warm grin from underneath her straw brimmed hat. She didn’t wait for Jess to reply before continuing her spontaneous conversation with her. “So I look at ‘em, and I realize that they should still be loved. They meant somethin’ before, but just because they don’t to that person anymore, doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t keep on livin’. So I buy ‘em and collect somebody else’s memories and keep ‘em goin’ on.” With that she let out a soft but cackling chuckle as if she was laughing at a joke that she assumed Jess had gotten. “Name’s Mildred. Mildred Miriam.” And with that she extended a wind suit clad arm tipped with a weathered hand. On that hand was a collection of mismatched costume jewelry and chipped but obviously self-done painted nails. Her hands were aged and wrinkled but Jess sensed a warmth from her uncommon friendliness.
She reached out and took her hand so she wouldn’t appear rude and the woman just smiled at her as she shook her hand firmly. It was a solid handshake for a woman her age. “That’s a nice one ya’ have there. Reminds me of you!” Mildred pointed at the figurine of the reading girl in her hand. Jess smiled and replied “I used to have one just like it when I was a kid. Brings back good memories.” The woman smiled at her as she said “Now you see what I mean. These aren’t just things. They’re memories. I can’t for the life of me figure out why somebody would want to throw away memories. Unless they’re bad ones. Even then, the memories don’t really go away when the object does I reckon. But they’re good reminders for a person anyhow.”
Jess had to admit holding the reading girl figurine that it had indeed sent her down memory lane, so this woman was right about how powerful the memories attached to an otherwise ordinary object could be. The old lady Mildred was on to something with that. Her curiosity peaked, she decided to follow her and continue the conversation. By now Mildred was already at the checkout register as the young woman behind the counter, Anna of course, was counting with her pointer finger the quantity of the contents in her basket. “Looks like you have 14 of them there Miss Mildred?” “That sounds about right I reckon.” She replied with a crooked toothed grin and handed the cashier two rolls of quarters. She then said something to the cashier under her breath that Jess couldn’t quite make out. Anna looked at Jess and smiled before turning her attention back to the old woman. “Would you like your change back in coins or paper money Miss Mildred?” “Coins of course!” She replied as if the answer to that question should be obvious. “You know how I like the weight of them in my pockets!”
She handed her back a handful of coins and they parted ways. Mildred turned to Jess who was still holding the statuette of a girl reading a book. “That one’s yours. Consider it a gift”. Momentarily confused as Jess realized that she was still holding the figurine, she snapped back to the present tense and replied “Oh no, you don’t have to do that, it was just a memory from the past causing me to daydream. I don’t need…””Need and want are funny words aren’t they? We usually want more than we need, and need less than we think, but things that make us smile the way you smiled looking down at that youngin’ in your hand makes me think that it’s something you ought to have. Now, I already paid for it and I want you to enjoy it.”
Jess smiled at the gesture from this stranger and simply replied “thank you, that’s very sweet.” She was going to continue her gratitude and pleasantries, but as she looked up Mildred was already walking out of the shop’s door. Jess hurriedly followed her in an effort to keep up. “Miss Mildred, wait!” She called out to her as she was walking down the sidewalk toward the town square. “There was something I wanted to ask you about!” Mildred made no effort to slow down, but did call back over her shoulder “Well come on then child, you can ask and walk!”.
Jess caught up to her and slowed to her pace which Jess thought was sprightly considering her apparent age. Mildred was full of surprises. They were walking past the entrance to the city park so Jess immediately jumped into the question. “Yesterday I was walking into the park here and I saw you put the statuette of the squirrel in the base of the old oak tree that they cut down last year. I was just curious what the purpose was. I mean, I left it there because it seemed to belong there, but it is a very curious thing, and I have been wondering about it ever since I saw you do it.” Mildred looked at her and smiled. “Way I see it, it did belong there. I knew it the second I saw it at Anna’s. The squirrels used to use that tree for all sorts of things. Food, a place to lounge and live. I used to enjoy watching them every day chatterin’ and squeakin’ their squirrel songs to one another. Since they cut the old oak tree down, I thought it might be a nice ode to them since they can’t use the tree anymore. Just to let them know that somebody remembers. It’s like I said before, these trinkets contain memories, so I made that squirrel trinket represent my own.”
This made Jess smile. She was fashioning a reply, wanting to tell her about how she used to swing in that tree as a child, and that she remembered the squirrels that played there as well when Mildred continued her sentence. “Come child, I want to show ya’ somethin’” and she turned left into the park.
