Peace - Chapter Four: "Descent"

The following is Chapter Four of a five-part short story entitled, “Peace.” Chapter Three ended with Louise Howe Bailey offering to explain to Clarence Peace the mysterious history of his small grocery store in the heart of Flat Rock, NC.

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Summer, 1983

Clarence considered Louise’s offer, not sure if he wanted to know the story about the strange apparitions who’d been appearing in the store. He’d been alive long enough to understand that sometimes not knowing was preferable to hearing the truth. His curiosity won out. “What did grandma tell you? Is this place haunted?”

Louise smiled and patted the back of Clarence’s hand. “No, dear.” She walked over to the rockers by the potbelly stove and sat down. “Lock the door, Clarence … and draw up a chair. This may take a bit to explain.”

Clarence did as he was told and sat in the rocker opposite Louise. She began. “When I was just a girl, maybe 9 or 10, I stopped by the store one afternoon to pick up some milk and eggs for mama. Your uncles Milton and Luther were running the store back then, but your grandma Antha spent a lot of time helping around the store as well.

“That day, while I stood at that counter right over there, I could feel Antha staring at me from the back of the store. Clarence, I swear I thought I could feel her eyes burning a hole in my back.

“Milton was handing me the bag with my purchases when Antha came up behind me and barked, ‘What’s your name girl?’” Louise shook her head at the memory. “Well, I’m here to tell you that I ‘bout jumped out of my skin. Still makes me shudder a little just to think about it.” Louise chuckled softly.

“I was so scared, I just blurted out ‘Louise Howe’ and ran out the store. I didn’t stop running until l got home.”

Squirt appeared from behind the stove and jumped into Louise’s lap. The cat settled into the folds of her dress and purred as her hand ran along the ridge of his back. “I don’t think I came back to this store for six months after that. I was afraid Antha would be here. I couldn’t stop thinking about the way she had stared at me and the look in her eyes when she demanded to know my name.”

“But when I was a little older, I got to know Antha better. She always remembered my name and she would ask about my family. Wanted to know about my people. How I was doing in school.” Louise looked down at Squirt and rocked quietly. “Eventually, I forgot about how scared I had been.”

“Then one day, just before the war, she pulled me aside and said we needed to talk. I was surprised. I thought I must be in trouble. I couldn’t imagine what an old woman would want to talk about with a girl like me. I was in high school by then.

“I remember we walked across Depot Road to the old high school and sat on a bench in front of the cafeteria building. And that was the day she told me about this place, Clarence.” Louise closed her eyes and fell silent as if watching the scene unfold again in her mind. She reopened her eyes and stared at Clarence.

Clarence leaned forward in her chair. “What did she tell you, Louise? Was grandma some sort of spirit conjurer?”

Louise smiled and shook her head slowly. “No. She was more of a gatekeeper I suppose.”

Clarence frowned. “Gatekeeper?”

Louise sighed and continued her story. “I won’t claim that I understood everything she told me that day. But she was patient with me. With time I did understand – after she convinced me to let go of my skepticism.”

“Understand what, Louise?” Clarence could feel a sense of annoyance rising up through his body again.

“Well Clarence, it turns out that our great flat rock just up the road is more than a big ol’ slab of granite.” Louise paused. Knowing what she said next would be met with disbelief. “It’s a nexus in time.”

Clarence stopped rocking. “A what? What in the world is a ‘nexus in time?’” The words dripped with skepticism as they left his lips. He was beginning to feel like Louise was part of an elaborate prank to make him think he was crazy. He glanced back at the front door, halfway expecting Wick and Albert to come bursting in laughing and slapping each other on the back in celebration.

Louise nodded and smiled. “Yep. That was ‘bout my reaction.”

Clarence slumped in his chair and put his hand to his forehead. He realized that Louise’s explanation was not going to clear up anything. His situation was just getting more complicated. And he didn’t want any more complications in his life.

