Mysterious Memories

Manuel Nava Leal

© 2009 All Rights Reserved

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Cover Artwork by Jake Hellbach © 2007

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced electronically or in print in any form except for brief reviews without the written permission of the publisher. ISBN: 978-0-9796288-8-7 Creative House Press A Nurturing Place for Your Creativity www.CreativeHousePress.com

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Acknowledgements My sincerest appreciation goes to my family and friends for their support and encouragement in my endeavors at short story telling. I dedicate this book to them and especially my wonderful children who helped me create and share fairytales, folktales and chronicles in the bedtime stories I imparted to them. I would also like to thank my publisher and editor Alan Bourgeois for giving me the opportunity and method to convey the following stories. Manuel Nava Leal

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Contents

Pearl 5 Silver Dollar 8 Free Fall 11 Carla’s Gifts 16 Butch 21 Martin’s Escape 27 The 13’s 31 Barren 44 Hailstorm 48 Knowing 58 Craving 62 Gray Eyes 72 El Curandero 76 The Kid 79 Natie 89 The Hanging 102 The Rocking Chair 105 Gloria (La Tomatera) 109 Qualemortl 119 Indio 133 A Santa Story 138 Globes 142 NVA NAM1 146 Lucifer Lost 150 About the Author 178 Redivivus Literacy Program 179 Beautiful Heart, A Collection of Romantic Poetry

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The Rocking Chair

The chair rocked back and forth, like a pendulum swinging in an old-fashioned grandfather clock. The interesting thing is that no one presently sat in it.

When Sharon and I first saw the rocking chair, it was coated with a thick layer of dust. “Someone, don’t know who, dropped it off on my mother’s front porch many years ago. I was just a boy!” said the old man with a steady and piercing look. “Along with an old quilt, which I eventually sold to the only antique shop in town. For some odd reason, everyone who’s bought that old rag keeps bringing or sending it back and asking for a refund. Old hag over there that owns it never gives them their money back, though,” he told us with a cagey grin. “Hell, she’s made more money off that old rag than all the things she’s ever sold combined!” he cackled and coughed.

We brought the rocker home and placed it on the front porch of our Victorian-style house. Sharon’s mother had willed the house to her. It’d been in the family for generations and we were happy living in it. I’d remodeled two old rooms into separate offices for us, as well as a darkroom for Sharon. She’s a freelance photographer and I sell commercial real estate, farmland mostly. The majority of farms I sell and buy had been in the same families for generations. Some were sold at rock bottom prices by

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farmer’s kids who’d decided early on they weren’t cut out to “toil the land” like their ancestors.

I’d been taken to a land auction by a friend a few years back and couldn’t believe what properties were going for! After talking to Sharon about it and convincing my parents to loan me a few thousand, I began my real estate venture. I paid my parents off in less than a year and have been going strong ever since. Our house is near town and the closest city is about eighty-five miles from us, so it’s country living for the most part. Weekends bring city people who come antique hunting or for weekend getaways at the local bed and breakfast. They cause a bit of a traffic jam on our main street then, but it helps our town’s tax rolls.

Oh, the rocker! The first time we saw it move I thought it was just the wind. We didn’t pay it any attention because we were on our way out for a viewing. Sharon laughed and clicked a picture just for fun. We jumped into the truck laughing and joking about it as we drove off. Later that evening, I sat on it rocking and sipping an iced-tea while Sharon was in her darkroom developing photos. I’d been dozing off when Sharon screamed so loud I fell and broke the tea glass, cutting myself in the process. I ran to the back of the house leaving a trail of blood droplets all the way there. The door to the darkroom was open, revealing its red hue. Sharon was in the dark facing me and holding a photo in one hand, her arm extended, out as far as she could reach and covering her mouth with her other hand. Her eyes, wide open in shock, didn’t focus on me. I stood there for a minute and slowly, but forcefully, pulled the photo out of her hand. Tears began to fall from her eyes as she pressed her face into my shoulder and she began

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sobbing. I couldn’t look at the photo right then; I brought it down next to me. Sharon eventually stopped crying and asked me to follow her to the kitchen so she could help clean and bandage my cuts.

