Thistle Down

Eight

SOMETHING ABOUT THE HOT NIGHT AIR, high humidity, and the smell of spilled beer on her now ruined silk blouse played tricks on Phelma Jo’s vision as she drove home to her condo overlooking the river and the railroad tracks. The buildings blurred, overlapping the shacks she’d torn down for the expensive development.

“I am in control of my life. I am rich and successful. I don’t owe anything to anybody-except a few mortgages. No one tells me what to do. I don’t have to remember my god-awful childhood. It’s in the past. It’s over. I’m not that scared child anymore.” She repeated her personal litany over and over as the blocks grew longer and her mind kept drifting to the past when the smell of beer on a hot night ruled her life.

Her mind drifted back to where she’d started twenty years ago, back when life was one long pain in the ass…

“I’m theven now, you are thuppothed to take care of me!” Phelma Jo yelled at her mother through her oversized and gaping front teeth. “You’re thuppothed to make sure there’th food in the houthe and cook it. Not me!” At least that was what the latest foster mother told her before Mom had sobered up and taken her away from the family that had fed and clothed her for six months.

Mom actually took care of her for almost six weeks before she brought a new boyfriend home, and he bought a bottle of the clear liquid that smelled so awful. That was five bottles and three days ago.

Now the boyfriend was trying to play Daddy and help Phelma Jo take her bath. It didn’t feel right having him touch her where she knew no one was supposed to touch her.

Before Mom could take another swig out of the latest bottle and the boyfriend could drag her back to the bathtub, Phelma Jo stomped out of the tumbledown one-bedroom house beside the railroad. The moment her feet hit the pavement, she started running, her toosmall sandals scuffing against the street. Hot tears ran down her face. Her breath came in short gasps around the huge lump inside her.

Five blocks away, straight up the cliff, The Ten Acre Wood loomed tall and dark and mysterious. A hiding place. She didn’t even look back to see if the boyfriend followed her. Or care.

The quiet coolness welcomed her on the hot summer evening. Birds chirped happily. A frog croaked from the muddy spot that in winter was a small pond. The scent of hot fir sap and sweet thistles filled her nose. Her sweat dried along with her tears as she picked her way along a faint trail to a hollow stump. Deep inside, she found the cracked and stained mason jar she’d stolen from one of the old ladies who lived across the street from the park. She unscrewed the cap and crept toward the little clearing where dragonflies rested, soaking up the last of the sunshine for the day.

Something moved in the shadows to her right. She froze in place and looked only with her eyes, suddenly afraid. The kids in school said these woods were haunted. They said that weird things happened to kids who came here alone.

Most of the time, Phelma Jo didn’t believe them. But now… the shadows grew long and the evening winds came up to chill her arms and her knees.

The shadow moved again. She dropped her gaze to a small tree that lay across her path. The biggest spider she’d ever seen crawled along the rotting wood. Brown and hairy. “I bet you’re mean ath well ath ugly,” she whispered. “As mean as the boyfriend. Well, I’m meaner. I have to be meaner.”

Cautiously, she stooped and rested the jar on the log with the open mouth toward the spider. Inch by inch, she nudged it closer to the bug. The glass bumped up against one of the hairy brown legs.

The spider raised that leg and waved it about, kinda like it was sniffing. Then it crawled inside, pausing with each step.

Phelma Jo remained as still as still could be until her prize had climbed all the way inside. Then in one swift motion she scooped the lid over the opening and screwed it tight.

“Just what I need to make life interethting. Should I turn you loothe up my mom’th thkirt while she thleeps? Maybe you’ll bite the boyfriend when hith handth get too clothe to her.”

A faint buzzing drew her attention. She batted at whatever bug dive-bombed her ear. Jewel-bright wings caught the sunlight in the clearing just ahead.

Phelma Jo watched the purple dragonfly swoop down to the mudhole, tagging the top of a frog’s head. She followed cautiously, still holding her prized spider inside the jar. Her hand unscrewed the top but left it in place as she took a wary step crossing over her previous wary step.

The birds stopped singing. The breeze faded away. All was still.

She watched as the dragonfly spread its wings and settled on a broad fern frond overhanging the dried mud at the edge of the pool. Not much water left this time of year.

Watching where she placed her feet, making sure she didn’t rustle a leaf or crack a twig, Phelma Jo moved up beside the colorful bug. She slid the jar beneath the fern, right below where the dragonfly perched.

As quickly as she’d trapped the spider, she caught the bug with the lid and forced it into the jar, along with the fern tip. The plant made a ripping noise as it lost the bit of its leaf.

The dragonfly beat frantically against the glass with wings and tiny feet. It flitted about, desperate to stay away from the spider.

“Let’th play that you’re my mom and the thpider ith her boyfriend. When he eats you, my fothter mom and dad can come get me. They’ll make sure I get thupper. They’ll make sure no one touches me where they shouldn’t.”

“Help, help. Let me out!”

Phelma Jo thought she heard a cry. Only her imagination. Imagination would get her into trouble, just like the kids who scared themselves with ghost stories about The Ten Acre Wood, then tripped and got hurt trying to run away too fast to look where they were going.

She held the jar up to the slanting sunlight, admiring the bright colors and wondering how long the bug could evade the spider. Wouldn’t it be funny if she let them both out under her mom’s skirt as she lay on the sofa too drunk to move?

“That’s not really a dragonfly, you know,” Dick Carrick said from right behind her. He reached an arm over her shoulder and grabbed the jar away from her.

“Hey, that’th mine!” Phelma Jo shouted. She jumped, trying to snatch the jar back.

“It’s not nice to hurt spiders and Pixies and things,” Dick admonished her.

“Juth cuth you’re older and bigger than me, doethn’t mean you can tell me what to do. No one can tell me what to do.” Phelma Jo jumped again.

