Critically acclaimed novelist and Mississippi native, Michael Holloway Perronne explores how a forbidden teen romance and the violent act of a desperate boy forever binds a community.
Prologue
There is not much that can compete with the sheer majesty of a hundreds-year-old oak tree. Symbolizing strength and continuing growth, the tree’s massiveness inspires awe, especially in children who feel compelled to climb its sturdy branches as generations had done before.
Kate remembered being a little girl heading to the beach and walking across the hot asphalt along Beach Boulevard in Long Beach, Mississippi. Her mother, still youthful, with hair the color of Mississippi red clay and rosy cheeks, held her hand as they dashed across the first side of the highway to the median.
“We have to wait for the cars,” her mother reminded her, when Kate started to make a mad dash across the boulevard. Just the anticipation of building one of their grand sandcastles together had had Kate awake since early morning.
Kate always loved this time she got to spend alone with her mother. Her older sister, Carol, always preferred to stay inside the air conditioning with their grandmother and watch Love of Life and The Doctors.
As they had waited for cars to pass, Kate looked at one of those gigantic oaks that dotted the coastline. Her grandfather had recently told her you could tell a tree’s age by counting the rings in its trunk after cutting it.
“How old do you think this tree is? Older than you?” Kate had asked.
Her mother laughed.
“Much older than me,” her mother replied. “This tree started growing long before I came into this world and it will probably be here long after we’re all gone.”
Kate’s tiny five-year-old hand wiped the summer sweat from her brow. She couldn’t even begin to fathom a period of time much older than her mother and long after her life.
Many years later, when Kate saw the coastline after Hurricane Katrina, her eyes immediately filled with tears over the damage or complete disappearance of various parts of her hometown. When she saw the oaks, many of which had been reduced to jagged trunks or simply killed by saltwater from the storm surges, she felt an even greater sense of loss.
After a good amount of time had passed by after the storm, sculptors came into town and with saws, varnish, and other tools turned the trunks of those trees from signs of destruction and trauma into beautiful pieces of artwork celebrating the Mississippi Coast and its culture. Trunks turned into seagulls and other symbols of coastal life.
It had been this transformation that first convinced Kate that beauty could sometimes arise from the worst of nightmares.
Chapter 1- October 2006
Javier chuckled as he looked up into the bright moonlit sky and saw a bat fly between two pine trees. He and Alison had cuddled up earlier that evening on a blanket underneath a star-drenched sky, surrounded by half-constructed houses. She laughed at his disbelief when she told him that what flew overhead had not been a bird.
“Yeah, a bat, city boy. You do know what a bat is, right?” she said teasingly.
“Of course I know what a bat is. I just didn’t expect them to be flying around at night here in Mississippi. I thought they lived in, you know, caves and drank blood,” Javier said, wrapping his arms tighter around her. Her warm breath against his neck stirred the river of testosterone that churned through his veins every time she came within twenty feet of him.
“These aren’t the blood-sucking bats,” she whispered in his ear. “They just eat bugs.”
“Good to know,” he said.
“The first few nights after the storm,” Alison began, “some-times I would just lay outside in the backyard looking up at the stars, wondering how all of this could have happened to so many people I care about.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through all that,” Javier said before gathering her into a deep kiss.
Javier was jolted back to the present when a blast of chilly wind blew through him. He stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets. He had never been in temperatures below the 40s before he moved here. He could even see his breath under the moonlight.
He checked his watch and saw that it was still a few minutes early. She’d be here, and tomorrow they wouldn’t have to hide anything any more.
Alison pulled her cheerleading jacket tighter around her body as she quietly walked through the kitchen and out the backdoor. She had waited impatiently at the top of the stairs for the sounds that would confirm that her parents had gone to bed ” two flushes of the toilet in the bathroom connected to their bedroom, her father loudly asking if her mother had set the alarm even though her mother never, ever, forgot and, finally, the slamming of their bedroom door.
