Kelters Way

By Timberly Ferguson

Brody's Summer Checklist
Fish with Jimbo
Help Karl with his pirate stuff
Paint the widow's dang fence (again)
Find more butterflies for collection
Stay away from HIM
Meet a stranger from France
Become friends with him
Get hurled into adventure that will change life forever
Reeder BewaRe:
My bruthor is only 12 but this story is not for ye cowerds or babees.Our new
frend from French has a secrit that I'm not allowd to diskuss but I get to dRaw the
map and bury the chest. signed karL CHiles

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499081695

Timberly Ferguson

Timberly Ferguson lives in Malibu, California with her husband and two daughters. Kelters Way is her first novel.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Twelve years isn’t old unless you are an old soul. If that happens to you then your insides don’t match your outsides. If that happens to you then you’re stuck feeling like you’ve lived a thousand lives, trapped in a body that has years to catch up.

My mother says I was an old soul the day I was born. My eyes said it all. They knew things that are impossible to know so fresh and new and recent. She says my eyes with all the things they knew scared her a little and made her rearrange what she thought she knew about people in general. An old man, for instance, old in years, might be the opposite. He might be like a child or a teenager on the inside, feeling stuck in rickety bones and pretend teeth and a cane to help him walk.

People can go either way. Sometimes it’s their own choice and sometimes it’s chosen for them, like in my case. My mother says my old soul helped prepare her for all the things that were yet to happen that she didn’t know were going to happen. And therefore me feeling like I was worn out and burdened with the weight of the world—while other kids could just be kids—was a blessing in disguise.

Maybe she was right. But it didn’t help much in the day to days. And it didn’t seem to hold any special significance on the day I first saw him.

It was summer and it was hot. You’d never have guessed it had rained the day before. The sun was spitting its heat everywhere, as if it had been insulted it couldn’t break through all those clouds and shine like a good and proper summer sun should shine. There was a post-storm mugginess to the air, but everything still seemed parched and dry. Even the ice cream in my hand looked miserable, angry at the weather and unwilling to let someone use it to help cool themselves off.

My best friend Jimbo was sitting next to me on the patio outside Supreme’s Ice Cream Parlor. School had just got out and it was our ritual, every year, to celebrate the beginning of summer with an ice cream cone. We’d been doing this since kindergarten. I was bored to tears with the tradition but Jimbo seemed just as excited about it as he was the day we invented it, so I went along for his sake.

I was eating my ice cream without tasting it when everything in a moment changed, and I knew my summer was not going to be dull or sitting around pretending to be thrilled about mint chocolate chip. That’s because a bus pulled into the Greyhound depot across from Supreme’s. And out of that bus, first person off, was a stranger. And immediately I could tell this stranger was not only new to the South but new to actual America.

He looked like the foreigners in my European studies series (a six-week review of photos, maps, bonjours and guten tags that thrilled our teacher to no end). While all my classmates were focused on obvious things like talking whole different languages, I was observing the small details like hairdos and stuff. And this guy looked like all the small details, pasted together onto one person.

They tuck their shirts into their jeans, for starters. And their teeth are not straight and white, like United States teeth. Plus their faces have an enthusiasm, an awe of everything surrounding them like regular trees and buildings that they must not have in Copenhagen or wherever.

In contrast. The occasional businessmen who showed up for business-type stuff looked disappointed—even a little disgusted—with Kelters Way. Not this man. This man’s face was like my younger brother Karl’s, the first time he saw what would quickly become his favorite ride at Disney World. This man was foreign down to the way he wore his socks.

Jimbo noticed him too. I could tell this without even looking at him, because the front legs of the chair he was leaning back on hit the patio floor. I was just about to say something when Old Man Cackly came shuffling out of Supreme’s, his smelly dog Throw at his side. In his hands were two napkin dispensers and an unopened package of napkins. He put everything on the table between me and Jimbo, cackled something out of his mouth, then turned around and left us to it. We didn’t need to know what he said to know what he wanted.

It was always like this with Old Man Cackly. Sometimes it was a broom, sometimes a mop. Old Man Cackly enlisted the help of his customers without so much as a please or a thank you. He believed small communities like ours were meant to help each other. That’s how it was in his time, he insisted. No one had the heart to tell him times had changed. So everyone humored his outdated ways and followed orders, refilling the coffee grinder, stocking the cash register, sneaking well-earned licks of ice cream when his back was turned.

I had been so fixated on filling the napkin dispenser that I’d forgotten entirely about the foreigner; when I looked up he was long gone. Jimbo must have read my thoughts. He paused in his work, holding a napkin under his nose and smelling it.

Dj’you see that man out off the bus, earlier?

What man?

I said this because I liked to play with Jimbo, sometimes. It wasn’t right but he got me back in his own ways, so it all evened out. Plus I didn’t want Jimbo to find anything out before I did. I had a suspicion where that man might go, a town as small as ours. So I played it cool.

"That, you know… that person, Jimbo huffed. Strange clothes? Big clangy bag?"

Uh-huh. I focused all my attention on pushing in the last of my share of the napkins. I gotta go now, Jimbo Jumbo. Chores and whatnot.

You wanna meet up at Kelters Eight later? Pappy says they’re biting.

Don’t believe everything your old pappy tells you, Jimbo. Lake’s got no action right now. On account of the rain, remember?

Jimbo gave a look. It’s on account of the rain they’re biting, Brody Chey.

That all depends on who you talk to. I fixed Jimbo with a look of my own.

I talk to the expert. My pappy. If he says fish bite most the day after it rains then that’s that. Anyone else says different is plain stupid.