Walking down the paved walking path toward the back of the park where the trees were, Jess noticed the life that was teeming within the park today. Spring was on the horizon, and that wildflowers were making a show of it. The last clutches of autumn were letting go, and the clouded yellow butterflies were flitting between sunbeams that were cascading through the canopy of trees above them. It was surreal. And then she saw it.
As they rounded the bend at the back of the park where the oak tree once stood, she heard a scraping sound. Standing before them was a giant wooden arthritic hand, its fingers scraping the elaborate slate roof of the newly built cathedral behind the fence that they had erected to create the new barrier to the back of the park. The oak tree was back, its green leaves blossoming, and as if they knew that they were just talking about them, the squirrels put on a show of acrobatics between tree limbs as they chattered high above them in the fingered branches of the tree.
Jess stopped in her tracks. Her mouth was even slightly agape as she was looking skyward toward the top of the tree. “I don’t…understand…” She said between staggered breaths with her staggered words. Her eyes must have been the size of saucers. “Now then, that’s much better.” Mildred said as she crossed her arms with a look of what Jess interpreted as accomplishment on her face. “Sometimes things just need to be remembered.” She said as she walked up to the base of the tree. Jess followed her, her amazement intermingling with curiosity. The tree was exactly as she had remembered it from before, rope swings still dangling from the limbs of the tree. The hollow at the base of the trunk was still there. Jess looked closely into the dark miniature cave. Even from this distance she could tell that the squirrel figurine was gone.
“The figurine you put there, its…gone.” “Yes child, that was always the point. It helped my memories come alive. You see?” She said this with a question on the tips of her mouth and in the ruffles of her gray eyebrows. “No I’m afraid I don’t…” Jess said and trailed off as she was staring up into the red oak’s canopy. “It’s just how I remember it. Even down to the rope swings. How did this happen?!” She quickly shot her gaze back to Mildred. “Somebody remembered her. She came back because she was missed. Sometimes that’s all it takes.”
By this time, Charles Davis, the minister of the newly founded cathedral, and some of his parishioners must have gathered outside at the sound of the branches clawing across the blue gray slate tiles that adorned the roof of the building like a crown. You could hear the surprise and the anger in his voice, though they couldn’t see him through the wooden privacy fence that they had erected as a border between nature and their church grounds. She couldn’t make out what they were saying until he punctuated his last words with a callous yell. “Get the superintendent of the public works on the phone. NOW!!!”
~
On the walk back toward her apartment, Mildred made a few stops and found new homes for some of the things that she had acquired from Anna’s Thrift Store. There was an old house at the corner of 4th street that had caution tape wrapped around its perimeter. There was a big sign on the front fence that said “Condemned. Property acquired by the City of Addington”. The older couple, Mr. and Mrs. James, that had lived there for as long as Jess could remember had passed away several years back and the place had fallen into a state of disrepair. They had no children, so Jess assumed that there was no one to inherit the property and keep it up. She used to wait for the school bus at the corner where their house was built and she remembered that Mrs. James always had a beautiful bed of perineal irises planted along the fence line. Their indigo color was Jess’ favorite color. She loved seeing those flowers. They still grew there. If you looked closely, you could see them sprinkled between the weeds and the detritus of time that nature had slowly taken over in the once meticulous flower bed.
Mildred placed the framed and embroidered “Home is where the heart is” picture against the chain link front gate at the entrance to their property. She remembered thinking how it wouldn’t be the same when the city demolished the property to construct the new city bus stop on the James’s corner. Their heart had definitely been in that home when they lived there. You could find them on the porch swing most evenings enjoying a cup of coffee or tea as they sat hand and hand and watched the sun set over the western horizon of town. “The James’ gave the best hugs.” Mildred stated matter of factly as she placed the picture on the sidewalk against the fence. “You knew them?” Jess asked her as she snapped out of her mental walk down memory lane. “Knew them? Of course child! Where do you think Dylan got the recipe for his famous crusty bread?” Jess raised an eye brow at Mildred obviously not knowing where she was going with this. As if on cue Mildred continued. “ Dylan took to the James family. Mrs James was his aunt by marriage. He was kind of a surrogate grandchild to them since they didn’t have any of their own. He always came by to check on them in the evenings. He’s the only one that Betty shared her famous recipes with, so the legend goes. All of those fine pastries and baked goods he makes could be found at the town bake sale back when we were young. That’s where part of the funds to pave the walking path in the park came from! Betty cooked up a storm to raise money every year.” She smiled at Jess, gleaming pride as she told some of the town’s history to her. “I had no idea. I just enjoyed seeing the irises bloom every morning while I waited for the school bus. They always seemed like sweet people, never missing an evening on the front porch with the sunset.” Jess said with a smile. “They certainly knew how to enjoy their time together, didn’t they?” Mildred said as she started walking back down the sidewalk.
