Sketch № 16: Crickets on a Summer Night
Overlapping conversations in a public place sound to me like a field of chirping crickets on a summer evening. Voices rise and fall, they have their own cadence and volume and intonation, and yet in a way they’re all the same. I wonder if we could translate what the crickets say, if only we knew what to listen for, whether we could home in on the secrets they whisper.
This past Friday, I managed to tune my ear to one group of seven crickets gathered in Café Confictura’s Fireplace Room — and when I say “crickets,” I mean “members of Roscoe’s writing salon.” Clarke, Samantha, Kaiya, Brandon, Portia, Miguel, and Allie had all gathered for a rare meeting without Roscoe, their fearless leader and mentor. With daytime temperatures in the high eighties, the natural wood hearth for which the room is named has been dark and cool to the touch for weeks (since the strange cold snap the café endured back in June). No crackling patter of licking flames, then, drowned out the salon’s whispers; and once I settled myself into a neighboring table and tuned my ear to their conversation over others chirping in the room, I heard them distinctly.
This is what they said.
Clarke, unusually prim for a writer in his early twenties, snagged the handkerchief from his suit’s breast pocket and dabbed at the hairline just under his Afro. Maybe it was wearing said suit on an eighty-eight-degree day that was making him sweat. Or maybe it was the topic at hand. “We need to sneak into the O’Connor house so Samantha can see if the stairway pit thing in the basement is the same one from her dream,” he said.
Edna Mary O’Connor is still missing, as of this blog post. No one has been able to verify that the hole Brandon happened upon in her basement — a hole that’s really a spiral stairway built into the rock leading down to heaven knows where — is the same as the one Samantha and the other volunteers of Father Jack’s Table have dreamt about.
If it is, we could be one clue closer to finding the key to the mysterious Quake and its fallout.
“Clarke,” Allie said, her tone like a mother’s gentle admonishment, “that’s breaking and entering. We can’t do that.” She sat with her hands in her lap, shoulders square. Allie is originally a California girl, with the long, straight blond hair and peacenik aura of the Haight-Ashbury transplant she is.
“No one’s seen Edna Mary for over a week,” said Clarke. “Maybe longer. We don’t know what happened to her. What if we go in her house and she’s, like, hanging from the top of the pit by her fingertips?”
“And she’s been hanging there for over a week?” said Portia in a sarcastic drawl, her eyebrow raised into a pointed arch. “That’s some strong fingers.”
Brandon piped up, his near-black eyes narrowed at Portia: “Well, what if she’s stuck on that staircase? I told you, when I leaned over to see what was down there, it felt like something was trying to pull me in. I almost didn’t escape.”
“You’re saying we should bust in there?” said Portia.
“Yeah,” said Brandon. “I’m with Clarke.”
“Then I’m with Allie,” said Portia.
“You guys,” said Allie, “you’re forgetting that the cops have searched her house. Wouldn’t they have heard her calling out if she was in trouble? At the very least, if she’s stuck on that staircase, they would have seen the wardrobe pushed out of the way and the door to the staircase open, right?”
According to Brandon, the only person we know of to have encountered any of this, an old wardrobe had stood in front of the door like a sentry.
“Maybe,” said Brandon. “Unless someone closed the door and pushed the wardrobe back into place after she was down there. Maybe after they trapped her down there.”
“And no one would have heard her yelling?” asked Allie.
“She was missing for at least five days before Roscoe filed a report,” said Brandon. “How long do you think someone can survive that? No water. Maybe no fresh air.”
“Yeah,” said Portia, “but if Brandon the Wonder Dog here sniffed out a door behind the wardrobe, my boyfriend would have figured it out, too.”
Brandon snorted. “Sergeant Stupid of Applewood’s finest?”
Portia opened her pencil bag, picked around inside it, selected a rubber eraser, and chucked it at Brandon’s head.
Kaiya asked Portia, “Wouldn’t Luis have told you if the cops found anything? He knows you’re interested in this, right?”
“He doesn’t share a whole lot with me from work,” said Portia. “Ongoing investigations can get a little sticky.”
Clarke turned to Samantha. “What do you think we should do?” he asked her softly.
If tipping your head just the right amount to hide behind your hair were an Olympic sport, Samantha would be a gold medalist many times over. She’s the oldest of the group in her early thirties, but she’s also the shiest. After a moment, she replied, though her unique chirp is so muted I had to strain to hear it.
