V. H. King's Ink

Judith rolled over and grabbed her phone to keep it from buzzing against the motel’s nightstand.  The mattress was thin, the blankets were thin, the walls were thin. Yesterday’s drive had ended with a club sandwich—a picture of which she’d sent to Turner—and a few too many hours combing through articles on JSTOR. 

Because of the publishing house’s extensive creative non-fiction market, Judith had scored hesitant votes in favor of academic research databases.  Literature in sociology and anthropology provided a frame against which many writers could contrast their own experiences, giving them a sharper idea of how they wanted their story to be understood. 

It also meant Judith could browse new publications when she was bored, and she had a slew of folders and subfolders of research ideas.  She’d spent most of the morning compiling spreadsheets, organizing narratives from the city by decade, business type, topic, and keyword.  Judith avoided major news publications, focusing instead on blogs from local businesses and community organizations. As usual, she didn’t know what she was looking for. 

Turner hadn’t asked her to write about a place.  Turner hadn’t asked her to do anything, really.  He just thought she needed a break, and knew “looking into” something would give her something to do while also getting her out of her house, away from the office. 

Bastard. 

“You hear anything back from legal?” she asked, saving the spreadsheet for the third time before closing out of it. 

“No red flags.” Turner said.  “Have you had breakfast?”

“I’ll get coffee.  Did they see any flags?”

“I’ve combed through the system and marked every contract that matched the city, name, or topic.  There’s nothing. No flags.”

“Thought so.  I just had to check. Again.”

“Where are you headed?”

“A drive.”

“Did you pack your camera?”

“I didn’t pack anything, remember?”

Judith pushed away her tablet and flopped back on the mattress.  Funny, how there were never fans in hotels. Just a loud box on a wall that made more noise than anything else.  Fresh air would be good for her.  Pictures would be nice too, but she would do it with pen and paper instead of a lens and a shutter.

“Check in later? I’ve got a training to run with the newest cohort.”

“You hate training.”

“I don’t hate it.  It just makes me tired.  Fuzzy brained.  You were always better at the whole…explaining how stories connect people thing.”

“You think I have people skills?”

“You didn’t need people skills,” Turner said.  “You’re you.  Mythic and inspiring and casual all at the same time.”

“I’ll put that on my resume.”  Judith sighed.  “I don’t want to talk about it though.  Whatever it is, whatever is here—I don’t want to talk about it yet.”

“Do you know what it is?  What are you feeling about it?”

“I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Judith ended the call as her stomach growled.  She stood up and stretched, holding her wrists over her head and twisting her spine one way and then the other.  She took two lunges back from the bed and widened her stance.  Slowly, she tilted one side, swooped down to her toes, and reached back up. 

Three clock-wise stretches, ten squats, three counter-clockwise stretches.  It wasn’t exactly a workout routine, but it eased the bulk of the aches in her elbows, shoulders, hips, and knees.  It also made her dizzy.  While she waited for the tingling to recede from the tips of her ears and her vision to clear, she focused on taking slow, deep breaths. 

Coffee sounded good.  And a bagel.  Maybe a fruit and yogurt parfait too—one with berries. Turner, you’d be proud of me. Maybe she would text him this evening. He wouldn’t have time to check in for most of the week, if he was leading classes. That made it easier to send him updates.  Even though he didn’t expect her to answer his questions, he still asked him.  And the fact that he knew her that well sometimes made her uneasy.  It was something she’d wanted, but never expected to receive.

Kind of like everything else, here.

Judith stashed her tablet, headphones, journal, and pencil case into her miniature backpack and left the motel a few minutes later.  It was time to see how much the city had changed in the last dozen years. 

o-o-o

The dreams had started not long after she’d moved away.  It was easy to chalk them up to homesickness at first.  Easy, but irresponsible.  If stories could transcend time and place, so could everything in them.  Hope, anger, bitterness, regret. 

The heavy aches lasted longer than the dreams, so it was easy to let them live in hidden recesses.  Except sometimes they would rear out of their caves and shred her heart to pieces, leaving a blood trail back to everything she’d run away from. 

The high school she went to looked smaller than it used to, the parking lot emptier.  The softball field and tennis courts were pristine, though.  Bright green astro-turf surrounded by burnt rubber track. 

