Redemption

By Jim Adams

In the unforgiving backwoods of Vermont, 11-year-old Katie finds the road to redemption is paved with bad intentions.

20,000 words.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim Adams
• Release date: Mar 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393064589

Book preview

Dedication

To my college English professor, the late Diane Freund, who first encouraged me to write and continued until her passing to inspire me by sharing her thoughts and works with me. She was an outstanding teacher and a wonderful friend.

Diane was the winner of the Faulkner Award for her novel, Four Corners.

Special thanks to Geoff McLeod, for guiding me through the publication process, so I could finally make the dream of holding my book in my hand come true.

Geoff is the author of Unfinished Business, The Way the Wind Blows, Home on the Range, Home Again, and T-Bar.

I

It was the morning I turned eleven that my Aunt Gail murdered for the first time, but I’ll come back to that in a minute. My sister Emily and I shared a twin mattress in the smallest room upstairs and I saw she was staring at me when I woke.

You’re up, you’re up, she squealed, throwing her tiny arms in the air as if she were tossing handfuls of confetti at a parade. Come on Katie, let’s go have a tea party for your birthday!

I sat up and peered out at the muggy July dawn as it seeped through the dense Vermont forest surrounding our house. A sticky breeze drifted in past the rusty car rim that propped up the sliding window. I looked down into the yard to see if anyone else was up yet, but only saw broken farm equipment suffering under the oppressive sun.

Come on Katie, Emily persisted, tugging at a handful of my night gown.

Okay, I’ll be down in a second, I said, trying to rub something out of my eye.

Emily scrambled bare foot out into the hallway and bounded down the stairs. As soon as I heard the screen door bounce shut, I looked out again and saw her dancing through the yard toward the old root cellar that was on the other side of the pond. I watched as she held her doll at arm’s length while skipping through the tall weeds and how the over-sized, hand-me-down dress she wore floated in her wake.

I went into the bathroom down the hall, peed and splashed some water on my face to get the thing out of my eye. When I looked at the mirror, there were streaks of clean on my cheeks and neck where the water had rinsed away some of the dirt. I figured I might risk taking a bath that night if I was still awake after Grandpa Abe fell asleep in his recliner.

I changed silently into ratty jeans and going downstairs, peeked into my brother Jack’s room as I slid past. It was still dark in there, but I could see his outline on the bed. Jack’s room was always filled with gloom on account of Grandma having covered the outside of the entire downstairs in black plastic. She said it had something to do with keeping the outside out and the insides in. Grandma’s husband, Abe, had since cut some of it away and the rest was trailing off in shreds from years of harsh sunlight and whipping winds. I saw that Jack still didn’t have his door back yet. Abe had taken it off the hinges a few days ago after warning him not to slam it anymore, but Jack thinks he can do whatever he wants... at least that’s what he tells everyone.

I paused at the mouth of the hallway leading into the living room and didn’t see Gail, which was a relief. I did see that Grandma was in the kitchen, but she was looking the other way. I knew Abe was in the forest cutting wood for the pot-bellied stove, because I could hear his chainsaw tearing through tree flesh out back. I slipped through the house and closed the screen quietly, so Grandma wouldn’t see me and start talking about how her ankles were swollen or how Abe snores.

I made my way toward the root cellar, which was all that was left of the original house on the other side of the pond that had burned to the ground long before I ever got stuck living here. I crossed the short stone bridge that strangled the neck of the pond, trying not to step on any lady bugs as I went. From there you could see where some of the pond’s water managed to escape by passing under the bridge and into the creek, which in turn snaked through the forest. On the gentle hillside across the bridge was the family cemetery, which was choked with vegetation. I trundled my way between the crumbling headstones, where sporadic patches of golden rod and Queen Anne’s lace jutted heavenward through the knee-high grass.

The cemetery was planted with mostly Elliotts but was also dotted here and there with Noldes and Traylors who had mistakenly married into the family and probably perished trying to get back out.

Abe had told me the older tombstones at the top of the incline were reminders of our family’s history and that we should cherish those who have gone before us. He seemed to be the only one still alive who considered it important to know everything that had happened and to pass it on. Like most days, I stopped near the crest of the hill and stood in reverence at the graves on the top overlooking the broken world below. I thought about how Abe told me that in March of 1854, three of the Elliott kids died from an epidemic, which had swept through several states. While everyone was still grieving their deaths, the other kids came down with the sickness, too. He said their mother lost her mind one day while the dad was at work and held the last three kids underwater in the pond. Abe showed me how their small grave markers had the same date of death carved into them, with the word drowned written just below