Continual Grace (short story)

Continual Grace

The rain washed through with a seemingly personal vengeance creating drops the size of dimes that beat against anyone or anything in their path.  Sean had never seen weather quite like this before.  The large drops pelted and splattered against his visor and he thanked his Irish luck that he had chosen to wear his leather jacket and chaps.  Pools formed on the flat highway making the motorcycle’s tires part them like mini Red Seas lifting walls of water on either side of him.  Thunder boomed like cannons overhead setting his teeth to chatter while lightening ripped through a sky suffocating from enormous ill looking clouds. Sean gripped  the handlebars tightly until his fingers throbbed.  He surmised that the farmhouse should be just a few miles past the next exit according to an old man who ran the gas station two towns ago.
“Yer not goin’ to stop me,” Sean muttered; his mood equal to that of the storm.

A semi passed him on the left sending a wave of water that nearly knocked him off his bike.  The Irishman cursed vehemently while trying to maintain control.  Straining to see, Sean noticed his exit lay ahead.  As he made his way off the dreadful highway, he imagined how they would meet.  She’d be standing at the door unaware of his intent.  Sean didn’t want to think of the killing part.  He had never taken a life before, although, he knew how death looked.
He saw her in his mind as perhaps his age, plain, stupid and flattered that an attractive man like himself had come to visit her.  He would pretend that they had the same friend in common and after she became comfortable with his presence, even unwilling that he should leave, Sean planned to exact his revenge.  She took his brother and Sean would make her pay. He would work out those details later; but, not before she begged for her pathetic and useless life under the accusing eyes of her executioner.
That was Sean’s last thought before a roaring wind snatched him from his bike, carried him for almost a mile before it tossed him like a rag doll into a nearby swollen stream.  A voice shouted above the fading roar just before darkness swallowed him up.

“Land sakes child, you sure ain’t ready to meet your maker yet.”

