Blindfold

A Friday morning in early October begins like any other morning in Felicity, Ohio.

But in the basement of the old courthouse at Fourth and Market Streets in the heart of the downtown area, the cold, hard-packed, earthen floor seems suddenly to shift, to recoil, as if something has frightened it, and the scurrying sounds of small creatures within the rough, white stone walls stop, as if the animals are listening intently, trying to figure out what the oncoming, unknown danger might be.

The six jail cells, three on each side of a narrow corridor, are empty. The small, filthy windows high on the back wall of each cell are blank and unseeing, the black metal iron-barred doors standing wide open.

In other places, an open door means welcome. But not here. Not in this dark, damp, dismal place. Here, an open door is an invitation to danger, to despair, perhaps even to death.

It's ancient and tired and ugly now, an old hound too stubborn to give up. Why can't they let it die a decent death? And let all of its secrets die with it.

Restore it to its "former glory"? Why? What is wrong with that Keene woman that she can't let things stay in their natural state? Always fixing up, restoring, preserving, like it's her mission in life. If she has her way, they'll have crews in there any day now, digging and poking and prodding, ripping out doors and walls and flooring... and uncovering secrets.

Why should that building survive? It doesn't deserve to.

I have to come up with something.

I never meant to hurt anyone. Especially Christy. We were friends.

But when we were thirteen, she started experimenting with makeup and hairstyles and clothes she saw in magazines, while I was still all knees and elbows. She looked sixteen years old. I was still an awkward, uncertain thirteen, and she didn't want to be seen with me, because she was afraid everyone would guess she was the same age as me.

I didn't understand what was happening. I only knew I didn't like it. I hated it. I missed her. Friends were so hard to come by way out there in the country, where the farms were spread so far apart.

We all went to half a dozen different elementary schools scattered along rural roads while we waited for high school to come along and rescue us. Going to different schools didn't matter if we were close enough to hike or bike to one another's houses.

That was true for Christy and Dante and me. He was three years older than us, but out there, that didn't matter, either. He had other Mends, too, friends Ms own age. People liked Dante. But he still spent time with Christy and me.

On weekends, if we got to go into Felicity together, we liked to sneak in through the coal chute window of the old courthouse, slide down the chute, and play in the basement passageways. We weren't supposed to, but the town kids did it all the time. It was creepy down there, but fun. Someone told me once that all those gloomy subterranean passageways had been used to hide slaves who'd escaped from the South through the Underground Railroad.

We were careful to stay away from the one corridor that housed the six basement cells. Not that there was ever anyone dangerous in those cells. A drunk or two, maybe, sometimes a transient who'd stolen something from one of the stores in town. I heard there was a murderer there once, some guy who'd killed his cousin over a prize pig. But mostly, the prisoners were harmless.

Still, we avoided that corridor.

Then Dante outgrew those fun escapades. And soon after Christy did, too. It wasn't any fun by myself.

Everything else changed then, too. Things changed forever for all three of us when Dante looked at Christy one day and saw just how much she had changed. We were just thirteen and looking forward to high school the following fall. He was sixteen.

I saw the look he gave her that one autumn day. I didn't like it a bit. My stomach felt hollow inside. I knew it meant that nothing would ever be the same again.

Nothing was.

From then on, it was Dante and Christy, Christy and Dante, together all the time. With me on the outside, looking in.

She jumped off the bed and stomped to the door, glancing into her dresser mirror as she passed it. The sight of the tall, slender figure in the glass brought forth another groan. "Great!" she muttered, yanking open the door. "I look like a Raggedy Ann doll! Just shoot me now." A disgusted expression on her angular, fair-skinned face, she ran a self-conscious hand through the short, bronze-colored waves and called down the stairs, "Mom, no can do! Get Dog-face to do it!" Dog-face was her older brother, Darren.

'Tour brother has already left. Maggie, please! I've got that bazaar tonight, and I'm way behind schedule."

Dog-face had split already, probably knowing what was coming. Jerk! Why wasn't she an only child? What would it take to make her one? Nothing legal, unfortunately.

"It will only take you five minutes. You go right by the courthouse on your way to school." Maggie's mother stood at the foot of the stairs, looking upward with expectancy in her face, an older version of her daughter's. Wearing worn jeans and an oversized white sweatshirt that read save our antiquities, you'll be one someday, she smiled up at Maggie. "I've got tons of other stuff to do today if we're going to be ready on time tonight." Sheila Keene was president of the Women of Heritage Society in Felicity and was spearheading the drive to save the old courthouse. To that end, she had organized a bazaar being held on the courthouse grounds that evening.

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Maggie felt a twinge of guilt. What with the start of school and the renewal of peer jury activities, she had helped her mother very little with what had to be an overwhelming task. "Okay, okay, m go! Give me a sec." Heaving a sigh, she returned to her dresser, where she stabbed at her hair repeatedly with a pink plastic pick. "It wasn't my idea to save the stupid courthouse," she muttered as she struggled with the chaotic waves. "If you want my opinion, that old wreck of a building should be put to rest. And everyone on the peer jury thinks the same thing, so it's not just me. This whole bazaar thing is a huge waste of time."

Snatching up her suede shoulder bag from its usual resting place on the cluttered floor, Maggie turned away from the dresser.

Her mother, holding out a sheaf of papers, was standing in the doorway. She looked hurt, which told Maggie that she'd overheard the last comment.

"Oh. I didn't know you were there," Maggie said, embarrassed.

"That's obvious."

"Mom..." Maggie began.

