Reckless: Shades of a Vampire (19 page)

Splash!

The smell of decay kicks up from the ripples, but Emma isn’t hanging around to ingest them. She leaves the keys on the ground and is bounding across the road through the parsonage grounds past the garden where she was working and into through the back door.

Emma heads straight for the bathroom for a quick bath so she can get on a clean change of clothes before dinner. Fifteen minutes later, Emma walks into the kitchen smelling of bath oils wearing a black dress that smells line-fresh.

“Evening, dear,” her mother says. “Who died?”

“What?”

“The black dress. Who died?”

“It was just the first one I saw.”

““Wasn’t sure where you were," her mother says.

“I wandered off out back in the pasture,” Emma says. “I was close by. Just getting some air.”

“Got a big dinner ready. Went ahead and made it without you -- meatloaf, green peas, mashed potatoes and rolls. Your father isn’t here yet. But we can go ahead without him. I’m sure you are famished.”

“Oh,” Emma says, clutching her stomach. “Don’t know where my appetite has gone. Lunch must be hanging with me. I’m really full.”

“Full?” her mother says. “You haven’t eaten for hours.”

“It’s fine, mother. Save me a plate for later. I’m just completely stuffed at the moment,” Emma says. “I’m going to turn in early and get some rest.”

Emma stretches out across the covers on her bed with her clothes on. She counts the minutes as they pass through her own calculations, marking the time by the evening’s momentous events – her father coming home, her parents eating, her parents cleaning the dishes, her parents getting ready for bed, her parents turning in.

After that, she peers from her window, waiting for the moon to reach the one a.m. position. When it finally arrives, Emma doesn’t hesitate.

She finds in her closet the black material she used as a snake bag. Emma ties that around her neck to cover her arms, otherwise exposed by her short-sleeved black dress. She puts on a light pair of field shoes that are heavily worn and creeps from the house as she’s done before – without waking her parents.

Emma scampers to the Denton farm to the well where she left the keys. Once there, she takes the cape from her neck and uses it as a mitten to pickup the keys to keep her prints off them. She hurries to the deputy’s car. Emma opens the door, with the cloth, takes a seat, puts the key covered with the cloth into the ignition, puts her foot on the brake, and starts the engine.

Vrooom!

She stretches the cloth over the steering wheel, and clutches it in the ten and two positions. The engine’s sound reminds her of Josh’s truck.

She hopes the deputy hasn’t gone missing yet. He said he was single. He said he stopped by the farm on a whim. He shouldn’t be missed by the morning, she hopes.

Emma isn’t sure where she is going; she’s just sure it is as far away as she can get and get back. She notes the odometer – 59,069.5 – and she starts driving the marked car, clumsily, but effectively enough to move down along the darkened highway toward Henegar. For 15 minutes Emma drives along the mountain road without passing a single car. She is almost to Henegar when she notes that the odometer says she has traveled 7.6 miles.

That’s far enough, Emma figures.

She pulls the car to a stop on the highway’s median. Turns off the engine with the cloth. Leaves the keys in the car, gets out, shuts the door, ties the cloth around her neck, and begins the journey back home.

For two hours, Emma fast-walks through the night without a car passing her. She arrives back home at a quarter before 4 a.m. The sun won’t be up for another two hours.

Emma takes off her shoes, rubs her weary feet, and sits down on her bed. She’s ravenous, and remembers the plate of meatloaf and sides her mother was leaving for her. Emma walks to the kitchen, quietly, pulls the plate from the refrigerator, and gobbles it down without warming it.

She exhales when the plate is emptied.

Emma tiptoes to her bedroom, stretches out on her bed, and smiles.

She began this year’s plants indoors as seedlings, transferring them to the outside soil in mid-April, in hopes they would bear mid-June fruit. She got lucky Sand Mountain had no late season frost, so early blossoms remained intact, turning to tomatoes she watched ripen in the latter part of May to fruit almost ready to be picked now.

She’s been hopeful, based on progress, that one or two will be ready in the coming days. Emma could have picked them already, probably, but they wouldn’t have been ready – not perfectly so, anyway.

