Born Bent

By T. R. Thomas

Richard and Elizabeth are twins of very different characteristics. Richard is a hunchback with deep passions, and Elizabeth is a child in behavior, but both must change when evil invades Manchester, Virginia, and two rival families escalate a long-lasting feud.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Hawes & Jenkins Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 5, 2024
• ISBN: 9781637844007

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Born Bent

T. R. Thomas

ISBN 978-1-63784-399-4 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63784-400-7 (digital)

Copyright © 2024 by T. R. Thomas

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Hawes & Jenkins Publishing

16427 N Scottsdale Road Suite 410

Scottsdale, AZ 85254

www.hawesjenkins.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Of Scabs and Scars

Chapter 2 No Cat Has Nine Lives

Chapter 3 Bargain Basement Reverie

Chapter 4 All the Stages Are a World

Chapter 5 Summer Sisters

Chapter 6 Every Cat Has One Life More Than No Cat

Chapter 7 I Never Promised Chronological

Chapter 8 Storm Cat

Chapter 9 A Short History of Nothing in Particular

Chapter 10 Wee E.

Chapter 11 Open-Ended Mysteries

Chapter 12 Wee E. and the Tunnel Troll

Chapter 13 The Dreams That Things Are Made Of

Chapter 14 Caterpillar Considerations and Butterfly Beginnings

Chapter 15 Max Making Maximum Impressions

Chapter 16 Rack and Smack 'Em

Chapter 17 Things to Do When You Aren't Too Busy

Chapter 18 All Bets Are Off

Chapter 19 Library Returns Aren't Necessarily Books

Chapter 20 Therefore, Every Cat Has Ten Lives

Chapter 21 A Vow Revered

Chapter 22 Things That Grow in a Cellar

Chapter 23 Pardon My Sanity in an Insane World

Chapter 24 A Lending Library

About the Author

Chapter 1 Of Scabs and Scars

Crookback Crookie in school. I endured years of torment to the point where I wanted to splinter an oak branch from the tree and swing into Bobby Craig, Lyle Chastain, even Elizabeth. Are you with me?

One of my first recollections, even before I thought I learned to peer behind from under my arm, was when I heard mother refer to me with Scabiosa. Scabs I knew well, acquired, peeled, and lost as frequently as shoves, kicks, and pokes, my daily dose from straight-spined cloakroom tyrants and playground assassins. Carl Summers, one of the worst of the cursed Elanore McDuffie school inbreds, had a collie named Scab. Who knew why anyone would name a sweet female pup something as initially intrusive as something that started red and ended brown and good riddance was beyond me. Ironically, that described her master and her short life because the James River claimed Carl and Scab. No one ever found either of them, but Carl Summers's jacket and shoes were at Manastoh Crossing along with a collar with the S worn off. I'd often wondered if Carl decided to take a cab ride on the James, but we knew better, didn't we?

What Mother had said was scoliosis, that back bender and bone shifter, the kind of thing that woke you when even the night birds were silent. It ground and moved and seemed to speak like rough stones cursing in the earth. And if you listened carefully, you heard vertebral voices in granite whispers. They said, We grew with you in that dark, wet space, where love and millennia of genetic promises suggest that this miracle of millions will be yours too and would have if your older twin hadn't been there, hadn't also heard the promises, and hadn't wanted your space, food, and life. In the wet dark of your worldly space, imagination finishes the whispers: if you survive this silent onslaught and the gauntlet of birth, you will not feel physical pain afterward, but there will be excruciating living and then an abrupt ending.

Sobering. So when Mother said scabiosa, I thought it was some definition or other. I asked Elizabeth, thinking she'd smile and point to the chevrons on my forehead, arm, and knees.

Well, Richard, that's a butterfly flower. A nice thing. Look, see those blue flowers there, just under the fritillaries? That's scabiosa. You've been pounding those little beauties with your dirty feet for years, dummy. Maybe they're called scabiosa because of scabs like you who scar them into stronger flowers to survive a lump and the neighbor's dog.

My sister, you see, was as succinct as she was sadistic. As if being a sneaky cannibal wasn't enough, she still wanted to take bites out of me.

Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. Yes, I should get to the point. You see, Mother was actually correct in my error. I was a scabiosa flower bringing in the butterfly. If a color or aroma could be as strong as spider silk…well, then, there you have it, or I should say, I have you.

Nothing. I listened for a response, rustle, even the soft, running flutter of a heart, pulse, quick breath. The patter of a tear? Nothing. The crickets continued their arpeggio to fireflies. So was a lightning bug the lantern of butterfly shadows? Did they have reflections we couldn't see? Did you ever have thoughts like these? When the bird took the butterfly and the bat took the firefly, was there a moment of searing clarity? Did pain reveal mysteries of the universe? And was the bird or bat any wiser? What did you think? Or were you consumed with the truth of knots, rough earth, and the finality of your end?

I gazed across the shrouded expanse and noted the sharp splash. Frog? Carp-testing muscles? Some black thing tasting the night? The Rocky Ridge Phantom, who supposedly roamed the James searching for something fouler than itself? Come out, beast, and behold something more wicked than the spider's pounce, owl's talons, or midwife's gasp. Come out. I'd be bat to your lantern eyes.

Ah. A rustle, shifting of limbs, birth in the darkest corner of the potting shed.

Dicky, fetch me the trowel, wretch.

Mother, I may be a wretch, but I'm fruit of your fruit, heel to your boot, hangover to your rum and Coke.

What? What did you say? Mother was a pale pansy in her yellow frock, brown straw hat, and grubby boots. She always managed to show her left knee, unconsciously or otherwise, with the white line…the meandering pointer, distinct arrowhead gouge that seemed to draw attention to that most private of spots: the womb.

On that particular July 4, seven years to the day of my launch, after an angry outcry and kick because I'd slipped out of my shirt, Mother gasped, perhaps in disbelief, innocent splendor by the blood-breast robin. I didn't believe it either. How fluid, how swift, how exact, how simple. Elizabeth just stood and stared, thoughts flitting across her face. Then she glanced at Father, fixed her stare on me, and smiled. Smiled. And in that smile was a razor strap snapping across my back.

Mother was beginning to blubber, hitching, gasping, holding her stomach, and clutching her knee, trying to stop the blood from spilling. I couldn't look at her directly, just stared at Father as if I knew that it would be the last time I would ever see him. Mother's hand must've been fluttering over her knee, and I was tempted to look at red ruin but was afraid that if I looked away from Father I would die in the next instant, that Mother would start screaming and never stop, that I would actually see a robin ravaging her skin.

You stupid stump! Count on Beth to break the spell. Father huffed, as if he'd been sucking air into the bottom of his soul, turned on his heel, stumbled, might have sobbed, and walked out of our lives for good. I didn't realize what I'd done till I saw the fork sticking from my left arm, blood beginning to ooze and drip.

Good job, brother. Guess even a stump can bleed.

By that time Burley and Jean Tyrrell arrived, yelling and stamping, pushing me this way and that.

What have you done, boy? What in holy hell have you done? Burley demanded.

Nothing, I said. I didn't do anything.

Later I realized that I meant what I said, that I didn't and wouldn't miss Father, that my arm hurt like holy hell, and that I was thrilled by the blood.

The next morning the house was sleeping, once white blinds yellow, jaundiced, down to the full extent, rips grimed gray, veins continuing to the peeled paper, rows of sunflowers gone to seed. Mother pulled all the blinds when she was able to get up after the birthing. She used to claim that we, Elizabeth and I, had opened her like a can of tomatoes that the red pulp was gone for good and the patch was dry. I never understood what she meant till Harvey Yost explained it all. Harvey was known to have all the answers; at least he did until his head popped like a ripe pumpkin one Halloween when old Reuben Knowles caught him looking in Cindy's bathroom window. Too bad, too bad the Knowleses' house wasn't as blind as our place. It was also sort of too bad that Harvey was gone because I had several questions for him. Of most importance was if it was worth what he saw, if anything, of Cindy Knowles. I wanted to ask her what, if anything, she saw, but whenever I'd find her alone, she was usually crying. The last time I looked, I decided not to bother her. Ever. But I wished I could've told her that Harvey would've unboxed her secrets next day like a container of soft Milk Duds.

