My Dearest Jonah (8 page)

“How were the burgers?”

“Best meal I had all week. So you’re Harlow’s girl. Well I’ll be damned.”

“One of two. We’re the twins. Identical,” she threw herself backwards and pushed with her feet causing her to streak through the air. She swung like a pendulum before returning
to my side. “For all you know you might not even be talking to me at all. I could be my other half,” she laughed again and bounced the weight of her body gently towards me.

“Say Aimee, I like your Daddy, I like him a lot, so with that in mind I want to ask you a question and I want you to promise me you aint gonna get mad.”

She giggled to herself and held me tight in her usually flimsy gaze. “You know as well as I do a person can’t make that kind of promise,” she said with uncharacteristic
certainty. “But we’ve come this far so I guess you better go on and say it.”

“You know what it is I’m gonna ask you. Why you kicking around with a dirty old man like Levi, Aimee? Good God. You’re only a girl.”

At this she shook her head lightly and those blonde locks tumbled across her face once more, making her expression distant and distorted. “He has what they call potential. He’s going
to give me things no-one else can.”

“There’s more to life than money you know,” I said, gripping tightly to the swing’s chains.

“That’s what he says when he talks about you.”

“He talks about me?” I asked. She stared to the ground and shook her head gently. “So then what is it?” I asked. “What keeps you following him around like a damn
shadow? Surely there’s more interesting folk you could be playing with?”

“All I ever wanted was to live forever. And he can do it. He’s making me a character. He hasn’t said as much but I just know it. He’s stealing pieces of me each and every
day. Aint that something special?”

“Harlow?”

“Levi...
the writer
,” she said breathlessly. “They say he’s a genius, you know.”

“Can’t say I did. I’m new to these parts.”

“You’ll get old soon enough,” she said standing up. “For what it’s worth Levi knows all about you. Says even he couldn’t have invented someone as interesting
as you,” she ran her hands across my hairline and held my face up towards her. “You’re a nice man, even if all these scars say different.”

“A man can’t help the scars he picks up,” I said, becoming jittery at just about every aspect of our interaction – not least the proximity of Aimee’s father; the
man I was fast coming to think of as my one true friend in this town. “Don’t make him good or bad.”

“There’s different sorts of scars,” she said. As the long sleeves of her dress inched up I made out a small line, no longer than a slug and a fifth as thin, colouring her wrist
like a bracelet. “These don’t look like the kind of scars a man gets from just fighting back.” She turned from me and waltzed carelessly into the house. Behind the window I saw
her approaching Barbara who gave her a loving embrace and a small cookie, which seemed to enrapture her completely. Aimee twirled out of the door leading to the living room and out of sight.

“Don’t mind Aimee,” said Harlow, standing so close behind me he could have pushed me like a child on the swing. “She’s a sweet girl, harmless, you
just got to give her time.” He sat down next to me and handed me a beer.

“She sure is pretty,” I offered. “I spotted her around town. Never put two and two together I suppose. Older than I thought she would be.”

“Them’s old photographs I carry around with me. Stops me forgetting... more of a sentimental gesture, you understand. Something’s worth remembering you hold it in your heart
and your head no matter how many prompts you carry around with you. If you know what I mean.”

I nodded.

“She wasn’t always like that, Aimee. God knows we tried. It’s her nerves, you see. Doctor’s can’t do anything about it.”

“Doesn’t seem to need curing to me.”

“Course the wife blames the company she keeps. You say you’ve seen her around town. I know what people think. I know what they see. See her chasing after another stranger, strange
old men, with strange old habits. She can’t help it, just the way she is. Never quite wanted to be herself. You ask me she’s still just a girl playing fairytales.”

“Worse things than holding onto your innocence in this life. Wish I hadn’t been so keen to spend mine.”

Harlow cleared his throat and took a sip of beer. “There’s a difference between spending and having it taken over and over again, if you know what I’m saying. I just
don’t trust the sort of men who can’t see that they’re handling a girl as fine as china. Had it my way I’d take a gun to market and pick off every sonofabitch that came
within ten yards of the little one. Only she’s an adult now, on paper, which is all that matters in the eyes of the law, got to make her own mistakes. And I tell you, that girl makes mistakes
finer than my wife makes Thanksgiving dinner.”

