The Angel's Kissing Spring

By Luciano DiNardo

For more than a thousand days, Alice Dempster has visited Ashton Falls’ cemetery every evening to maintain the flame in a rusted lantern she has placed at the base of a tombstone. Regardless of the weather or her health, she performs her duty . . . a duty she believes in with all her heart. One night, after three years of performing her ri

• Language: English
• Publisher: Burnstown Publishing House
• Release date: Dec 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781772570434

Book preview

For Donna, you know why...

– 1 –

The only thing Alice Dempster ever resented was the stain on the front seat of the car. No matter how hard or how often she tried, she was never able to completely wash the stain away and every time she opened the car door, it saluted and taunted her, reminded her of the day six years earlier when she had become a mother.

It was the day before Halloween, and a blizzard had invaded the farmers’ fields that monopolized the sprawling countryside outside Ashton Falls, a town familiar with long, cold winters. Snow in October wasn’t that unusual for those who had lived their entire lives in Ashton Falls, and weather records confirmed that the only month never to register any form of snow was July; but no one anticipated the fury of the snow and wind that debilitated the town the day Alice Dempster became a mother.

Early that morning, Alice stirred her languid, warm body underneath the bedsheets she had wanted to wash for days and listened to the battering her tiny house was trying to endure. She remained in bed, minute after minute, hour after hour, and wrestled with the stubborn sleep that refused to yield from her, her ears trained to the anger outside the house. When the morning finally surrendered to the afternoon, she lifted herself from the mattress, trudged to the window, and looked outside where the world had been rendered white.

As the day grew relentlessly darker and the snow continued to fall, she wondered if she should drive to town in case she needed someone’s help. The doctor had reassured her several times that the baby wasn’t due until mid-November, but as she trudged into the simple bathroom of her simple house, a petulant cramp deep in her lower abdomen troubled her. She sat on the toilet bowl, dropped her face into her hands, and listened to what had become her now familiar heavy breathing. She then did something she hadn’t done since she was a child, she prayed … prayed for the blizzard to stop. When her prayer had been absorbed by her memory, she tilted her head back, sighed, and glanced at the window covered with snow.

A gurgling somewhere inside her spawned a shiver through her legs just before the water splashed into the bowl. Alice cleared her throat, hoisted herself from the rim and peeked at the water. The doctor had been wrong.

Alice quickly stepped back to the bedroom, the skin between her thighs damp and dribbling, grabbed the bag she had already prepared, walked to the hall closet, and tugged her boots over her swollen feet. When she yanked her coat off its hanger, the hanger spun and fell to the floor.

The snow that struck her face when she left the house almost blinded her. She shut the door behind her, chose not to lock the knob, and, with her coat billowing around her, scanned for the car that should have been a few yards from the porch steps. She clasped her lapels and pulled them together, the impatient life inside her rhythmically arguing for its freedom. Alice spotted the car in the driveway; the snow had almost consumed it. She released the lapels and her hand reached for the broom that was always on the porch. Cautiously, her feet negotiated the surface of the porch until she reached the edge of the stairs, but she couldn’t see the steps; the snow had buried them. She toed the snow from the edge of the porch, discovered the first step, and slowly walked down the stairs, feeling each one with the toes of her boots. She waded through the snow to the old Ford, her bag trailing alongside her, creating its own path through the drift that had squatted by the edge of the porch. She reached the car, her lungs empty, the stabbing in her abdomen constantly reminding her she didn’t have much time. She dropped the bag to the ground, and the snow swallowed it. She quickly set the broom to work and swept the snow from the car’s roof, windshield, and hood, but no matter how quickly she swung the broom, the car always seemed doomed. Two cramps buckled her and she groaned with an inflection she had never before uttered. Alice clutched the broom and propped her body against it, the snow tickling her face, tumbling down the front of her neck, chilling her.