Some of the strip plazas were the same, with ice cream shops and brunch cafes. The laser tag and arcade by the mall had been replaced by an escape room, while the mall itself was mostly potholes and overpriced department stores.  Judith hadn’t kept up with much of the news about anyone or anything in the area.  She’d managed to avoid answering questions about where she was from, usually opting to say something about a place she’d been.

There was no such thing as home, but seven years of her life came close.  Her favorite library had gotten a massive face-lift, even though it had seemed fairly state-of-the-art before.  The parking garage was a nice bonus at least, along with the covered walkways.  The café was on the other side now, but the menu was mostly the same.  A small flyer invited applicants to scan the QR code for open positions. 

“Hi, can I help you?”

“Pomegranate Power smoothie, please,” Judith said.  “Large.”

“Anything else?”

“That’s everything,” Judith said, digging for her debit card.  “Do you like working here?”

“It keeps me from asking my aunt to pay for my art classes.” A shrug.  “Can’t complain.”

“What’s your favorite medium to work with?”

“Not charcoal, I can tell you that.  I had an asthma attack last week because of it.  Wiped me out so bad, I missed going to the movies with my friends.”

“Damn.”

The blender swirled ice, juice, and frozen fruit.  The weather was mild, but not warm enough to go walking down Main Street.  Bowling had been the winter activity of choice, way back when.  Spring leagues were probably just starting their final bracket of games.

“Good luck with the charcoal,” Judith said as she took her drink and grabbed a few napkins.

“Hey, you wanna see one of my projects?”

Judith nodded, expecting anything other than the girl coming around the counter and grabbing her hand.  As she let herself be tugged along, she idly wondered if this kid thought they were the same age. Not that Judith knew anything about guessing how many trips people had taken around the sun anyway. 

“Call me Wiggs, by the way.  You?”

“Judd.”

“Love it.”

Wiggs pulled her back through the main hall until they were somewhere near the middle of the building.  On one of the wide panels separating one alcove from another, a rope ladder swung over a three feet by five feet sheet of corrugated metal. Judith’s eyes took in the materials—crochet squares, tissue paper, a desk fan, mannequin arms, flannel.

A half-dozen wooden figures used for sketching practice sat, climbed, swung, and dangled from the rope ladder.  They wore tiny outfits, their Sharpie-drawn faces expressing all manner of emotion. Sunflowers bloomed between cornstalks, and butterfly wings peeked between the broad green leaves. 

Laughter surprised its way out of Judith.  Not the sharp ha! of her office days, but something lighter.  Younger, even. It was the feeling of storybook imagination, the playfulness and beauty of a Fall Harvest Festival.  A pause between seasons, when the high heat of outside work was traded for the comforts of hearth and home.

“This is perfect,” Judith said.

“You think so?”

“It’s everything pigtails and overalls and 4-H and strawberry pie. Quintessential Americana, at first glance.  And then you look at the faces, and…wow.”

Wiggs clapped her hands and let out something like a squeal. Judith only noticed they were still holding hands after Wiggs let go to start clapping.  The absence bubbled up another nameless feeling in her, one that echoed Wiggs’ art piece on the wall.   

“I couldn’t come up with a title that blended Dorothy and Jacob’s Ladder and angels and Children of the Corn and Salem’s Lot all into one.  But that’s what I feel about this.”

“Sometimes you don’t need the words,” Judith said, smiling. “You made this.  It says everything.”

“Thanks!  I think it might be one of my favorites, but I also have like a million other projects and mediums I want to try, so who knows what I’ll do next.”

“Hey Wiggs—mind if I take a picture?  Of the artiste and their work?”

This time Wiggs let out a proper squeal and bounced up and down on their tip-toes.  They posed against the wall, palms on their cheeks, grinning like they’d been announced the first-place winner all over again. 

Wiggs actually hadn’t placed at all, but had gotten an honorable mention.  On later visits to the library, Wiggs would tell her they thought the subtle creep factor had weirded out the judges too much to give it an award, but maybe just enough to make sure they did give an award, just in case.  To Wiggs, that was worth more than anything else; it meant the art had done exactly what Wiggs had intended it to.