Words Burned to Flame

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  “Stay in the car, James. There’s a lot of broken glass, and the police don’t want you stomping around the shop. They don’t want anything moved around until they can take a look at everything for themselves.”

  I watched my father hurry away to help mother gather the candles and knickknacks strewn about the sidewalk in front of her shop. Pieces of small dresses lay strewn about the sidewalk like white and lavender confetti. Father claimed Addieville’s police cared enough about preventing vandalism to look into the damages inflicted upon my mother’s storefront, but no officer came to help my family pic up the perfumed soaps and the bead bracelets thrown into the street. My parents had no help, but I sensed lots of faces were peeping through curtains to watch them work against the mess.

  I almost swallowed my heart when someone tapped on the car’s rear window.

  “How bad is it, son?”

  I rolled down the window as quickly as I could to talk with Mr. Turner. “There’s lots of glass, and doll parts everywhere. The police don’t know who might’ve broken through the windows last night to ruin the place.”

  Mr. Turner shook his head. “They know well enough. They know someone living in Addieville did this to your mother’s shop, and one person is the same as another in this town.”

  “But what reason would anyone have to vandalize a store that sells Christmas wreaths and calendars?”

  “Jealousy for starts. Maybe someone’s envious that your mother seems to keep a surviving business where and when no one else can manage. I would guess that Addieville remains angry that your father still keeps my book of poetry in his library. I think someone’s saying your family will never be a part of this place as long as any of you keep associating with me.”

  “You don’t think this was done by a bunch of drunk teenagers?”

  “Certainly not, James.”

  My mother didn’t seem at all shaken until she examined what remained of the flowerboxes father installed beneath the shop’s windows. The vandals spared no color in their attack, and they pulled out all of mother’s cherished tulips and smashed each flower on the concrete sidewalk. My mother sobbed as she looked at her ruined plants, and her back seemed to collapse. I never understood how mom kept the shop open for as long as she had, because I couldn’t remember the last time anyone purchased a doll or wicker basket at her register. My dad was quickly at her side to hold her as she softly cried. Mr. Turner nodded at me before limping to the sidewalk and slowly bending to pick a crumpled tulip from the concrete. I saw him pocket that flower before saying something to my father, who shook Mr. Turner’s hand before the elderly poet shuffled away down the street.

  I remained in the car for the rest of the morning as my parents swept glass from the sidewalk and salvaged what they could from the shop’s scattered inventory. The short trip home was quiet and tense, and I felt like a target. Perhaps my parents felt the same.

  I thought of the tulip Mr. Turner stuffed into his pocket. I tried to think why he would be so interested in a trampled flower. I couldn’t imagine how much magic that old man collected when Mr. Turner lifted that tulip from the concrete, no way of sensing the oddity that would sprout from those flower boxes that hung beneath the shop’s broken windows.