So that next morning, after shrieks and curses, Burley Tyrrell's hard stares, Beth's death-head smirks, the house emptied. I shrugged and sighed, lath and plaster around me. If there were any echoes remaining, they were only the finality of Father's boots on the porch when he left. But he'd actually escaped the night of our birth when he took a pillow and blanket into the den. He was probably more at home with stuffed animals than he was with us anyway.

Anyway, as I was saying, the house being asleep, I decided to go roust some sleeping crickets.

Granny Bellamy used to say that there's nothing better for cuts than cricket innards. Elizabeth asked Granny once if cricket guts could fix humpy brothers. Granny fixed Beth with an insectile stare, rolled something around her mind, then said, If we can figure how to change a strident sister into a giant cricket, cracked her like an old walnut, and spilled her bile over Richard…then maybe. Course, a huge grasshopper might work too. But in your case, the tobacco juice would probably be as caustic as battery acid. But Dicky, poor child, it couldn't make anything worse.

Elizabeth jumped and stalked off, practicing spells and curses in strained whispers. Probably stomped countless crickets and such on her path to the porch swing. My sister was famous with her marathon motion, clocking hours with rust and chain, working squeaks in and out again. At least I knew where she was. I loved Granny as much as I feared my sister…and they both knew it…but Beth was destined to grow to something simple in reasoning and genuine in blonde beauty, contrast to my black hair and suspicious stare.

Something about Rachel Bellamy here was called for because it's part of the narrative story, confession, or admonition. Born Rachel Reynolds in Erie, Pennsylvania, she bought a bus ticket one fall day for Roanoke, Virginia, because she liked the name of the city of vowels, and she was tired of the ankle-biting winters that scoured Erie and Rachel Bellamy to the bone. Having no family ties, debts, or regrets, she settled her slender behind on one of Greyhound's finest cracked seats, winked goodbye to Erie, and wondered what life would serve up. She didn't have to wait long because the young man she had noticed at the front suddenly plopped into the space beside her. The first thing she noticed about him, even before she locked into his brown eyes, was his hands. You see, Rachel had been a manicurist, claimed she could read fingers and thumbs, nails, and skin, spots, freckles, even scars—the whole package—as well as palm readers. She'd say decades later that Psalm beaters, tea loafers, and naysayers could come and go, but that lost young man with Michelangelo hands was never going to go from her.

Whoever he was, he appeared to sink into the seat a bit before he spoke, Your daisy dress seemed to have all the sights and smells of summer, and I miss July, so I followed the path to meadows, ponds, butterflies, and picnics. Oh my, I did just say that, didn't I?

He still hadn't looked at her, was staring fixedly at his hands, as if he knew that words, even silence, could reveal untruths, but that the absolute honesty of perfect hands could forgive other lapses.

My name is Jack Bellamy, Ms. Jackson, from Andy Jackson. You can blame my mother for that one. Truman, my mom's maiden name, claimed to be a cousin to Harry S. Bellamy. Jackson Truman Bellamy and my friends call me JT. I hope you could call me that too, miss.

Hard to believe, wasn't it? Like a scene from a Frank Capra movie. Gary Cooper would play JT, and Barbara Stanwyck would make a perfect Rachel Reynolds…smart, witty, wise, and as beautiful as the best summer day.

That young woman—who would eventually marry Jack Bellamy, hold his perfect hands in the country church, and give him a daughter, my mother, and son—still hadn't said anything. The story was that she was afraid that if her first words were wrong, then he'd stand and follow his beautiful hands to somewhere that she wasn't.

But he made it easier for her when he asked, Would you please tell me your name so when I get thrown off the bus, I can put a sound to your beautiful face?

Names had personal power for the individual. She'd believed that from her teens when she felt what she thought was love for the first time. Even more, she believed that the middle name, tucked between whim or afterthought and lineage, especially if it was linked to the mother, carried an even stronger code for the person, whether a cousin to a president or not. Rachel's middle name was Trueheart. Mother was Constance Trueheart…no middle name, which could be the case of a baby born out of wedlock to a Cherokee mother. Rachel never cared and was only concerned about her middle name and if she'd ever find a mate worthy of the significance. But she believed that she had, even before she put her name and magic into his beautiful hands. Hers was a true heart, and he was a true man.

