Flash by Gregory Meece
THE SKETCHBOOK
Blacktop parted infinite walls of cornstalks as I drove through another town. It was as if Moses had stretched his hand across a verdant sea. A fallen leaf on a current, I was pulled aimlessly along.
My phone’s disembodied voice told me, “Stay straight through the intersection.”
Those who live here don’t need directions; they know where they are, which always seems more important to them than where they’re heading. Time stretches for them, each moment savored. For me, it threatens. I run faster.
The blur of the landscape muddled my thoughts until something caught my eye. Beside the corn, its brilliant white pages flicked gently with summer’s feeble breeze.
I felt compelled to back up. The image of a book emerged in my rear-view mirror.
It was a blank-page journal—no cover art or text. Just pencil sketches: landscapes and nature close-ups—mushrooms emerging from a rotting stump, a splitting milkweed pod, its silky tufts exposed. The back half of the book remained untouched.
Nobody would have thrown something like this away. Beautiful. Personal. Unfinished. It must have slipped out of some hiker’s fanny pack. I tossed it onto the passenger’s seat and drove another ten miles to a filling station.
Two men sat out front. The grey-haired one, a pipe clenched in his teeth, folded his newspaper, compact, as if arming himself. “Damn shame, these speeders,” he said. “Matter of time before someone got killed.” The only indication that the younger fellow had been listening was a subtle head shake. Words aren’t wasted when the sun bakes each inhaled breath.
“Pardon me, fellas, can I get a cup of coffee here?”
“Scorcher.” It suggested that asking for coffee on such a hot day was crazy.
“I need to stay awake.”
The other man pointed inside.
As I poured the dubious contents of the electric coffee maker, I overheard the men talking.
“Said she was on a bike ride.”
“College kid?”
“Said she was studying art.”
“Damn shame. Snuffed out like that.”
I returned to my car to pump gas. The digital numbers raced across the screen. “Did you say an art student was killed?”
“Just before Fallowfield. Hit at the crossroads.”
I made a U-turn. After about ten minutes, I reached the intersection where I had found the sketchbook. My car’s wheels crunched sun-dried stubble as I pulled off the road. Opening the sketchbook, I cautiously turned to the last entry, as if sneaking a peek at the end of a book to see how the story ends.
The last sketch revealed a blackened X of corridors edged by the vertical fortress of stalks—a mazelike illusion like those M.C. Escher prints. But there was something else. Beyond the horizon line, where the sky met the tassels crowning the densely planted corn, I saw the artist’s ghostly inspiration: a gnarled, bark-sloughed tree. Its stooped spine and splintered limbs were grotesque against the corn rows’ geometric precision. Yet, the girl’s final drawing unmasked its dignity. A reminder of what was. A portent of what’s to come. The tree took center stage in the otherwise unbroken scene. The corn was relegated to a supporting role in the artist’s monochrome drama.
With the engine off, the only sound was my breathing as I contemplated the specter of the ancient tree, the young artist, and everything else I might have missed.
A car rushing from the opposite lane broke my trance. I was about to turn around and head back through Fallowfield, continuing down the empty stretch of road. Instead, I moved straight ahead, hoping it wasn’t too late to be pointed in the right direction.
Gregory Meece is an educator, author, woodcarver, and Amish taxi driver residing in Chester County, Pennsylvania. His fiction has been featured in over two dozen anthologies, magazines, and journals, including Mystery Most Traditional, Love Letters to Poe: Tales Torn from the Heart, Larceny & Last Chances, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Weekly, Thriller Magazine, Bristol Noir, Willows Wept Review, Kings River Life, Punk Noir, Flash Fiction Magazine, Fabula Argentea, Freedom Fiction Journal, The Writers’ Journal, and others. Visit Gregory Meece at his website.
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