Jasper
by Sharon L. Dean
A sudden noise jumped Connie’s reflexes into overdrive. She spilled her coffee. At the window, she saw Ruthie cup her aged face to look inside. Connie liked her landlady, but she didn’t need a mother. She blotted the wet spot on her turtleneck. Another one whose stain wouldn’t come out in Ruthie’s ancient washing machine.
She opened the door. Before she could even say good morning, Ruthie said, “I’ve decided. I’m selling.”
Connie knew what she meant, but said anyway, “Selling what?’
“My house. I want you to buy it. Make your home in Ashland. I’ll give you a good price and you can rent the apartment to someone else. Maybe to some good-looking bachelor.”
Ruthie turned to go downstairs. She might be right. Maybe Connie should stay in Oregon, try love again. She grabbed a sweatshirt and went outside into the crisp October morning. The leaves on the maple tree at the side of the house had begun to turn orange. They pulled her toward Massachusetts. This would be a good time to move back. Twenty Years a Wanderer was with her publisher, and she was ready to put down roots.
She turned onto Hyatt and collided with a gnarled tree branch. It hurt. She stopped to rub her forehead, wondering who cut the limb but left enough overhanging the sidewalk that it was a hazard.
The house behind the tree was a mess. Curtains covered the windows where cobwebs and debris had collected. The roof was coated with moss that threatened to collapse it. On one side, a Volkswagen bus had become a playground for squirrels and on the other, the yard was an overgrown mass of weeds.
Ruthie told her that an old man lived in the house. They’d been in school together, but he was a few years older. He disappeared after high school and people assumed he’d gone off to fight in World War I or had gone to prison because he’d refused to fight. He never came back until the 1950s. Connie did the math. It was 1983 so if he fought in World War I, he must be close to ninety now. If he didn’t come back until the fifties, he’d been closed off from the world for a quarter of a century. Ruthie told her not to worry about him. He took out trash in the night so no one would see him. If he didn’t put the barrel back or didn’t collect the junk mail from the box on the side of the house, the mail carrier would notice. If he didn’t pick up the groceries that he had delivered every Friday, a neighbor would notice.
While she stood in front of the house rubbing her head, a car pulled to the curb. A young man got out and lifted a box of groceries from the back seat. He dropped the groceries on the step and took an envelope out of the mailbox. “Don’t stand there watching,” he said. “He’s a crazy old man. They say he won’t come out if anyone can see him.” He got into the car, leaving her to wonder who “they” were.
She continued walking and told herself that if she stayed in Ashland, she could write a story about an old man who lived in a shack. He could have one friend who came in the evening to play some kind of game with him. She’d name the man Jasper after her father who’d taught her to play cribbage. She’d use cribbage as a metaphor and call the novel The Man Who Loved Cribbage. But first she had to decide. To stay or to move back to Massachusetts.
At the entrance to the park, trees whose leaves showed off reds and oranges greeted her. Their turning had been a surprise. In this dry climate, she thought she’d never see the colors of a New England fall. She entered the walkway that wound along the creek to an upper reservoir. It turned to dirt and the trees turned to Ponderosa pines and madrones, reminding her that she was in the West. She missed the damp smell of leaves and the taste of frost in the air. She continued walking until she reached what the locals called the reservoir, though it wasn’t used for the town water supply. Its circumference held less water than an Olympic swimming pool, but its water was as cold as the Atlantic Ocean in Maine. In summer, teenagers swam to the dam that held its water back or swung from a rope into the steep drop-off. She thought of the lake she used to swim across when she was a teenager. She missed the water of the East.
As she started back along the path, she made a mental list. Mountains. Theater. Weather. Advantage Oregon. Water. Greenery. Family. Advantage Massachusetts. Friends. Advantage neither.
When she left the park with its groups of people enjoying the fall air, she was still undecided. She slowed when she approached the hermit’s house. A man had opened the door and was bending to lift the box of groceries. His appearance surprised her. He was old, but not decrepit. His hair was clipped short, his face clean shaven, and his flannel shirt faded but clean. When he saw her, he dropped the box. Apples, a squash, and cans of something scattered into the weeds that had invaded his walkway. A glass bottle shattered on the step.
She moved toward the man who was gathering the spilled groceries. “I’m sorry. I must have startled you. Let me help.” She picked up a can of tomato soup and a jar of peanut butter and put them into the box that rested next to his feet. He was barefoot. “There’s broken glass. You shouldn’t be here with no shoes. Do you have a broom? I’ll sweep up the glass.”