Louise took a deep breath and continued. “Antha told me to think of the great flat rock as a dam. Like the Highland Lake dam. But instead of collecting water, the flat rock collects time. Time pools right here in Flat Rock. Clarence, your store is floating in a lake of time.”

Clarence started to stand up and tell Louise he needed to leave. But Louise held him in place with an unblinking gaze and he slowly settled back into his chair. Louise, after all, was not a woman to make up stories like Wick and Albert. And she was definitely not a woman to ignore.

“You’re telling me I’ve been seeing time travelers?” His voice quavered with exasperation.

“Not exactly, Clarence. “You could say the river of time has been dammed up by the great flat rock. The people you’ve seen – that your grandmother could see - are more like pilgrims who have been temporarily waylaid. They stay here for a while, but eventually, the waters of time will spill over the rock and carry them on their way. These visitors you’ve seen, are simply waiting to continue their journey.”

“Where are they going?” Clarence’s voice was barely a whisper.

“I don’t know. They don’t know. They are just here until the next stage of their journey begins. And some people can see them while they are in this place. Your grandmother could. So could your, mother.” Louise smiled gently at Clarence. “And now you.”

Clarence dropped his head into his hands. “Louise. Don’t try to hoodwink me. I’m not sure I can take any more of this.”

Louise reached out and put her hand on Clarence’s shoulder. “I know it’s a lot, Clarence.”

Clarence looked up at Louise. His eyes pleading. “What’s all this it got to do with me?”

“You have the ‘gift’, Clarence.”

“Gift? I don’t want no gift. I ain’t never seen nothin’ before. And that was plenty fine wi’ me.”

Louise continued. “I’m sure you know your grandmother Antha was part Cherokee. Her people knew about the flat rock. They understood in their heart and bones the truth about this sacred place. That’s the reason the rock was so special to them. There were shamans among them – mystics – who could communicate with their ancestors. And for your grandmother’s people, this was the place – right here on the flat rock - to make those connections.”

Louise rubbed the top of Squirt’s head. “These days, folks are so caught up in science they can’t see the truth right under their feet anymore. They think if they can’t see it, it’s not real. But Antha’s people knew the truth of this place. They could feel the truth in the depths of their being. They didn’t need a scientist to explain what they knew or how they knew. They just knew, Clarence.”

Clarence started to speak, but Louise cut him off. “Most of us have lost touch with the truth of this world. But some of us...” Louise studied Clarence’s eyes. “Some of us can still see the truth around us.”

Clarence’s eyes dropped to the floor at his feet. “Me.” His voice was barely audible.

“You,” replied Louise.

“Why now? I ain’t never seen these people before. Maybe I don’t really have the gift. Maybe I’m just having bad dreams.”

“Something has shifted in you.” Louise hesitated. “Or something is about to shift in your life.”

“Why did Grandma Antha tell you all this? Can you see these people?”

Louise laughed and rocked silently for a moment. “Oh, no. Not me. But Antha saw something in me when I was just a child. She saw that I was destined to be a storyteller. She knew that I would be a scribe for our forebearers.” She considered the man before her, shifting nervously in his chair. “She knew that someday I’d have to tell you, Clarence.”

“Is that why you know so much history about this place? Is that why you are always tellin’ stories of the old times?”

Louise smiled and patted Clarence on the knee. “Antha shared a few things with me. So did your mother. I just scribbled them down.” She leaned in closer to Clarence’s face. “But that’s our secret now, Clarence.”

Clarence snorted and sat back in his chair. “I ain’t talkin’ about this to no one.” He exhaled slowly. “Why didn’t you tell me this way back, Louise?”

“Would you have believed me?”

“I don’t want to see these people, Louise. I jus’ want to be left alone.”

“I’m afraid you don’t get to choose Clarence.” Louise nodded toward the front door to the store. “Once that door has been opened, there’s no closing it. I think you should prepare yourself.”

“I don’t understand.”

