Summer Wind

Summer Wind

Chapter 14 – Morrison - “Time is of the essence, but the essence is forgotten”


What was it that Nickelback said in their song? Feeling way too damn good.

A feeling of euphoria had been hanging onto Jameson for so long now that she should have realized that she was going to crash any moment.

The end of track season was always enough to just about push her over the edge into depression, but this year, the end of the season was combined with a miserably wet, rainy winter that had put a sudden halt to her running. There were no art classes to fall back on, and to top it off, Warren was off on some kind of extended weekend retreat for soon-to-graduate heroes.

She should have known she was going to spiral downward into her old habits. She should have been stronger. She should have been able to make it through one long weekend on her own without Warren around to baby-sit her.

But here she was, in the back of the school grounds, gym bag full of spray paint cans, and a handful of her old cohorts gathered around to back her up. She should turn around and go home. Listen to her common sense. Listen to that tiny voice that said this would not end well.

But, the blank wall at the back of the gym did look so inviting, like a canvas, begging for her to express herself. And it wasn’t as hard to squash that little voice as one might think.

Jameson turned to Derrick, Joe, and Kelly. “Let’s go grab the scaffold. This is going to be a big project.”

“Do you want me to start on the background?” she heard Chris ask.

“No, you’re look out. Let us know if you see headlights coming this way.” Chris was only fourteen, and would go to juvie hall if he got into any more trouble. She didn’t want him even touching the paint cans tonight. Juvie Hall might keep his permanent record clean, but as small and delicate as he was, she couldn’t bear the thought of him being locked up anywhere.

Derrick, Joe, and Kelly knew what they were getting themselves into. Derrick and Kelly had been in and out of trouble so often that they had friends and family on the inside, outside and everywhere in between. Joe was well over six feet tall, and built like a linebacker. No one was going to mess with him. They could take care of themselves, but Chris reminded her of a stray puppy. She wished he hadn’t caught wind of what they were up to tonight. But when he heard, she couldn’t tell him no. Those eyes alone could melt her heart.

Jameson helped the boys drag the scaffold from where it was being used to repair the parapet behind the softball bunkers. Once they had re-assembled the scaffold, the boys started on the background, while Jameson started on the main subject of the painting, the portrait of Jim Morrison that was on the cover of one of the Doors’ albums. Jameson loved the contrast of dark on white that was used in the picture. She changed up the image a little making it almost a silhouette, a study of shadows and highlights.

As she was working, her thoughts drifted to Warren, and the guilt that she had been dodging began to sneak slowly into her consciousness. He had been trying so hard lately to keep her from sinking into a state of melancholy. It seemed almost like a betrayal to seize the first opportunity when he wasn’t around and head off down the path that her criminal tendencies were most apt to lead her. Had she no self-control? She knew he would be disappointed.

Jameson climbed down from the scaffold and looked up into the face of Morrison. Then again, it was a good picture. Maybe he wouldn’t be quite as disappointed as one might think. It did need one more thing, though. A title, a quote. She knew just the perfect one.

“Time is of the essence, but the essence is forgotten…”

Kelly finished packing away the supplies, and then walked over to stand with Jameson. The full moon and the lights from the nearby parking lot illuminated the portrait in stark relief. Jameson wondered if it would be as startling in the daylight.

“Like the quote,” Kelly said, studying the mural. “Is that from their album?”

“No idea,” replied Jameson, “It was carved into the back of a bathroom stall when I went up to tour MSU. Seems appropriate though.”

Joe and Derrick had just returned from replacing the scaffold when Chris shouted the warning, “Headlights!” Chris jumped to the ground and headed towards the duffle bag that lay forgotten near the corner of the gym.

“Leave it, Chris, I’ll get the paint. Stick with Derrick and Kelly. Meet you on Seventh Street.” Jameson grabbed the duffle bag, and headed back through the tangle of outbuildings and storage sheds that littered the back half of the high school campus.

Skirting the chain link fence that was supposed to separate the campus from the nearby residential section of the city, Jameson headed down the sidewalk looking for her car. Keeping to the shadows, she scanned the street for any headlights. She had thought she had heard a car motor, but the noise must have carried from one street over. She hoped the guys had gotten away okay. Once she got to her car, she would swing around and go pick them up.

She spotted her car up ahead, and checking the street once more, she stashed her bag in the trunk and went around to unlock the driver’s side door. Climbing in, she decided later, she must have been pre-occupied with thoughts of Warren and whether he would compliment her painting or curse her for her foolishness, because she never heard them coming.