I wouldn't bother you with the fifty-decade story because the importance of Granny Rachel rested in two of the many pieces of truth she revealed to me.

Richard, there are many kinds of scars: those from mishaps, those from birthing for mother and child, those from living, and those from preparing for death. Those given and received, those physical, and those verbal. Yes, there are all kinds of scars, but they all have one thing in common. Whatever the reason, scar tissue is stronger than original skin, original anything, and I bet your back is stronger than your sister's back or her words. Sometimes there's a blessing in a scar.

So then could there be a communion in a scab? I had to think on that one for a long time.

But the second thing that Granny Bellamy said was the real corker. The wound from whatever: You have hands like your grandpa.

So you see, Granny had scripted the whole thing for me. Be willing to strike out on a hunch or whim, look for signs of verity, that even scars have purpose even if it's only to be stronger, and I had hands of a sculptor or surgeon. Still it took me several more years of rug burns on the carpet of life and one more Independence Day to sort them out.

Older, at random across my body from various confrontations, I was going to the James to cherry-bomb fish and frogs when I saw her. Elizabeth was hunched down in the ferns lining the bank of the river. She was staring back up toward the house, gaze fixed on something. I knew that Mother was deep in a rum dream and that we wouldn't see her till the first boom of fireworks from Clyde Holman Memorial Park. Clyde Holman was a star catcher for the Richmond Rangers softball team and could catch anything within two feet of him, pick it out of the air like a flypaper tongue from a hungry bullfrog…and probably would've gone on capturing things on the fly until he snatched a grenade out of the air in France and saved his squad. There wasn't enough of Sergeant Holman to return, so the French gave him a stone and gave his family a photo and thank-you, and Manchester gave him a park…oh, and a thank you.

But I digressed. Elizabeth was hunkered down in green things. I thought she was taking a peek at the house at first but then saw she was staring at the wildflowers, grass-stained denim, cracked tennies, blue blouse, and straw hat. She was absorbed in her examination, at least as much as someone who was never really all there could be. Creepy was as creepy did, but too much was happening right then, even for Beth.

Hey, assassin. What are you doing, squatting with the bugs? Nothing at first.

Absolutely.

She speaks.

Listen, lump. Can't you hear it? She made a question mark with a crooked finger and glanced over her shoulder.

Hear what? The river, frogs on the other side, airplane way up there, wind in the trees, house settling, Mother snoring?

No, dummy. That other sound. The one that's left when you squeeze out all the usual sounds, all the life sounds. The one that's still there, has always been there. Inevitability, what's waiting, has always been waiting but not stationary. Oh no. Never stationary. It's been circling, swinging in a slow orbit, cutting the distance with every movement. And regardless of what we do, eventually we reach out, up or down, and grab it, do a Clyde Holman, and disappear in a flash that leaves…nothing.

What the… I had nothing after the, so I started again. Why don't you go get it out of your system?

Listen, brother, something bad is coming, and I hope it gets you and not me.

Shocking. What could be worse than my leech sister, battling over the sow bugs?

She was finished talking, finished with whatever was haunting her at the moment. Some explanation about Beth was necessary: I might have a question-mark shadow, but my sister came out of that fluid struggle with mostly scarred whimsy between her ears. She imagined many things: that Mother would stop drinking, that father would come back, that mosquitoes would stop biting, and that I would forgive and forget. I did neither because Beth expected it and because she never let me forget it.

Chapter 2 No Cat Has Nine Lives

Cassandra Thorne—Cassie to her friends, Thorny to her dad, and Cass Anne to the world—was a dynamic five feet two, eyes so blue that water and sky seemed to be absorbed in their depths. Her yellow hair wasn't yellow, blonde, towheaded, albino, or sunflowered. In truth, her hair was almost like the hallowed locks of angels in mosaic windows of churches. What she lacked in height she compensated with derring-do and audacity. One of her favorite sayings was, If it can be thought, then it can be wrought. She was famous for barn jumping, rumored outhouse tipping, cat tagging, bicycle-tag terrorizing, and flag capturing and gave a five-year-older and six-inch-taller Butch Bartholomew his first of many black eyes.