She wrenched open the car door, reclaimed the bag from the snow, and tossed it onto the floorboard away from the pedals. She propped her body against the seat and closed the door. Another spasm coerced another groan. She shut her eyes, pursed her lips, and waited for the pain to ease. Waited and waited. Heard the snow and wind against the car. She corralled her breath and lowered her head against the steering wheel, the snow sliding from her hair, dripping to the floor.

The pain passed. A pulse pounded in her neck. Alice opened her eyes. The windshield had again become a wall of white. She plunged a hand into her coat pocket, felt the car keys, and pulled them out just as another stab stiffened her and arrested her breathing. She waited for the pain to ease, and when it did, slipped the key into the ignition. She hesitated turning the key. The car had always been disagreeable in rainy weather, had always refused to co-operate when it was damp … but when she twisted the key, the car rattled, shook, and then roared belligerently. She activated the wiper blades, and they groaned with the heavy load they swept away from the windshield.

Alice considered the distance to the doctor’s house and realized she would never get there before the baby was born. A nauseous tide flooded her and then retreated. She returned her forehead to the steering wheel, and felt its cold, smooth contour pressing against her brow. Her breath shot from her short and quick, its sound amplified in her ears. The nausea returned and heaved her stomach, her breathing becoming more erratic. She eased her breathing, felt the nausea dissipate, and then realized her bowel was trying to free itself. Before she could resist the urge that was trying to escape from her, another cramp ripped through her and she fouled the air. Alice grimaced at what was underneath her, at the smell around her. She lifted her head from the steering wheel and lowered the window. A blast of cold air and wet snow invaded the car, and she reluctantly rolled the window back up leaving it open but an inch. She stared at the wipers methodically sweeping the snow, the riot inside her slowly dispersing. A soft cough shot from her. She tilted her head back and looked at the tattered headliner that covered the inside of the roof. A forgotten web clung to one corner.

She was afraid to move; didn’t want to disturb what was underneath her. She concentrated on controlling her breathing, but her lungs wouldn’t obey. She started panting again, and the windows began to fog, the pain in her abdomen returning. She wrenched her coat from her body, threw it beside her and angled herself across the cushioned bench seat, her crumpled coat pressing against her sweaty back, her scalp brushing the passenger door. Again she looked at the headliner and wondered how she could have never been aware of its decay. She tugged her dress from underneath her, felt what her bowel had surrendered and folded her knees to her chest. She slipped her messy underwear from her and tossed them somewhere to the floor. Her left hand gripped the top of the seat; her right hand braced the cold floor and pushed against it. She planted her right leg to the floor and spread her legs, the air stroking the inside of her thighs. When her eyes drifted to the window on the driver’s side, she couldn’t see through it. It had completely fogged.

Her labour intensified, and as her body dampened in the chilly air, she acquiesced. Her breathing slowed; the throbbing in her neck dulled. She swayed her head, gripped the top of the seat and refused to cry. As she orchestrated sounds she had never heard, the car’s engine rumbled, incessantly, and the wipers fanned the snow from the windshield, over and over.

Alice spread her legs as wide as she could and felt more cold air against the inside of her thighs. She pushed and relaxed; relaxed and pushed, knew a fraction of the head had left her. She wanted to see it, but couldn’t over the exaggerated contour of her belly. She pushed again and a collection of short tight breaths was freed from her chest. The muscles of her abdomen locked, and she summoned all her strength.

An odd sensation unexpectedly drained her. Her lungs relaxed and the throbbing in her neck retreated. She couldn’t move, simply stared at the tattered headliner, at the cobweb in the corner. She propped her body onto her elbows and saw the limp, contorted body of her son pinched between her thighs, his blue and purple skin bloody and wrinkled. She had always been proud of her resilience, her independence, but when her eyes rested upon the silence of his still face, she craved for someone, anyone, to be there to hold her hand, to wipe her brow.

