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Meet in the Middle

By LoRee Peery

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Have mercy on me, my God, have mercy on me, for in you I take refuge. I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed. ~ Psalm 57:1

How had Colin come so low as to stay in his uncle’s uninhabitable shack? Especially considering it sat on the edge of this Podunk town, where rumors once abounded about Glen Lovelady’s gambling. The bed, such as it was, had him off the grotesque floor. He’d all but covered his head to fight off the chill so, at least to his awareness, no rodents had crept over him during the night.
He fluffed his pillow and smoothed the sleeping bag over the cot. In the gray light of early dawn, he straightened to get out the kinks, rolled and cracked his neck.
The smell hit him. Rotten wood. Mold. Fecund animal droppings. He’d been too tired to breathe last night. Who knew what kind of filth he’d inhaled as he slept? The place looked horrid in the daylight. Unsanitary even for an avid outdoorsman, which he’d never considered himself. He’d have to find a room in town until his next step.
Whatever that might be. What was he even doing here? A desperate move on his part, thinking he could fix up the small house and make a profit so he’d have the means to stay by himself without a job. Just a while longer, at least until the end of summer.
Wouldn’t it be something if the rumors about hidden money were true?
He dragged open the door, no easy feat due to the swollen, broken wood panels, and stepped on the rotted porch. A rusty hinge from a nonexistent screen door snagged his flannel shirt. If he attempted to stay, what should he fix first? A sneeze jerked him. No surprise, considering the dust.
He lumbered to his truck, grabbed a reasonably clean napkin from the console, and blew his nose. He stuffed the used napkin in the white sack from last night’s drive-through meal purchased halfway between here and Lincoln.
Then he retraced his steps, zipped his pillow inside the sleeping bag, and tucked the bundle behind his truck seat. He sneezed again on his return to the poor excuse for a house, retrieved the cot, where he stored it in the truck bed against the cab.
It may be April, but the onset of spring sparked nary a thought of anything good for Colin. Rather than pay attention to varied greens and the touch of the sun now visible above the horizon, he blinked away from the rising orb. Adam had always laughed at those times the sun’s brightness made Colin sneeze. He rolled his shoulders and gazed at the trees lining the Platte River.
And this flat land. It’s prime, surrounding Maplewood, his mom’s hometown, where its bottom land proved fantastic for producing rich crops.
The distant foghorn of air brakes carried from the highway on the other side of the water, as a semi slowed for the lower speed to go through the village.
Poets no doubt had a heyday penning beautiful words concentrated on fresh mornings such as this, but the glory of the day mocked his severed heart. Let the world welcome spring in all its rebirth glory. The only thing that consumed Colin was loss.
The ecstasy of his own rebirth, thanks to Jesus, just as well belong to some other man. He stretched. “How long, Lord, how long until I want to live as I once did, in tune with Your Spirit?”
It took too much energy to pursue a good mood. Easier to stay low, remaining in a dark frame of mind seemed friendlier at the moment.
Friend. He knew in his head that Adam now spent his time in the presence of Jesus. Yet, rejoicing for his friend’s home in heaven escaped Colin’s sensibility.
After all, he’s the one who deserved the bullet.
The Bible talked about restored joy in the morning. He’d rather stay in the dark and absorb the sound of silence, which had become his latest best friend. But he had no power to stave off a new day. The earth still spun on its axis. Living things continued taking the next breath.
All the while, he wallowed in mourning and fought off horrific nightmares that always ended the same. With him unable to save his best friend.
He stumbled along through the weed-entangled yard. Why had he paid taxes to keep this place all these years? Inherited from his mother, who got it from his bachelor uncle, just to keep it in the Lovelady family?
A wadded ball of dried roots from years of over-grown weeds caught his toe. He staggered, regained his balance, and looked up again. Silly. No one around to see him almost fall on his face. He knelt to untangle his booted foot. Moist soil met his fingertips.
A grunt jerked his head to the right.
He rubbed his eyes in disbelief. He blinked. Focused. Nope. No figment of his imagination. He knew what it was, but he’d only seen the pigs on film.
A pot-bellied pig ambled along the ancient rusted wire of the fence that marked his Uncle Glen’s decrepit property, the last acre on this edge of town, bordering a picturesque small farmstead.
Curious, Colin followed the pig’s journey as though it was the Pied Piper. Past Uncle Glen’s property line and onto the next, which happened to be the first farmstead outside Maplewood.
The pendulous animal snorted again, bobbed its snout, and a clot of roots topped by dried strands flew to the side.
The act would be funny, if he felt like laughing.
First, they came upon a small shed, bordered by a plot of fallow, unfenced garden. The pig bypassed a row of what looked like maroon tipped flower heads poking through earth like pebbles to greet the sun, and circled toward the only wreck on the place, an old corncrib with the sun glinting through its unpainted ribs on the back of the farmstead.
His steps ground to a halt as he closed in on the leaning building. He stared through the empty center of the peaked structure. The crib. Money. Whoever in the family came up with the rumor that Uncle Glen had buried money near a building? No buildings on his place, except an unsafe, lilting garage.
Details of the old story flew out of nowhere. A notorious gambler, Glen Lovelady never believed in banks. Family lore claimed Uncle Glen had hidden thousands of dollars at the corner of some old building, way back when.
Colin surveyed the surroundings of the neighbor’s acreage surrounded by farmland. A garden shed. A detached garage. The corncrib. No barn, outhouse, well house, or machine shed. Such buildings would have existed fifty years ago.
Who paid attention to rumors anyhow?
The reality of buried treasure was way too fanciful for a guy like him to consider. On second thought, he had to pull life together and heal from the incident that stole his normal life.