He realized that he couldn’t be dead because every inch of his body burned, stung or throbbed.  It hurt to open his eyelids.  At first, Sean thought he was blind; but, after a few moments he began to pick out shapes in the dark, a window, some furniture and the blanket covering him.
“I’m safe,” he muttered, or so he thought.
The next time he opened his eyes, he perceived daylight except for a large black shape looming above him.  Gradually, the shape became a defined face with two cinnamon colored eyes, a wide nose and two red lips.
“It’s been two days, boy.  I wondered when you’d awaken,” a deep melodic voice emerged behind the bright white teeth framed in the color of strawberries.
“Ce´ he´ tusa?”  Sean asked.
Two dark brows raised.  “I know who I am boy.  Who are you?”
“Sean Reilly.”
“Well, Sean Reilly, He wasn’t ready for you, child.  You should have been deader than a doornail, a cat coming up on ten lives, a chicken with a wrung neck, a hog ready for bacon, a bug under my shoe…”
“I get your meanin’,” Sean said flatly.
“You ain’t got a broken bone on you.  Good thing I came along and pulled you out of that creek or you would have sunk to the bottom like an old boot full of holes.”  She stepped back revealing a fairly large frame.
“Ca´ bhfuil me´ ?”
“This place is called the farmhouse.”
“Farmhouse,” he repeated softly.  What Irish luck! “How did I get here?”
The woman rolled her eyes.  “I brought you here of course.  You’re such a skinny thing.  Why it wasn’t a lick of trouble.”
“There was this wind…”
She laughed.  It sounded deep and comforting.  “That was no wind.  A tornada carried you off like a babe in his mother’s arms.”
“No’ like any mother I’ve had.”
The woman eyed him thoughtfully.  “You would surely know that, child.”
Sean rubbed his sore jaw.  That was an odd thing for her to say.  “Does anyone else live here?”
“Who wants to know?  For now, only me.”  She adjusted his pillows.  “I suspect that you’ve probably gotten the most sleep you’ve had in years.  Are you hungry?”
“Aye,” Sean replied warily.  His stomach agreed noisily.
“Your clothes are in the bathroom.”  She pointed to a doorway across from the bed.  “Mind the stairs,” she boomed from somewhere below as the sound of floor boards squealed.
Sean wondered how she moved from one moment beside him to somewhere else so quickly.  He swung his legs over the side of the bed.  Wincing, he discovered that his painful limbs looked like an abstract painting covered with black, green and purple splotches.  He groaned loudly.  As he intended to stand, his head began to swirl like ice in the bottom of a whiskey glass.
“I cahn’t do this,” he complained.  The last time he felt this bad was an awful night in September during his prison stay when several bad lads beat him senseless and cut off two of his fingers.
After the dizziness subsided, Sean glanced up and a bit startled to see the large woman staring at him.  How could someone that big move so quickly?
“Come child, I forget you ain’t nothing but a little flesh and bone.”  She wrapped her arm around his shoulder and helped steady him.
He smiled inside.  She seemed oblivious to his nakedness.
“Seen it all before,” the woman commented as she walked him toward the bathroom.
After a warm shower, shave, hair brushed and clean clothes, Sean sat a a worn oaken table in an equally worn kitchen with cabinets thirsting for paint, chipped linoleum flooring and spider web cracks in window panes and counter tops.
The woman set a plate of hotcakes and eggs before the hungry Irishman.  Sean grabbed the fork and began shoveling food into his mouth.
“Don’t you want to thank the Lord before you eat?”
“Eh?”
“Pray.”
“Ye mean to God?  Far what?  He’s never had anythin’ to do wi’ me, so why should I bother wi’ Him?  Besides, I dohn’t believe there’s a God.”
The woman sat down across from him a strange look on her face.  “Well, child, He believes in you; but, I sure can’t imagine why.”
Sean was a little taken aback.  Still, he polished off the cakes, scrambled eggs, ham and potatoes without another word while the woman went to clean up dishes at the sink.
“Mmm mmm…this old place could sure use some work,” she exclaimed as a knob fell off a cabinet door she opened.”
“Doesn’t look as though it has been cared far in yahrs.”
“Little money and no time,” the woman sighed.
Sean hobbled over to the cabinet, his legs stiff.  “That can be fixed with…”
“One of these?”  She produced a screwdriver.
When he had tightened the knob, there was the matter of a leaky faucet.  A few hours later, a window frame had been repaired and just needing paint and new panes replaced.  Exhausted, Sean returned to bed and slept until the aroma of something extraordinary filled his nostrils.  She called it “Jumbalaya.”  His mouth burned long after he had finished eating; but, it was worth it.
“How long have ye lived here?”  Sean sipped the iced peach tea.  Although it tasted quite good, he was disappointed that she didn’t have anything stronger to drink in the house.
“Not long at all,” she replied sewing a piece of clothing.
“Ye haven’t told me yar name.”
Her eyes gleamed like smooth wet stones.  “Why would it matter, child?  You weren’t looking for me.”
Uneasiness descended upon him.  Did she know his plan?  But, how could she?  Did he reveal something by talking in his sleep?
“Who said I was lookin’ for anyone?”
She smiled. “Good friends are like that peach tea you’re drinking.  They refresh you.  Isn’t that why you came to Alabama? To find a friend?”  She left the room and Sean got up and followed.
“Maybe I am lookin’ far me friend,” he said a bit too angrily.  He entered a spacious room right off the kitchen with two floral couches and two red armchairs.  Tables of various sizes decorated with tasseled lamps were lined with dust as well as the glass protecting the artwork that adorned the walls.  Sean peered out one of the tall windows hoping to see his motorcycle; but realizing it was probably in a hundred pieces from here to New York.
He moved down a never ending hallway that had rooms on either side until the staircase met him.  He climbed the steps and found her just at the top standing in front of a room up from the one he had been sleeping in.  Breathing like a guppy in too little water, Sean said between gulps of air, “I am lookin’ far a gerl who lived here.”
“Come and let me show you something.”  The woman grasped his arm.
Sean felt strength in her touch.  He had no expectations and therefore, he was without a doubt amazed.  Every inch of room had been transformed into another time and another place.  On one wall, lush emerald vegetation surrounded jewel like flowers along a petal covered path leading to a brilliant waterfall that cascaded from ebony cliffs and plunged into a lake as clear as aquamarine tinted glass.
Sean turned around and around until he felt dizzy.  Even the floor and ceiling had intense colors that overwhelmed him.  He stepped outside of the room.
“I feel ill,” he said.
“I think that if you are not aware of the beauty of your surroundings, they can be frightening.”
Sean frowned.  “I didn’t say I was frightened.  It looks like someone, as ye Americans say, threw up a rainbow all over the room.  Who painted that?”
The black woman shook her head.  “Vomiting in color.  Now that’s a first.  Best get some sleep, Sean Reilly.  There’s more work to do come morning.”
“What makes ye think I want to do more werk?”
Her dark brows rose.  “How else do you plan to pay for your stay here?”
“I didn’t ask far yar help.”
Her eyes darkened and she seemed a bit taller.  In all of Sean’s young life, he had never back downed from anyone or anything.  Losing his fingers proved that.  The lads wanted him to admit to stealing their smokes; but, he wouldn’t admit anything even though he was guilty.  Something deep inside warned him not to push the woman.  Instead of telling her what he thought in a barrage of nasty language, Sean pasted a smile on his face and walked on toward his room.
“Ye still did no’ tell me who ye are and who went mad crazy wi’ a paintbrush in there?”  Sean turned around and she was gone.