She made several other stops along the way. She left the figurine of the couple holding hands on the guard rail to the Main Street Bridge that spanned the Carlisle River. Mildred said that they used to call it “lovers lane” back before there was a bridge. The river was hundreds of feet below the bridge and Mildred explained that it was the place where you used to go when you wanted to “neck” with your sweetie. She made the connection that what she was talking about was making out.
Next she left the picture of the Cahaba River Basin on the front steps of the Public Works building explaining that before the river had been dammed back in the early 80s, the building sat exactly where the best swimming hole around had been. She pointed out on the outdated map What was labeled “Addington Tributary”. “Right here is where you’re standin’ child.” This history predated Jess, but she could almost imagine the children splashing and playing in the shaded waters under trees that no longer existed as Mildred described the scene to her.
“How long have you been in town Miss Mildred? How come I have never met you or seen you around before?” Jess asked as they neared her duplex apartment. “Oh you have. I’ve been here as long as anybody around could remember. And everybody else has met me too some time or another, child. Lots of people just don’t remember the inconvenient things, even if they tell their own stories through time. Life has a funny habit about that.”
They had reached Jess’s doorstep by now and by the time that Jess explained that she was home, Mildred was already walking away. “Thank you Miss Mildred!” Jess called out as she waived. But she was already out of earshot. Or she just chose not to reply as she carried on toward the east.
~
It had been weeks since Jess had seen Mildred. After the day they spent together, and their hurried departure, she had been on her mind a lot. It wasn’t just the day that was keeping Mildred to the forefront of her mind though. Things had been, for lack of a better term, strange in town lately. The City had cut down the red oak tree in the park more than 10 times. Every morning, it was as if they had done nothing. It was always present each day, clawing the rooftop of the cathedral as if it were mocking. They had attempted to put cameras to catch the tree emerging, but the footage was never legible when they went to watch it the next day. City workers who kept watch in the park could only report that the tree was gone one moment and in the next it was as if it had never been touched. It was a baffling mystery to everyone who had taken notice. The children had a different opinion of such matters as you could find them every day after school swinging from the rope swings and playing in the company of squirrels. The park had found its purpose again it seemed.
That wasn’t the end of the mysteries though. Other happenings within the Town of Addington were even more baffling than an incessantly alive oak tree. The James’s house on the corner of 4th Street had been restored. There was really no other way to describe what had happened. No one had taken credit for the work, but it looked as pristine as it had when Mr. and Mrs. James were alive and tending their home. That included the lush carpet of indigo violets that were painting the corner of 4th the color of a moonlit midnight sky in a perfectly weeded and mulched bed. The caution tape was gone, and the shiplap siding and brickwork were pristine. The town’s elite, with Charles Davis at the helm acting as not only the minister of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, but simultaneously acting as the president of the town council, wouldn’t let this get in the way of progress if they were to have their way. They made the statement quite publicly in the newspaper, that the bus stop that was slated for that corner would bring lots of revenue and exposure to the Town of Addington. They bulldozed the pristine James residence since technically the city owned it. It had been a pointless endeavor.
To Jess’s simultaneous amusement and bemusement, but to the Town Council’s chagrin, each morning, much like the oak tree, there the house stood as if it had never been touched. This went on for several weeks before the construction permit expired. The town tried to file for an emergency assembly to renew the permit, but it would be another two months before the town council could reconvene properly as the mayor had such matters on hold as he attempted to make sense of what was going on in his town.
He made a statement in the newspaper that was full of skepticism and fear, as Jess read between the lines of the statement as he made uncertain proclamations to the press. He made mention of the James home and the oak tree in the park. While he attempted to sound sure of himself, you could tell that he was as confused as the rest of the town who had started taking notice of the strange events. He postponed construction while he awaited the opinions of “outside experts” to assess the situation and let them know where they stood before they regained their forward momentum of progress.