Alice gingerly lifted the rubbery body, the umbilical cord still connected to her, and clamped her lips around the tiny nose and mouth, inhaling again and again, until she heard his first breath, his first sound, saw his tiny arms and legs sluggishly move. She sat up, reclaimed her coat from the passenger seat and wrapped it around the life she had bargained for. Her trembling hand again turned the ignition key and the engine squawked, scolding her that she had already started it. She wiped the mist from the windshield and the window to her left and shifted the car into gear. It rolled forward, the snow dotting the windshield like freckles. The car lurched unevenly toward the road, unaccustomed to one hand commanding the steering wheel and gearshift.

There was only one place she could go.

The last thing Margaret Thompson expected to hear during the snowstorm was the ringing of the doorbell, and when she opened the door and steeled herself against the cold and wind, she never expected to see her neighbour from up the road standing on the porch with a coat bundled in her arms, her hair saturated and her dress stained. Margaret simply stood there, blinking, wondering what her neighbour was clutching in her arms, and just as she was about to invite the young woman into her house and ask what had motivated her to leave the safety and warmth of her home, Alice offered her the bundled coat. Margaret accepted it, frowned and steered her gaze to the folds of the coat where she glimpsed the fraction of a tiny face between the folds. Margaret returned her gaze to Alice, realized the umbilical cord and the baby were still connected, and called for her husband in a voice that was so eerily calm she never forgot its tone and how the words rolled through the hall. As Margaret waited for her husband, Alice swooned and almost fainted. Margaret braced herself against Alice and just before the first words were set to escape from Alice’s mouth, her husband appeared in the hallway. He saw the two women clutching one another, the bundled coat between them. Margaret calmly instructed him to put a pair of scissors into a pot of boiling water, to bring as many clean towels as he could carry to the front door, and to call the doctor. Her husband nodded obediently and left without uttering a sound. Margaret hugged Alice close to her and eased her to the floor, always conscious of the umbilical cord protruding from her. She stroked Alice’s head and waited for her husband to bring what she needed. When he finally returned, Margaret grabbed a cool, damp facecloth and wiped Alice’s brow, face, and neck. Minutes later, she cut the umbilical cord and handed Alice her son, his little face a creamy white. Alice held him as if she had held him every day of her life.

Margaret and her husband looked at the new mother and her son and whispered they were amazed with what she had endured. Alice simply shrugged her shoulders and an infant smile curled her lips. She was used to doing things alone, she reminded them, had been doing things by herself for half her life. Alice looked at the boy she was cradling in her arms, his face beside her breasts, his eyes closed, his lips firmly sealed.

She would look at him, hold him and smile at him for only three years.

Alice Dempster had spent her entire life in Ashton Falls. Thirty-three years in a town with one church, one jailhouse, one cemetery, and no department store. The church, built during the century of ploughs, was the town’s largest building. People were baptized there, married there, and eulogized there. The jailhouse was the town’s smallest building and was rarely used for its stated purpose. It was adjacent to the sheriff’s office, where over the years men played cards and debated who shot William Desmond Taylor and how could Wallace Reid have been so stupid. They argued whether Fatty Arbuckle actually used a Coke bottle to rape that badger girl, but it wasn’t until the story broke about that Bruno fella, as they labelled the Lindbergh baby kidnapper, that a card game was aborted by blows struck across a table. The men heard the president’s voice on the wireless, as some still called the radio, saying they had nothing to fear but fear itself—and they heard the same voice eight years later describe what happened in the Pacific as a day that would live in infamy. And it was during the previous autumn that the men contested who was the Most Valuable Player: the Yankee Clipper, who had hit safely in fifty-six consecutive games; or the Splendid Splinter, who ended the season batting over .400. When one of them suggested no one would bat .400 again, a series of snickers rippled through the barren cells.

In Ashton Falls, the tombstones in the cemetery were used as much for reference as they were for reverence, and when Alice Dempster ignored the warnings of some of Ashton Falls’s most prominent citizens and continued her twilight visits to the cemetery, the town became more convinced she had finally lost her mind.