He heard her muttering, “Why do you bother with that skinny little man who needs to have his mind washed out with lye soap?”
“An bhfuil me` as mo mheabhair?” Sean rubbed his face.  “Aye. I must be the crazy one.”
The next morning, another breakfast feast awaited him.  After he finished eating, Sean stepped outside and discovered tools, paintbrushes, several gallons of white paint and an assortment of other materials to scrape and repaint the old farmhouse.  He stepped out into the gravel drive and gazed up at the enormous job before him and wondered why he couldn’t have been saved by a tiny old grandmother who lived in a stone house.
“Ah, but then, she might not feed you as well as I do.”
Sean jumped.  He turned and watched the large woman swinging her frame like pendulum as she walked around the back of the house.
Scraping old paint and repairing places in the wood siding lasted nearly the entire day.  Sean felt too tired to lift a fork to his mouth when supper time came.  He fell asleep after a few bites and awoke about four hours later to the delightful smell of apple pie and humming.  He devoured the pie.  From the doorway, he saw the dark shape of the woman rocking in the old rocker on the porch.  She started to sing and he found her voice to be comforting like the arms of his mother when he was but a wee lad.  He hadn’t given her a thought until now.
Sean decided to leave her alone.  There was no point in engaging her in conversation that resulted in unanswered questions.  Obviously, the girl didn’t live here, or if she had, she was gone.  He stopped by the crazy room.  Flipping the light switch just inside the door, Sean took a deep breath and went inside.  A soft glow from the bulb overhead seemed to tone down the brightness.  On the wall to his left flittered a pair of faeries.  The way the light played upon the glitter in their wings gave the appearance these creatures with lovely faces and yellow hair were really flying.  It made him smile.
His people believed in little people and their kind.
Sean glanced up.  Immediately, his bottom made contact with the floor.  Above, a deep purple dragon, wings spread, jaws apart revealing glistening teeth and eyes blacker than death seemingly fixed its gaze upon him.
“Mercy,” he croaked.  It was the most amazing thing he had ever seen and the lifelike artwork actually made him weak, a reaction that startled him.