An editorial inside of today’s paper mentioned foul play or perhaps even supernatural intervention that was causing the current events to transpire. Jess was reading along as the congregation member turned opinion writer in the Daily Herald concluded her article with vague accusations of someone defying the Lord. This made Jess chuckle. Such an easy scapegoat when one is unsure of how to explain what they are seeing. It’s tried and true and has been used for millennia. The modern day witch trials in black and white finger pointing written right on page 2.
She could only imagine how the headlines would read after she witnessed what was to occur that evening. Little did Jess know that things were about to become even more bizarre, and honestly a little frightening. The rain was coming down in waves as she was walking, umbrella in hand, back home after her workday had concluded. There were flickers of light as the fingertips of lightning danced across the gloom of the evening sky. She huddled closer to the handle of the umbrella in a fruitless attempt at hiding from a rain that seemed to have a mind of its own. Its mind was set on soaking her it would seem. Upon reaching Main Street Bridge, she crossed it in the pedestrian lane just as she did every evening on the way back to her duplex. There was a couple holding hands peering over the edge of the bridge at the raging and growing body of water that was filling up the river basin as they stood silently watching with wide eyes. After watching what could only be described as a lake taking shape where the gentle river usually meandered, Jess continued her walk toward home. There were barricades at the end of the bridge forbidding traffic to continue traveling down Main Street when she reached the end. She could still turn right down Parnell to reach her home, but forward progress down to where the Public Works building stood was impeded by a roadblock. Clarence Thomas, the man who could be found mowing the grass along the roadways during the summer as an employee of the town was standing in the rain in a neon yellow and reflective rain coat as he stood watch over the wooden orange and yellow barricades.
“What is going on Clarence?” Jess asked as she was bracing against the wind and the rain. Clarence stepped closer to her so that she could hear him over the cacophony of nature’s noise. “We’ve gotten word that the Walter Dam has broken upstream in the north of the county. The river basin down there is the best spot for that water to collect I reckon. Everything down there is flooded!”. Mildred immediately came to the forefront of her mind on that night however many weeks ago it had been as she explained that the Public Works building stood where there used to be a lake. She could see within her mind’s eye Mildred placing the old weathered map of the river basin by the door of the Public Works facility that fateful evening. “Thanks!” She stated in a louder than normal voice to Clarence as the wind was making an awful racket. She continued on her path home while Mildred kept playing on repeat in her head as a mental movie as she interacted with all of the places and objects in town that were now somehow acting in revolt. “Be careful out there Miss Jess!” Clarence called back as she waved her thanks to him.
Making it back to her apartment and changing into a dry set of pajamas, she clicked on the television as it was showing coverage of the dam breech that Clarence had just informed her of. He was right. The camera footage clearly showed the dam collapsed into nothing but a remnant of the barrier it once was, engulfing everything in its path with a deluge of water and debris.
Her teapot squealed its ready whistle atop her stove as she turned off the eye and poured the boiling water over the top of a previously prepared bag of Chamomile. She brought the steaming mug with her as she sat down on the sofa and opened her laptop. A quick internet search of the name ‘Mildred Miriam’ didn’t show her much in the first several results pages of her search, so she added ‘Mildred Miriam, Addington Virginia’ to the search box. This time, there came up only two entries on a single page of results. A scanned newspaper article dated 1947 from the Lennox County Register. Addington was founded in 1951, so this was all still just “county” property back then. There was only a single picture with a caption that read “Mildred Miriam, wife of newly appointed Mayor Charles Miriam breaking ground on the newly minted Main Street in the town of Addington.” The picture was blotchy and faded but a smiling woman stood hand in hand with a man while they each held a handle of a pair of giant scissors cutting a ribbon in front of what she recognized as the old town hall.
The only other mention of Mildred Miriam was an obituary. It read as if she and her husband Eustice had both died in a train crash in upstate Virginia in 1968 when they were visiting their son in Pennsylvania. It seemed a tragedy as there were no survivors. There were also no pictures accompanying this article aside from one that was an aerial photograph of the wreckage.
Jess’s heart simultaneously skipped a beat and sank at the same time. This couldn’t possibly be the same woman. Jess wasn’t a believer in the supernatural or the spiritual, even though the events of this past week had seemed to be firmly planted in one of these categories as they defied any typical explanation that she had attempted to conjure. None of this made any sense.