As a child, Alice had always endeared herself to anyone she met. Always simple and unassuming, her initiation to life was anything but simple and unassuming. She never saw her mother’s face, never heard her voice, never felt the touch of her hand. Thirty minutes after Alice was born, her mother, Faye, a wisp of a woman, frail and perennially ill, died, her lungs stubbornly surrendering just as her daughter’s welcomed life. Her father, Sam, a conscientious firefighter, devoted most of what was his remaining seventeen years to the care of his one and only child. The town so admired his tenacity in fighting and conquering fires that they tolerated his admonitions about the blight of cigarettes and cigars. Everyone knew he had seen more than his share of charred barns, charred animals, charred people.

People died quietly in Ashton Falls, but when Sam died three days before Alice’s sixteenth birthday, no one could agree on the events that led to his demise when he had been routinely testing a new extension ladder the fire department was ambitiously promoting. Sam hopped up the shining rungs, the sunlight escorting him with each easy step, and, three storeys high, something happened. All the witnesses’ accounts were inconsistent, but one thing was certain. Sam plunged from the ladder and died on impact. A few said he appeared dizzy; some were convinced he had sneezed and lost his balance. Others maintained a perky wind had loosened his grip on the rung. One person insisted the wind swirled something around Sam that made him sneeze; he then became dizzy and lost his grip.

Alice was granted one benediction. Her father had steadfastly saved his money, building a small house on an inexpensive piece of property miles from the town limits, hoarded his holdings, and always lectured Alice about rainy days. Sam never saw the deluge, but for Alice the tempest had just begun.

She had been an unremarkable student—with the exception of numbers—and always surprised her father with how easily she had mastered arithmetic’s four operations. Three days after her third birthday, she announced she could tell time. No one had taught her. She just picked it up on her own. She formed friendships easily, but she often wondered if her classmates felt it necessary to befriend her since she was the only student at the town’s only school without a mother. No one ever teased her about it, but the girls never seemed to laugh as loudly or play as cheerfully when she was with them.

She ricocheted between small, insignificant jobs in her small, insignificant town, washing things, licking envelopes, cooking meals during the frothy years of the twenties when she looked at moving picture magazines and was enthralled by what fashion prophets called flappers. All of Alice’s friends married at the right time, but some didn’t marry the right man, and as her friends fondled motherhood, she was content to count her days. When she heard on the radio and then read in the newspaper about the collapse on Wall Street, she coped with whatever work she could find: washing things, licking envelopes, cooking, and always appreciating her father’s financial conservatism. She was barely twenty-one, and, as he had so astutely warned, the rain had started.

She was able to keep the house, maintain the yard, operate the car, buy her groceries, and pay the bills. It wasn’t until the Depression had just about exhausted itself and trouble brewed again in Europe that she was granted what she always wanted: the bookkeeping position at the town’s chocolate factory. She was promoted to the bookkeeper’s desk after the accountant had so nobly and patriotically declared himself fit and more than willing for duty. His enthusiasm fooled no one. He was miserable with his wife and didn’t have the gumption for a divorce. He just wanted one thing from his war effort: either a bullet between the eyes, or one in the back of his head—just so long as it made him a hero.

Months following Alice’s promotion, the factory’s owner, Philip Steel, raised Alice’s salary even though she hadn’t been employed for long, had done nothing remarkable from her desk, and had contributed no ideas for how the plant could run more productively. No one quite knew why Philip spoiled Alice, but many knew she had spawned some of Ashton Falls’s spiciest scandals. Her raise was one matter, but her steadfast independence titillated the county. People wondered how she managed to keep the house, maintain the yard, operate the car, buy her groceries, and pay the bills. Her salary couldn’t possibly support such an ideal isolation, and surely Sam hadn’t left her that financially independent. The money came, they were certain, from what she did inside her house with their men.