“For what it’s worth I’ll keep an eye out for her, if I ever see her around.”

As I spoke an aeroplane left disappearing fingerprints on the sky’s canvas as it pricked the foot of a cloud. Harlow traced its ascent with a roll of his eyes before patting me on the
back, and returned his gaze to the endless yellow of the cornfields that led to his yard. “That’d be good kid, that’d be good. Now... if there’s one consolation it’s
Sylvia. You haven’t met my other daughter. She was working today. Works in the city, have her working every hour God sends her way. Not that you’d hear her grumbling. I guess
life’s really down to chance.”

“Some of us are luckier than others.”

“Aint that the truth, kid,” he said, draining his can of its contents. “Aint that the truth.”

We were left in silence, immune to the faint clatter of background noise from the party’s dying dregs. I could hear Harlow’s breath, slow, steady, next to me. If I could have
stretched that moment for the rest of my life I would have.

“That’s a fine piece of work you got yourself there,” came a voice from behind us. Caleb, a distant relative and - according to Barbara - a constant feature of Harlow’s
household made his way to the front of the swing set on which we rested. It took me a few moments and a brief glance towards my lap to realise what he was referring to. In my hands, against the
blade of the knife, the wood block was now smooth and curved, like some abstract piece of fruit.

“Oh,” I said. “Just a hobby of mine.”

“Jonah’s good with his hands. He’s a frustrated artist,” said Harlow, standing up and offering Caleb his seat.

“Frustrated something,” I added.

“Ever thought of turning your hobby into some spare change?” asked Caleb, “I’m always after able craftsmen, and I’m sure Harlow’d give you a reference if need
be.”

“A fine one at that,” said Harlow, sending a million inert mosquitoes up into the air as he prodded the white coals with a spatula. “I been faking Max’s signature on
references since you were knee high to a midget.”

Both Caleb and I laughed. He reached into my palm, carefully avoiding the blade, and took the strange fruit from my hands.

“You think you could work to a larger scale?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Depends on what you had in mind. I’d draw the line at reproducing the Titanic but within reason don’t see why not.”

“Caleb runs the old funeral home on Sixth Avenue. Been in that family longer than the red in his hair.”

“Buried four generations of pallbearers and counting. Say, you don’t have any business you can pass my way do you?” He laughed at his own quip. It is a trait I have come to
acknowledge that the more morbid a man’s work, the more humour he is able to elicit from it. I bet my life’s worth that doctors and gravediggers have more laughs than children’s
entertainers and street performers.

“Not this week, sir. Business can’t be too bad for you though, it’s not like it’s a habit anyone’s going to be quitting,” I added.

“What’s that son?”

“Dying.”

Caleb paused for a moment and then chuckled. “A habit. I like that my man. I like that a lot. So, what do you say? Fancy a sideline that’ll never go out of business?”

“He pays good,” said Harlow, covering the grate with a drum lid. “Or at least he will, now that he’s poaching my very own houseguests.”

“I’m sure we can come to some sort of arrangement. You in?”

“I’ll certainly take a look. See if I might be able to help.”

“Well that’s just dandy. You come by tomorrow morning. We got some big business coming up. I’ll show you the ropes and you can decide if it’s for you or not.”

“Here’s to hoping,” I said, raising my empty can towards his.

“To hoping,” he mimicked, clicking his beer against mine.

I was one of the last to leave the party. I timed it carefully, you see. I wanted my presence to be noted, in an effort to show my enjoyment of Harlow and his hospitality.
Though I was equally keen not to be the final few – those last drops of ketchup that simply won’t vacate no matter how many times you tap the bottom and bash the side.

“Don’t be a stranger,” groaned Barbara as she embraced me by the front door, blushed from an afternoon of sun and wine coolers. “We’re always open for visitors, any
time, just you drop by.”

I thanked her and kissed her once on the cheek as I accepted the cold meats and stale rolls she had kindly wrapped in foil as a midnight snack.

My street seemed more barren than usual as I walked the final stretch towards my front door. Porch lights beamed as moths grew closer to the flames, the lucky few jutting back
as the heat scorched their wings whilst their more lethargic companions were caught flickering and hissing behind white shades; their shadows frantic and magnified. A cricket played a sad solo
somewhere in the distance. The juices from the meat began to seep through their shroud and dribble awkwardly down towards my elbow. When I was able to take a closer look a trace of red had emerged
like a wound across the now crumpled white of my shirt.

