Posted: May 18, 08 6:59am
Hello, this is actually a portion of a larger untitled work. It's a piece of a chapter.
I'm just curious as to how it reads, anything would be helpful. The story takes place late 50s, early 60s in this particular scene. The location is a remote area of Ocala, Florida, at a tiny rundown hotel. The character, Elgin, has just arrived for his first day of work as the maintenance man.
The girl has a bad left eye, as does her father, Paris Carver, the owner of the hotel.
Thanks.
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The “one eyed” Hotel
Elgin arrived on his first day, early, and it was still dark as he climbed out of his Plymouth. He stood on the slippery brown pine needles outside the Carver Hotel. The air was cool and a light breeze rustled leaves high in the oaks. He wished he were still in bed next to his warm wife.
Elgin walked toward the office, the air was damp, and the smell of pine dominated the current. He heard the pitch of tiny wings in his ears, and the sharp cheat of a mosquito caught him below the left side of his jaw. He slapped himself with an open hand in the dark. Rounding the corner in the back he saw a small light in the rear office. Elgin had half a mind to turn and head back down to the car. He started to do just that, when the rusty door was pulled open, and a young girl stood at the threshold. She was lit from behind by the small desk lamp on the inside.
“Mornin’ mister Turner.”
She looked sleepy but content with the moment.
“You can call me Elgin, and good morning,” he announced, hating the sound of his name and the sudden shake in his legs.
“It’s cool outside, maybe rain today.”
Elgin moved in a little closer as the mosquitoes found their mark several times through his thin t-shirt.
“You mind if I step inside girl, fore these damn things carry me off?”
“Sorry, come on in …Elgin.”
He slipped by her and smelled soap. He guessed she was eighteen or twenty, and he felt another bite on his cheek as the steel door was closed.
“I made your keys they’re over on the desk,” came her voice from behind him. It was a crystal lilt of a voice, almost inside his very ear.
“Uh…thanks…any coffee?” Elgin headed for the desk and thought about the eye.
“Right there, behind you,” said the young Carver girl.
Elgin watched his skinny hand scoop up the key ring from the edge of the desk. He smelled soap again. He turned and she was there. Her hair was down, partially shrouding the eye. She seemed more of a woman as he took the white Styrofoam cup from her hand.
“There’s creamer and sugar next to the fan.”
Elgin cared for neither, but he wanted to buy himself some time to process what he had just seen. He watched as the dry non-dairy creamer floated and resisted mixing with his coffee.
“You married…Elgin?”
He turned around and faced her again, thick brown hair framed her face, her lips hung apart as half a smile.
“Yeah, I guess I am. I mean…I am.”
He felt like a fool and he didn’t like that.
“Sorry, it’s really not my business, I just wondered is all.”
“She’s pregnant too, my wife,” Elgin spit the information proudly.
“Well, isn’t that the best. Congratulations to you.”
She leaned against a file cabinet and seemed like a different person. Elgin could not draw a bead on her despite all his detective skills.
“I’m Zel by the way, it’s short for Zelda, Cassia’s off today.”
She peeled herself from the file cabinets and extended a hand toward him. He met it with his own and could not seem to purchase any type of control. He released the grip of her hand and she held his for just a moment longer. He caught her eye. She was there before him and her left eye was not as bad as Cassias.
“It’s a birth defect. I’m blind in the left eye.”
Elgin stood in the darkened office, stunned under the sight of Zeldas’ working eye. She was fearless. He backed away a little and felt the keys in the pocket of his loose fitting painters’ pants.
“Everyone has birth defects. It’s just that not all of them are visible. Do you know what yours are Elgin?”
An exceptionally painful mosquito bite jilted Elgin from his trance. He slapped at his upper arm with his right hand. The eye fell to his crotch. He pulled his left hand from his pocket as Zelda laughed and folded her arms.
“I guess I had better get to the paint shed now, it’s getting on after six.”
“You have the keys,” she smiled under the eye.
“I don’t know where it is.”
“Elgin, this building sits on two acres. That shed won’t be hard to find.”
She leaned against the door jam, and reminded him of a pretty cat with a bad eye. He plunged a hand into his pocket and pulled the little ring of keys from inside. In less than three steps he smelled the soap. The eye knew. She drew a pinch of hair, and pulled it under her nose.
“I’ll send daddy out when he gets here.”
“Appreciate it,” Elgin passed by her. She didn’t flinch, just curled that hair around her finger as he bounced off the steel door.
“Gotta push hard skinny,” and she laughed out loud. A hot flash ran through him, and he despised the word ‘skinny.’ He had spent months casting it from his thoughts and she threw it around him like a barbed net.
Elgin welcomed the return of the fresh morning air. The heavy door thunked behind him. It shut out the eye and her laugh.