Cassie! Why did you have to do that? Butch growled, stooping and pressing his nose to her nose, poking his fat finger into her thin shoulder.

Pushing herself onto the balls of her feet, knocking his arm aside, she said, I saw you move your black croquet ball, Butch, and the red ball. Furthermore, besides being a cheat, you're ugly, have a permanent stink, and look dumber than dishwater when you cross your eyes. Having said that, Thorny Cass, as her dad so often called her when she was being particularly ornery, proceeded to crack nuts with as much skill and gusto as she exhibited when she produced walnut meat for her cookies. When Butch, the bugaboo of all playgrounds, my nemesis even before school, stopped huffing for breath, that allowed Cassie to say, Leave the balls alone and I'll do the same.

In the future, Hobart Butch Bartholomew, one of those people who didn't know if they're coming or going because they had a first and last name that could be last and first, would gaze at an older Cassandra Anne Thorne with awe, envy, and something else. If she turned his way, he'd shuffle his feet to put a knee between her and the cookie makings.

Cassie, you're certainly big for a little girl, I said once with obvious admiration. I could push the moment with her because we'd always been friends, sort of the good dwarf to the sprite; Cassie never grew beyond five two, and I never outgrew the knob between my shoulders. We were common in uncommon outcomes.

Richard, she said with mock anger, I am neither big nor a girl. The only big thing I have is a friend. Thanks for the compliments, but I think I'll stay the way I am and put up with what nature gives. We have to do that, don't we, Richard?

That last part was spoken with the kindness that I recognized in spite of her usual candor and rough humor. She was the rose that some lucky man would find one day…and I would've said as much, but she used, as always, her crude but gentle retorts as a guard against anyone getting too close, unless she chose to close the distance. Usually for good reason.

When Cassie reached fifteen, she found the true definition of female with brass timing. It's probably true that she kept Hobart Bartholomew in her sights third through tenth grade, noted that he and his swamp toadies were looking back, but still seemed ready to charge if things got out of hand. Through all the rescues, rough-and-tumble scratch ball games, midnight melon raids, flag capturing, and hide but don't peek, she still managed to help her dad in his hardware store and have a root beer float with the guys after the Saturday cinema. And I supposed observe herself occasionally in the mirror to gaze at the amazing marvel called growing up. I confessed that I probably helped her inventory the newest freckle, luster in her skin, and inch to her chest. I thought she even caught me once when she said, Richard, you're going to make me blush, and that would be a real achievement.

I tried to think of something witty, charming, or disarming to say but found that I could only manage a mumbled, Sorry.

Don't be because I'm not. At least I don't have to go looking, like someone trying to find Easter eggs. A small frown clouded her face but passed, as if she was assessing the various meanings of what she said. Guess she didn't find any harm there because she snapped a salute and said, with mock solemnity, Carry on, Private James. Inspection completed and satisfactory.

She had a knack for either bracing a bully to the breaking point or putting someone at ease. I'd seen her do both enough times that she might even have been better as a comforter than as a rescuer. It's an understatement to say that the breeze freshened, flowers peaked, and the sun shimmered when she was near. And I couldn't describe what happened to my perception of her in the moonlight. I supposed it would be redundant now to say I loved her.

She didn't know, couldn't have guessed, and would never get a clue, and life would just flow on like the James on a hot summer day if it wasn't for that October night in my twenty-second year.

It's funny sometimes how life could become the dustpan, fate the broom, and we get swept up in something seemingly mundane but ultimately larger.

Several of us were at Toff's Bar. I was there to sweep up, clean up spilled spots, and tote bottled bliss, the genie that always made bad on promises. At one table were Pete Proctor and Abe Underhill, Manchester's unashamed and functioning drunks. Sally Tibbs was ensconced with her sister, Irene Noyes. Good night, Irene, and less noise, she loved to say when things got too quiet. Sally and Irene were freethinkers, freebooters, mostly free everything, and had reportedly found the needle in every haystack in the county. There were three missing high-school athletes who were believed to be in the Navy because one or both of the frolicking fillies thought she was with child. They were always good for a laugh, among other things, and had just had a touch-up at Grace's Hair Place because the two redheads seemed to glow in the dim light like predatory fireflies.