As she cleaned and patched me up I remembered the photo, which I’d placed face down on the counter without thinking. I reached for it and Sharon quickly slapped my hand down over it. I angrily snatched it out from under her hand and looked at the picture. My hand shook as my eyes focused on a fuzzy white image of a comely woman who held a quilt tightly to her bosom. For a minute or so, I couldn’t understand why this had shocked Sharon so, until my mind began to clearly see that she was sitting in the rocker on our front porch. Everything that was ours, the plants, the patio table and the portable radio, all those things that belonged to us were there clear as day; the only thing that wasn’t was the fuzzy image of this stranger sitting there on the rocker on our front porch. She wasn’t an old woman. She appeared to be in her late thirties although she could pass for much older in bright sunlight. She seemed to be from another era, her dress was old fashioned with an apron pulled to the side. Her eyes looked pleadingly into the camera with just a hint of a tear in her right eye. Her wrinkled but strong hands wrung the quilt holding it tightly.

The more time I looked at it, the image seemed to become clearer, not as clear as the inanimate objects around her but clearer still. I began to make out a word stitched around the top of the apron; it was Sharon, the same name as my wife’s.

Sharon slowly took the photo from me and gently touched the image. She quietly told me that she had been named after her great-great

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grandmother. She’d been widowed at an early age and had raised two daughters on her own while running a dairy farm. It was said that both girls had been raped by a farm hand, who was found dead later. Despondent and shamed over the affair, she suffered until she couldn’t stand it anymore. One early evening, after a day of cooking and baking, she took her favorite quilt, sat on her rocker and drank a glass of poisoned milk. Sharon had never mentioned this sordid past and now here she was, quietly sobbing at the picture of a long-suffering ghost.

The owner of the antique store grinned from ear to ear as she parted with the old quilt; after all it always found its way back to her. The chair, which rocked back and forth from time to time, came to a complete halt soon after Sharon and I placed the quilt on the lap of its rightful owner.

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Knowing

A light drizzling rain had soaked his clothes

thoroughly. The cool rainwater had been refreshing at first. His clothes had grown cold and heavy and his thin frame, which had been warm, was now chilled to the bone.

He’d stopped briefly beneath the canopy of a storefront and found himself, staring at an expressionless face reflected on the glass door. The dark brown eyes caught enough of the streetlight above to reveal emptiness. The normal cockiness was gone. What was left of a shit-eating grin were deep wrinkles that had taken a lifetime to form. People thought of him as a smart-ass but that had never bothered him. Knowing it had kept him distant from everyone. No one could do him harm from a distance. The alienation however had created loneliness to the point of despair.

And loneliness was carving a deeper chasm in his dying heart. The longer he breathed, the deeper the crevice. Pain was nothing new to him; he felt not only his own but that of everyone he touched. If he happened to rub elbows in a crowd, the person he came in contact with would instantly be shocked as though by static electricity. He, on the other hand, would immediately sense whatever it was that was affecting them, be it an aching tooth or a sore back.

It had been a burden the likes of which very few of us ever experience. Oh, we feel the pain of those suffering souls whom we love dearly. We sometimes even have what medical practitioners call sympathy pain. The pain I’m addressing here, however, is insufferable.

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Imagine this; you come home to your very pregnant wife, whose feet are swollen and aching so that she can hardly walk. In addition, she is dilating and her water is about to break.

You, walk in and say… “Hi honey, I’m home!” You kiss her and suddenly you’re the recipient of all her suffering. Not only do you feel your own aches and pains, now you’re carrying her load too!

Hard to imagine isn’t it? Well, for him, that is only the tip of the iceberg,

as the old cliché goes. Why then the smart-ass grin? Knowing. Knowing beforehand what others are about to

say or do, not way ahead of time, like some mediums seem to predict, mind you, just a moment or two before, that’s all. It’s as though nothing were ever new to him.

