A Million Doorways Read online

  A Million

  Doorways

  K. Martin Beckner

  Copyright © 2016 K. Martin Beckner

  Names, characters, places, and incidents in this book are either creations of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Book cover designed in coordination with John Thompson of Zebra Graphics. Original book cover photo used by permission of Pamela Larue of stillvanishingtennesseeandkentucky.com.

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-10: 1537772708

  ISBN-13: 978-1537772707

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to the memory of Murl and Belle Beckner, Wallace and Lois Haynes, and Bobby Reynolds, who saw the light of Heaven and went on before us. They will be dearly missed until we meet again.

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Special thanks to the following family and friends for reading it first, asking questions, and offering first-rate opinions and suggestions: Phillip and Mary Beckner, my biggest supporters and the best I could have asked for; Clarissa Cowles, a steadfast friend from way back; Freda Epley, a calm in a storm called nursing; and Joshua McCombs, son of songbird Angie Smith, brother of cowboy Tyler McCombs. Additional thanks to Philip Higginbotham for sharing his infinite knowledge of bees.

  Chapter 1

  Although Ethan Brook was unaware of the mummified body down in the cellar, just below his feet, he still didn’t want to be there. No, Ethan wanted to be back home in Boone County, Kentucky. Boone County was, and always would be, his real home. It was a place of seemingly endless mountains to explore; where he had built a log fort with his best friend, Russell; and where he and all his buddies, on hot sunny days, would swim and play for hours in the pools and cascades of Little Salem Creek. Sometimes they’d take a break from swimming and compete to see who was best at skipping rocks across the water’s surface. Ethan had been the reigning champ on total skips, a title he’d planned on keeping forever. But forever was a useless term, relevant only for the dead. Now one of the other boys would be crowned rock-skipping champ, probably Russell.

  There were those things, his friends and all, but most importantly there was his dad. He wanted his dad back so much it hurt. He thought often of the days, not so long ago, when he’d be beside himself with excitement to see his dad driving his old Army Jeep up the steep gravel driveway, coming home from a long day at the coal mine. He would be exhausted and covered in coal dust, but he’d always find time to spend with his one and only “favorite” son. If nothing else, they’d shoot baskets until dark. And when Ethan had been a small boy, every night he would fall asleep to his dad’s soothing voice, talking about days of long ago when he too had been a boy. Many times on warm summer nights he’d build Ethan and his friends a bonfire in the backyard and tell them stories about the moon and stars, stories he claimed to have heard from a Cherokee Indian who had been more than two-hundred years old. These mystic tales of other worlds always sparked Ethan’s imagination, and he’d have fanciful dreams until the morning sun interrupted them. Yes, life was everything he could have wished for back then.

  But that was all gone now. Now he was a lonesome stranger in Rocky Creek, a little town located in south-central Kentucky. This part of the state was like a foreign country to him. There were hills but no mountains, and the people were different too. He couldn’t explain to himself exactly how they were different, but he was certain that they all thought themselves better than he. Oh, he wanted so badly to return to his real home, back to the mountains, back to where his friends lived, to where he fit in and felt like somebody. If given the chance, he’d fly there like an eagle and regain his rock-skipping title on the first day.

  No matter how hard he tried to wish it away, though, he was still here, trapped in a foreign town, stuck listening to his mom exaggerate his good qualities to a highly sophisticated-looking old woman wearing a long black dress and a string of pearls that nearly reached her waist. Zelma Green was her name, and she looked to Ethan about as relaxed as the queen of Russia. Even the cane she carried, shiny black with a silver horse’s head on top, a perfect match to her curly silver hair and black dress, was highfalutin. But as straight and proud as she stood, Ethan wondered why she even needed help walking, until he noticed her stumble a bit, a quick whirl of the cane breaking a potential fall. Thinking it over, he did reluctantly admit to himself that he kind of wouldn’t mind having such a nice cane to display in his room.

  Glancing around the cavernous entryway, Ethan tried his best not to be interested in all the other cool things that filled the imposing old-fashioned house. He thought of how out of place he must look surrounded by such expensive antiques, and he began to feel embarrassed, even more embarrassed than he usually felt about his thrift-store clothes, with the matching pair of well-worn tennis shoes. What clothes he had that weren’t thrift store finds came out of boxes of stuff that a local church had donated to him and his mom after his dad’s terrible accident. With the exception of a pair of bellbottom jeans and a few t-shirts, he hated the donated clothes, but there were enough different sizes of them to last all the way until he graduated from high school. Every week he’d hide a garment he didn’t like in the bottom of the garbage can to be carried away to the dump. That way the pile of clothes would slowly disappear without his mom thinking he was ungrateful for them.

  Wearing cheap shoes bothered him the most. He’d outgrown his favorite pair of sneakers, red high-top Converse, about two years ago when he was around eleven years old. They were the last thing his dad had ever bought him, if you didn’t count food and basic needs. Every so often he’d get those sneakers out and hold them; they made him feel close to his dad—his dad who went to work one day and never came back home. Ethan resolved to put up with Miss Green at least long enough to be able to afford another pair of Converse sneakers, though he’d never throw away the ones his dad had given him. Maybe someday he’d have his own son to pass them along to.