Hey, Richard, bring us another pitcher and those mother of all pipe-cleaning peanuts! Sally snorted at her own joke.

Sal, you know he doesn't serve. Leave the guy alone and keep your one good eye on the beer. We still have half, and I figure that's two trips to the ladies' room. And unless your bra is broken, I hear peanuts grinding.

Everybody, almost, laughed because the Tibbs girls had begun life with an eye for fun, had peddled lemonade at three, magazines and cookies at thirteen, and home products at twenty-three, and all their extra cash went for makeup, makeovers, and make-dos in their old mobile home in Coach Home Park, which they constantly called Roach Roam Park. They were fun.

Arnie Trent was tending bar, snapping the towel around his massive shoulder when he dried each glass and put it safely on the mirrored shelf beside the old register. An older sign hung drunkenly off-center over the register: If you don't see two fingers, then you're done. If I see one finger, you'd better run. If you stick around, I'll bump you off. Yours sincerely, Ada Toff. Cindy Knowles was hopping tables. Butch Bartholomew was sprawled in the only booth with his mongrel pack—Bobby Craig, Lyle Hastings, and Carl Summers. They'd been quiet, and it was obvious that they were waiting for something. Butch was feeding the jukebox. Clyde McPhatter had just finished his Magic Moment, and the Buckinghams were revving into Kind of a Drag when Butch remarked that Ada Toff was the real drag, and I thought that the tune and goon gab would end in bloodshed.

Ada Toff and Amos King hit town running, sometime in the dim past. Wags liked to say how they were running from the Chicago mob because Ada had hooked up with Short Stack Maldonado, known for his hardware and not his pancakes. Amos King had been muscle for Johnson Johnny Boy Raymond, a loan shark notorious for gobbling up most of the riffraff in the dives and dens in Moline. Johnny Boy was another one of those names confused by first and last, so he spliced them together with the Johnny Boy, which should've been Boy Johnny because when Two Fingers Fenton pointed out that Johnson Raymond should actually collect some money before snuffing his debtors, two things happened: Johnny Boy picked up the new moniker of Cleaver (all this transpiring in the kitchen of Johnny Boy, a.k.a. Cleaver Raymond's restaurant, The Chop House). And the other happening was that Two Fingers had to become Lefty Fenton, losing the last three in a loopy swing that caught everyone by surprise and provided a tasty meal for some of Chicago's biggest wharf rats.

No wonder Ada and Amos skipped town before they acquired an unwanted nickname—Ada and Amos, Postmortem Famous. They'd been secretly meeting in Ada's place and knew that eventually Short Stack would shorten Amos.

When they escaped, they didn't go with a plan to speak of, but Ada knew she was done there and wanted Amos, all six feet three inches of his chocolate-brown frame. And Amos King knew that his queen was this diminutive Irish American who dressed to her name: top hat, monocle, and bow tie. She wore a man's clothes as well as Marlene Dietrich and could keep the monocle perched for hours, then pop it into her hand, breathe on it front and back, polish it with a silk hankie and reposition it, and blink as if to adjust it, and all this while rattling off ball scores or the measurements of starlets. She was a Toff and might have chosen her name when she saw a picture of a toff or British dandy.

They stormed across the Midwest, using only gray roads, progressing from cornfield to cornfield, lunching beside the old Chevy, conversing with fireflies at night, pledging again on startling stars at the early hours. Pointing only East, easy in their togetherness, they never looked over their shoulders and let glances and eye contact do most of their conversing. Most of it.

Ada, sweet lamb, I'll never let anything unhappy in except hugs and warm love.

Ada would smile, maybe play with the forever monocle, and say something like, Oh, sugar, there'll never be anything but hot love for us…hot everything, and after I'll do a song so sizzling lowdown that the devil will dance.

Amos would laugh at that because Ada could always raise a smile, but inside he believed they would end the way they began, so he continued with a fire that would melt the sun.

I was just going on here and needed to bring my story back around. They ran all the way to the Atlantic, and not wanting to go North to the same icy Decembers they endured in Chicago, they swung right and South. In no hurry now and feeling safer by distance and softer-speaking gas-station attendants, general-store grandmas, their paths inevitably took them to Richmond, then to Manchester.