As she was sipping her tea and scanning the internet for anything useful to her query, the thunder rattled the windows of her duplex right after lightning had lit up the interior of the room. The power flickered and her internet went out without the electricity to power it. The laptop was still running on battery power, but provided a poor source of light in the now dark living room of her apartment. She turned the screen toward the kitchen so that she could try and make her way to the drawer where she kept her candles. Making her way carefully in that direction with her arms outstretched to prevent inadvertently bumping into any would be obstacles in her path, she finally retrieved the candle from the drawer and used the long lighter from the same drawer to light several of them. She sat one on the room divider that stood around 3 feet tall and served as a partial wall between the kitchen and the living room. Lighting another, she left it on the kitchen counter to light the way to her bedroom and adjoining bathroom. The third and final candle she placed in a candle holder shaped like a dolphin that had come with her apartment and carried it back toward the living room to retrieve her tea before it got cold. She closed the laptop causing the rooms to only be illuminated by dancing candlelight. There was a figure moving as a shadow on the wall in front of her illuminated by one of the candles in the other room. She watched the figure dance for a moment, mesmerized by the undulating shadow creature and turned around to try and determine what was casting such shapes. As she turned she heard a “thunk” as something hit the floor and the shadows that she had just watched dancing on the wall had disappeared. Turning to find the source of the noise and the shadows, her foot made contact with something hard in the middle of the floor. Kneeling down to determine what the object was, her candle cast a flickering light across the face of a ceramic girl who was permanently reading a ceramic book lying on the carpet. The figurine that Miss Mildred had given her.
~
The next morning, Jess awakened on the sofa. The chamomile had done its job, and she was still clutching the figurine of the reading girl. The power was back on as she could see the red flashing LCD display of the clock that sat on her TV stand as a repetitively blinking “12:12” flashed across its display. Turning the television on again as she wondered if there was any more news about the town, she could see that the current time was 6:05am. Earlier than she thought it was. The newscaster was telling the daily news saying that more rain was to be expected in the forecast. Apparently, the river basin below her town had sustained the most damage, as all of the water flooded the valley and had become what could only be described as a lake. Just as there had once been before. It was too steep for most construction down there, but the Public Works building had to be underwater looking at the aerial pictures of the affected area. Jess peered back down to the figurine in her hand. She needed to find Mildred.
Being a Saturday, she put on a pair of jeans and her sneakers. She loved the days when she could dress for herself and not for her job. Looking out the window as the rain was still puddled everywhere she could see, she decided against the sneakers and swapped into her rain boots. She was glad she did, because walking down Parnell Street, the ground was completely saturated. There were several small trees down as she walked, along with garbage cans lifted from their residences and distributed on lawns and driveways. Not serious damage, but you could tell where the wind had left reminders of itself from the storm the night before. The drainage culverts had taken the form of miniature rivers rushing alongside the streets, and you could hear water draining in every direction. The sky was the color of a week old bruise, and for the time being there was no rain. She was using her umbrella as a makeshift walking stick just in case. Reaching the end of Parnell, she turned left to walk back toward the bridge. She needed to see for herself the damage that was done. As she reached Main Street Bridge, the traffic was light, but there were several cars parked along the roadside. She imagined that they were doing the same thing that she was, being nosy about seeing for themselves what the news had reported on.
It was indeed a lake. And not a small one. The river’s flow had slowed in the wake of the burst dam, but the valley below was now flooded. The entire river basin had become a makeshift bowl whose only agenda was retaining all of the water that had been set free from the embrace of Walter Dam. “It’s amazing that nobody drowned or was killed” she heard as commentary from one of the observers peering over the guard rail. “It’s the darnedest thing. I can remember stories about the river valley being a lake, but that has been what? Fifty years or more?” The young man in a pair of overalls replied. “At least.” Said the first pedestrian. “It’s like the river always wanted to fill that land and suddenly decided that it should!”
No one was harmed. That had been a pressing worry on her mind from the moment Clarence told her of the dam break last night. The news had confirmed that although the property damage from the storm had been significant, the lack of a loss of life was a miracle. When she had heard some of the people meandering through Addington’s streets, and then later a blurb coming out of a car radio from an idling car unable to cross the still partially flooded streets, she felt a sigh of relief leave her chest. She could put out of her head that Mildred was somehow a magical murderer since the thought had crossed her mind trying to make sense of it all. That slight sense of relief didn’t quell the other questions that she had on her mind. She still needed to find her, so she started walking toward downtown.