He put the last of the groceries into the box, reached behind him to open the door, and backed into the house. His eyes looked frightened.
She waited a few minutes, then went back to Ruthie’s to get a broom and a dustpan, propelled more by curiosity than the desire to help. If he saw her sweeping, maybe he’d come outside.
When she returned, she nearly hit her head on the tree branch again. She wished she had brought a saw as well as a broom. The glass was covered in blood-red cranberry juice. She swept what she could into a dustpan and dropped the pieces into a paper bag. The old man watched her through a curtain that he pulled open a crack. She thought Torn Curtain, except that movie was about the Cold War and the title was a metaphor.
Ruthie had given her a month to decide. She walked in the park every day, trying to convince herself that the changing leaves were like New England. The air was clear and cool, but the smell wasn’t right. Too dry after the long, hot summer. The old man didn’t appear again at the window of what she’d begun to call The Hermitage, thinking it a better title for a novel than The Man Who Loved Cribbage. She’d look at the rusted swing set and imagine a childhood marked by joy that turned into a trauma that forced him inside. Maybe shellshock from World War I. Or agoraphobia from hiding out in a cave during the war and surviving on bugs.
A story began to unfold as she walked. She named the man Jasper after the Jasper stones that were so profuse in Oregon. He’d been separated from his platoon during World War I and had found a cave to shelter from the enemy for months until found by a hunter, a child, an old woman. She’d figure the details as she wrote. The story would be a flashback, told by an old man who occupied his cave of a house where he’d closed himself in because only there did he feel safe. Or told in dialogue with his cribbage partner who filled in details for the reader between cribbage moves. She imagined the inside of the house, cobwebs, dust, the smell of an old man’s urine.
On the next Friday, groceries appeared on the man’s doorstep. She lurked on the corner of the street, hoping he’d appear and she could pretend to help him. She was being a voyeur. She had no business intruding on the old man or the hovel he lived in.
She proceeded into the park and what had become a daily fix of visiting the ducks in the pond that was filling with leaves from the trees that bordered it. She thought of Massachusetts and how the lakes would already be showing a skim of ice. She tried to imagine herself there in a house she’d buy, maybe a cottage on a lake. The lake would freeze and she’d buy ice skates. Snow would fall and the day after a storm would be glorious. Her nostalgia ended when she remembered that as soon as the lake froze thick enough, a snowstorm would ruin it. The roads would be pristine for a day, then become icy and rutted from snowbanks that melted and refroze. The temperatures would dip so low the pipes would be in danger of freezing. She’d spent a winter in Oregon. Ashland’s climate was good. On the coldest days, she needed only gloves, a hat, and a warm jacket. No worry about frostbite or dead car batteries. She started her cost-benefit analysis again.
When she walked back past The Hermitage, the groceries were gone. She wanted to knock on the door, tell the old man that something fell out of the box, glimpse the inside of the house. She loitered too long. The man’s face appeared through a crack in the curtain. He shook his head “no” and pulled the curtain tight.
When Friday came again, she tried to time her walk to coincide with the arrival of the man’s groceries. She kept her head down, counting acorns that were dotting the sidewalk. Fate would help her decide if she should buy Ruthie’s house. An odd number of acorns and she’d leave, an even number and she’d stay. She was at eighteen when the blow knocked her to the ground. She looked up, dazed, at the tree branch she’d forgotten to avoid. She pressed her hand against her head to stop the throbbing. When she pulled it away, she saw that it was covered in blood. She rolled onto her side to push herself up then fell back and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she saw the man she called Jasper standing over her. He bent, put his arms under hers, and helped her to stand.
“Been meaning to fix that tree,” he said. His voice was gravelly, as if it hadn’t been used. “You’re bleeding.”
She touched her head, then tried to shake off the dizziness. Jasper caught her before she fell. “Come inside.”
He helped her into a kitchen and onto one of two chairs at a table. When he opened a drawer to find a towel, she studied the room. The window curtains were covered in dust except for one spot where he must have pulled them aside to watch for his groceries. And to watch her. But the room was clean. A surprise, not what she’d imagined. No dishes in the sink, nothing on the counters to attract ants, no rug that needed vacuuming on the wood floor. The kitchen opened into a living area where she could see a table with a photo of what looked like a woman and a series of votive candles in front of it. Her head cleared enough for her to imagine a shrine.