It’s the morning of June 8, a Saturday, and Emma is walking to the garden after breakfast as she has every day since Memorial Day passed, hoping this will be the day. She sees the plants in the distance glistening in the sun as dewdrops on the leaves shine like crystal. She looks across the road, however, when she hears a sound – a humming, like a tractor’s engine.

Emma stops walking, and swallows her last breath. She covers her mouth with her hands, as if she anticipates needing to muffle a sound.

The noise is coming closer.

From around the bend on the dirt road on the farm Emma sees the old green tractor huffing and puffing its way along, with a strapping lad at the wheel she thinks looks like Michael.

“You’ve come back,” she says, softly, into her hands.

The tractor gets closer, turning from the road to a path leading toward the barn. Emma can see clearly, now.

It is Michael.

“Yeeessss!” she screams, muffling the sound into her hands. “Michael is home.”

She waves.

Michael waves back.

He was looking for her.

She giggles girlishly and smiles, broadly.

Emma resumes her path to the garden, skipping along, while keeping her eyes affixed on Michael riding on the tractor. At the garden, she peers at a tomato plant she’s been watching with two mostly-red Better Boys.

“Well, Mr. Tomato,” she says, cheerfully. “I think your day has come.”

Emma plucks a tomato from the vine.

“Yours too,” she says, prying another free.

She holds them before her face, admiring the harvest. Emma skips back to the parsonage with the tomatoes. Her mother is in the kitchen, cleaning up from breakfast.

“Look mother,” Emma says, showing her the tomatoes. “It is a happy day.”

“I see,” her mother says, noting Emma’s rare smile.

Emma puts the tomatoes in the windowsill.

“Let’s have a tomato sandwich for lunch,” Emma says.

“Very well.”

Emma scampers back to the garden, looking for Michael. She can’t see him now. The tractor is parked near the barn. She assumes he’s there, and skips along that way. Emma crosses the road, hops the fence and sashays to the barn in her yellow dress humming the tune to “Skip to my Lou.”

“Michael?” Emma calls out as she nears the barn.

“In here,” he says.

“Michael!” Emma says, stepping into the doorway.

She sees him in a corner and rushes over.

“Michael!” she cries out, extending her arms.

“Hello, Emma,” Michael feebly responds, half extending his arms for a hug.

Emma leaps into him, wrapping her arms around him and the white t-shirt he’s wearing.

“I thought you would never come back,” she says.

Michael gives Emma a half hug, then a slight shove to get her at arms length.

“It’s good to see you, Michael,” Emma says.

“You too, Emma. How have you been?”

“Same is the same is the same,” Emma says. “Until now.”

“Are you just visiting your parents?” Michael asks.

“What?”

“Your parents. Are you just visiting?”

“Well, no. I…I live there of course, with my parents still.”

“I thought you were getting married,” Michael says. “What was his name…David?”

“Oh, well, yes, I was, but…” Emma says. “That didn’t work out.”

“Why not? You seemed so…happy together,” Michael says, smiling a sly smile.

“You know I didn’t want to marry David,” Emma says. “It was all my father’s idea.”

“But you were planning to,” Michael says, cocking his head slightly to look at the right side of Emma’s neck. “That’s what you told me. So what happened?”

“Oh,” Emma says, moving her right hand to cover the bite mark on her neck, and fidgeting without looking at Michael as she talks.

“Well, there was this accident. Strangest thing. David apparently got some snakes out of my father’s church on Christmas Eve and took them home. He was bitten and died, in his room.”

“He died?”

“Yes, he died. David is dead.”

Michael has a troubled look on his face.

“David, your fiancée, is dead?”

“He’s not my fiancée. But he is dead. Yes.

“Can we stop talking about this? I’m so glad to see you,” Emma says, walking closer to Michael.

“Hold me,” she says.

“Emma, wait. Wait, Emma. I need to ask you something.”

“Something else about David? Please, no. He’s dead.”

“No, Emma. We need to talk about this truck I found back on the road.”

“Oh,” Emma says. “That.”

“Yes. That.”

“Why do you think I know anything about it,” Emma says, looking at her feet.