Imagine “déjà vu” as a constant. Cool for a while, but only for a while. Intuition was not what he called it; he preferred “gut feeling” as it has a manlier ring. Well, the grin came and it stuck.

Standing close to the building, trying to warm himself, it appeared as though the dark night had grown darker. The drizzle that had reflected whatever light there was had now become a downpour. Tears rolled down to his chin as his thin torso shook feverishly.

Knowing the inevitable, he silently watched and waited.

Knowing. Even as a child he knew. He once narrowly

avoided being snatched when a pedophile’s fingers came in contact with his while reaching for the same bag of chips. Running from that store with the

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pervert’s thoughts and images burning his mind was excruciating.

It was a week later when the perpetrators’ victim was found in a bayou near town. The boy had gone missing the same day from that very store.

The murderer was caught a few months later and bragged about the killings. His only regret was missing out on his intended victim at the grocery store. The pervert couldn’t stop thinking of the kid with the “electric touch.” In fact, he’d been captured because he couldn’t stop asking children about that special little boy with the “electric touch.”

Loneliness. His young but weary heart craved the love of a

woman, a loving embrace, a warm passionate kiss. All the typical sensations normal people share with each other. These were the feelings he had never experienced. His single mother had given him up early in life. She’d been incapable of nurturing. The lack of love was killing him.

He slid down and came to rest on the top step of the storefront, eyes, weary from lack of sleep, unable to shut. Hands shaking uncontrollably, he waited.

A long sleek car drove up and parked just in front of the store and a beautiful young woman came rushing out, unfolding a large blood-red umbrella. Her radiant smile captured his heart and that cocky grin reappeared once more.

The wait was finally over. Shocked to see how beautiful she was, he was

even more surprised by the wonderful loving kiss death gave him. Her warm embrace brought on such peaceful rest. Together, they languidly drove off into the darkness.

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Left behind was a cold hard shell of a body with a shit-eating grin and sunken eyes that reflected the bright red taillights of a luxuriously warm automobile.

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Manuel Nava Leal considers himself a wordsmith who has been writing since childhood and recalls creating short stories and poetry early in life. His passion is the short story and has converted several into theatrical plays. Manuel enjoys reading and writing poetry and is inspired by life’s subtleties and grandeur. Mr. Leal has been involved in theatre for over twenty years and is currently producing his fifth play and writing his sixth, intending it to debut in Fall of 2008. Mr. Leal is on occasion invited to teach creative writing classes on a voluntary basis in Middle schools in both Houston and Pasadena, Texas and relishes the opportunity of bringing the written word to youth. He has also written and produced a children’s play in Spring Branch, Texas for the Spring Branch Boys and Girls Club. Mr. Leal is the proud loving father of two sons, Pedro Joseph and Genaro “Naro,” Daniel and one daughter, “Gina Ann Leal.” He appreciates the love, joy and inspiration they bring to his life.

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We hope you have enjoyed this book. As part of our community outreach program, we have teamed up with the Redivivus Spiritual Center’s Literacy program. We encourage people to donate their books to this program so that they may be given to others who are less fortunate. To donate this book or any other book, please send it to: Redivivus Spiritual Center Literacy Program 1302 Waugh Dr., #199 Houston, TX 77019 Thank you for your participation. RSC will send you a receipt for your donation, which could be used for your taxes. At the time of this printing, the Redivivus Spiritual Center has applied for it’s not for profit status with the IRS.

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Beautiful Heart, A Collection of Romantic Poetry by Manuel Nava Leal

Over time a person will fall in love. At that time, one feels a great emotional impact on th3eir lives and maybe at a loss for words. Beautiful Heart is a wonderful collection of love poems to help express how one feels during this time of euphoria. Share these poems with the one you love. Available at: CreativeHousePress.com or Amazon.com or your local bookstore.