Heritage Trails (fiction) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Liz Abrams-Morley

HERITAGE TRAILS

AP Service: Dateline: Milan, Ohio A break-in during cherry festival last week at the birthplace of Thomas Alva Edison left the sleepy town of Milan, Ohio perplexed. “Nothing appears to have been stolen, ” George Conklin, chief of detectives said yesterday. “In fact, we seem to be dealing with some kind of vigilante maid service. ” According to docents familiar with the historic site, papers placed on Edison ’ s desk had been straightened, and one mirror appears to have been wiped clean of fingerprints and dust.

I’d been working the bar at Coltrane ’ s, in Ft. Myers, Florida for maybe two months before Alva and I talked. Alva was Coltrane ’ s, had been working there since the place opened, and no one—not the bartenders, not the big, slow-witted busboys, not even the owner, Mr. Harvey Synell himself with all his money, ever messed with Alva.

I was the new girl at Coltrane ’ s. I’d come down from Jersey for my grandfather ’ s stupid-ass wedding and couldn ’t figure a reason to go back—Mom gone, my brothers all married and cheating, just like every guy I’d been involved with. I got sick of angry, big-haired wives coming by whatever CVS I worked in that week and getting me fired. I think I could have put up with the guys with the bad toupees and the smoker ’ s breath sliding their rings in their pockets before asking me out for coffee, but after Mom died, I couldn ’t take the way there was never a woman to cry to. New Jersey ’ s a small state if you ’ re past thirty-five and you find yourself in bed with other people ’ s husbands.

The manager at Coltrane ’ s didn ’t ask for references, only if I was strong enough to carry trays of drinks without The Silent Body Melody by Orna Ben-Shoshan © 2009

spilling. I said sure I was. I have never been afraid to work up a sweat, I said. But I was thinking, just don ’t askme to dealwith peopleorvermin.

“Well, will you look at the tail on that one?” Alva said to me the night a rat moved right out from behind the twelveburner stove in Coltrane ’ s kitchen.

I glanced at what looked to me like a line of thick electrical cord, bundled and bound with gray electrician ’ s tape circled tight around and around until it came to one nasty little point what looked like yards from that nasty rat’ s ass. That was my view from my vantage point up on a counter. I didn ’t have a clue how I got up that high, one leap; the only time in my life I ever vaulted anything.

“Jesus. You scared of a little fourlegged creature of God that I could smash with a broom handle?” Alva