The simple saloon near the track, lapped by the pond in the back, wildflowers on both sides, felt right. The old man drowsing over the empty bar took their first offer. Sam Wright had been dreaming about Richmond and thought they were the answer to a prayer. When he took that tainted money from the Midwest, he was none the wiser. Ada and Amos began to create Toff's Bar. The soap, water, and paint framed the mural over the door with a smiling woman in top hat, monocle, and bow tie.

Time passed as easily as hard shots tossed back with gusto. Amos was proud of what he'd done and how they'd escaped almost certain death in Chicago. Occasionally he touched up the tuxedoed Toff, a mural picture of a woman who looked surprisingly like Ada. Besides having a sharp and crushing right hook, which he unleashed often as an enforcer for Johnny Boy Raymond and soldier for Short Stack Maldonado, Amos was also deft with the brush and had captured Ada's smile, green eyes, and monocle with top hat tipped to a jaunty angle, as if she'd just said, Howdy, gents. Welcome to my place. Enjoy yourselves and spend big.

The smile never faltered, though it eventually was punctuated with wrinkles, as were Ada's green eyes with laugh lines, especially when Amos would drag out the ladder and chuckle when he said, Time to touch you up, old girl. I swear that picture is looking better 'n' better. Can't seem to find the right color to show the years, but that's maybe 'cause you'll always look like a fresh daisy to me, Ada.

Amos could say that over and over, glance back at Ada with a foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, but she always laughed and said, Just take care up there, sugar, because you're too big to catch.

Truth was, Ada caught Amos the first time they locked eyes at O'Brien's speakeasy. Time slowed, stopped, and caught them both up that night. Lifetimes later time slowed, stopped, and gathered Amos up with fast cancer; before Ada's picture could even begin to fade, there was no one to drag the ladder out.

Ada aged gracefully after that and still greeted customers in her tux and fixings. About that time, she hired a very young Arnie Trent after a slow afternoon answering questions about Amos, Chicago, and wilder times. When Arnie asked if he could unload and stock the bar for room and board, Ada had already had the same thought and hired him on the spot. Arnie broke in with a shipment of Jim Beam and Johnny Walker.

Ada stopped drinking about that time but never stopped the dress-up. The bar prospered. Ada winked and smiled, twirled her monocle, and tipped her top hat till Arnie found her one morning holding a picture of her and Amos, taken with the James rolling along in the back. The river framed them perfectly, and that was the only photo of the two. Arnie framed it under glass and secured it beside the If you don't see two fingers… sign, which was a private joke between Ada and Amos regarding Two Fingers Fenton.

Arnie Trent had bought the bar from Ada sometime after Amos passed, hired Cindy Knowles, eventually oversaw Ada's burial next to Amos, and got on with running a bar. It would be too obvious to say that Toff's wasn't the same, but I secretly thought that Arnie, who moved into the bedroom and sitting room, touched up Ada's picture after hours unless he just stirred in his sleep to the sound of a ladder being dragged across the floor. And even if it was Arnie, I liked to think that they were still there, dancing to soft music when Arnie and the world were asleep.

This might all sound sappy and sentimental, but they were as essential to Manchester, my story and me, as was the James River.

When Butch cracked his remark, I wouldn't have been surprised to see Amos King materialize to snatch him from his seat, maybe even out of his clothes. I knew Arnie would probably stop Butch cold. I even tightened my grip on the broom and took a step forward, ready to dust Homer off. None of those things happened because Cassie Thorne just seemed to spring through the door looking for her cat.

Hiya, all. Has anyone seen Lynx?

The missing kitty was a gray-and-white Manx who, if she'd been just a little bigger, could've been mistaken for a real lynx. Almost everyone in Manchester had seen her at least once, sitting on her back paws, long front legs perpendicular to her body, the absolute picture of female feline beauty. If Amos King's Ada was breath catcher in black and white, Cassandra Thorne's Lynx was the cat's meow in gray and white.

So how about it? Anybody seen my kitty?

