Sketch № 9: Catching Up Over Coffee (A Recap of Sketches 1–8)
Two months ago, it felt to me that the streets and lives of Applewood tangled like branches on an ancient tree. Fascinating stories and places unknown to me at that point wove around each other. Mysteries have always drawn me in, and the more unfamiliar a place is to me, paradoxically, the more I feel at home. The bark of an ancient tree branch may feel rough and broken, but it is precisely that broken roughness I reach out to grasp every time.
I sit here, in the Riverview Room of the Café Confictura, accompanied at the moment only by the soft click of my laptop keyboard, a raspberry latte, and the droning susurration of the Housatonic River rushing by out the back windows. It is twilight as another weekend sets. My own day-to-day Technicolor struggles of a dwindling savings account (since I’m no longer working for a news publication) and hopping from short-term apartments to motels (since the Quake and ensuing rot have wreaked havoc on the real estate market here) fade in intensity when I have a few moments to myself to sit in one of the café’s rooms and reflect on all of Applewood’s tangled branches.
No one spoke to me when I first came here, even after I stayed when all the other newsfolk had taken their story of the mysterious Quake and run (Sketch №1: Café Open on Darkened Street). But when Mrs. Phillipa Creaverton, owner of the Café Confictura, welcomed me, I found myself plunged right into a snarl of those rough, broken branches at the heart of this great tree (Sketch №2: The Poisoned Pie). And my new friend, Mrs. Creaverton, found herself suddenly in a life-threatening bind.
With the help of Mrs. C’s fiercely loyal and often snarky French chief cashier and barista, Violet, and Dr. Graham Teek, whom everyone calls Doc Graham, Mrs. C has managed so far to hang on after contracting a mysterious illness that appeared in Applewood just after the Quake continues to strike randomly and, often, mortally (Sketch №3: A New Recipe). Mrs. C was reluctant to try Doc Graham’s experimental treatment of this new disease, but after a little inspired convincing by Yours Truly, if I do say so myself, not only did she try it, but I won the favor of her friend Roscoe, who I’d been trying to convince I was not the devil.
Roscoe Belesprit and the literary writing salon he runs meet at the café weekly. Apparently, another of the Quake’s aftershocks came in the form of a brain fog that fell over the seven relatively young adults the much older Roscoe mentors in their writing endeavors. Before the Quake they were the next generation of literary greats. Now they can barely put a sentence together. I’d been dying to sit in on one of their sessions, and after I helped out with Mrs. C, Roscoe finally let me (Sketch №4: Round Table Salon and Saviors). It was there where I met these outstanding and fascinating young people, one of whom reported that the popular Pastor Sweeney told her writing was a frivolous activity while the rebuilding of the town needed attention. Roscoe refuted this, saying, and I quote:
“The pressure to put immediate profit before enduring art has always been constant and severe . . . In times of crisis, it is more so. I don’t know if this town will survive the fallout of the Quake. I do know that if it does, it will be in no small part due to the role you, and those like you, will contribute. Not as assistants, or physical laborers, but as the equally essential artists and thinkers. You will inspire the better angels of beauty and civility, you will record this history through the nuanced emotions of the people, you will hold those liable to account. You will salve the wounds of damaged souls.”
Pastor Sweeney didn’t like that.
Never mind the rumors of dark mysticism swirling around Our Lord of the Ascension, Sweeney’s church. Never mind the glass chapel that was not spared its cracks and shatters in the Quake’s rage. Pastor Sweeney has the gift of redirection, some might say misdirection, the quintessential illusionist who controls precisely where a willing audience looks and what they see.
Sweeney pitted his followers against those he deems as instigators of sloth and various other sins. (Sketch №5: Inside the Glass Church). And, it seems, he has help.
Enter Nessie.
Nessie Fyne owns the Ambrosia bakery across town, and according to Violet, she’ll do anything to take over the café’s space and move Ambrosia into it . . . and that includes poisoning Mrs. Creaverton. Apparently Nessie holds the belief that the café is on blessed ground, a belief made all the more impervious after the Quake. The Café Confictura has shown no sign of the “rot,” whereas every other building in town, to some degree, sprouted instant decay in the Quake’s aftermath.
Despite Nessie’s best efforts so far to bring about Mrs. C’s demise, though, Violet has thwarted the bakery owner (Sketch №6: Cheesecake and Thunder). It seems like Nessie and Pastor Sweeney are two snakes in the same grove, hunting their prey together, their sights set on those Applewoodians who would dare defy their agenda that’s just beginning to rise.
I don’t buy it, though, that Nessie’s interest is solely capitalistic. There is much more at stake here. There is much more brewing.
The other church in town that’s on the same scale as Our Lord of the Ascension is the Newman Community, which Father Jack Evandrus runs. He also coordinates Father Jack’s Table — a charitable organization that feeds those in need. Another strange branch on Applewood’s tree is the case of the volunteers for Father Jack’s Table, who woke up on what would be the morning of the Quake, and then didn’t sleep again for forty days.
And then they did sleep, for nine days straight, before waking again and beginning the cycle all over. In those nine days, they dreamed.
One member of Roscoe’s writing salon, Samantha, is a Father Jack’s Table volunteer. She sat down with me to tell me her experience, to tell me about her dream (Sketch №7: The Spiral Rocks). Yet it was not just her dream. All thirty-six volunteers shared the dream, and it played in their minds over and over until they woke.
The symbols and sounds of the dream, including a gold thurible and shattering glass, pointed to one man: Pastor Sweeney. But no one could figure out what Sweeney had to do with unnatural sleep patterns. So we — Mrs. C, Violet, Roscoe, and I — went to Our Lord of the Ascension to ask him what he thought about it all (Sketch No 8: The Eyes of Applewood).
Never did we expect to find an open church door with no Sweeney in sight. Nor did we expect to find the gold thurible inside a sacristy whose glass door, under its own power, began to crack while we were inside. We really didn’t expect Nessie to find us there, accuse us of vandalizing the church, and a crowd of people along with a police presence all set to indict us before we could even walk back outside. There’s no doubt in our minds that Nessie set us up.
But why? And how did she know we’d be there in the first place?
As I sit here, in the Riverview Room, my raspberry latte down to the last foamy sips, I’m listening. Beyond the quiet Sunday night sounds, no voices carry back from students in the Book Room finishing up their homework. The shopkeeper’s bell over the front door is silent. There is no doubt the café has not enjoyed its usual level of business since Nessie made us look like a bunch of criminals — church vandals, no less.
The Café Confictura has been this town’s stronghold. I am concerned, as a newcomer who’s snuggled quite nicely into this tree’s rough boughs, what it means if the stronghold languishes.
And I want to know why it seems like that’s exactly what Sweeney and Nessie are plotting to do.
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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.
Clarissa J. Markiewicz is 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.