  There had been a collapse in the coal mine, and it was several days before rescuers were able to reach his dad’s body. For five days and nights Ethan and his mom waited outside the mine, sleeping in their car when exhaustion overtook them. Initially they waited with hope, but as each hour passed, hope slipped away like the wind, the wind that as a small boy Ethan had once tried to capture with his tiny fingers. Oh, he knew his dad was in heaven, but he wanted him back, back to get him another pair of new shoes that fit his growing feet, back to take him fishing in the mountain streams, back to tell him stories, back to do nothing more than to be his dad. There would be plenty of time for Heaven later. Why’d he have to go so soon?

  Ethan looked around the extravagant house again, at the fancy fireplace mantles in the two rooms on either side of the foyer, at the bronze chandeliers, at the statues, at the clocks, at the paintings, and at the old sepia-toned photos in thick gold frames. The more he looked around, the more he had to struggle to maintain his disinterest. From early on his dad had instilled in him an appreciation for history and old things, and this house wa
s old for certain. He had a fleeting thought of wanting to run and tell his dad about this place, a thought that made his heart sink into his stomach for a moment.

  Ethan wondered how much money a mansion such as this one must be worth. The intricately-carved staircase alone was probably more valuable than the little house he and his mom were living in. He marveled at the craftsmanship of the heavy oak pocket doors and the thick crown molding atop the long rectangular foyer. It had certainly taken a lot of work and a lot of expert skill to create such a detailed design without the use of modern tools. The house did need a lot of fixing up, though. The outside needed a fresh paint job for sure. If he owned this ageing masterpiece, he’d have it shined up like new in no time.

  But none of that mattered, not in the least. Coming to his senses, Ethan remembered that he didn’t care a bit about this oldfangled house or anything else in Rocky Creek.

  “I’ll pay Ethan ten dollars a day to help me out around the place,” Miss Zelma Green was saying to Ethan’s mother, Sandy Brook, her calm composure not giving away the fact that her fifth husband lay entombed only mere feet away. “I’ll expect him to be here by nine o'clock, and he can leave at two. He will of course have the weekends off. A boy his age needs some time to get out and explore the world, make friends. When school resumes in the fall, if he wishes, he can come by for a few hours in the afternoon. I’m getting old, or rather have been old for decades, and I need a hand around the house to help out with a few things I can’t do myself. Clara Satterfield, my secretary, as I call her, will let him know what needs to be done around here. He’ll be working for her as well as myself. Some days he’ll be bored with nothing to do but talk to this old woman, and some days he’ll be busier than a squirrel.”

  “Oh, Ethan will be a great help to you,” said Sandy. “He’s always been good at fixing things, and he keeps that old car of mine running like a top. He’s the man around our house, responsible beyond his years.”

  “I hope so,” said Zelma Green. “It’s so hard to find good help these days. We’ll do this on a trial bases at first, of course. If he’s like most kids these days, he won’t last a week. Most kids are too lazy to work anymore. It’s not like it was in my day. ”

  “I’m sure it’s going to work out great,” said Sandy.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Ethan,” said Zelma.

  “It’s nice to meet you too, Ma’am,” said Ethan, looking down at the large Oriental rug on the floor.

  “Shy as a mouse,” said Zelma. “No need to be shy; I’m harmless, really. At any rate, it looks like my ride to town is pulling in the driveway. I will see you tomorrow at nine, Ethan.”

  At home that night Ethan lifted weights and did a few exercises before going to bed. He had been skinny all his life and was proud of the fact that he was now getting taller and gaining weight. Working out helped keep his mind off of how depressing his life had become since his dad had passed. He looked at himself in the tall mirror fastened to the back of his bedroom door. With his green eyes and thick dark-brown hair that was almost starting to block his view, he supposed he didn’t look too bad. He had his mom’s small nose and bigger mouth with teeth that were, thankfully, pretty straight—not bad attributes.

  Once in bed, he lay awake for a while staring at the ceiling, making out faces and monsters in the textures of the drywall. He didn’t want to go to Miss Green’s tomorrow. He just wanted to go back home, his real home, and be with both his dad and mom. That’s the only thing that would be okay. He felt that everything good in his life was behind him, nothing ahead. They had lived in a nice brick house back before everything had changed. Now he and his mom lived in a little four-room house next to a large dairy farm, one that stunk half the time, nonetheless.

  His mom had been having a hard time making ends meet without his dad. She had received a little money from the coal company, but that money was long gone. There had been enough money to buy their house in Rocky Creek; the rest paid off their old house and debt his dad had accumulated while remodeling an old service station and restaurant he had dreamed of opening one day. Ethan had spent many hours helping his dad fix that place up. It had become his dream too, a ship the two were building together to sail away from the mundane life of clocking in and out to make a living.