Painting the outside of the farmhouse took two full days.  He stood back after its completion and congratulated himself for a fairly decent job.  After fixing the screens on the porch, the old house actually looked almost new.
A long shower and one of her delicious meals was reward enough.  As he descended the stairs, he heard Frank Sinatra crooning a song.  Sean liked some of the older American singer.  He sang a few lines softly.
“Mmm mmm mmm.  That’s some heavenly music,” the woman said just within his hearing.  “That child can certainly sing.  If he don’t do something stupid, he might make something of himself.”
Sean sat down on the porch steps and sipped his peach tea and enjoyed the light breeze as the sun began its gradual descent.  It occurred to him just then that he had no money or transportation to leave.  The woman had to know that, too.  Was she just using him?  He had become her repairman losing focus of his mission.
The large woman appeared in front of him.  How did she do that?
“ Come with me,” she said and started in the direction of the barn.
“What’s far supper?”
Sean followed but she did not answer him. She pulled open the heavy door with ease and entered the barn.  Sean right behind nearly fell backwards from the smell of rotting flesh.  Next to a pile of straw lay the bloated corpse of a once beautiful golden retriever.  The eyeballs had been eaten leaving vacant sockets that appeared freakish and disturbing.  Sean felt his insides retch.  He ran outside and puked.
After a little while, he returned.  He saw the woman pointing at a dark corner beyond the dog.
“You did an evil thing by destroying this poor creature for no good reason.  Git out before I make a purse from your hide.”
Sean thought the woman had really lost all her marbles at this point.  There wasn’t another soul in the barn.  Then he saw it; a long blackish thing slithering over the straw.  Feeling no shame, he jumped nearly a foot behind the woman.
“What is that?” he rasped.
“Cottonmouth,” she replied.
At the sound of her voice, the snake opened its jaws revealing the creamy white tissue that had earned the beast its nickname.
“Git,” the woman ordered.
As the snake, all five feet plus, slithered out of the barn, Sean stared mutely and somewhat shaken.
The large black woman glanced down at him suddenly and again seeming twice as tall.  “Poisonous fangs and revenge are very much the same thing, child.” Her voice sounded eerily calm.  “They blindly destroy beautiful things like that poor creature over there.  You have two choices in life; you can either be a blessing or you can be a curse on the lips of others.  Bury the poor thing.”
Sean didn’t argue.  He grabbed a shovel which just happened to be hanging on a nail beside the barn entrance.  He dug a hole outside and found a grain sack for the dog.  After he had buried the animal, Sean took the shovel back inside.  He walked around in circles trying to get his mind wrapped around how the woman seemed to know about his plan.  A glint of red from the other side of the barn caught his eye.  Under a canvas tarp sat his motorcycle.  He cursed under his breath and immediately glanced around making certain she hadn’t heard him.  Small dents here and there; but, all in all, the motorcycle was not damaged.  He had assumed that his bike and seen a fate worse than his.  The wallet and money were still in a saddlebag.
“All finished, child?”
“Why didn’t ye tell me aboat me bike?  And, I’m no child.”
She stood in the doorway and pursed her lips.  “That’s debatable and you didn’t ask.”
He felt that rush of attitude that left him powerless, throwing caution to the wind.  “Ye know why I’m here, dohn’t ye?  Who told ye?”
A long sigh escaped her.  “What purpose could you have harming another child like yourself?”
This child thing was grating on his nerves.  “Answer me question.”
“It sure wasn’t hard to figure.  You have her name in one of those bags on that thing you ride and the word dead next to her name.”
“That’s all?”  Sean wanted to believe it was no more than that.
The woman smiled.  “That would be all you’d accept.”  She ran her hands along her wide hips.
He needed a place to think.  The painted room.  It didn’t frighten him anymore or make him sick.  In fact, he felt almost comforted, included as if he blended in with the scenery.  Tucked in the corner of the wall, Sean wrapped his arms around his knees and hid his face.
“She painted this.”
His head jerked up.  He never heard her come in.  “What?”
“The sweet girl you want to murder; she painted all of this.”
“So she does live here,” Sean mumbled.
The woman shook her head.  “Not anymore.  She went on home,” she said in a far away voice.
Dead?  All this for nothing?  The Irishman expected to be enraged; but instead, he felt almost relieved.  “Ye knew all the time and still ye saved me life and took care o’ me.”
The woman smiled sadly.  “You have much to learn, Sean, or is it Patrick Sean Donnelly?”
Sean opened and closed his mouth.  Who are ye?
“I hear you singing in the shower.  You have as much passion in that skinny little frame of yours like that girl had with a paintbrush.  You two could be so good together. You’d better wake up now and do something decent with your life. I am Grace and you had better wake up, boy.”