Timing was the essence of life, a clockwork that spun, whirled, or tick-tocked along. Step off a curb twenty times and make it safely to the other side, ball rolling free, little girl frozen in her fear before the speeding car. The clock moved as usual, seconds ticking off in absolute synchronicity. Twenty times the opposite side was reached, ball was retrieved, girl was saved…but on the twenty-first time the clock hitched, second was missed, spinning and whirling, tilts, and a tick wasn't followed by a tock. When time faltered and timing betrayed its fallibility, the other side of the street slipped away, ball was lost, and little girl…

So when Cassie asked about Lynx, the clock didn't just falter; it basically stopped—almost for good—for some in the room. Eventually for good for others.

But in that moment when everyone was caught in his or her own time freeze, I took another step forward, free of restraint but not thought. My focus was on Butch's face, hands gripped so tightly on the broom handle that I expected to hear a crack and see wood powder puff from between my fingers. Instead of a physical impossibility, a line of script carried from high school unrolled behind my eyes: Keep time. How sour-sweet music is when time is broke and no proportion kept.

Roy Orbison was holding one of his impossible high notes in Only the Lonely. Could this be the broken element of those moments that seeped from the past and spilled into the future? Could this simple country boy, guitar king, have the answer to a simple time device?

I wasn't supposed to know, I guess, because someone coughed or choked back a laugh; someone else scraped a chair in a startled squeal across the floor, or was that a ladder?

I saw your crummy cat and gave her a ride on the river. Even Butch's friends frowned at him with that remark.

I know better, lardon, because Lynx wouldn't let you get close to her even if you do smell like a rat, Cassie retorted. She was obviously peeved and let it show.

Well, sweetheart, I found her sleeping by the library, scooped her up, and set sail.

That didn't happen because if you had, you'd look like her scratching post and would be bleeding in your beer.

Used my jacket and bundled her up before she knew what was happening. Should've heard her yammering.

Butch, you've always been a crap cannon, too rotten for even Jacob's outhouse, Sally Tibbs sneered. Raleigh Jacob was an eightyish bachelor who was too cheap to add a bathroom, too piggish to pay for an outhouse cleaning. No one wanted to get near the dump in question to verify the rumors, but it was a fact that birds stopped nesting in the woods behind his shack. That was one stinky insult.

Not to be outdone, Butch said, Well, Cassandra, I intended to tip that old tightwad's toilet but saw you there doing your midnight powwow and shied away but got a good look-see at you and Raleigh.

Even Pete Proctor snorted at this nonsense, and Irene, whom everyone thought had fallen asleep, coughed up a chuckle and murmured, Butch, that just doesn't make any sense at all. I remember how Ms. Hance told you to be quiet or be sensical. Yes, sensical is what she said, and I had to look it up, but that was certainly what you were doing. That was sixth grade. You got your knuckles rapped for that one. Yes, you did all right, and, Butch, you still haven't found it.

A second or two elapsed, and the room erupted with laughter, which woke Abe Underhill. He yelped and flailed out, spilling the half pitcher of beer by Sally Tibbs. She looked at Abe, wiped her ample front with her sleeve, and glanced over at Arnie, who had his hand on the axe handle, waiting to see how things would play out.

Arnie, Sally said slowly all the while staring at Butch, better bring me a new pitcher and bar rag for my shower. Better make that two. Second one for Ms. Bartholomew because she sounds like she has the curse.

If Pete had softened the mood with his nonsensical nostalgia trip, Sally put an edge to it again.

Butch rose from his seat and couldn't seem to decide who to fix with his baleful glare: Cassie, who smirked in the doorway; Irene, who was trying to catch Pete up to date with the events; or Sally, who had gripped the empty mug and was slapping it into her open palm. Butch glanced at his friends and took a step into the room.

Arnie came around the bar with the axe handle extended and pointing toward Butch. The muscles in his arms were knotted. His brow was creased, and he told the room with firm finality, Everyone has had a laugh, most everyone except Richard, and I appreciate a chuckle as much as the next guy.

This was said in a general nod toward everyone there. Then Arnie fixed Butch with a fierce gaze and gestured to the aged sign behind the bar.

"I'll skip the finger part, Butch, but the rest is pretty simple. I'm going to amble over there in no particular hurry. If you and your friends are still here