A hand grabbed the frame of her door, and stopped her from closing it. A figure loomed above her, and if she had been able to get the keys in the ignition, she would have started the car, and sped away with out even looking up to see who it was.

Unfortunately, she fumbled the keys and they fell, lost now in the inky blackness of the floorboards. Inside lights weren’t a safety precaution that had been thought of in 1965, and the Mustang’s interior was pitch-black.

Jameson looked up to see who was holding her door open. Hoping against hope, she prayed she would recognize the face of one of the security guards that her father had hired to patrol the high school campus. But the street light behind the figure threw his face into the shadows and Jameson couldn’t make out any distinguishing features.

When next the figure spoke, Jameson’s heart sank.

“You’re out kinda late, aren’t you, Mills?” said Keith Alsbrook. “Where’s your skanky boyfriend? The freak with the tattoos? Tired of him already?”

As much as Jameson wanted to reply, as much as she wanted get out of the car, kick Alston in the ribs again, and make him regret his insults, Jameson knew she had to stay in her seat. In her rear view mirror, she could see someone moving in the shadows. She knew that Alsbrook wasn’t alone. Reaching her hand down slowly, she began exploring the floor mat under her feet, searching for the missing keys.

“I’ve always liked your car, Mills. Why don’t you slide over, and let me test drive it?”
Keith reached down to play with Jameson’s hair. “Then, we can stop over on Davis road and you can let me explore the interior, let me see for myself if what everyone says about the principal’s daughter is true.”

“Go fuck yourself, Alsbrook.” Jamie thought she felt the edge of the key ring under the tips of her fingers. Scrapping the keys slowly along the mat, she dragged the ring gradually towards her.

Keith’s temper seemed to rise at the suggestion, although Jameson was sure she had given him this advice at least twice a day since school had started this year.

“Your punk-ass boyfriend is good enough for screwing, but I’m not?” Keith reached for Jameson, attempting to pull her from the Mustang. Jameson grabbed onto the door handle with one hand, slamming it shut on Keith’s fingers in the process, and jammed the keys into the ignition with the other hand. The engine started smoothly and Jameson was convinced she would have gotten away, if not for the faulty lock on the passenger side door.

One of Keith’s friends yanked the door open, and dragged Jameson out through the passenger side. Panic set in as she felt myriad hands on her body, pulling her this way and that. Rough hands tugged at her clothes, and she felt the seam on her shirt start to rip. She didn’t think she was going to be able to catch her breath, and she couldn’t focus on who was standing where.

Then she heard Keith’s bellow of rage, “You broke my hand, you fucking bitch.” He rounded the front of the car and headed for her. Cradling his right hand against his chest, he shoved Jameson against the trunk of the car with his left. His friends held her down as Keith thrust himself against her, tugging at her jeans, and fondling her breasts.

Suddenly headlights illuminated the street, and the red glare of campus security’s flashing lights lit the scene. The irony of the fact that the team whose very existence had irked and harassed her for the last four years, was now rescuing her, did not escape Jameson’s notice, even in her distressed state.

Luckily, both of the security cars had shown up, and the guards were able to easily round up Keith and his accomplishes. As Jameson watched one of the guards speaking into his cell phone, no doubt contacting her father, a movement to her left caught her eye. Jameson turned her head slightly, and there, on the other side of the fence, she could just make out the golden curls of Christopher Strawn. Hidden by the bushes, he was barely visible, but she was still able to see the phone clutched in his hands. Her rescuer and savior… though at the moment, he looked terror stricken. Jamie wondered if it was the thought of the fate that had almost befallen her that had Chris looking so pale, or if it was the consequences that he knew lay ahead for her at the hands of her father.

“Thank you,” she whispered into the wind. Then she turned away as one of the guards headed her way, doubtless ready to escort her to the back seat of one of the patrol cars.

The ride to see her father was short. It hardly gave her time to sort through the events in her head. Though she did have plenty of time to think as they waited for the parents of the other boys to show up, and for the Advisory Board and the Superintendent of Schools to be contacted.

The fact that Jamie had a trunk full of spray paints in her car, and a fresh mural was evident on campus, weighed heavily against her. Her past miscreant behavior was well documented, and the fact that Keith’s hand was already broken before she was dragged from the car, did not paint a guiltless picture of Jameson for the board that had gathered to listen to the evening’s events. There was also the documented attack against Keith on the track field from earlier in the year.