The water had been high here. Dylan was using a push broom to sweep standing water off of the tiled floor within the bakery. Being on Main Street put his shop along with a handful of others at the lowest point of the town. There was still a shallow current of water running down this part of the street and into the storm gutters in a steady stream mimicking the sound of a babbling brook as it disappeared into the grate. Looking around, there was hardly any traffic aside from the occasional big truck with a city logo distributing caution cones in the particularly flooded areas as a warning. She assumed that the roads must be worse in other places. She walked by her workplace, but being higher up on a hill toward the center of town it looked to have sustained no damage. The coffee shop sign was outside of the door to her building having traveled over a block to get there. There were more garbage cans, tipped over flower pots, a couple of broken windows, but the town seemed to have endured most of the storm drenched but in tact. She walked across Main until she followed the old familiar path that took her to the Thrift Shop. Closed. The park was as full of life as always, just not the human kind from what she could see before entering. As she walked into the park and around the bend, the birds were singing a cacophony of their spring ballad, and the squirrels were of course chattering from branch to branch.
Jess didn’t know why she was so disappointed to find the oak tree still standing, but no Mildred there to keep it company. She had only casually assumed that this was where she would be, but not finding her here made her realize that she had no idea where to find her. She had exhausted all of her available mental waypoints of where she might be at this point.
An alternating high pitched screech intermingled with a sound similar to crunching newspaper drew her attention away from the trunk of the tree that she had been daydreaming into. As she looked up to follow the sound, she noticed that the tree was still clawing at the slate roof of the cathedral as if it was trying to reclaim its personal space by getting rid of the offending roof. There was a blue tarpaulin covering part of the roof where she assumed there had been damage. What wasn’t clear was whether the tree caused it, or the storm from the night before. That’s when she noticed that the fence had been damaged.
It was a ten foot tall chain length fence with a landscape fabric covering its face to block out the view of the cathedral from the park and vise versa. There was a large Bradford pear that had dislodged one of the panels of the fence. The church had planted them there in an effort to decorate the new lawn of the grounds. Jess had always thought that it was absurd to remove trees from an area and then replace them with ornamental ones as decoration once a building had been constructed. Besides that when these trees bloomed they smelled horrible. She was scrunching her nose at the mere thought of their springtime bloom aroma.
Looking through the gap of the now damaged fence, a glint of hot pink and woven straw caught her eye. It was Mildred.
She walked past the immortal oak tree and through the gap in the fence, minding her step so that she didn’t trip over the new disarray that used to be galvanized fencing and florid foliage. The church was less finished than she had assumed. It was at this moment that she realized that she hadn’t ever seen the church other than the view of the roof and the bell tower over the fence. Being on the south side of town, she never had reason to venture in its direction. Perhaps it was her subconscious outwardly expressing its disdain for the structure and the events that brought it into being.
Mildred was standing in front of the church’s would-be front doors. She was arguing in a heated fashion with Charles Davis, who was wearing a dark blue windbreaker that said “City Council President” in bright yellow heat transfer appliqué across the back of the jacket. It reminded her of a cheap copy of FBI attire from the movies. Jess assumed that he had personally decorated himself with such a garment considering the town budget, as far as she knew, didn’t include a category for garment expenses for unpaid positions. Typical.
“I don’t care what you say you’re doing out here, but I won’t have you telling anyone who passes by that the can shelter in my church if they need to. This is a place for parishioners, not anyone who wants to occupy space for the sake of it!” He was rudely gesturing toward Mildred with his finger.
Mildred stood defiant, shopping cart to her side. She didn’t raise her voice, but was looking Davis directly in the eye when she spoke to him. “Isn’t that funny, and all of this time, I always thought that the church was a shelter from the storms of life. My mistake.” She didn’t sound frail, she had the tone of voice that sounded like someone who had made up her mind about something. With that Davis stormed back into the unfinished cathedral where she could see there were more people on the roof splaying tarpaulins across various sections of its slate roof.
When Jess looked back down at Mildred, she was smiling at her with a glint of something sly in her eyes.
“What were you arguing with Mr. Davis about?” Jess asked her, not giving away any indication that she had been eavesdropping just moments before. “I reckon its because I was bringing some folks from town here who didn’t have power to have a place to wait out the utilities. There’s a chill in the air after the storm and I didn’t see any reason for people to be cold in their houses when the church had a perfectly good furnace. He didn’t seem to like finding a group of people in his precious church when he got here this mornin’.” With that you could see Charles Davis escorting people out of the front of the door church making a halfhearted excuse about the building not being up to code since it was still under construction.