“Evening, boy,” said Mrs Pemberton, rocking silently on her porch. The orange orb of a cigar was the only visible trace of her, like some shocked Cheshire cat.

“Evening, Mrs Pemberton,” I said, stopping at my front door. Usually this would be the beginning and end of our interaction. I loathe her and she me. Neither with reason, I hasten to
add. It just seems to have been an unspoken initial response that has remained unfaltering during my tenure as her closest neighbour. Despite this, and being in such fine spirits that very evening,
I decided to grant her the courtesy of both my time and my good manners, though rationing both to the bare essentials. “Warm out,” I offered.

“Been warmer,” she said, making no attempt to move into the light. Her husband died three years into their nuptials and she has sat ever since, sour and Havishamesque, waiting on
that porch. Waiting for what I do not know: for his return from the great beyond, I suppose, or perhaps for her own demise, and their ensuing reunion. Whatever her aim she is little liked amongst
the neighbours I have spoken to. Though her age and longevity within the area have elevated her to a status of those whom we must respect.

“A welcome breeze, that’s for sure. This time last year I could hardly draw breath.”

“I like the heat,” she said, her orange orb dilating with a quiet fizz. “Keeps my joints as they were.”

“Well you take care Mrs Pemberton,” I said, turning the key in my door.

“Awfully late,” she said, just as I was about to step inside.

“Sure is. I’m pretty beat.”

“Don’t see you going out at night so often. Not for some time now anyway,” there was a thump on the wood beneath her feet and a small black cat ran down the length of her
garden and squatted beneath the car of the house opposite. “You haven’t been courting trouble have you young man?”

“No, ma’am. Visiting friends from work. Had us a barbeque,” I held up the aluminium meat as supporting evidence.

“I been on this street for forty years now and never seen a pick of trouble. I hope I don’t start now.”

“I’m not the sort of man to court controversy,” I said, opening the door wider still.

“Mmhmm,” she said, rocking back on the bows of her chair. “Some men been sniffing around your house.”

For some reason my stomach turned slowly like a sycamore falling to soil. “My house?”

“Mmmhmm. Looking through your window. Been into your garden too, probably wanted to check your house wasn’t burning down. I got three baskets of laundry ruined thanks to that fire. I
hope you apply more thought to your surroundings in future.”

“There were men at my house?” I asked again.

“Men, yes, two. How many times you need telling, boy?” she said with a snap before returning to her dour tone, “I been sitting here for hours. I saw them clear as day. They
don’t see me though. I keep my lights off, for providence you see?”

“What time was this?”

“Yes siree, that stench won’t be scratched from my delicates no matter how much I scrub. Lighting fires in broad daylight. Anyone’d think we lived in a slum.”

“I’m sorry for any inconvenience caused, Mrs Pemberton,” I said, fully aware that no further headway was going to be made on the subject, that night at least. “I’ll
happily reimburse you for any loss to your estate. Now if it’s all the same with you I really have to be getting to bed.”

“You go boy. And remember what I said. This is a nice street. Nice people too. Don’t want no trouble.”

“Goodnight Mrs Pemberton,” I said, stepping inside and closing my door.

I looked out to the garden; the pleasure of the day now marred by such incongruous news. Nothing had been taken. Nothing destroyed. The garden lay as flat and featureless as it
had been left. I pressed my forehead against the cool glass to get a further look but to my eyes everything appeared the same.

I do hope this remains the case. It seems that for the first time in my life I am beginning to fear change.

With love as always,

Jonah

Dear Jonah,

Being still drunk is so much worse than being hungover. If nothing else the latter is universally acknowledged; invoking, as it does, rolled eyes, ironic head shaking and the
knowing smiles of those desperate to be seen as ‘with it’ enough not to judge. The former however requires an element of deceit; that strange notion that one must appear to be entirely
sober despite alarming evidence to the contrary. In such a state one is inclined to forget that being sober is like so many things in life, whereby once a level of consciousness is applied it
becomes satirised to the point of nullification. The symptom is always so much more telling than the cause.