Sheila Keene waved a hand. "Never mind. Your father feels the same way. So does your brother. So does half the townl I don't even know that we're going to win this battle. But," a grin spread across her face, "if we lose the battle, and the building is torn down, the money we raise tonight will go toward that rec center you and your friends want built in its place. So if I were you, I'd try to muster up a little more enthusiasm."

Maggie relented and returned the grin. She took the papers and the car keys her mother handed her. "Who do I give these to?"

"Anyone. It doesn't matter. They're the plans for the renovation." The hurt look was gone. "And thanks, Maggie. I know your schedule is pretty full. I should have delivered them myself yesterday."

Shrugging, Maggie said, "Nobody's perfect. That old dump is right across the street from school anyway. I guess a few extra steps won't kill me. But do I have to go inside? Can't I just slip these into the mail slot? I hate that place! Every time I go in there, I think the floors are going to collapse or the ceiling's going to land on me."

"You're exaggerating. If it were that bad, it would have been condemned long ago. People are still working in that building, Maggie, and nothing's fallen on them. And no, you can't drop them in the mail slot. I want them hand-delivered, so I know someone got them. Please? Tell you what, as a reward for helping me out this morning, you can keep the van all day. Trudy's picking me up later for the errands we have to run."

Maggie pocketed the keys. Passing her mother in the doorway, she said, "Bribery works every time. See you later."

"Don't forget, you're helping out tonight. You're on the kitchen schedule for eight p.m. sharp!"

"I won't forget. Not that you'd let me."

It was a beautiful early autumn morning. The air was warm and sweet, almost like summer, and the leaves were beginning to turn, hinting of the deep

purples and scarlets, and the brilliant, blazing oranges and yellows they would soon become. Maggie hadn't been in the van more than a minute when she found herself relaxing and enjoying the drive down their hill toward the center of town.

The welcoming signs posted at the city limits boasted, fifteen thousand friendly people. Maggie always viewed those signs with a cynical eye. The town itself contained far fewer residents. Reaching fifteen thousand required adding up all of the people in the surrounding rural communities: Arcadia, Muleshoe, Updown, Sugar Hill, Nestegg, and Thompson. Rural students made up half the population at Otis Bransom High School, an ugly, old, gray-stone, three-story structure just around the corner from the supermarket and the ancient courthouse.

Half of Maggie's classmates in her junior year and all of her closest friends were kids she had never even met until ninth grade. The rural schools included grades kindergarten through eighth. It wasn't until they were ready for ninth grade that the farm kids piled into big yellow buses and rode into the heart of Felicity, where the high school would be their daytime home for four years.

Freshman year had to be hard for the newcomers, Maggie thought, not for the first time, as she drove down Main Street toward the courthouse and the high school. First, because the rural kids entered a school where the town kids already knew each other. Cliques had already been formed, allegiances sworn, teams established. Second, since

ninth-graders weren't old enough yet to drive, they could only enroll in extracurricular activities if one of the few "late buses" traveled close enough to their homes, most of which, but not all, were farms. For many of them, a high school social life couldn't really begin until junior year, when they had driver's licenses. And then only if they had access to wheels to carry them along the dusty farm roads and onto the paved highway into town for practices and games, rehearsals and dances and parties.

Maggie had always been grateful that her family lived in town. If nothing ever happened inside the city limits, even less had to be happening outside them, where there wasn't even a theater.

When she arrived in the heart of town, quiet this early in the morning, she hesitated. Could the plans wait? Which was more important, being on time for the peer jury hearings, or delivering the plans? It wasn't as if the renovations were going to begin that day. She could take the plans over later, between classes or even after school. What difference did it make?

She hit a red light at the intersection of Market and Fourth. Otis Bransom High School occupied one corner. The old courthouse, which had actually once been the Bransom family home, occupied another. Everyone called it "the old courthouse" now because a new one was in the process of being built just a block away and was, in fact, almost finished. Soon the old building, a huge, white-pillared pre-Civil War structure, would be emptied, stripped of everything but dust and memories.

Her mother wanted it preserved. Some people agreed with her. Others wanted it torn down. Her mother would probably win. Preserving Felicity's history was her "cause," and she almost always overcame any objections.

"That is a really creepy-looking building, even in daylight, even with the sun shining," Maggie muttered. "Hard to believe a family ever lived in that rotting old place."

Of course, she knew it hadn't looked that bad way back then. It was, now, a weary, decrepit structure of peeling paint, sagging shutters, and dying ivy. But old photos of the Bransom House on display at the Women of Heritage offices on Third Street showed a very different image. The pictures reflected a pristine, pillared, white mansion with immaculate grounds and shiny black shutters.

"Can you believe thfc courthouse ever looked like that?" Maggie's best friend, Helen Morgan, had said, awestruck, when they saw the photos. "It looks so awful now!"

The shutters were tilting on their hinges. Most of the lawn, except for a long, narrow strip near the kitchen wing, had become a paved parking lot. The lush gardens, front and back, had been mowed down. The mansion itself, seriously in need of a fresh coat of paint, sagged more with every passing year.

Maggie couldn't have cared less what happened to the ugly old building. But everyone on the peer jury, and just about every other teen in town, wanted it torn down and a rec center built on the

site. She had to admit a rec center sounded cool, considering the fact that teen social life in Felicity was sorely lacking. The new mall had only four movie screens instead of eight or twelve like malls she'd read about. Summers were deadly unless you had a pool or the kind of cool parents who let you drive to Cleveland for some fun. From June through August, there was never a single dance held in all of Greene County, unless you counted Friday night square dancing at Jimmy's Barbecue.