****

Elena drew in a deep breath and opened the kitchen door off the back stoop. The threshold she’d scarred from an old pair of roller skates welcomed her. She entered the tiny porch into a time past, and straight back to the best memories of her childhood. She gently closed the door as if a slam would disturb the house, and strode into the kitchen.
Her heart raced.
Grandma Merline’s hearty welcome didn’t resound to immediately fill her with love and acceptance.
Elena pulled herself together. “Stay in the moment.”
She stopped in the center of the comfy country kitchen with its red checkered curtains and rooster decor, and closed her eyes.
If the walls could talk, they’d fill her ears with whispered conversations of long ago.
“Listen to the song in your heart.” Grandma’s voice bounced off the yellow kitchen walls. Did the sweet echo of those sayings linger in all the empty rooms she’d called home for over fifty years?
If so, Elena had plenty more tears to shed.
The farmhouse at the edge of Maplewood, Nebraska, now echoed with emptiness. Yet Grandma’s presence couldn’t be ignored. It seemed as though she’d just left to tend her garden. Elena imagined the familiar, earthy scent of fresh-picked vegetables, and the faint fragrance of frying chicken. The hint of apples and cinnamon could not be forgotten, or strudel and pumpkin pie.
She sniffed, swiped her left eye.
How would she ever get through this? Grandma had been her only stable influence while growing up. And upon her deathbed, had given Elena the insurmountable task of going through the house and sorting Grandma’s belongings. Anything Elena wanted was hers to keep.
Pieces of Grandma’s last mumblings wheeled through Elena’s thoughts.
“You don’t remember your grandfather William. In his own way he was a good man, but he could be hard. He hid something from me that I never laid eyes on. He kept it from me. I know it’s still in the house somewhere, and I need you to find it.”
What could it be, other than compounding Elena’s clean-up task?
Grandma’s last phrases were all mixed up. She’d been agitated and adamant. “I know you were happy on the farm as a child. I want you to live there. Find your happy place again.”
And the last thing Elena had made out, with a beautiful light on Grandma’s face that washed away the years, she’d called out an unfamiliar name. “Glen.”
Elena had a new purpose in life, to honor Grandma’s memory as well as her last request to find something kept secret. Where should Elena begin to look for some unknown whatever that Grandma claimed to be on the property? How would Elena even know if she found it?
She had triple tasks to accomplish by summer’s end. Sort Grandma’s belongings. Search for an unknown object. And prove herself worthy of her new at-home job. Adequate internet service in Maplewood enabled her to work from outside Lincoln. The 90-day probation period wasn’t really stressful, but if the position didn’t work out, would she be happy returning to telemarketing?
After all, she’d been happiest here on Grandma’s farm.
Look for the happy during those hours she didn’t sit in front of her computer and talk to strangers. Grandma had hinted at something Grandpa had hidden from her. What did that say for the kind of marriage they had?
Along with working so many hours five days a week, she needed to lay out a plan to satisfy Grandma’s request. She must enter each room, each clean room thanks to a couple women from the church, and decide where to begin her search and her sorting.
Not much in the dining room but the antique oak furniture: buffet, hutch, table and chairs. The attic? Grandma’s room? Nothing could be undiscovered there, she would have known every nook and cranny of those places.