For Alice, there was one penance: the maintenance of the rusted kerosene lantern that perpetually flickered in front of the tombstone that bore her son’s name, a son who, despite being smaller than children his age, never shied away from a dare. But as Alice remembered all too well, he had feared one thing—the dark. No matter how often she tried to encourage him to sleep by himself, or coaxed him into believing he was becoming a big boy and that all big boys slept by themselves, she had never been able to subdue her son’s fears. Only when Charlie was so exhausted he didn’t know the difference between day and night, would he finally succumb to sleep and dream of the big boys.

And she could never forget how bright the spring morning had dawned when all three hundred pounds of Mr. Little bounded to her house, so out of breath he sounded like Death itself, and confirmed between gasps that her Charlie had finally been found down the road in the Thompsons’ well. She had always been careful with Charlie, had always been cognizant of where he was, but the day he died, she had allowed her thoughts to be seduced by the flowers and shrubs in the front yard, by the melodies of the red-winged blackbirds, by the sun gracing the sky.

He had died in a dark, watery tomb, and she had nightmares of him alone in the dark, calling and screaming for her. The morning she held her dead boy on the grass beside the Thompsons’ well, she vowed he would never again be alone and terrified by darkness.

Every evening before night covered Ashton Falls, she drove her 1926 Ford from her simple wooden frame house, the nearest house to the abandoned quarry, and went to the cemetery to nurture the lantern. She could have tended to the lantern during the day, as so many of the town’s more prominent women had advised, but she preferred the young night so she could accurately gauge the strength of its flame and make sure it illuminated Charlie’s chiselled name. She knew that many of the town’s women and some of the town’s men frowned on her routine: that they believed no woman, regardless of her intentions, and especially one whose past was as sordid and convoluted as hers, should be in the cemetery alone at night; and she knew the men in the jailhouse talked about her and her lantern.

As Alice’s evening ritual at the cemetery continued with no hint of stopping, her increasingly bizarre behaviour became an embarrassment to the town. A few believed her evening vigils to be a signal for help, but they also believed she had withdrawn from the town for so long she couldn’t approach anyone and simply preferred the solitude of the cemetery. Some suspected she was preparing to join her son; and there were those who didn’t believe she was pathetic or suicidal. They simply believed that whatever happened to her, she deserved.

– 2 –

The big car crawled over the gravel driveway, its tires grinding the tiny stones and spitting them aside. The car had been given its customary Sunday morning lathering just before it delivered its occupants to church, but the drive into the country had already powdered its polished black hide with a layer of dust. An abbreviated whine from the brakes announced its arrival.

Hortense Steel sat in the rear seat of the 1941 Cadillac, brooding. Her round frame had never agreed with the car’s cramped interior, and she’d always been amazed that a car with such a large body could have such a small interior. There was more room in the front, but she was a woman of position and knew she had to sit in the back so that Wesley, her ever-present chauffeur, could perform his duties—or else, as she so often reminded herself, what would people think? She adjusted her white gloves and waited. Wesley opened the door in the same manner he always did and then tipped his head, the mandatory greeting he had used almost every day of his adult life. He stood back from the car and as the dust continued to settle around him, Hortense hoisted her frame from the rear seat.

Do you remember when I could do this much more easily? she protested softly and sighed.

Yes, Ma’am, I do, Wesley answered matter-of-factly, and then added, but I think all of us could do things much more easily back then. He shut the door behind Hortense.

Wesley, there was a time when I wanted to be in the back seat of that car with you in the front driving it, but that was quite a few dress sizes ago. All I want to do now is ride in that front seat.

Wesley tipped his hat, walked around the car, and resumed his position in the driver’s seat. Hortense squinted and scanned the house before her, its façade confirming that no man had resided there in years. She remembered the man who had once lived there, how the town admired him, and wondered how troubled he’d certainly be if he saw what had become of his house. The paint had greyed and some of the wooden boards were noticeably cracked. Somewhere, a shutter squeaked mournfully. The porch steps listed to the left, and the chimney buckled halfway up its climb. The once-virgin green shingles had lost their shimmer, and the windows were so dirty a fog seemed to fill the house. Such a dilapidated house would never have been tolerated inside Ashton Falls, but since it was miles from the town’s borders and the last residence before the abandoned quarry, people had no reason to complain about it.