Mildred had a somewhat defeated expression on her face as she watched the townspeople that she had just led there leaving the building. Standing on this side of the fence, she was having flashbacks of memories from her youth. Of course the landscape had changed completely from what she could remember, but the aura of the place that she remembered was still there. She could remember a small willow tree by a tiny babbling brooke that only flowed when it was raining. Both now gone and paved over. She used to sit under that willow with its draping canopy and pretend that it was an igloo as she read the stories of Jack London and his adventures in the tundra. It also served as a makeshift Bedouin tent in the Sahara reading about Lawrence of Arabia. The sounds of the rain in the storm drains coupled with these vivid memories made her momentarily dizzy. Looking at where she was standing now, the ground scraped bare and replaced with fill dirt, sod, and construction, she had an overwhelming ache within her chest.
Her childhood was blissfully innocent. Before the worry and complication of adulthood, she could escape at her own whim with the mere page turn in a new book. As a child your dreams are powerful enough to transport you wherever you want to be and any given moment. Imagination is the driver if your mind is allowed to wander and wish. As an adult you struggle to remember what that was like, always finding one reason or another to put your imagination and your dreams on the back burner.
It was at this moment that she realized what it was that she liked about Mildred. There was a childlike imagination in her. A part of her probably realized it when she first saw it in her outdated clothes and her carefree attitude and reverence for memories. Mildred had given her a piece of herself back that she didn’t realized was missing. Her wonder.
Mildred had wandered across the street and Jess found her sitting on a park bench under a billboard. She had forgotten what was on the billboard the last time that she passed this way to visit her sister who lived south in Tennessee. Today, though, it was simply a sponsored billboard for Earth Day that was paid for by the Virginia Department of Transportation (so said the caption at the bottom). It simply stated “Plant a Tree This Earth Day” with a pair of hands holding a handful of lush looking soil that had a sprout in the middle. The irony of Mildred sitting on a bench under this sign wasn’t lost on Jess as she smiled, looking back at her first encounter with Mildred. She didn’t remember that bench being there, but then she couldn’t honestly say that she ever paid attention to the area before in the past anyway. It was simply the exit to Addington, so the times that she had gone that direction, she was looking toward the horizon of seeing her sister. She walked across the vacant street and sat down beside her. Mildred carried on her conversation as if she hadn’t stopped previously.
“When my husband and I moved here, I complained. I was a girl from Louisiana who didn’t know a soul up this way. Eustice had a fancy new job offer as a surveyor up here. The money was good and we were youngin’s at the time without much to our name so we figured ‘why not’. I hafta’ admit I fell in love with it. I had never seen snow, and my first month here it snowed. I was hooked ever since and it always felt like home from that moment on. The years went by, and the very land he came up here to survey became the town you’re in now. It wasn’t much more than a dot on a map at the time, but we made it our own along with some help from the people around these parts and we all loved it. The town blossomed and it never lost the magic that it showed me from the moment of that first snow. Matter of fact it got a little more magical with the folks who’s hearts got poured into it. Home is where the heart is, right?!” The sign she had bought and left at the doorstep of the Public Works office crept into the corners of Jess’ mind as she said that phrase. “So the years go by and people change I reckon. I just didn’t expect them to change so much while I was gone. I guess all those years can do that to a place. But then I met you. And after talkin’ to you I remembered how warm this town really was and I wanna thank you for that. Sincerely.”
Jess smiled at her. Before she could formulate a reply, Mildred said “Remember a place and it’ll remember you back. Now, I have some errands to tend to. Don’t be a stranger.” Mildred was rolling Mildred’s words in her mind as she was walking back down the street. She snapped out of it remembering why she had come looking for her in the first place. Her heart jumped.
“Miss Mildred, wait, what is happening here?! You have to help me understand! This is too much for me to deal with and the storms and the rain, and the tree and the James’ house and the Indigo flowers…” A large truck’s diesel engine was roaring up the road in her direction as Mildred. She called back to Jess, interrupting her train of thought, clutching her shopping cart not paying the truck any attention. She saw those blue eyes focusing on her as she called back “Oh child, just remember. That’s all we really have in the end is our memories. Just remember!” The truck was on a direct path to where she was standing in the middle of the road and her back was turned to it.
“Miss Mildred, no! Look out!” And with that the truck intersected where Mildred Miriam was standing. Jess let out an incomprehensible cry as the truck roared by where she was standing by the park bench. She ran toward where Mildred had been standing not knowing what to expect, but expecting the worst. There was nothing. Just the silence of the wind in the trees, the roar of the city truck disappearing into the distance, and the clamor of the towns residents righting last night’s storms in the background. Not a single thing to show that Miriam had ever been standing there.