Louise smiled. “Antha always told me that when folk worry, it’s because they don’t understand.”

“Understand what?”

Squirt jumped down from Louise’s lap and rubbed up against Clarence’s legs. The store was quiet except for the rhythmic sliding of their rocking chairs on the old wooden floor.

“There’s a lot of life just beyond the closed doors of our minds. Doors that stand between what we think we know…,” Louise paused and smiled at Clarence. “…and the truth of this world.”

—-

After his conversation with Louise, Clarence was visited by people from the past on several occasions – and with increasing frequency. Although still an unsettling experience, Clarence felt less anxious about the interactions. He didn’t understand how or why the people were visiting him, but neither did he worry about his mental health. Louise was right. Something had shifted in him. He just couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

Among the visitors was the old-time innkeeper, Abraham Kuykendahl, who told him the story of hidden gold he buried when he was an old man and knew his time was nigh. “Down by the creek, past the large oak tree with the crooked limb.”

Abraham asked Clarence if anyone had ever found his gold. Clarence admitted that he’d heard the story many times from Wick and Albert but they never said anything about the gold being unearthed. The old man seemed pleased by Clarence’s report. “I spent a lifetime collecting that gold thinkin’ it would make me happy,” said the old man wistfully. “Never did though. All it did was make me worrit.”

The young Carl Sandburg also made a return appearance. As Clarence swept the floor and thought about his mother’s voice telling him to “get up in the corners good,” Squirt stepped out from behind the pot-bellied stove. “You again,” said Clarence. “I swear you must be able to walk through walls.”

At that moment, he heard the front door behind him began to rattle and the windows began to shake. He stood perfectly still and did not turn around to face the door. Perhaps, he thought, if he ignored the sound, nothing would happen. But, as he stood in the middle of the store, a familiar golden light spilled around his feet and grew brighter until he was staring at his own shadow cast against the back wall of the store. He heard the heavy metal hinges squeaking, followed by a deep silence. The dust kicked up by his broom floated before him in the golden light. At his feet, Squirt stared past Clarence, directly at the front door.

“Hello, Clarence.”

Clarence turned slowly and was face to face with the young Carl Sandburg once again. Carl smiled and tipped his hat. But Clarence was in no mood for another unwanted visit. “Don’t you know you are dead?” he blurted out in agitation. “You died 16 years ago. Why are you bothering me?”

Carl looked down at his body and patted his chest with his hands as if searching for a missing pocket. “Dead? That is most distressing, I must say.” His hands continued to tap his hips and then to the front of his legs. “But I seem to be here. And in fine fettle at that.” Carl smiled gently. “Perhaps the rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated.” Carl's eyes swept around the store. “I do like this place. There is such a feeling of serenity. You must love it here.”

Clarence shook his head. “I ain’t hardly never been nowheres else. Seems right ordinary to me.”

Carl picked up a box of Bluebird orange juice, studied it for a moment and placed it back on the shelf. “Everything in a box it seems” He looked back at Clarence, “I met him once, you know.”

“Met who?

“Samuel Clemens.” Clarence stared blankly. “Mark Twain? Wrote Huckleberry Finn. That was the line I borrowed. Brilliant writer. Understood the soul of the common man. I always admired that about him.”

“What do you want with me? I ain’t done nothing to bother you.” stammered Clarence.

Carl reached into his coat pocket. “I’ve been working on my poem. Perhaps you could give me your honest opinion”

“I told you. I don’t know nothing about no poetry. Why are you asking me?”

Carl smiled. “You do know. You know it in your heart. You know it in your bones. You just need to ignore all those teachers who taught you to ignore the knowledge in your soul.”

“Listen to this. Give me your honest opinion.” Carl read from the paper in his hands.

The fog comes
Silence and stealth.

A mute mist over
City and harbor
Dissipates with the sun
And is gone.

Sandburg looked at Clarence expectantly. Clarence exhaled with resignation. “I don’t know. What does ‘dissipates’ even mean.”