The tops of the pines were lit with brilliant orange light from the rising sun. It contrasted with the distant rumble of thunder. Elgin walked alongside the back of the building and mosquitoes battled for his blood.
Under a huge Banyon tree sat a little white wooden building. Elgin deduced it must be the paint shed.
He approached the structure with his perimeter key drawn like a tiny bayonet. The pests in the air stabbed him with theirs. Elgin ambushed the door and baptized the old lock with the new key. He twisted his wrist and prayed for an opening.
The entire door gave way and left its hinges. It fell inward toward the darkness of the diminutive garage. Dust curled around the door from the dry dirt floor. Elgin looked behind him hoping Zelda had not been there.
He knelt and removed the un-needed key from the rusty lock. He pulled the old door back to the correct position. Again, he stole a look behind. Elgin spotted a dented can of insecticide sitting atop a splintering workbench. He raced to it and filled the palm of his hand with a small puddle of the poison. He rubbed it over his face and around the back of his neck.
Elgin took a moment in the growing light to look around the crowded shed. He found a screwdriver and a ten-penny nail. They would suffice as temporary hinge pins. There were paint cans of all shapes and sizes stacked around him. Varnishes and paint remover, stains, water seal, lacquer thinners and lots of turpentine crowded leaning shelves. It smelled of musk and chemical. Elgin had to restore it to order on his fist day under the employ of Paris Carver.
“Phony blood boy,” boomed a big deep voice in the quasi light. Elgin did jump.
“Uh, mornin sir, Mister Carver, blood?”
“Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning. I call it phony blood. There’s foul weather in the loop.”
“I guess I’ll be makin some order out here in the paint shed Mr. Carver.”
“The girl says you run up at about a quarter till.”
“If that’s what Zelda says, then I reckon that was the time sir.”
“Is that the handle she give you did she?”
“She told me Cassia had the day off.”
Carver chuckled to himself, and took a pull from a raging cigar. The eye studied the tip as he pulled it from his liver colored lips.
“The only thing off today is that girls mind. Zelda and Cassia are wrapped up in the same skin” said Carver, sounding slightly annoyed.
Elgin wondered how many new surprises he could endure before the break of noon.
“I guess I’ll be gettin on then Mr. Carver.”
“Her mother done her self in with a shotgun blast to the face over in number two. I was picking bits a skull outa the curtains for nearly a week.”
Grey tobacco smoke engulfed the two standing in the first light. Elgin looked down at his shoes for lack of contrived reaction. He wondered why Carver had not thrown the curtains in the trash.
“Seven years ago Cassia found her mother. So it ain’t much shock she divides her time between parallels.”
The eye seemed to speak as Carver returned the cigar to his lips.
“I sure am sorry about all that Mr. Carver,” blurted Elgin just because he thought he should.
“You might save that though you meant well. In the lottery we all got equal chance boy. It can’t be wrote and lived, it can only be dealt with.”
Paris Carver punctuated his final exhale by dropping his cigar butt to the sandy ground. He covered it with a toe tip of fill, and then stood atop the tiny tomb.
“Only thing needs sympathy is the devil, but he don’t want it either.”
Carver turned and spit as he passed through the remnants of the incinerated cigar. The procession of his commentary seemed to follow him.
Elgin stood outside the shed. A peregrine falcon flexed its neck from high atop a dead mahogany. It studied the path of a kangaroo rat foraging in the pine bed three feet from the heels of the skinny Elgin.
Four miles away, the big Hereford Elgin had passed earlier stood chewing her cud. Horseflies crowded the corners of her eyes, and she blinked shaking her head. Her long tail swished through the hot afternoon air tending her flanks. She began to lumber across the field heading for shade and escape from the biting flies.
The cicadas created a pitch which seemed to intensify then fade. A red squirrel stopped in its shadow. Perhaps it was taken aback by the big cow slowly slipping beneath the surface of the field. Her big brown eyes were pulled back in their sockets. Oxygen reversed, forcing its way back out of the big black dirt covered nose. Two thirds of the conscious animal was below the surface. She rested and the big flanks contracted. The red squirrel blinked as its forepaws touched the ground. The furry inspector ambled the remaining ten feet, peering into the dark hole.
An unfamiliar hot stench pushed into the face of the curious little squirrel. Before it could be diluted by surface atmosphere, the tiny lungs of the rodent absorbed the toxin. It backed away from this offensive invasion. Tremors coursed through its body and it laid still, eyes open, heart stopped.
A fire ant pushed through the soft fur of the newly dead. It sampled the warm flesh. Within half an hour the eyes were gone, and hundreds of them pillaged the poisoned corpse.
Thirty feet below the surface the dead cow floated in the limestone aquifer. Huge eels tugged at the recent flesh and the big eyes were the first to go. In tunnels hundreds of feet away, the blind trogs sensed a chemical change in the darkness. They could wait for their meal, they consumed very little. Food from the surface would always find them in time.