Frantically looking around for several moments in a state of panic, she finally realized that Mildred was gone without a trace. Expecting to find her dead or injured, there was just an empty street that would normally be full of outbound and inbound traffic. In a stupor, Jess wandered back to the bench not knowing what to do, and being more confused that when she left her apartment. That was when she noticed something that she hadn’t seen before. A small brass plaque was screwed to the back of the weathered wooden bench. It read:
In memory of Eustice and Mildred Miriam
April 27th 1968
Together in Paradise
Jess’s heart skipped a beat and felt like it might break. She looked back in the direction of the place that Mildred had disappeared just moments ago in the wake of a dump truck. There was nothing but pavement and roadside grass in the haze and mist of the passing rain storm. There was a calm to the scene. The smell of petrichor was still high in the air, and she could hear the birds singing their enduring melodies from the trees around her. She looked to her left and saw the incomplete cathedral sitting empty as several people who had just been evacuated from the premises stood around outside looking lost. The front entry way light was on showing that the church still had electricity. She could hear a generator humming in the background, and it now made sense why it did.
It was at that moment, she squinted her eyes and imagined that the church hadn’t been built yet and her willow tree was still standing there, just waiting to become an igloo or a tent in the desert, or whatever adventure she was imagining that day. Reaching into her handbag, she pulled out the chipped and faded statue of the girl reading the book. The pieces were falling into place.
Getting up from Mildred’s bench, she walked across the street and into the churchyard. She passed Mr. Davis trying to tamp down a piece of uprooted fresh sod on the newly formed lawn that had been washed up by the torrential downpour. She walked to the steps that led to the entryway of the cathedral. There under a newly planted crepe myrtle she placed the small statue and imagined her sitting under the willow as a child and reading. After that she went back home, feeling suddenly in need of a nap.
~
The town was in an uproar when the church had disappeared and had reverted back to nature as if it had never been built. People from all over town, including the local news came to photograph it. Mr. Davis wouldn’t make a public statement. Some people celebrated and couldn’t believe that the park was back to its former glory. Others, like the city council and the private investors tried multiple times to rebuild to no avail. Meetings were called, and gavels were hammered, but in the end what do you do when a church refuses to be built and a park refuses to be demolished?
The James’s house was eventually purchased by a young couple with two small children who kept the indigo garden beautiful and their backyard smelled of barbecue and freshly cut grass. The bus stop never was built. The Addington River Valley never turned back into a river. It was now Addington Lake, and the community could be found on the shore sunbathing or swimming in the water on any given summer’s day much like Mildred had described it many years ago.
The city council eventually dissolved as several prominent members moved away as their real estate investments seemed to be cursed in this town. The town seems to have decided that it wants to be a certain way, and nothing could be done to change its mind. Clarence Thomas ran for mayor and won the next year. He had lived here his entire life, and people saw him as a natural fit since he had spent so long taking care of their town with the street department. Jess saw him in the park regularly just listening to the birds. Because of that he would always have her vote. Dylan’s bakery continued having the best smelling bread that Jess had ever tasted. She enjoyed a doughnut from there almost every work day. It was better than a bag of stale potato chips by a long shot. These days, the town seemed alive. Maybe it was just her perception, but it felt like home more than it had since she was a child.
Jess never told anyone about Mildred Miriam and their time together. She swore that she caught a glimpse of her neon pink wind suit leaving Anna’s Thrift Store on several occasions, but as soon as she blinked she was gone. When she asked Anna if she had been in the store, she just smiled at her and said “I’m a few rolls of quarters short this week.” She always followed that reply with a wink. She thought about Mildred often. Every time she walked across Main Street Bridge. Every time she saw the indigo garden. She had come to love Mildred in her memories of her. Her quirky attire and her piercing blue eyes brought a smile to her face when she thought of her. She had changed her life and had given her back some of her innocence, but more importantly, she taught her that memories were made today while you’re living. As she settled underneath the willow tree at the back of Addington City Park, she pulled a book from her satchel. She hadn’t read this one since she was a child. ‘The Canterville Ghost’ by Oscar Wilde. So today, the willow tree was her very own Victorian mansion, and just like in the book, she finds comfort in knowing that love is stronger than life and death combined.