The hardwood floor squeaked on the way to the stairs, as it always had. She headed up, hand brushing the smooth banister, and welcomed the familiar creak on the third and seventh steps.
The bathroom glowed where sunlight splashed on the porcelain fixtures and checkered black and white floor. The room Grandma had always called Elena’s welcomed her as it always had, with its threadbare turquoise chenille spread. Grandma loved her treasured antiques. The dressing table with its splotchy mirror waited for Elena to fill its drawers with her clothing. An open drawer emitted an old scent of floral sachet.
She turned and sighed, still wondering where to begin. Sort or search?
To find anything Grandpa hid, Elena needed to think like a man. Where would a man hide something from his wife, in the basement or an outbuilding? She chuckled. The garden shed belonged to Grandma. The corncrib was full of boards with space between. That left the garage. She’d check it out, no hurry, but Grandma had parked her car there and stored few things on the hooks and shelves.
How to start then? Prayer. According to Grandma, she’d know the next step by first waiting quietly for the Lord. His prompt would get her going. But how? She’d need her own faith to recognize where to start. She couldn’t rely on Grandma’s faith.
Pause before you begin. One step at a time. Slow and easy came her first reaction. She giggled at the scritch of the upstairs hall floor. There was no one here to keep quiet for. God sure wouldn’t care if the floor or a step made noise.
Elena ambled down the stairs and into the dining room, ran her hand over the corner of the blond table.
Movement drew her gaze beyond the window’s lace curtain, past the garden plot. A big dog? A foraging coyote? Too dark in color for a deer.
A second, taller, figure crossed the distance from the property line to the corncrib. Who was poking around the old building? Or was someone shooing off an animal?
She swiveled and headed out of the house. On the way, she ran an eye over Grandma’s galoshes, flannel shirt, and heavier jacket. Outside, she lost her footing and slid off the concrete stoop.
Was that really a pot-bellied pig? She straightened. The comical sight drew an immediate lift of her spirits. She’d never seen such a fat hog. But it had to be, since most pigs didn’t list so low to the ground, unless it was a very pregnant sow. The oinker must belong to the trespassing man.
Elena strode toward the corncrib, where both pig and man had stopped.
Grandma’s voice whispered. “I had a first love that I never forgot.” And then she’d said what sounded like, “It was no secret that he didn’t trust banks.”
Who? Grandpa William, or the unknown Glen she’d mentioned?
“OK, Grandma, get out of my head. I have critters to tend to.” Then she laughed. A fat four-legged critter and a lean two-legged one.
The stranger turned as she approached. Shaggy hair the color of rich black coffee. Did those wide-bowed sunglasses hide dark brooding eyes?
“Hey there.” His low voice sounded loud in the sudden silence of bird and breeze.
She’d never been jolted by such intensity upon meeting a man for the first time. As she peered at the center of his scruffy beard, his nice lips and pleasant voice drew her closer.
So intent on studying his face, Elena came to a halt at the bump against her leg.
How could the huge, gray spotted pig move so quickly?
The man reached out to prevent her from vaulting over the animal.
At the touch of his hand on her arm, she sucked in a breath. The unexpected, immediate connection threw her. How had he managed to touch her spirit with a mere brush of fingertips?
She lowered her arm and trilled her fingers across the pig’s bristly back. “So, what are you and your portly companion doing on my property?”

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