Cradle Creek

Chapter 5, Belong

Drew could hear the evening news concluding on the television as he unlocked the door. He showered, dressed in fresh clothes and fixed a bowl of cereal for supper. With a forty-eight hour shift at the hospital the next morning, he would be in bed before 9pm and on the road by 4am and back to his life as a senior resident at Providence Hospital. Being the country doctor was a part-time gig for now.

Laying in his bed, he stared at the fan spinning in the dark. He could practically hear the heat outside the little cottage and was thankful for air conditioning. How could the nuns sleep in this sweltering weather? What did nuns sleep in, he suddenly wondered.

When sleep eluded him, he started making a mental list of where he was in the big house and what he had to do next. It had proven more effective than counting sheep.

The cottage where he currently lived was more than comfortable. It was an "L" shape under a rectangle roof with a front porch filling in the rest of the space. A better architectural vernacular might refer to it as a "cape code" or a "conch." He only referred to it as the workman's cottage. The bedroom was in the front, at the small of the "L" and the living room, kitchen, and fireplace ran the back of the home as one big room. He had replaced the window units with a mini-split for heating and cooling that could tame the space in a few minutes. The front porch had an outdoor sofa and two chairs covered in a happy Sunbrella fabric. Lauren Sullivan's choice.

With the sun gone, the two beers deceitfully helped him drift off into another restless sleep. As exhaustion pulled him away from the reality of day, the tentacles of hydrilla waved innocently in the ebb of water as they locked tightly around the light, darkness being what surrounded him as he rocked back and forth in his bed, unable to wake. Sweat seeped at his brow as he yanked on the sheet, pulling it loose. As the sheet, damp from perspiration, wrapped around his wrist, his leg kicked in the opposite direction, tightening the grasp and making his arm move. He screamed, finally pulling himself from sleep. Breathing heavily, the sheet relaxed from his arm, falling free. If only everything could be that easy in water.

He would be two hours down the road before the sun greeted him again.

Before: Two Years Ago

On another sleepless night two years before, the ink on the deed was still fresh and Drew lay sleeping on the floor of the big house tucked in a sleeping bag from his Boy Scout days. He had arrived excited to see his treasure but found nothing but work, sweat, and profanity.

Laying in the dark, Drew put his hands behind his head, taking in the home that his great grandfather built. The hand-hewn boards, the little nuances of ancient nails and horse hair plaster, the things that man did for the love of his wife and his future family. As the possums scurried across the upstairs floor, their nails made a tick-tick-ticking sound. Drew worked to block the noise by forming a list. This would start a tradition of calming sleepless nights, quelling the anxiety of tomorrow's day. Putting life in order with lists helped.

There were birds in nests on the mantle and in corners of rooms, all squawking before dawn. Dust, debris, and old furniture, not antiques, but old furniture had been inhabited by wildlife. Maybe a nest in the bottom drawer of the desk? There were vines winding their way inside the home and a few places where the roof had started leaking, and someone, probably a vagrant from years before, had found a bucket and was kind enough to leave it under the drips. The floors needed to be refinished, replaced in some places, the bathrooms were operable, but unattractive, and other then a steady string of profanity and several buckets of paint, the house would be in great shape. Laying in that sleeping bag, he started to make decisions. The cottage would come first and then, going room by room instead of project by project would be more expensive, but he could push past the rubble faster. Once he was out of the cottage, he could rent it to help pay for the renovations and offset the assumed paltry stipend the Rural Partnership Program provided.

The morning came, as it tends to do and Drew opened a notebook before he brushed his teeth and put the list that put him to sleep to paper. Relieving his full bladder outside, he brushed his teeth from the garden spigot before exploring the little town. First on his list was to get the bathroom cleaned enough to use.

Across the street, he smelled the bakery before he saw it. Sugarbaker's had letters that stood tall, but the door was locked. A pretty young woman was working behind the counter made eye contact when he approached the glass door. She waved, wiping her hands on the white apron around her waist, walked to the door and pushed it open for him.

"A stranger before noon?" she asked.

"A hungry stranger before noon," Drew corrected.

"Unless you want to survive on pizza, come on in. I don't have an expansive breakfast crowd at this hour, but if you like pancakes, I charge way too much but they're excellent."

"Sounds good."

Julia introduced herself to the new stranger in town and gave him the inside track on all the pertinent information of the town: it's small. The best (and only place) to get pizza is across the street at Nick's. Any kind of information you need, well, you just head over to Pete's Antiques, Oddities and Collectible for the Criminally Sane and Sanity Driven Criminals.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Pete's Antiques, he's great. Been around a long time and knows a little about a lot, unless it has to do with Cradle Creek, then he's the guy that knows everything. What brings you this way? I can't believe you bought the old Sullivan house, I thought they'd never sell that piece of property."

"They didn't. They gave it to me. Drew Sullivan," he said extending his hand.

"Ah! You're Charlotte's grandson?"

"Great-grandson. You knew her?"

"No! She's been long dead, but the stories of her are the things that create legends. What brings you here?"

Drew kept the explanation simple, he would never want a potential friend or client to think that he was taking advantage of a situation and that he would disappear as soon as his commitment was over which is exactly what he was planning on.

"I couldn't imagine the house rotting away beyond repair. I'm almost done with my training and am going to open a clinic here," was what he said instead.

She clapped her hands, laughing. "Well, then you have to meet Mama!"

"Mama?"

"Tonight, I'll make sure she is having one of her festivities. You can meet Nick and Pete. They're regulars." She gave directions to her mother's house and assured him that if he was not there by six, they would send out a search and rescue party.

"Festivities?"

"You'll see. Just come by tonight and bring an appetite."