Dick held her still with one hand on top of her head. At the same time, he tucked the jar under his arm and unscrewed the lid with his free hand. The dragonfly slipped through the first opening before the spider had a chance to follow.

“Hey, I worked hard to catch my peth,” Phelma Jo protested.

Dick just watched the dragonfly circle his head and flit away into the woods. “You’re welcome,” he said quietly, almost in awe of the bug.

“You’re ath crathy ath your thithter, talking to bugth.” Phelma Jo stomped away in disgust.

She waited in the shadows of the old railway shed for the boyfriend to turn out all the lights and fall asleep before creeping back into the house. She washed her hands and face from the cold water in the tub. But not her whole body. She wouldn’t take off her clothes and give him the chance to spy on her. Or touch her.

“What are we going to do about Thistle, Dick?” Chase whispered to his friend as they stood on the wraparound porch of the Carrick home. The Queen Anne style pile of gingerbread and turrets had been in Dick’s family since it was built over a hundred years ago.

Chase thought it an eyesore with Mrs. Carrick’s most recent paint job of pink with white trim and yellow highlights. Not just any pink either. A screaming harem-pink worthy of a whorehouse.

He hated that Dusty had to live with that image. But then she lived so quietly she’d never found the need to move out on her own. Did she even know how ugly the house was?

Dick thrived away from his mother’s stifling influence. But he’d finally decided he needed to save enough money for a down payment on a house. So he moved in with Dusty for the summer while their parents were away.

Or maybe he moved back home to protect Dusty from being alone. That would be just like him.

“What do you mean, ‘what are we going to do about Thistle?’ ” Dick asked. He kept looking over his shoulder.

“Dick, look at me. The girls don’t need you to put a very drunk Thistle to bed.” Though Dick looked like he really wanted to do just that. “She knows too much about things she has no business knowing. Things about us. How’d she find out?”

“Huh?”

“How’d she know I glued a dragonfly’s wings together with dog drool from my red mastiff when I was eight? Remember the posters I used to glue to the wall with Julia’s dog drool. Better than superglue.”

Dick smiled. “Yeah. Who’d of thought it would work.”

“Yeah. And how’d Thistle know Phelma Jo tried to capture a very similar dragonfly in a glass jar in the same stretch of The Ten Acre Wood?”

“You believed in Faeries and Pixies when you were little,” Dick said. His eyes finally focused on Chase. “I remember.”

“I gave up that notion by second grade. The same time I stopped believing in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, and the Easter Bunny. I thought you did, too.”

Dick looked as if he wanted to say something, but he clamped his mouth shut instead and let his gaze drift up to the waxing moon. “We’ll have a full moon for the Masque Ball. Magic happens under the full moon. Especially in The Ten Acre Wood.”

“Only for dreamers and lunatics. You’re no help at all.”

“Should I be? Think about all the wonderful things we did as kids, all the pirate games and exploring the wonders of finding a bird’s nest or watching frogs hop from tuft to tuft in search of the perfect bit of mud.”

“All natural. Except the pirate games. And that’s just kids playing. You’re a trained scientist. You, of all people, should know that Faeries and Pixies exist only in children’s stories.”

“Ever think we might be living inside one giant story?”

Chase snorted. “Just keep Dusty safe. That Thistle woman is a con artist if I ever saw one. Too bad I can’t arrest her without evidence.” He started down the broad stairs. Then he had another thought and returned to Dick’s side. “What made you invite Dusty and her new best friend to the bar tonight? I thought it was supposed to be just us men watching the game.”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time. We had fun, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, we had fun.” Chase’s mouth quirked upward despite his best efforts to remain stern. “Especially when the waiter stumbled and spilled an entire pitcher of beer on Phelma Jo. I’ve wanted to do that to her more than once.”

Dick burst out laughing. “Like the time she ran your boxer shorts with red hearts up the flagpole at City Hall the morning after she broke up with you?”

Heat flashed from Chase’s toes to his ears and spread across his cheeks. He was just glad the dim light over the door was behind him. “We were never going together, so we didn’t have anything to break up from. She always got rid of her boyfriends before they got tired of her and left. Always in control of the relationship. That’s PJ. I was a senior in high school and she was a football groupie, sleeping her way through the entire team like we were trophies. She only stayed with the guys she could control.”

Or she was a notch in his own belt of experimentation.

“Wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t scrawled my name along the fly with magic marker.”

“That is one vengeful woman, Chase. Best not get on her bad side.”

“She doesn’t have a good side,” Chase grumbled. Actually she did, but that was one secret he was sworn to keep. The health and well-being of a lot of troubled teens depended on Phelma Jo staying anonymous in helping them.

She made certain teenage runaways didn’t follow the same self-destructive path her mother had.

“Amen to that. I’ve had my own run-ins with her. But damn, she is hot, even with the squirrely overbite and mean temper.”

“Well, I’m going to keep careful watch on her and her new assistant. What kind of name is Haywood Wheatland anyway?” Chase shook his head in puzzlement.

“I’ll ask around. Discreetly. See if anything comes up on Google.”

Chase had his own databases on his work computer. He added Haywood’s name to Thistle’s for deep background checks.

“Anyway, can you find out if he’s a patient of any of your doctor clients? I’ve never seen him around before.”

“Patient confidentiality will rule. But there’s usually a talkative nurse or two leaving a computer screen untended.” Dick flashed a wide grin.

“Let me know if you find out anything. I don’t like strangers in my town associating with a woman of questionable morals and business ethics.” And that went for Thistle Down, too.

He bounced back to his pickup whistling a catchy tune. What was the name of the music? He couldn’t remember it. Great. Now it was stuck in his head until he figured it out. Something to do with May flowers and honey wine.