Squirt jumped silently onto the table behind Carl and nudged the back of his hand. The stranger looked down at the cat. “Well, hello there my friend. I didn’t hear you back there.”

Clarence shook his head. “You might as well be asking Squirt your questions for all I know. I ain’t good with words. I told you before.”

Carl looked down at his paper and then back at Clarence. “You are right, of course.” He took his pencil and scratched through the lines on the page. Squirt purred as Carl reached down to scratch him behind the ears. “Now I understand why Paula insisted I come to see you.” Looking down at Squirt, he added, “You have both been very helpful.”

Carl tipped his hat and placed his hand over his heart. “Until we meet again.” As he departed through the front door the golden glow ebbed away, and the store returned to the dim light of a late fall afternoon.

Clarence looked at Squirt who continued to stare at the door. “For a poet, he sure does have a hard time findin’ good words.”

Fall of 1983

Clarence handed a brown paper bag to Mrs. King. “Have a good day. I hope Mr. King is feelin’ better real soon.”

Just as Mrs. King reached the front door, a distinguished gentleman in a black suit with a bright white shirt and a narrow black tie opened the front door. Seeing the woman approach, he held the door for her with a dramatic low sweeping bow and a rolling flourish of his free hand. “After you, madame!”

As Mrs. King left, Robroy Farquhar stepped into the store as if he was striding onto the stage at his beloved Flat Rock Playhouse. His dark eyes flashed as he surveyed the room to size up his afternoon matinee audience. “Clarence. Wick. Albert. How are you honorable gentlemen on this fine day?”

Albert and Wick raised their cups of coffee in salute. “How are you, Mr. Farquhar?” asked Albert.

“Never been better. The summer season was a tremendous success. The patrons were wonderfully entertained. The actors can still feel the warmth of the footlights on their faces. And now it is a beautiful fall day in October. Just glorious.”

Robroy swept past Albert and Wick on his way to the refrigeration cases at the back of the store. “Clarence. Do you have any of those pimento cheese sandwiches I adore?” Before Clarence could answer, he found what he was looking for. “Aha! Here is that delectable contrivance inspired by the very gods themselves!” Robroy spun on his heel and held the sandwich wrapped in cellophane with two hands as if an offering to the heavens. "A feast of modest means, yet rich in grace, where pimento and cheese doth dance in sweet embrace."

Albert chucked. “Robroy, pretty sure that ain’t nothing but two pieces of white bread with some cheese and mayonnaise between.”

Robroy’s face assumed feigned offense. “Good sir! No greater joy hath nature blessed than this savory fare, fit for kings and commoners alike. Cast thy scorn aside, lest thy taste remain as barren as the windswept heath."

As the vagabond strode to the counter to pay for his purchase, Wick called out, “Great season this year, Robroy. Not too many bats in the rafters, I hope. Do you need me to come over with my tennis racquet?”

Clarence frowned at Wick. “Tennis racket?”

Robroy sighed. “The good gentleman is referring to an unfortunate decision on my part to enlist his services during performances at the playhouse to control the bats with a tennis racquet.”

“That’s right,” Wicked laughed. “As a boy, I was pretty handy at tennis. One summer, Mr. Farquhar here hired me and Eddie to sit up in the rafters during shows and swat them suckers right out of the air.”

“Indeed,” Robroy clucked. “Unfortunately, Wick managed to bat one of the offending creatures directly upon the head of my leading lady. Her screams remain, to this day, the loudest ever heard in the playhouse. Took us 30 minutes to calm her down and resume the show. But, as they say, “The show must go on! And so it did!”

Robroy walked to the front door and turned back to face the three men watching him in silence. “Now, good gentlemen. I must bid each of you a fond adieu.” As he stood in the open doorway, he ran his hands along the wooden trim of the door frame. “I get such a feeling when I pass through this door, Clarence. It’s the feeling one gets when the curtain goes up stage and the lights and all the faces of the people you know and love are right there to greet and shower you with accolades.”

