The Sweet Gum Tree

A Cerridwen Press Publication

www.cerridwenpress.com

The Sweet Gum Tree

ISBN #1-4199-0224-5

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

The Sweet Gum Tree Copyright© 2005 Katherine Allred Edited by: Pamela Campbell

Cover art by: Syneca

Electronic book Publication: May 2005

With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Cerridwen Press, 1056 Home Avenue, Akron, OH 44310-3502.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

Cerridwen Press is an imprint of Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.®

THE SWEET GUM TREE

Katherine Allred

Katherine Allred

The Sweet Gum Tree

Growing up in the Crowley Ridge area of Arkansas, I paid little attention to the sweet gum trees except to admire their brilliant colors during the fall. And maybe to laugh when the Judge cursed each time he ran the lawn mower over the hard burs they produce, the tiny missiles banging against the house or car with a loud thunk and denting the mower blades he kept so carefully honed.

It wasn’t until I was a grown woman that I realized the true nature of the tree. A sweet gum is the chameleon of wood, its corky exterior hiding its inner ability to imitate anything from cherry to mahogany. But its real value, one unrealized by most people, is its deep red heart, steady and strong. They see only the pale fibrous wood, easily warped, that surrounds the core.

Like the town of Morganville saw Nick Anderson.

As with most small town southerners, respectability was as much a part of my DNA as was my hair and eye color. It was the goal everyone strived for, the standard by which every citizen of Morganville was judged. And while my family, the Frenchs, weren’t the richest−that honor going to Ian and Helena Morgan−we were one of the most respected. Thanks mostly to the Judge, my grandfather.

His name was Carl, but no one, including his daughters, had ever called him anything but Judge. He retired from the bench when I was five, and since my own father pulled a vanishing act shortly before my birth, the Judge stepped forward to fill that role for me. I thought the man walked on water and took every word from his lips as gospel.

“Alix,” he told me. “Stay away from the railroad tracks. A wowzer cat lives under the trestle, and you don’t want to get tangled up with one of those.”

“What’s a wowzer cat?” I asked, enthralled.

“It’s a fifty pound cat with eight legs and nine bung holes, and it’s meaner than a gar.”

The Judge had an odd sense of humor.

The summer I was eight I’d spent most of my free time stretched out in the high grass near the trestle, trying my best to catch a glimpse of this elusive animal. I felt sorry for it and thought if anyone could tame it, I was that person. After all, hadn’t I tamed the half-wild kittens in the barn?

I remained a believer until my first close encounter with Nick Anderson that fall.

Everyone knew who the Andersons were. Frank, Nick’s father, owned the salvage yard on the outskirts of town. It was five square acres filled with the rusting, twisted corpses of dead vehicles, most of them shrouded in weeds or covered by wild morning 5

Katherine Allred

glory vines. In between the rows lay pools of stagnant water, their surfaces multicolored with the iridescent hues from leaked oil. At the very back of the lot sat a tiny trailer, in little better shape than the vehicles surrounding it, where the Andersons, father and son, lived.

Frank Anderson was the only person in town who cared nothing about respectability. He was a large man, well over six feet, and his weight showed his propensity to strong drink. I never saw him dressed in anything but khaki pants, soiled with stains of unknown origin, his huge stomach, covered in a badly stretched T-shirt, sagging over his belt.

It wasn’t uncommon to find him sitting on the bench in front of the general store or staggering down Main Street, a bottle gripped in his right hand, mumbling about the sons of bitches who all thought they were better than he was, and how he’d show them someday. Every kid in Morganville knew to give him a wide berth when he was in that condition. Frank Anderson wasn’t exactly what you’d call friendly even when he was sober. Drunk, he was downright dangerous.

Apparently, the only one who could stand him was Liz Swanner. Jenna Howard, my best friend since kindergarten, told me Mr. Anderson paid Liz to let him “do it” to her. I don’t think either of us was exactly sure what that meant, but I thought Liz could probably use whatever money he gave her. After all, she had six kids to feed and no job to support them. The whole family was on welfare, although they barely got enough to survive.

The Swanner house was the last one between the salvage yard and town. It sat alone, an outcast from its neighbors, a single-story shotgun house with flakes of paint clinging here and there to its weathered boards. Several mangy dogs graced the bare dirt in front like living lawn ornaments, the southern equivalent of pink flamingos.

I stared out the truck window as the Judge drove by the Swanner’s house, my curiosity boundless toward a life so different from my own, but there was no sign of human habitation. Lindsey, the youngest of the Swanner brood was in my class at school, but no one really knew her. She always kept to herself, seeming to shrink into invisibility in spite of her white-blonde hair and blue eyes. No one was ever cruel to her. Most of the kids simply forgot she was around.