When both sides were heard and all of the facts were considered, there was only one deciding factor that mattered to all of the parents involved. No respectable college would consider giving scholarships to any of the students if a police record was present.

So Keith and his friends would be transferred to a different school, a note was make in their school records, but no charges were filed. No harm, no foul.

No charges were filed against Jameson for the assault or the vandalism to school property. She was expected to return to her classes as usual, and everything would be swept under the carpet. Everyone’s scholarships were safe.

But, as the door closed behind the teens when they left, as Jameson endured the long ride home with her father in silence, and as she climbed the stairs to her room to take a long, hot, scalding shower, she could not get one picture out of her head - Keith Alsbrook laughing down at her, as he pinned her to the trunk of her car.

When Warren arrived home late Monday evening, there was a tall, familiar teen waiting for him on the sidewalk in front of his house. Warily, Warren approached Brian, surprised that the boy knew where he lived.

“What are you doing here?” Warren asked, wanting an explanation for how Brian had tracked down his residence.

Brian waved away Warren’s questions, and preceded to recap the weekend’s events. Warren had already begun heading for his motorcycle before Brian had even gotten through half of the recitation.

Dusk had fallen before Warren finally found Jameson sitting in the park, tears still streaming down her face. She had been forced to return to school that morning. Her father had driven her to school, escorted her to her first class, but the moment he left to return to his office, she had fled campus.

She couldn’t face anyone. Never before had she felt so beaten down, so helpless and so violated. Always before she had faced her problems head on. Well, maybe not head on, but she had never run from them before. But now, she felt like she was running away, and she would never be able to stop.

Warren sat with her for the rest of the evening, holding her, wiping away the tears, and listening when she was ready to talk. All the while the heat emanating from him was rising, until Jameson realized that his body temperature was almost unbearable. Her skin ached where it came into contact with his. But none of this set off warning alarms in her mind. Instead, she continued talking, cleansing herself all the doubts and frustrations she felt.

When she finally admitted to how powerless she felt in the whole situation, Warren already had a plan in mind.

Climbing onto the back of Warren’s bike, Jamie wasn’t sure if giving him directions to Keith’s house was exactly the best decision. But at the moment, all she could wonder was if the burning she felt in her chest was anything akin to what Warren must feel all of the time. If it was, she marveled that he was able to control himself enough everyday to keep from burning down the whole town around them.

They only had to wait a few moments in front of Keith’s house before he emerged and headed for his car. Warren and Jameson followed him to the local galleria, where he met up with the rest of his buddies.

Jamie had stayed on the opposite side of the parking lot. She hadn’t even wanted to approach his car. She didn’t want to be anywhere around him. Her own fears humiliated her, but as she watched the flames rising from the other side of the parking lot, some of the ineffectiveness she had felt was replaced with the satisfaction of knowing that sometimes, whether its justice or whether its karma, not every contemptible action goes unpunished.

The papers would state later that the crime scene investigators were certain that it was arson, that the fires were set deliberately. It was unheard of for three cars to simultaneously and spontaneously burst into flames. Police were baffled however as to how the fires were set and what had caused the initial ignition. An accelerant was undetectable, though one must have been present for such damage to have been done in such a short amount of time. The fire had burned at such a high temperature that the cars were virtually unrecognizable. Even more mysterious was the fact that despite the high temperatures, not even the paint had been blistered on nearby cars. They were all unharmed. Only the cars of three teenage drivers had been destroyed.

Only Jamie knew how lucky those three boys were that they hadn’t been inside of the cars at the time that they had burst into flames.

Watching Warren stride back across the parking lot, Jamie was awed. She had never seen him let his power consume him so completely. The flames weren’t contained merely to his hands and arms. The power flamed up around his legs. It mixed with his hair so that Jameson was unsure of where the black and red tendrils stopped and where the flames began. It coated his face in an unearthly red glow, and turned his eyes as black as coals, small red embers glinting out in the darkness.

Another explosion rocked the parking lot as Warren reached her side. Jameson fell into step beside of him. She didn’t look back as sirens began to sound in the distance. Cinders fell down on Jameson like sleet, and ashes floated down like snow.

It was an auspicious beginning to the holiday season, and suddenly, Jameson felt so much better.

Across the parking lot, names, dates and times were logged into journals, and details were recorded with satisfaction. Information was being gathered swiftly and plans were falling in to order. All in all, the spring time looked like a favorable date.

Merry Christmas.