Tonight it felt like her parents had taken forever to settle down, but Alison had learned at the young age of fourteen when she tried to sneak out to her friend Missy’s house after curfew one night. She hadn’t even thought of attempting to sneak out until they had gone to bed. Her parents had grounded her a month over the Missy incident. Always so over-protective. Always, Alison thought.
She glanced at the time on her cell phone and saw that she still had a few minutes. Tonight, she wanted to spend every moment she could with Javier. He had been all she could think about as she stood on the sidelines of the football field and cheered with her squad. She’d been so out of it she almost forgot to catch Missy with Madison Ashcroft after they finished a pyramid. Madison had given Alison a dirty look when they caught Missy. Madison could tell that Alison had almost forgotten, and if one thing pissed off Madison Ashcroft more than anything else, it was for one of her cheers to get screwed up. Alison always thought Madison took cheering way too seriously. After all, they weren’t curing cancer, for God’s sake.
When she started down the driveway, she was startled to see her mother standing under the oak tree next to the house. Their eyes met and Alison was not only surprised to see her mother outside in the yard, but was even more surprised to see that her Mother looked like she had been caught in the middle of an indecent act.
“Mom?” Alison said.
Beverly wiped her hands on her pants and tried to regain her composure.
“What are you doing out here, young lady? Shouldn’t you be in bed?”
“Shouldn’t you?” Alison asked, in a moment of new-found bravery.
Surprisingly, her mother seemed at a loss for words as she started walking back towards the house.
“I thought I heard something outside,” Beverly said, in a feeble attempt at an excuse.
As she walked closer, Alison could see that her mother looked visibly upset.
“Mom, are you okay?” she asked, now feeling genuinely con-cerned.
“Yeah, of course,” Beverly said. “And where were you going?”
“I, uh, was going to Missy’s to get my notes for the test on Monday. I forgot them,” Alison said, ready to bear her mothe’s wrath.
Beverly took a deep breath and wrapped her arms around her chest.
“Well” she said, not looking convinced at all. “Don’t be out too late, okay?”
“Oh okay,” Alison said, taken aback by this unexpected permission. She started to walk back down the driveway to the Ford Mustang her father had given her on her sixteenth birthday, but she stopped and turned back to look at her mother, who still stood in the carport. “Mom, are you sure you’re okay?”
“Sure,” Beverly said. “Be careful, Alison.”
Alison nodded and headed to her car.
“I told you not to eat Mexican food before bed, Robert,” Kate said, shaking her head as she drank her herbal tea.
“Yes, Kate, I remember,” Robert said, searching through the cabinets for an antacid.
“You should have a light supper before bed. Not those spicy tacos from that drive-thru place.”
“Yes, Kate,” he said, sarcastically. “I’ll make sure and run all future food ingestion by ya, okay? Now could you help me find the damn Mylanta.”
“Second cupboard on the left at the top,” she answered, ob-viously knowing all along.
“Thanks,” Robert said dryly.
“Robert,” she said, brushing back a few strands of the baby blonde shade of hair that had covered her gray for fifteen years already. “I’m worried about you. That you’re taking on too much. We’re pushing fifty. We don’t have the energy we used to in our thirties.”
“I’m fine,” Robert insisted, before drinking the Mylanta straight from the bottle.
“It’s just that Sandy’s husband” Kate began before looking away.
Robert sighed loudly.
“That’s not going to happen to me. I’m not going to have a heart attack,” he replied, suddenly sounding softer. “We finish this project and we’re set, Katherine. Set for the rest of our lives, probably.”
Kate walked around the counter and hugged her husband.
“I know. I just worry. I can’t help it. I worry about us, Matt, and Sean.”
“Everyone is just fine.”
The kitchen door slammed shut, and Matt, their seventeen-year-old, came stomping in the house.
“Hey, son. How are you?” Robert said.
“Okay,” Matt muttered under his breath.
