Page 13 of Lightning in a Mason Jar

“Don’t mix bleach and ammonia.” Libby tapped the cleaners on my cart. “The fumes can make you pass out. Or even kill you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Although passing out didn’t sound like a bad idea, I was far from suicidal, in spite of what Phillip would have others think. “Where does your son stay while you work?”

The question had seemed natural, but the moment I spoke I regretted the intrusive words. Would she answer? I’d never been a part of secrets that had such serious implications. But she was my only “friend,” and so far as I could tell, I was her only one too. “Sorry if that was nosy. My mother always said the best way to have a good friend was to be one.”

“Not nosy at all.” Libby emptied a small trash can into the larger bag attached to the cart, helping me finish my list even though she had to be exhausted from her own. “Keith will be in school for a few more days finishing up first grade. I’m still figuring out what to do with him for the summer. He’s been having a tough-enough time adjusting.”

I didn’t have a clue what to suggest. Most of my friends never held a job, and the few who did were teachers who’d usually dropped off their children with their mothers. “I’ll help however I can.”

“Thank you. Annette has information on some babysitters that I pray I can afford.” She crossed her arms, hugging herself. “It’s hard leaving him. His dad used to say that I ... Never mind.”

And just that quickly, questions could lead to slipups. I grabbed the handle of my cart. “It’s time to clock out.”

Smiling, Libby raised her hands. “Praise the Lord and pass the gravy.”

We put away our supplies in the janitors’ closet, hung up our uniform smocks, and stepped into the factory still in full swing. The facility operated on three shifts, never silent. The whine and grind of the machinery reverberated in my ear, but I was growing accustomed to the point where I could hold a brief conversation.

The factory felt like a beast that swallowed people whole, then spit them back out at the end of a shift, sweaty and wrung out. Except withan excitement to be free that reanimated them by the time they cleared the parking lot.

I pitched the garbage bag into a dumpster by the loading dock. The thud launched a swarm of flies. “What are you going to do with the rest of your afternoon?”

“Pick up Keith from school,” she said as we paused for a slow-moving forklift heading toward the line of trucks. “Then we’ll head down to the riverbank to do his homework and eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”

“I love the water.” The beach, specifically. But I couldn’t afford the bus fare to Myrtle Beach, even if I’d felt ready to leave the security of my new hometown. I pulled a floppy hat from my sack to ward off sunburn. Although, more than just following old cautions from my mother about preventing freckles, the hat also offered a hint of disguise I welcomed.

“You should join us sometime.”

“Thanks. Someday.” I needed more time to trust that I wouldn’t let something slip.

Halfway across the lot, Libby hefted her satchel higher on her shoulder, fat folds of discarded paper scraps sticking out. She pressed her elbow against them to keep them from slipping free. “I’m not a thief. I made sure it’s okay to take the scraps. I use the throwaways for Keith to practice his alphabet, and Annette gave us a used Spirograph. This way he doesn’t waste his school notebook.”

“Smart and thrifty idea, Mama Libby.”

I’d written countless letters, invitations, and thank-you notes over the years, never once giving thought to how that paper came into being. Sure, I understood it came from trees. But I’d missed the intricacy of the process, the intensity of the labor for something so whispery thin. Like glassblowing, there was an art to making paper with the synchronicity of the workers choreographed to perfection inside that building.

Yet for most, without the joy of art. That emotion had been smashed out like waste squeezed from the pulp.

As the ringing in my ears faded, shouts swelled just past a line of trucks near the gate. An altercation of some kind. Men getting heated. Libby stepped back, clutching her bag, her eyes darting as if scrambling for an escape route. Except there wasn’t one other than returning into the paper mill, then taking another exit on the far side of the labyrinth. Libby lurched toward the building.

My aching feet protested over the extra steps. I clasped her elbow. “Come on. We’ll just walk fast along the edge of the fence. Whatever’s going on over there is none of our business.”

Libby chewed her bottom lip before nodding. Over the past week I’d figured out that Libby was a follower by nature.

Her wariness made me wonder, though, and worry. What danger had made her run with a child in tow? She claimed to be a widow. Except she never mentioned friends or family to help with Keith, and I didn’t ask since I didn’t want her prying too deeply into my past. No doubt she felt the same about her secrets. I needed more time to practice this new way of communicating.

Later, though, because things were escalating in the parking lot shouting match.

The barked taunts grew louder, a mixture of “she’s mine” and “not anymore,” followed by “keep your hands off my girl or I’ll ...” Each sentence was punctuated by a shove. My nerves burned from a cocktail of anxiety and adrenaline.

A half dozen others egged on the pair with an array of “you tell him” and “kick his ass.” Figured the argument was about a woman.

And then the fists flew.

Full-on violence hadn’t been a part of my world before. Battles were waged through the power of money, social influence, and as a last resort, the court. My only experience with physical fights—beyond playground scrapping—occurred when my cousin gotpregnant in the eleventh grade and Uncle Cecil punched her bony boyfriend.

The Carlisle family reunion probably hadn’t been the wisest time to announce their impending parenthood.

Carlisle.

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