Stupid is as stupid does, I said just to get his gruff.

Jimbo crushed a napkin in his hand and I saw him do it; he missed me by about a foot.

I took my dispenser in to Old Man Cackly, who cackled and pointed at one of the tables in the back of the parlor. I knew he meant for me to walk back there and put the dispenser on the empty table, but I was sick of doing his chores, just then. In fact—I realized—I was in a mood, as my mama called it. And you didn’t want to be getting up under my skin when I was in a mood.

I decided I was doing Old Man Cackly more of a favor by leaving than waiting to see what my mood might make me say or do, so I didn’t feel guilty at all when I ignored his pointy old finger and left the napkins on the front counter. Plus there was Jimbo still out front, working on his half of the napkins. Jimbo was good at taking orders.

I mumbled goodbye to my best friend and made extra special care to make it look like I wasn’t in any hurry. To go and find out who that foreign man was, for instance. Or to discover just what was in his clattery duffel bag, the sound of which did not escape my notice earlier, not for a second. That is the sound every boy on this planet who loves adventure knows in his bones: the sound of a mystery needing to be solved. Plus it was a familiar sound, to me at least.

I could feel Jimbo’s eyes watching me, so I got on my bike in a lazy way and very slowly pedaled toward home.

Because sometimes you just want to do things alone, without your best friend in the whole world doing them right alongside you. And you have no idea why. You just feel this pull, this voice telling you that whatever you are about to discover, it is something special. And the most special things in life are sometimes the most alone things in life. You don’t want a roomful of people or even one other person getting in the way. You want it all to yourself.

That’s how I felt about that stranger and that’s why I was in a mood. Because I knew my life was about to be forever changed, and it made me feel guilty. Jimbo and I had shared everything our entire lives—even the same teething biscuits, as both our mothers loved to point out when they were in a teasing frame of mind. Even half my name belonged to Jimbo, in a way. (When we were toddlers he couldn’t say my last name, Chiles. He called me Brody Chey, and the name stuck.)

But there was something deeper than just guilt that was putting me in my mood. And that was fear. I was afraid because somehow I knew that man had come to town to meet me.

Even if he himself didn’t know that yet.

I knew.

47286.png

As usual I could smell HIM before I actually saw him, even though I knew he’d be where he always was, sitting in his truck in the driveway, pretending to be looking for something he’d lost. Sure enough, I saw the shape of his head and shoulders in the cab. As I rode closer I heard music. Bruce Springsteen, good and loud, just like always. And just like always he was drumming the steering wheel with both palms, eyes closed, his lost item no doubt tucked right next to his waist, nice and convenient.

I’d hoped he wouldn’t notice me with his eyes shut and the music blaring but it was like a sixth sense of his, to sniff my every move the way I could sniff his drink.

Brody, Brody, Brody, he drawled.

I’d learned to read his moods even better than my mama could explain mine. I could tell his mood was playful by the way he said my name, so I figured I wasn’t in any immediate danger.

Hello.

He cupped a hand to his ear. Hello what?

Hello… Father.

‘Hello Father,’ he mimicked. Now why can’t you just call me Daddy like everyone else around here does? You some higher educated numbskull or something?

No sir, I said.

That’s right. Call me sir. Word Father makes me feel like a priest. And I ain’t no holy man, now am I Brody?

I knew he was trying to corner me. I’d misjudged his behavior, miscalculated how much he’d already drunk. I kept quiet. He reached next to his waist and drew a bottle to his lips, taking a deep, long drink like someone dying of thirst. His eyes, red and sluggish, squinted at me.

Ain’t no holy man, living in a tin can, living off a fryin’ pan, he crooned.

It is no small thing to sing out of tune with Bruce Springsteen already cranking it out at full volume. I looked around for the usual nosy neighbors, aka Mrs. Pithmore. That woman followed our every move. We were a reality show in a kit, ready to go at a moment’s notice and way more entertaining than rich and lonely housewives.

Sure enough, I caught her standing at her front window. She used to have the courtesy to pretend to clean the window with a rag, or to at least hide behind the curtains. Now she watched openly. I was waiting for the day I’d see a bowl of popcorn in her arm.

HE turned the music down and grinned at me.

Guess what your old man done gone and got this morning?

I glared at the general area near his waist, to tell him with my eyes I knew only too well what he done gone and got.

He followed my look. "Guess what else I got. Something I don’t get every morning."

I shrugged.

A job, is what. He seemed pleased as punch. New rich family, ’bout a mile off. Want themselves a swanky entertainment center. Big ol’ cabinet. The works. I’ll be sawing and hammering at least a month and give your mama a break. Let her take some time off selling all that silly makeup.

I wanted to remind him all that silly makeup paid for his food and his home and his other habits, but I stayed quiet.

Yes, sir, he continued, not new to town more than a week and they know who to come to if they want it done right. Me, that’s who. Steven Chiles, craftsman extraordinaire. Best carpenter in Kelters Way.

I knew it would be pointless to tell him what he already knew, that he was the only carpenter in Kelters Way. Most people who have to tell you they are the best usually have to tell you they are the best. That’s because no one else will.

I decided to stay neutral. Okay.

Okay is right. Now you get on in the house. Your mama says to see her directly. Says you got a debt to pay.

If it had been earlier in the day, say before that stranger came to town, this statement would have made me want to go hide in my room till evening. He couldn’t have guessed I’d come home on purpose, for that very reason.

He spun the volume knob and shut his eyes, returning to his car world with his car friends.

I was dismissed.

I opened the kitchen screen and smelled the other half of bad, my mama’s own nasty habit. I followed the smoke till