“You want some…?” Kate started to say, but before she could offer her son any of the pound cake she had made earlier that evening, he had already stormed out of the room, and she could hear his quick footsteps bounding up the stairs.
Sean allowed Caleb to hold him even tighter despite the fact that he felt warm. Caleb was a big cuddler, and immediately after making love, he’d snuggle as close as he could to Sean and immediately fall asleep. Sean, feeling more awake than ever, would often just lay there listening to his boyfriend’s soft snores and the sounds drifting in from Market Street in San Francisco.
Sometimes, during these moments, he would watch Caleb sleep and wonder why in God’s name this sweet, cute guy seemed to want to be a part of his life so much. Caleb had always been so giving, loving, and more romantic than any guy in his life before had ever been. In fact, none of them acted as if they cared one iota about romance as long as the sex came their way.
Yet Sean knew that he had still not fully began to open up to Caleb and really let him into his life. He felt as though he had tried, but he knew that he still held back. He also knew that Caleb sensed it, and Sean couldn’t help but wonder how much longer Caleb would stick around.
Suddenly, Caleb’s eyes fluttered open, and he looked at Sean and smiled.
“I’m sorry I fell asleep,” he said.
Sean kissed his forehead.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I like watching you sleep.”
Caleb smiled.
At that moment, Sean felt a wave of uneasiness shoot through his body, and it had nothing to do with Caleb.
“Everything okay?” Caleb asked, looking worried.
“Yeah. Just got a weird feeling all of a sudden. I’m sure it’s nothing.”
***
“Hey, you,” Alison said, walking up behind Javier and wrapping her arms around him.
Javier, smiling, turned around, picked her up in his arms, and kissed her deeply.
“Come on,” Alison said, grabbing his hand and leading him down the street.
Surrounding them on both sides were rows of what would eventually be high-end houses, replacing the houses the high winds and waters had swept away. Some weren’t much more than a shell while others would be completed within a matter of a month or so. It had struck Alison as weird more than once that the quiet place that she and Javier had had their secret nighttime encounters, the place their romance had blossomed, would soon be a bustling new neighborhood development. Just a year ago, it had been a thriving middle class neighborhood. Children would ride their bicycles down the street, fathers would water their new lawns, and neighborhood mothers would arrange play dates for their children.
Every square inch of the new development had been carefully planned by Matt’s father and then gradually brought into being by Javie’s father in the new post-Hurricane Katrina world of Southern Mississippi, a moment in time where many suffered and some, like Matt’s father, profited from the new real estate boom.
They headed to a huge two-story home that had just been framed in€¦the perfect hiding place for two young lovers.
“After tonight” Alison said.
“We’re going to be together. No matter what they say,” Javier answered.
“Unless,” Alison giggled, “we just want some extra privacy.”
Matt quietly closed the door of his fathe’s upstairs study. His father hated anyone else going into the study.
“This is my domain, my sanctuary,” Robert often told his family.
And when his father went inside and shut the door behind him, not even Matt’s mother dared to disturb him. What his father did in there, really, no one knew. Matt wasn’t sure he even wanted to know.
When his parents went on vacation to Memphis earlier in the year, curiosity got the best of Matt, and he snuck into the room and began to explore ” carefully. He looked through what turned out to be nothing more than boring business documents and carefully replaced each one in the exact spot it had been. He found a bag of chewing tobacco, a surprise since he had never seen his father chew it before.
What was hidden in the second from the bottom drawer on the right side surprised him the most. There, carefully hidden behind pieces of his father’s high school mementos ” yearbooks and his old jersey ” was a small pistol. Matt never knew his father even owned a gun. That day he had picked the gun up carefully, admiring its weight for such a small object and the surge of power he had felt holding it. From that moment, the idea of the gun never left his mind. He thought about it and what could be done with a firearm often.
Now the time had come for him to put it to use.
Matt quickly but quietly opened the same drawer now, reached in the back, and pulled out the gun.
Copyright 2008 Michael Holloway Perronne. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
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