Chapter 6 #4
To my right stood an old two-story clapboard house, painted teal, with red shutters affixed to its windows.
However, it wasn’t a house. The sign out front proclaimed it to be the post office.
To my left, further down a street that curved off of the one I was on, was a gas station.
But I didn’t see any cars. Or employees.
Straight ahead sat an honest-to-freaking-goodness pirate ship.
The Jolly Roger even sailed from a mast that reached for the sky above it.
A quick glance let me know that the ship had been converted into a shop of some kind, and a few people walked in and out as I stood there, staring like a simpleton.
Further on, just down the street from the pirate ship, was what looked like a mosque or holy temple of some kind.
On the other side of the street sat two identical buildings, that could have been homes or businesses, as well as what looked like a very small reddish-orange circus tent.
At the end of the street that the post office, pirate ship, and mosque were on was a street that ran perpendicular to it.
Four simple looking, one-story houses lined that street, though I wasn’t sure if they were homes or businesses.
If I squinted a bit, I could see that on the street behind the one with the pirate ship there were other businesses and what looked like…
train tracks? Off to my right, and much further down the creek, I could see a big red barn.
I assumed that was simply a barn, but this was Possibly, Texas. Maybe it was a church?
I didn’t see a graveyard. That’s what mom told me to look for when I got to Possibly.
Scanning the town around me, I couldn’t image that I had missed it.
There wasn’t all that much to see in the downtown area of Possibly, after all.
My aching feet told my brain to just ask the first person I saw if they knew where the graveyard was in town.
It would be a lot quicker than walking around like an idiot until I just happened to stumble upon it.
My hands clutched the suitcase handles firmly and I marched towards the pirate ship.
Hopefully, whichever person I found to ask actually lived in town and wasn’t just visiting.
Then again, from what I could see, I couldn’t imagine anyone visited Possibly unless forced.
Like a teenager whose mother dropped him off on the highway and said: “Good luck!” I mean, essentially.
As I approached the massive pirate ship, plunked down in the center of town, I realized a swinging glass door was set in the side of the hull.
A sign over it proclaimed the establishment to be Starbuck’s.
Not Starbucks, but Starbuck’s. From the smells wafting out of the place, I could tell that the pirate ship was actually a coffee shop.
The other thing that immediately got my attention was the man—or what I assumed was a man—standing to the side of the entrance in a green-screen suit.
Like the kind used to do special effects in movies.
The suit covered every inch of his body, including his face and his head, but certain things—around the waist area—led me to believe the person in the suit was male.
“Hey,” I said as I approached, “can you tell me—”
“You can’t see me.” The man cut me off.
“What?”
“I’m invisible today,” he said. “I’m part of the hull.”
“You’re part of the—”
“Shhhh!” He hissed. “Hulls can’t talk. Maybe waves slapping against them make some noise or something, but they can’t talk.”
I just stood there, dumbfounded.
“Crap.” The man groaned.
Then he was reaching up and snatching off the green hood that covered his head. Golden curls and the sun-tanned, freckled skin of a guy not much older than me appeared.
“I ruined it, didn’t I?” he asked, golden flecks in his brown eyes sparkling in the sun. “I shouldn’t have said anything, right? If you’re being a hull, you’re a hull. Hulls don’t talk. I talked. I’m hopeless, man.”
“Wh-what?”
“If you’re going to be a hull, you have to be the hull, right?” he explained. “Everyone always tells me, ‘Levi Lee, you have to commit. If you can’t commit, don’t bother!’ And here I am talking to you.”
“I’m sorry?” I giggled nervously. “What is going on?”
The man—Levi Lee—frowned at me for a second, his eyes wandering over me before landing on my suitcases.
“Oh!” He jumped suddenly, a smile splitting his face. “You’re not from here, are you?”
“No?”
His chest bowed out proudly. “Levi Lee, my good man. Performance artist and all-around handyman.”
His hand shot out. Against my better judgment, I reached out and took it.
“That explains nothing, but nice to meet you,” I murmured. “Levi Lee?”