He wet the towel and handed it to her. “Have your fill. Contrary to what people think, I don’t live in filth.” His hands shook enough that she thought he had some kind of tremor that had caused him to drop the grocery box two weeks ago.
“I’m Connie Lewis,” she said as she accepted the towel. “I live on Bushnell Street. In Ruthie Stone’s house. I walk by here when I go to the park.”
“I watch you.”
His comment startled her, even frightened her as she realized she was alone in a house with a man no one had seen in years. They were both watchers and he was standing over her now as if she were his prey. “You watch me?”
He took the towel away and dropped it in the sink. “Just since you swept up the glass. Let me look at that cut.”
She clenched her teeth when he touched her forehead. His hands were cold and she could feel them shaking as he moved them from the cut to her temple and her hair line. He started to move his hand into her hair. She jerked her head backward and he moved his hand away. He cinched it to stop its trembling.
“You can go now.” The rasp in his voice had changed into something she couldn’t identify. The snarl of an animal stalking its prey or the gasp of a man holding back a sob. He went to the door and opened it. “Go.”
She stood and went to the door. “Thank you for helping.” She held her hand out to shake his. He ignored it.
She walked outside onto a step that was covered in leaves. Before he closed the door, he said, “Tell Ruthie I remember her.” She couldn’t read his tone. Kindness? Hate? Fear? If she put Jasper and The Hermitage into a novel, she’d have to decide.
She began to leave treats on his doorstep. A chocolate chip cookie, an apple turnover, a blueberry scone, everything bought from Sweet Shoppe Rosie’s. She set the sweets on top of notes meant to draw him out again. “Thank you for your kindness.” “Can I help you trim the tree limb?” She signed them, “Your friend, Connie.” She could feel him watching, but never saw him at one of the debris-filled windows, never caught him opening his door to get the treat she’d left.
The morning after Halloween, his walkway was covered in smashed pumpkins. She brought a shovel and a bucket and scooped up what she could. The note she left was the longest she’d written. “People can be cruel. They fear what they don’t understand. I’d like to understand you. I’d like to hear your story. I’d like to be your friend.”
The next day she left a loaf of pumpkin bread and a note that read, “From Sweet Shoppe Rosie’s, not the smashed pumpkin,” and a smiley face beneath her usual ending of “Your friend, Connie.” When she returned from her walk, the bread was still there.
The next morning, the wrapper had been torn apart and crumbs beside it told her an animal had eaten it. She picked up the shredded wrapper and opened a trash barrel she saw beside the step. Inside the barrel, among an assortment of cans and vegetable scraps, she could see the unopened treats she’d been leaving for days. There’d be no friendship. Whatever she imagined for her character, this old man hermit would remain a mystery.
Instead of continuing into the park, she went back to her apartment to wash her hands. Ruthie was outside pulling dead plants out of her raised garden beds. She set down her trowel, took off her gloves, and said, “Well?”
“Well what?”
She expected pressure about buying the house, but Ruthie surprised her when she said, “Did he come outside? Thank you for those treats you’ve been leaving?”
“How do you know about that?”
“I’ve been watching you leave every morning with a bag from Sweet Shoppe Rosie’s.”
She shivered, not just from the cold morning air. Two people had been watching her. An old woman and an old man. One an open book, the other one closed and locked.
“An animal got yesterday’s pumpkin bread. I put it in his trash can and saw that he’d thrown away all the other things I brought him. I thought I could be his friend.”
Ruthie challenged her. “His friend or are you just a curious writer?”
“Guilty as charged. I don’t need to know him to write a novel.”
“You’re obsessed. Write about something else. But write here in Ashland. Have you decided?”
“Give me until Monday.” Tomorrow was Friday and she wanted one more try with the old man. She’d watch after his groceries were delivered. When he opened the door, she’d offer to help. She knew she was obsessed, she knew she was a voyeur, but she also believed she could become a friend to this lonely old man.
On Friday, she drove her Volkswagen that she’d named The Yellow Sub onto Hyatt Street. He wouldn’t recognize the car. She watched the delivery boy set the groceries on the step and waited. She gave up after an hour, got out of the car and walked into the park the way she’d been doing every day. As she walked, she imagined the opening for The Hermitage. It would describe the house, the cobwebs and leaves in the windows, the moss-covered roof, the debris-covered Volkswagen bus, the rusted swing set in the unmown yard. After the opening paragraph, she’d move into the dialogue. Jasper would be remembering a road trip in the bus. Where? When? The writing would direct her.