“Normally, I’d agree with you, Allie,” she said. “But there’s something in me pulling me to know if that stairway is the same one in my dream. It’s almost like that force Brandon talked about, the one that nearly pulled him down into the hole. I have to know. I have to.”
With a decisive nod, Clarke said, “Great, let’s go.”
“Hey, let’s not,” said Miguel, chewing on his gum. His brown hair swooped down over his forehead in a comma haircut style, and it twitched a little as he plonked his crossed arms on the table. “I’m with Allie and Portia.”
“Oh, come on, Miguel,” Brandon blurted.
“Um, no,” said Miguel. “It’s like Allie said. It’s B&E, man. I’m not getting picked up, thank you. Frankly, I think we should just mind our own business.”
Clarke said, “This is our business. It’s especially Samantha’s, since this could have to do with her dream.”
Miguel sat back again, his arms still crossed. “I’m just saying, I don’t think the cops’ll see it the same way if they catch you.”
“Who says they’re gonna catch us?” Brandon asked.
“They’ve been over there searching and looking for clues back and forth all week,” said Miguel.
“How do you know that?” asked Clarke.
“Well, haven’t they?” Miguel asked Portia.
“I told you, Luis doesn’t tell me specifics,” she said, and then she shrugged. “But yeah, I’ve heard people talking. The cops have been back there a few times.”
“See?” said Miguel. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t have someone staking out the place.”
Portia said, “I don’t know if they have the resources for that . . .”
“Whatever,” said Clarke. “The vote’s three-three.”
“What vote?” said Allie. “This isn’t an election.”
“Kaiya,” said Clarke, ignoring Allie, “whose side are you on?”
“Do I have to be on a side?” she said.
“No,” said Allie at the same time Clarke said, “Yes.”
Kaiya glanced from one to the other, then pushed back her chair and said, “I’m getting more coffee,” before she headed for the front of the café.
“Clarke,” said Allie, “think about what you’re doing here, and more importantly, why you’re doing it.”
“I want to get to the bottom of what’s going on in Applewood,” he said.
“Really?” said Allie. “Or is it that you want to do something, anything, active instead of sitting around waiting for our brain fog to clear up?”
“Figuring out what’s going on with this staircase might lead to answers about all the weird stuff going on since the Quake,” he said. “So, yeah, I think it’s a good idea to check it out, to finally do something.”
“Roscoe said this will take time,” said Allie.
“He doesn’t know that,” said Clarke. “Look, I’ve been with this salon the longest, and Roscoe’s been there for me, for all of us, and I think the world of him. But what if he’s wrong about the fog? What if we’ve just been wasting time, working on our remedial writing exercises and not seeming to get any better? You’re damn right I want to do something, Allie. I’m sick of sitting around.”
“If you go off half-cocked, you could do more harm than good,” said Allie. “You could do yourself more harm than good.”
“There’s a time to act,” he said.
“And until you know when that is and how to do it, there’s a time to chill out,” she said.
For a while, Clarke was quiet. Everyone was. The chirps all died down, like when crickets sense a storm is on the way.
Before they all left for the night, Allie asked Clarke, Samantha, and Brandon if they were going to go through with their plan. “Maybe you’re right,” said Clarke. “Maybe we think about this a little more.”
“Good,” said Allie with a smile and a relieved sigh. “That’s all I ask. Maybe we can find out more info. Maybe, Portia, you can try asking Luis what’s up.”
“I can try,” she agreed.
Allie put a hand on Clarke’s arm. “Just try to be patient,” she said. “The answers will come.”
He nodded, and the group said their good nights.
Yesterday we got word that, in the wee, small hours of the morning, Clarke, Samantha, and Brandon were arrested for breaking and entering at the residence of one Edna Mary O’Connor.
Apparently, the cops were tipped off.
The question is, by whom?
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Clarissa J. Markiewicz is also the author of Christmas In Whimsy — a heartwarming, fun novel readers compare to Hallmark Christmas movies, and recipient of Readers’ Favorite 5-star Seal — and the genre-bending new-age mystery The Paramour Pawn.
This and any related blog posts are works of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Any reference to living or dead public figures, entities, places, events, and the like, are of a fictional, opinioned, and/or parodic nature. No healthcare professionals have been consulted in writing this. Any advice given or inferred is anecdotal and used at your own risk. Consult your doctor in all healthcare matters. ©2024 Clarissa J. Markiewicz. No portion of this or any related blog post may be used to train any AI application without explicit consent from the author.