“Wake up, Sean.  Open your eyes for me.”
Sean pushed open his eyelids an annoying beeping sound in his ears.  A woman in green scrubs with curly red hair and honest green eyes gazed down at him.  She smiled.
“Welcome back, Sean.  The entire staff on this floor has been waiting to meet you.”
“Whare am I?” He glanced around.
“You’ve been in the hospital.”
“Hospital?”
“Mmm Hmm.  Three weeks today.  Some folks found you in a ditch after the tornado that came through here.  My name is Rain.  I’ve been your nurse since you came in.”
“I dohn’t understand.”
“That’s because you’ve been in a coma.”
“No,” he croaked, “I’ve been at the farmhouse with the black woman who lives oat there.”
The nurse squeezed the IV bag.  Her red brows furrowed. “Is that the last thing you remember?  Do you remember your accident?”
Before Sean could respond another person, a man also dressed in green scrubs, entered the room.
“Hello, Mister Reilly.  I’m Doctor Guilford.  You are one lucky young man.  Other than a nasty crack in your head, you have no broken bones or internal injuries.”  The doctor waved a penlight in front of his eyes.  “Honestly, son, I am quite astonished.”
“I dohn’t understand how I can be in a hospital when I was stayin’ at the farmhouse.”
The doctor shrugged.  “Rain has probably told you that you’ve been in a coma for three weeks now.”
Sean rubbed his face.  He felt a beard.  “I dohn’t understand.  A black woman found me and took me to the farmhouse.  She shaved me face…”
The doctor smiled sympathetically.  “Sometimes a nasty bump on the head will jar your memories.  I wouldn’t worry about it.  Everything will come back in time.”
Sean was released four days later and into the hands of the local sheriff, Conroy “Conny” Jackson.  Conny drove the young Irishman out to an old farmhouse.  He told Sean that the house had once been owned by a lady, Grace Bienvenue.  The sheriff had put Sean’s bike in the barn for safekeeping after the storm.
“I’ve lived here,” Sean told the sheriff.  “I painted the whole thing.  Why does it look like it needs paintin’ again?”
The sheriff removed his Smoky the Bear hat and scratched his head.  “I don’t rightly know, son.   No one has lived in this house for over a year now. The doc says you might be remembering someplace else.”
Sean took his wallet from the sheriff and smiled wanly.  “Perhaps.”
“Where are you headed?
“Back to New York, I think.”
“What brought you here in the first place?”
Sean shrugged.  “Can’t remember,” he lied.  “Do ye mind if I joost have a peek inside.’
“It’s not locked,” the sheriff said.
Sean went into the house.  It had to be a dream because the kitchen showed none of the work he had done.  He climbed the stairs quickly and hesitated just outside the room.  Sean put his hand on the doorknob.

“Hello, Sean,” a familiar voice said behind him.

He turned, tears collecting in the corners of his eyes.  “I think I was here befar; but how could that be?”

“Grace lived here,” Rain began.  “She owned this house and she saved me from a terrible life.  A man died five years ago when a young girl drove her car off the road one night.  She was angry and impetuous.  She was in such a hurry to get somewhere, nowhere.  The poor man was sitting on his motorcycle by the side of the road.  A deer appeared to her left and the girl swerved to miss it.  The car went off the road and when she tried to overcompensate, the car hit Daniel Donnelly.  He died a week later; but, not before he told me about his younger brother, Sean.”

Sean ran his fingers through his hair.  He studied the nurse for a long time.  “Ye keeled me brother.”

She nodded sadly.  “Yes, it was me.  Grace talked with the judge and there were no charges brought against me.  She said my own guilt would be punishment enough. She helped me decide to become a nurse and take care others after what I did.  I know nothing I could ever say or do will make it right; but, I am so sorry, Sean.”

Sean balled his fists and pressed them against his temples.  “He was me only family.  I heard aboat his death when I was in prison.  I thought aboat nothing else except taking me revenge.”  He opened the door and stared.  Then, he said with tears in his eyes,“I couldn’t ye or anyone else.

Rain put her hand on his shoulder.  “Grace is still watching over me and I think you, too.”

“What weel happen to the house?”

“I don’t know.  I thought about buying it myself.  No one is going to want a room with a dragon on the ceiling.  But, there’s so much work to be done.”

Sean smiled a crooked smile.  “I know where she keeps the tools.”