That particular day, my mother and my aunts had run me out of the house while they prepared for the church social to take place the next day. It would be the last hurrah before school started and they were going all out for the event. Mounds of food already filled the refrigerator and both the Judge and I had been threatened with Dire Consequences if we were to touch it.

I was sitting on the swing that the Judge had made for me in the backyard; a logging chain with the ends wrapped around a sturdy branch of the sweet gum tree and nailed in place, with a notched board seat. Years of use had worn away the grass beneath it and left a deep groove where my feet dragged. Bored, I was contemplating enlisting Jenna to help me corner the wowzer cat when the Judge appeared from the shed and headed for his truck.

6

The Sweet Gum Tree

In stature, the Judge was one of the biggest men I’ve ever known, but physically, he was short without an ounce of fat on him. A pair of black glasses with thick lenses were constantly perched on his nose and his crew-cut hair was dark gray on the sides, blending into a lighter gray strip down the center of his head. His manner of dress was always the same; a brown work shirt and jeans on weekdays, a suit on Sunday.

As soon as I realized he was leaving, I leaped to my feet and followed. The Judge never offered to take me with him, and I never asked permission. It was understood by everyone concerned that where he went, I went too.

The truck passed the Swanner house and I shifted my gaze forward as we turned in at Anderson’s Salvage Yard. The Judge pulled to a stop at the end of a row and we climbed out. The main focus of the salvage yard was the big tin building sitting in front of the gate, heat waves shimmering from the top and the scent of stale oil and gasoline permeating the air.

I could feel Frank Anderson’s glare as soon as we stepped inside. He was sitting behind a dirty counter, his feet propped up on top of it. “Judge. What brings you out this way?” His voice was surly, like he was doing us a favor by acknowledging our presence.

“I’m looking for a fuel pump that’ll fit the ‘52 Chevy I’m rebuilding. Think you might have something?”

The Judge had bought that car the day he retired and spent most of his time working on it. At first, he’d let me sit inside while he tinkered, until the day I accidentally blew the horn while his head was under the hood. Now I was banished to standing beside him, handing over tools as he needed them.

“I might.” Mr. Anderson turned his head. “Hey, boy!” The rustling sound from the back of the building was the first indication I had that Nick was present. Partially hidden by the shadows, he rose from the engine parts that were scattered around him like chickens around my mother’s skirt at feeding time.

Silently, he moved through the debris and stopped at the counter, waiting.

“Go take the fuel pump off that ‘52 Chevy pickup in the back of the lot.” Mr.

Anderson turned his glare back on the Judge. “It’ll probably work.” When Nick grabbed a toolbox off the counter, I decided to go with him. The town being small, I knew who he was, but I’d never talked to him before. I was eight, he was ten, and even if there hadn’t been a gap in our ages, Nick didn’t frequent the same circles I did. As far as I knew, he didn’t frequent any circles at all. The few times I’d seen him at school, he had always been alone, leaning against a tree or the building, watching but never participating in the play. The only difference between him and Lindsey Swanner was that everyone knew Nick was there. Even at ten he was hard to ignore.

“Don’t get dirty, Alix,” the Judge called as I skipped out the door.

“No, Sir. I won’t.” I was well aware of the repercussions from Aunt Darla, the oldest of my mother’s sisters, if I got dirty. The woman considered dirt of any type her 7

Katherine Allred

mortal enemy and searched it out with a diligence that was both frightening and awe-inspiring. When I was little she had me convinced that one speck of dirt on my person had the potential to kill me on the spot. It wasn’t until I had a few bouts of hysteria that my mother forced Aunt Darla to retract her previous statements and assure me that I wasn’t going to die. These days I repaid the favor by getting dirty at every opportunity, thereby sending Aunt Darla into a few hysterics of her own.

The Judge says what goes around, comes around, and we both understood his warning was mostly for show. At least if Aunt Darla yelled at him, he could honestly say he’d told me to stay clean.

Since Nick’s legs were twice the length of mine, I had to run to catch up with him.

When I did, I watched him from the corners of my eyes. He was tall for his age and thin, his body all sinew and bones that seemed to protrude in every direction. His black hair was thick and long, even for a world that used the Beatles and the Rolling Stones as the current fashion trend.

“You must know a lot about motors,” I ventured when the silence became too much for me.

“I guess.”

A thrill of excitement shot through my stomach. He was going to talk to me! “I help the Judge work on his car sometimes.”

He glanced in my direction, his gray eyes skeptical. “You’re too short to reach the engine.”

My nose promptly went out of joint. “I am not short. My mother says I just have a delicate bone structure. Besides, I don’t work on the engine, I hand him the stuff he needs.”

When he didn’t answer, I decided to forgive him for the insult. “My name is Alix.” His lips curved upward a bit. “I know who you are. Everybody in town knows who you are.”