I’m releasing Chapters 7 and 8 this week. Chapter 8 will follow in a separate e-mail.
This novel, 3 Lives in Jury, is delivered, a chapter or two, every Thursday. There will be mistakes because self-editing is a fool’s game. I apologize in advance but experimentation has a price.
I’d love to hear what you think. I can be reached at terryfries.edit@gmail.com or leave a comment.
It’s better in the Substack app, if you’re so inclined.
The past, like time, is an illusion. Once you understand that, there is nothing else to know.
Chapter 7
While Whit convalesced at home for three days, Lucy prepared. She’d hiked into Mud Valley before and though it was years ago, she was certain the route wasn’t complicated. In better times, her father had shown her the way, even carried her for part of it, on trips to fishing holes and hunting hideouts.
To be sure, Lucy checked online and the trail was essentially a straight shot westward from Jury. Campsites were highlighted on one map, two official forestry service sites and three improvised locations. She spotted Moe’s Canyon and thought she remembered that name. If the forest hasn’t swallowed up the path and it hasn’t been redirected, at the end of Moe’s Canyon they had to climb up beside a waterfall and eventually, that led to Mud Valley, a massive watershed of rivers and bogs.
They could do this in a day, she thought, if they did it right.
For Lucy, a journey into the Mud Valley backcountry meant treading into a past she swore she would never visit again. She has, in her young life, stuck to the conviction that her father didn’t deserve one speck of her memory.
Years ago, he took her on carnival-style tours through the small towns and villages around Lake Charity. They became a two-person show of travelling mystics, building a substantial reputation on both shores of the giant lake, which stretched about 100 kilometres from Nor Loch in the north to Gold Rush in the south, including Jury, which sat on rocky cliffs overlooking the lake, a few minutes north of Gold Rush.
Her dad would set Lucy upon a high rock, a bench or a picnic table and call people in to have their futures told and their souls healed, if God and the Lake willed it. Lucy was a channel to the spirits, he shouted his pitch to the sky. Sometimes he’d parade Lucy through the streets, with chains binding her hands for show, until enough people to form a crowd allowed themselves to be caught in the net. They were curious, or bored, or simple.
Lucy never considered that she was being used by her father to raise money for his shifty habits. She wouldn’t have cared if she had. She and her dad were doing things together.
After drawing a crowd, Lucy assessed each person as they came forward, searching for the telltale signs; the snaking, twisting silhouettes entwined around them.
The swirling ghosts screeched cowardly and sullen as she approached, but were unable to resist. She attracted them with music, humming softly, ignoring the yellow teeth gnashing, the brittle nails snapping. She understood that was mere posturing.
The spirits wielded no power and as Lucy sang out the names of those in the crowd who had come forward, the vengeful spectres spat forth their hosts’ secrets out of incomprehensible spite. Phantoms brushing up against the barrier between worlds were driven by selfish want for a tangible existence.
Lucy would shout out names, dates and places dear to the hearts of the amazed crowd, and shake a few dollars loose for the collection hat.
Lucy’s visions and uncanny accuracy, made her a celebrity from a young age. Church people feared her, many avoided her, but the redeemers tried to keep her safe. Many people wanted Lucy removed from her father’s control and he responded by taking Lucy and her mother away to live in a small cabin in the hills, off the well-trodden trails.
Lucy was a legend at 10 years old. And when her mother crashed to the pavement on the brightest of noon hours at the intersection of Blister and Main, with her daughter serenely looking on, Lucy’s place was cemented in Jury lore for all time.
Her mother drowned face down in a puddle. Police called it a drug overdose and deemed the puddle irrelevant. She would have died regardless.
Lucy scrutinized every second of her mother’s death from start to end. Her mother sighed, gurgled, blew bubbles in the water and twitched for what seemed like ages before she kicked one last time and slumped, as though her body had lost its bones. Lucy expected more of a show; a shimmering star or a fiery burst, but there was none of that.
Her mom’s horrible ending brought a shocking conclusion to a day that had dawned shiny bright a few hours before. It was Lucy’s birthday and she’d come to Jury with her mom and dad so they could buy a cake to celebrate. Her father was standing in line inside Big Heart Bakery while Lucy and her mom waited on the sidewalk.
Lucy bounced up and down, boiling over with excitement, and shook a vial loose from her jacket pocket. She scooped it up, but not so quick her mother didn’t notice and swiftly did the math. She had noticed pills missing from her supply but until this moment, she blamed Harley, her husband. They had squabbled over it the previous night and he had denied it. She didn’t believe him.
It was obvious now. The kid was the culprit.
Lucy apologized and babbled her reasons for taking the pills. She had been helping with her mother’s addiction, she believed, and had taken only a few at a time so her mother wouldn’t miss them. She wanted her mom and dad be awake for her birthday and in a desperate plan only a child could conceive, she started a week ago to make it happen. She took a pill each day from her mom’s stash, banking the supply would run short and her mom would be in her own mind come Lucy’s birthday.
It worked spectacularly, even if her mother had seemed a little grumpy, until the vial tumbled from her pocket.
Lucy’s mom held out her hand, and Lucy handed over the vial. So what? Lucy thought, not clear on how addictions worked. It’s not the end of the world that her mom had to keep her snoot out of the pills for a day or two.
Her mother held the bottle up to the sunlight. Her blackened front tooth stuck out from her face as she grinned crazily. Her body shook with anticipation as she lifted the vial and poured the entire contents into her mouth and gulped. She spread her arms wide before the sunny blonde child, teaching the kid a lesson about stealing, or authority, or addictions, Lucy was never clear on the lesson, then collapsed face down in the street.
The rest of the day was a blur of faces, the hospital, nurses and police.
When mental health staff ruled her scars were minimal, she was set free into the custody of Harley, who led her home in the dark at a rapid pace, growling each time he was forced to wait for her to catch up.
She woke the next day to an empty cabin, a carrot muffin and a note scrawled on a piece of cardboard torn from a box of Raisin Bran.
Dear Lucy,
You have every right to hate me for leaving, but you are strong and I know you’ll be fine. You’ll probably even learn to be happy because you’ll be able to do as you please and you’ve always wanted that.
I am sorry. I think you might deserve better, but I can’t get the pictures out of my head, of how you gave your mother those pills and then stood watching and smiling while she died. I saw everything through the bakery window.
Don’t worry. I won’t go to the cops. I don’t blame you. If your mother and I had done a better job of raising you, it wouldn’t have happened. I blame myself.
You’re the blood of my blood, so I’ll never turn you in, but I can’t bear to stay.
You’ll find a way through this. It’s who you are.
Make your way to Maisie Kane’s place. She and her husband are good people and they’ll get you looked after.
I hope you find peace one day.
Your father,
Harley Kloot
Five years have passed, and Lucy still had the note. She laminated it and took it out to read when she needed to stoke her rage.