“Because you don’t seem surprised that I asked about the truck. Because there’s some golden hair strands on the back of the front seat. Because something tells me you do know.”

Emma lifts her head and looks at Michael’s eyes.

“I didn’t mean to,” Emma says. “I didn’t mean to Michael. I really couldn’t help it.”

“Emma,” Michael says, leaning back against the barn wall for bracing. “Are you saying what I think you are saying? Help me understand, ‘I didn’t mean to.’

“I looked in the glove box,” Michael says. “I saw the truck belongs to that Josh fellow he went missing in the fall. I saw the flyers in the grocery store when I was home Thanksgiving. My parents were talking about it. Josh worked for TVA. Josh had a wife and a baby, Josh up and disappeared.

“That’s too bad, I thought,” Michael says. “Then I didn’t think anything of it until I come home, come to work at the barn, ride down the dirt road on the tractor, and see this truck wedged in the brush. It startles me a little bit. But not as much as when I open the glove box to see who’s truck it is and see Josh’s name on the registration.

“I’m a little startled, Emma, you can imagine,” Michael says. “So I look closely inside the truck and nothing really catches my attention but these golden hairs on the back of the seat.

“This just doesn’t make sense, Emma. What didn’t you mean to do?”

“I didn’t mean to kill him,” she says.

“That’s what I was afraid you were going to say. Lord have mercy, Emma Mays. That’s what I was afraid you were going to say.”

Michael moves from the wall and starts pacing slowly back and forth in front of Emma, who has taken a seat on the barn floor on some loose hay. Her legs are folded and her elbows are resting on her legs and her head is resting in her hands.

“I didn’t mean to,” Emma says, softly.

“You didn’t mean to,” Michael says, turning toward Emma. “Shew. I hear you. Right. You didn’t mean to. Josh did something to you and you had no choice and something happened to him? Is that it?”

“No,” Emma says, “not exactly.”

“What do you mean, not exactly?”

“I mean he didn’t do anything to me, but I didn’t mean to.”

Michael drops his head to his hands and sighs.

Emma is silent.

In a minute, Michael walks to Emma and sits down beside her on the barn floor. He reaches for her hands and holds them. She squeezes his back, tightly.

“It’s good to see you,” Michael says. “I’m sorry. I’m sure there is a good explanation. But you have to understand my shock. I’m sure we can work this out once we call the sheriff and all.

"We can get this cleared up. It shouldn’t be a problem. You can just explain what happened and they can get this truck out of here, tell his wife and everybody can move on.”

“Sheriff?” Emma says. “No sheriff! You cannot call the sheriff.”

“Emma,” Michael says, “it’s awful and all, believe me, it’s awful. But if you didn’t mean to do it, you didn’t commit a crime. You have no reason to be hiding his truck. That makes it look like you have done something wrong. We can’t keep hiding that truck, and now I know about it now. If I don’t do something, I’m involved with something I had nothing to do with.”

“We can’t call the sheriff!” Emma says, raising her voice, and pulling her hands free of his.

“We have to Emma,” he says. “We just don’t have a choice. You are not going to talk me out of that. It will all be okay. I’m sure you are scared. But you can explain what really happened.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Emma says. “Tell them I am a vampire or something.”

Michael gives Emma a long, pleading look.

“No,” Emma. “No crazy tale. Just tell them the truth.”

“Kiss me,” she says.

“What?”

“Kiss me.”

Michael wants to say no, considering all the information he has to digest. But he’s drawn beyond reason to oblige Emma’s request.

He touches her cheek with his right hand, softly. He gazes into her eyes as they sit, facing one another on the barn floor.

“You are so beautiful,” Michael says.

His eyes move to her nose, her chin, and her neck.

“What happened?” Michael says.

“I was bitten,” Emma says.

“Bitten.”

“By what?”

“A rattlesnake.”

Michael moves in for the kiss, starting softly, with his mouth slightly open. But the soft touch of Emma’s lips is too alluring, and the soft kiss quickly turns to a passionate broil. Emma falls back to the barn floor slowly, pulling Michael down on top.