  Ethan would never understand why his mom had decided to make their lives even more miserable by moving them to Rocky Creek. Sandy’s sister, Betty Flowers, lived close to Rocky Creek, over near Russellville, and had gotten Sandy a job at the sewing factory. It wasn’t a job that was going to make them rich, but it would bring in enough money to buy food and pay a few bills. Surely there was some way she could have made that kind of money at home.

  It was at the sewing factory that Sandy had found Ethan the job. A woman she worked with had a son who had previously worked for Miss Green, but he was starting college in the fall and was now working at a restaurant near the school’s campus in Nashville. A few phone calls later and Ethan had the job, at least for now. He felt sure he’d be fired pretty soon, as that old Miss Green woman looked eager to fire him already. He just hoped he could stay long enough to buy some new shoes and maybe a few decent clothes.

  It was the beginning of summer vacation, so he hadn’t had an opportunity to meet anyone his own age. He was friendless for the first time since he had been old enough to make friends. A few days ago he’d seen two boys at the little park in the middle of the town square. The boys looked to Ethan to be around twelve or thirteen, one with short reddish hair, the other with dirty blond hair that reached his shoulders. They had been exchanging comic books on a bench next to a large black fountain that was the centerpiece of what the town called Fountain Square Park. Ethan had his own collection of comics and saw an opportunity to make some new pals.

  He dreamed of inviting the boys over to check out his comic books; they would be extremely impressed and instantly become his best friends. He awkwardly tried to start up a conversation, but someone called for the boys, and they gathered up their comic books and left him standing there alone. They rode away in a new Cadillac that had been parked beside his mom’s 1966 Volkswagen Beetle. He figured he wouldn’t have fit in with the two boys anyway. The boys over here just weren’t the same as the ones in eastern Kentucky. He didn’t have hopes of ever fitting in. He was an eastern Kentucky boy to the core; the mountains and the people there were in his blood.

  Chapter 2

  Morning came too soon. Ethan hit the snooze button on his alarm clock three times before finally throwing off the covers and sitting on the side of his bed. His mom had already left for work, so she wasn’t there to yell repeated warnings of being late, like she did on school mornings. He started a pot of coffee in the kitchen then walked to the house’s only bathroom and washed his sleepiness away in the bathtub. He hated that the house didn’t even have a shower. He was surprised that it even had hot water. After drying off and combing his hair out of his eyes, he hurriedly ate a breakfast consisting of coffee, a bowl of Cheerios, and a piece of toast with strawberry jam. After gulping the last drop of coffee, he threw on a pair of jeans, a fairly new dark blue T-shirt, and a pair of worn sneakers, and headed out the door. He didn’t want to be late on his first day, and he was pushing it. Miss Green would surely jump at the chance to fire him. Badly needing money to buy the new pair of shoes he dreamed of, he rode his bike at an almost dangerous speed.

  Miss Green’s house seemed even more imposing today as he made his way up the long driveway. It had obviously been a very expensive home to build, all those years ago. It was an Italianate Victorian painted in various shades of green with a little yellow thrown in for contrast. He’d never seen a house quite like it over in eastern Kentucky. It was the type of house your friends would dare you to sneak into at night. If ever a house was haunted, this one surely was. It seemed a perfect match for Miss Green—stately, old, and mysterious, not to mention green.

  There was a Siamese cat sitting on the porch, and another almost-identical cat
ran out of the house when Zelma Green’s secretary, Clara Satterfield, opened the tall front door. She was a very pale woman with an almost masculine physique who looked younger than Zelma, though not many years younger. Her grey hair was pulled back into a tight bun, and she was wearing a dark blue skirt and blouse covered partially in front with a white apron. “Glad to see we got some help around here, finally,” she said. “I hope you’ll work out. We need a strong boy around the house to fetch things.”

  “Where’s Miss Green, Ma’am?” asked Ethan, for lack of knowing what else to say.

  “She’s gone to her sister’s house, probably won’t be back before you leave. I’m glad she’s not here today because it gives me the opportunity to set things straight. You will answer to me as much as you will answer to Zelma. I’ve worked for her enough years to own this place, started out as a housekeeper. Zelma grew up very rich, and I grew up very poor. Zelma inherited money; I inherited a smart business sense. That’s why I was eventually promoted to secretary. It’s my job to ensure that Zelma stays rich and is never taken advantage of. She comes from the wealthiest family in the county, though there are few of her line left today. The problem with growing up rich is that one only knows how to spend, and even the greatest fortunes will eventually dwindle if not nurtured, not to mention the vultures that encircle those of means. I trust that you’re not a vulture?”

  “No, ma’am,” said Ethan, a little taken aback by all the info he had been bombarded with.

  “Well, you may last a day here, and you may last all summer, depends upon my opinion of your work.”

  “I always try to do a good job.” He started to walk into the house, but Clara Satterfield abruptly closed the screen door in front of him, nearly causing him to bump into it.