The actor placed his hand over his heart and intoned:

And whether we shall meet again I know not.
Therefore our everlasting farewell take:
For ever, and for ever, farewell,
If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;
If not, why then, this parting was well made.

The aging actor bowed once again, his head nearly reaching the floor with both arms extended and his palms turned upward. As he returned to an upright position, he stood ramrod straight and threw his chest forward. His head turned slightly with a half-smile on his lips. He slowly nodded to his enthralled audience one last time and then stepped through the door. With that, Robroy Farquhar was gone.

----

At the end of the day, Clarence locked the door and stood there for a moment to make sure no strange visitor would suddenly appear. The door remained unmoved. The only light was from the setting sun outside. Assured that there would be no apparitions visiting on this day, he walked behind the counter and carefully lifted the painting above the cash register off the wall.

He smiled as he turned the painting around and saw the flashing eyes of Emma Middleton. Even in a faded black-and-white photograph, he could feel the warmth of her smile. “I miss you,” he whispered.

Thoughts of the day he’d lost her began to creep into his mind. He tried to think of something else. But it was no use. It never was.

It was a fall afternoon, just like the current day. It was 1947.

Two matronly women were shopping and catching up on the latest village news and gossip. In the stillness of the quiet afternoon, Clarence could hear their conversation at the back of the store.

“Did you hear about poor Emma Middleton?” asked one of the women as she read the label on a bag of flour.

“What news?” her friend asked.

“Such a tragedy. You know she was pregnant with her first child.”

“Oh, gracious. Don’t tell me she lost her baby!”

“Even worse, I’m afraid. Emma died. In childbirth.”

Her friend gasped. “My Lord! Died!?”

“Right there in the delivery room. With Callahan holding her hand. The whole family is devastated. She was so young. And so excited to be a mother.”

The two women stood in silence for a moment. The friend asked tentatively, “And the baby?”

“Thank God, the baby was just fine. Darling baby boy with beautiful brown eyes. Just like his dear mother.”

The second woman reached into her purse and pulled out a white lace handkerchief. Dabbing her eyes, she asked, “What did they name the child? Did they name him after Callahan?”

“No. They named him Alexander. Emma was adamant months before the child was born that if they had a boy, they’d name him Alexander.”

Behind the store counter, Clarence listened in stunned silence. He could feel the blood draining from his face. The room began to spin, and he felt like the walls of the old store were collapsing on top of him. He struggled to catch his breath. He fell backward against the cigarette display, knocking several cartons to the floor.

One of the women looked over at Clarence worriedly. “Clarence? Clarence! Are you ok?”

Without answering, Clarence staggered from behind the counter. He tripped into the display of cereal boxes he’d built the night before and it crashed to the floor. One of the boxes broke open, sending Cheerios skittering across the weathered wooden floorboards. Gasping for breath, Clarence stumbled past the two women towards the back of the store.

“Clarence! Clarence! Where are you going? Are you alright?” The stunned women watched as Clarence crashed through the door to his apartment. Clarence ran past his bed, through his small kitchen and out the back door into the overgrown field behind the store. Brambles and briars tore at his clothes and ripped his skin as he ran blindly through the brush. He didn’t feel a thing. The sound of the woman’s voice careened through his head in a terrible taunting echo. “Emma died. Emma died. Emma died…”

Reaching the far side of the field, Clarence continued into the woods that encircled the village. He ran until he could run no more and then collapsed to his knees. Tears spilled from his eyes onto the ground between his hands. His fingers clawed at the soil, tearing up handfuls of damp black dirt. He wanted to escape. He wanted the ground the absorb him. To swallow him. He wanted to silence the voice ringing in his head. “Emma died. Emma died. Emma died…”

Sobbing uncontrollably, his body sank to the ground and Clarence rolled over on his back, smashing the handfuls of dirt over his offending ears. A primal scream escaped from the depths of his soul, rising like a grief-stricken prayer past the tree canopy and into the heavens. Overhead, a single crow circled high above the village and cawed; nature’s messenger calling out the terrible news.

