...or, The Emancipation of Flora Belle
“I absolutely do not need any more stuff,” muttered Avangeline to herself as she flipped through the stack of old recipe pamphlets buried in between even older crafting books. “Nothing. At. All.”
An hour later, she stood nervously as the girl at the checkout desk for the estate sale looked through her haul. Luckily, Ava had managed to find two stray paper bags in the kitchen in which to put her armfuls of things – it had been a little precarious moving the stacks from room to room. She had no idea what the asking price for such historic materials would be. $100? $80? More? Ava was prepared to try to bargain them down to $40.
“So they’re just old….” said the young woman, trailing off as she looked through Ava’s collection.
“Cookbooks!” Ava replied. “Umm, a couple of old cookbooks – you can see they’re kind of falling apart – and then these little pamphlets and oh, some other old books too.”
One hopeful sign was that the sale hadn’t really been organized in any particular fashion, as it was for more formal estate sales. Most rooms just had random piles of things stacked up on every surface, almost whimsically. “Let’s put all these religious tomes next to the cookbook stuff! Those church ladies are the only ones who cook these days, amirite?” Sigh. It was so hard to be a traditionalist in a modern world.
Ava was suddenly startled out of her reverie. “How about $10?” chirped the young woman in front of her, having finished her idle perusal.
“Okay!” Ava practically shouted. “Sure, that works,” she continued, more languidly, as she pulled $10 out of her wallet in record time, scooped up the bags, and started fast-walking to her car. What luck! She couldn’t believe her good fortune, for a change.
It wasn’t often that a house like the Granville mansion was available for rent, especially on a short-term basis. Ava had been looking for a place off the beaten path, in the middle of nowhere, with few distractions so that she could finally – finally! – start working on the novel she kept talking about writing. That’s why she was now in Iowa on a rainy fall day, rattling around alone in a drafty old (but glorious!) house, currently staring at a blank screen. How to start? Ava always had ideas and thoughts and sentences tumbling over each other in her head, but as soon as she went to write them down, they disappeared
“I know,” though Ava to herself, comfortably ensconced on a couch in the parlor, near the fireplace. “I’ll write for an hour – no, half an hour – and then I’ll let myself have a muffin. Yes, a banana muffin. That’s a good muffin.”
Half an hour later she had stoked the fire, checked the weather forecast, done a few stretches, and rummaged around in a drawer for candles in case the power went out, as the wind outside picked up to an unrelenting midwestern howl. Ava also had yet to write a word, but found herself drawn to her purchases that day.
“Fine, I’ll just take a quick look at the Kaiser Shipbuilding – Oregon scrapbook, that’s all.”
Three hours later, Ava was using the glue she had found in a cupboard to put the old pictures in place back where they belonged. It was easy enough to figure out, since the scrapbook owner had helpfully included an ordered list of the subject of each picture. “Fred D. in the shipyard.” “Assembly line of parts for the U.S.S. Fond du Lac.”
“Flora Belle wore the highest heeled shoes she could find because she was only 4’9 and Fred was 6’2. She loved to go out dancing with their friends. They went out one evening after Fred and the boys had stacked a cord of wood for the fireplace. It was stacked next to the driveway. Fred let Flora out of the car and told her he would park it and for her to go on in the……”
The page abruptly came to an end.
“Wait, where’s the rest of it?”
Ava looked through all the papers and photographs, and then checked again. And then looked at the backs of the pages. Nothing. The story of Flora Belle and the hapless Fred just left them dangling on this cliffhanger. J’accuse!
“Well, dammit,” exclaimed Ava. “How the hell can I not know what happened to Miss Flora Belle as she stepped out of the car and right into the pile of wood laid down by Fred and his merry band of idiots?”
Who apparently shared one brain among themselves, mused Ava. And of course it wouldn’t occur to Fred to tell his pals that hey, maybe we should think about stacking the wood up against the house rather than in the middle of the yard, right by the driveway?
That moron, she thought. Just like a man.
Ava could have sworn she had just heard something that sounded remarkably like a snort of derisive laughter. She sat perfectly still, but all was quiet except for the soothing sound of rain on the metal roof.
“In case someone’s here I HAVE A GUN!” she yelled. True, she didn’t have it on her per se, not at the moment, but it was upstairs in her bed…..room. Oh. Ava looked up. Was that a floorboard creaking?
“If you’re up there and planning to butcher me with my own gun, you will feel my wrath!” Ava yelled again, recognizing that that made no sense whatsoever, but going with it anyway.
But there were no sounds, no floorboards creaking, no derisive snorts. Just the rain, and the stately comfort of the old mansion settling down around her for the evening. Clearly, she was being completely ridiculous, or perhaps losing her mind. Or both.
Maybe, thought Ava, she should go exploring the house on this dark, rainy night, much as the stupid people in a slasher movie would. “Oh, let’s go ask that man with the chainsaw for directions.” Of course, she had never let the idea that she was doing something extremely foolish stop her before, so why start now?
(to be continued)
3 comments:
Cliffhanger!
:D !!!
Love this! "Ava pictured her as a saucy minx who didn’t suffer fools gladly"
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