“That’s me,” he said proudly once more. “Now, the specials today are Café Mochas and Red Eyes. Personally, I’d stick with the mochas. Chocolate hides a lot of sin and coffee tastes like sin to me. Of course, I probably shouldn’t say that to a customer, but—”
“Look, Levi Lee?”
“Yes?” He smiled brightly.
I didn’t get a chance to ask my question.
A gunshot rang out nearby and my instincts kicked in; I dropped my suitcases and got low, throwing my arms around my head to protect it.
When I looked up at Levi Lee, he was just staring at me quizzically, the lime green hood clutched in both hands in front of him.
I prayed he would hold it a little lower to cover… things.
“What is going on?” I barked.
“What?”
“The gunshot?” I asked frantically, glancing up and down the street as I crouched in front of the coffee shop next to him.
“Oh.” Levi Lee chuckled. “That’s Wyatt.”
He gestured vaguely towards the end of the street in the direction of the mosque-like building.
I uncovered my head just enough to glance around Levi Lee’s body in the direction he had indicated.
A man, dressed like Yosemite Sam—blue jeans, chaps, plaid long-sleeve shirt, ten-gallon hat, with a handle-bar mustache to boot—was strolling up the street towards us, gun in hand.
It was hard to tell at such a distance, but it even looked like the gun was a six-shooter.
“His timing’s all off,” Levi Lee said, as though this explained everything. “You’ll get used to it.”
“What?” I looked up incredulously.
“He had a stroke.” Levi Lee gestured for me to rise, and I slowly obeyed, using the hull of the ship to brace myself since my knees felt like jelly. “His timing is off but he’s harmless.”
I watched cautiously, keeping Levi Lee between myself and Wyatt as the weird man marched down the street, swinging his gun. He passed within a few feet of us, paying us no mind, then turned on the road that went down towards the gas station.
“Don’t go buying any candy, Wyatt!” Levi Lee hollered, making me jump. “You know it gets you all riled up!”
The crazy man with a gun and no timing—raised a hand in the air, a single finger rising to respond to Levi Lee’s demand. Levi Lee laughed.
“Grandy won’t sell him any candy anyway.” Levi Lee waved a hand in Wyatt’s direction.
“I’m pretty sure I’d give a guy with a gun anything he asked for,” I muttered.
“He’s harmless,” Levi Lee repeated.
Obviously, I was in a town full of crazy people.
People who jumped off of bridges into creeks after screaming some girl’s name.
Guys who did performance art in green screen suits outside of a coffee shop that looked like a pirate ship.
Men who felt shooting a gun randomly was a perfectly okay thing to do.
And then there was the radio station DJ who really, really, really loved Tiny Tim.
I could still hear the song playing, but it seemed to be coming from multiple directions.
Apparently, my theory about several speakers littered throughout town had been correct.
Where is Jack’s place?
“Levi…Lee?” I asked.
“Yes, my good man?” He beamed.
“I’m looking for a graveyard.”
“You don’t look like you need a graveyard yet,” he quipped. “You’ve still got plenty of years left in you, I’d think. If you want ‘em.”
I paused. “Right. Yeah. The graveyard is supposedly close to a house I’m trying to find.”
“A marker!”
“What?”
“A landmark.” Levi Lee expounded. “One of the steps on your journey!”
“Sure. Yeah. Okay.” I agreed to avoid further discussion. “A landmark. I need to find the graveyard.”
“Well, it’s never in my interest to keep a man from his quest,” Levi Lee said importantly. “Bend of the Road Graveyard is just over there. Just beyond AMOR.”
AMOR? AMOR!
“The radio station?” I asked, looking in the direction Levi Lee was pointing. “That green building between the two yellow buildings?”
“Precisely! Just walk through the trees there. You’ll see the tram—”
Ah. They’re tram tracks. A tram? In Possibly?
“—and just keep walking past the buildings. Behind AMOR, you’ll find Bend of the Road Graveyard.”
“Thanks.” I reached down to grab the suitcase handles. “Thanks a lot.”
Levi Lee bent at the waist, performing a grand bow.
“Anything for a fellow searcher and traveler,” he stated grandly.
I looked at him, my eyes darting to his waist area again.
“Maybe a pair of shorts to complete the outfit?” I suggested as I walked away.