Clarence’s parents, Rufus and Helen Peace, found him the next morning. Still lying on his back. His face and hair caked in dirt. His white shirt torn and bloody. He did not answer their frightened questions. “What happened?” they implored. “Were you robbed? Did someone chase you out here and beat you?”

Clarence remained mute. He never answered their questions – not that day and not any day after. Eventually, his family stopped asking. He’d obviously had some sort of breakdown but, with time, he seemed to slowly return to normal. At least, something close enough to normal that the furtive glances in his direction and the whispers from the back of the store began to fade into a distant memory.

Still, those who knew him all agreed that Clarence Alexander Peace was never the same person after that day.

As Clarence relived the pain of that day, 36 years prior, he surveyed the store around him. Same old shelves of canned goods and boxes. Same old green paint. The same black pot-bellied stove. The same produce. The same customers. The same. The same. The same.

Everything was the same except him. Now he was old. His body was betraying him with pain and overwhelming feelings of regret. How was it that his entire life had been spent in a rundown wooden building in a small town a thousand miles and a wasted lifetime from his dreams?

He thought of what Louise had told him. About the people stuck in this place. Swirling in an endless eddy of time formed by the great Flat Rock. But he was alive. They had no choice. But Clarence could choose to do something.

Looking out his apartment window, he considered the empty field where Flat Rock High School once stood. An arsonist had burned the school to the ground in 1974. He recalled how shocked the community was to find out that the arsonist was a volunteer firefighter who was always the first on the scene at all the suspicious fires that occurred around the county that summer.

As he stared out the window, a spark of another kind took hold in Clarence’s mind. His problem was the store. If there was no store, he would be free. He could leave Flat Rock. He could be an artist. He could live the life he wanted. Not the life thrust upon him by the generational gravity of a family business.

There was a way out.

——

That night, well after midnight, Clarence stood in the center of the store holding a metal container filled with kerosene. He studied decades worth of burn marks in the old wooden floor. Through the open door of the pot-bellied store, he watched the fire he’d just built grow brighter and hotter. No one would suspect anything. Just a terrible accident. Hot embers on the floor. A small fire that spread to the shelves. Then spread from the shelves to the walls and the ceiling. A venerable old building in the heart of Flat Rock, consumed by a tragic fire.

He would tell them that he smelled the smoke and saw the flames from his apartment. He’d run outside and yell for help. But the fire would be too far gone. The fire department would show up and try to contain the blaze. But the fingers of flame reaching into the night sky above Flat Rock would be too hot and too intense to allow the building to be saved. After 80 years, Peace’s Grocery would be no more.

And Clarence Peace would be free.

He wasn’t sure where he’d go or what he’d do. All he could think about was the place he wouldn’t be. Behind that counter. Behind those walls. Crushed under 50 years of monotony and broken dreams.

He tipped the metal canister forward and carefully poured the kerosene around the stove. Just enough to make sure the fire took hold. Not so much that anyone would suspect it was anything other than an accident.

He looked around the store. Now illuminated by only the light of the flames spilling through the open door of the stove. He glanced up at his painting of Markley’s Blacksmith Shop. Earlier, he’d taken one last look at the photo hidden on the back. As he stared into Emma’s eyes. He whispered, “Forgive me”, then returned the painting and her photo to the wall where she had silently and secretly watched over Clarence for over 30 years.

Now, Clarence looked down at the puddle of kerosene slowly spreading around the stove. He removed a match from its box and held the tip against the striking strip. He slowly and deliberately dragged the head of the match across the side of the box and watched as it burst into flames.

As Clarence held the burning match in front of his face, the reflection of the small flame danced in his eyes. A fiery dance celebrating the promise of freedom … at last.

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