Hortense trudged to the porch and scowled, perplexed at the meticulous care that had obviously been devoted to the perfectly arranged flowers, the pruned shrubs, and the healthy trees in the front yard. Roses and irises bordered the porch, its railing clutching baskets of marigolds and petunias. At the corner of the house, a trellis coaxed an eager clematis vine. Impatiens dotted the flowerbeds. A neatly trimmed boxwood hedge lined the narrow walkway that led to the porch, and a sturdy maple stood guard at the side of the house, its solid branches thick and heavy with leaves. But the grass was long and unkempt. Weeds freely frolicked through the uneven blades. A decent, hardworking man would never have allowed the lawn such free rein, to grow to seed, bowing in the early morning breeze. The paradox of the house and the front yard confirmed everything Hortense suspected of the woman living there. She had lost her mind.

Hortense shuffled up the walkway, and before she stepped up the porch, she looked back at Wesley. He would wait in the car just as he did every time he drove her somewhere. She glanced again at the flowers, and the blended fragrances that surrounded her seemed to suddenly appease her. With a lumbering effort, she stepped up to the porch, her weight forcing each short plank to squeal in protest. She stood before the screen door and again adjusted the tips of her gloves, hoping the sounds of the rotten wood beneath her would have announced her arrival to the young woman she had come to see, but seconds elapsed and the door remained shut. It was the first time Hortense had stood on the porch, and she suddenly regretted how many times she had refused Sam’s invitations, unable and unwilling to bring herself to set foot in such a Spartan house that had been built in such a remote area. She sighed, knocked, and waited. Seconds later, through the frayed and dusty screen door, she saw the green eyes of Alice Dempster.

Mrs. Steel, how are you? Alice greeted, her raspy voice failing to muffle her surprise, her hands wringing a checkered tea towel.

Hortense simply stood before her, saying nothing, and shifted her pronounced weight to the back of her heels. She had been caught off guard by the young woman’s scratchy delivery, and wondered if she was sick, but then she remembered her voice had always sounded as if she had a sore throat.

To what do I owe—

—to nothing, Miss Dempster, Hortense cut in. She cleared her throat and lifted her heavy chin upward. I’m here, she slowly continued, on behalf of the Ladies’ Auxiliary. I want to discuss with you something we feel is of the utmost importance and of great concern, I might add, to the rest of the community in general.

Alice opened the screen door, its mesh frayed and dusty, and stepped onto the porch. If it’s a confrontation you and the Ladies’ Auxiliary want, she initiated with a smile playing on her lips, let’s not have a screen door separating us. The screen door lazily swung behind her and gently rested against its jamb. Alice stiffened her back, clutched the towel, and folded herarms.

Hortense studied Alice’s tiny feet on the boards of the porch floor, waiting for them to produce a sound, but the porch conspired against her and remained silent.

Hortense, are you here for something in particular? Alice retaliated coolly. Because I know you prefer dealing with people when their backs are turned.

Hortense scanned Alice’s campestral cotton dress and envied how it casually, yet elegantly, hung from her, and the ponytail she had knotted at the back of her head made her sunny, young face seem even sunnier, younger.

Hortense again cleared her throat. "Several of us think—believe— she stressed, that it is quite inappropriate that you, a single woman, and I might add, a woman with your past, should be frequenting the cemetery at night as you have done for so long. And unescorted as well."

Alice looked past Hortense at the silhouette of Wesley behind the steering wheel and then steered her eyes above the Cadillac to a collection of languid clouds in an otherwise clear sky. I never realized, Alice began slowly as she gazed at the clouds, that the Auxiliary was so concerned with my safety.

Don’t be so glib, Hortense scolded.

"Oh, I’m not being glib. It’s wonderful you drove all the way from town to stand on my porch and tell me that people in town are so worried about me because I am going