When she returned and got into The Yellow Sub, the groceries were still on the step. They were there on Saturday. By Sunday, she became worried. She knocked on the door. No answer. She turned the knob and pushed. The door opened with a creak. Through the kitchen door, she saw the old man in his recliner, a hand-knit afghan covering his legs.
She called softly, “Are you okay?” and moved into the living room. She could see the rise and fall of his breathing. He didn’t look injured or starved. The votive candles in front of the photograph were burning. He opened his eyes and pushed down the footrest on the recliner. “I knew you’d take the bait.” Sleep had turned his gravelly voice into a growl. He hadn’t taken her bait from Sweet Shoppe Rosie’s, but his box of groceries trapped her. He’d caught his prey.
He clutched the blanket as if it were a net to imprison her. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said as he stood up and let the blanket fall to the floor. “I’ll tell you my story. Someone should know it before I die.”
He came toward her, looking as if he were about to lunge. The tremors she’d noticed in his hands were visible in the rest of his body. She backed into the kitchen and started for the door.
“Sit. I’ll tell you, then you can leave me in peace.” He grabbed onto the table and lowered himself into a chair.
She thought a moment before she sat across from him. She might be his prey, but she was the stronger animal.
“You look like her. Your hair. Same color brown. Same short cut. Different glasses, but the same dark eyes. And your small, taut body. You could be her ghost come back to haunt me.” His hands shook on the table while he spoke.
“A girlfriend? Someone who died?”
“I killed her.” His face contorted into a snarl when he said the words.
“Killed who? How? When? Someone you met during the war?” She imagined a love story destroyed by an oncoming army he couldn’t protect this woman from.
“My mother.” His hands shook harder.
“Is she the woman in the photograph? You burn candles for her.”
“I should have done more. Instead I stayed away. Came back from the war and never told her I’d returned.”
“She must have thought you’d been killed in the war.” She used a statement instead of a question to encourage him to keep talking.
He stood up and went to the sink for a glass of water. The glass rattled when he set it on the table. “The war was hell. It was like a game of who could kill the most men. Boys really. The only shelter from the game was in the trenches.”
“Ruthie told me you never came back until the nineteen-fifties. You must have stayed away for thirty years.”
“Thirty-four. Riding the Jazz Age, then the rails during the Depression, then the build-up to another war. Bought the Volkswagen bus in nineteen-fifty-two.”
“It must have been hard to stay away.”
“It was a game. I’d come back once in a while, watch the house. She never recognized me.”
“Like Wakefield.”
“Who’s that?”
“Just a character in a Hawthorne story. He leaves his wife and watches her for twenty years before he returns home.” She thought about the story and how it reflected Hawthorne’s sense of the writer as voyeur.
“I only came back every few years. I lost the game one day when I stayed too long in my car. She came over, asked what I was doing parking across from her house. She recognized me right away. After that, I stayed.”
“That’s not killing her.”
“Oh, I still played games with her. She’d ask about my life and I’d make up stories. A girlfriend dead in the war. A gig as a jazz musician in New York. A farm worker during the Depression. An auto mechanic, which is how I found the bus.”
“None of that true.”
“None. It was the game. Just like the one I’m playing with you.”
“That’s what you meant when you said you knew I’d take the bait. Why didn’t you just invite me in? What do you want from this game?”
“To tell you I won. And to tell someone at last how I killed my mother.”
“I don’t believe you killed her. Ruthie would know if you did.”
“You can kill without a gun or a knife. My weapon was lies. After a few months, she stopped asking me questions and withdrew further and further into her room. They said she maybe had leukemia. It wasn’t that. She was playing the game, too. A most dangerous game. In the end, she won by dying.”
Connie stopped playing the game of statements instead of questions. “Then why the votive candles?”
“Honor to the winner.”
“And why me?”
“A new game after all these years.”
“You should stop the game. Come outside. Walk with me. I’ll be your friendly opponent.”
“You mean you’ll be the bitch who wants to know what I did all those years. Sorry. I’m done playing.” The whispered gravel of his voice turned to a snarl when he stood. He picked up his water glass and aimed it at her. It slipped out of his hands and shattered on the floor.
He kicked the shards under the table. “Go. You trapped me once pretending to help. This time, I’ve won the game.”
Ruthie appeared at her door early Monday morning and handed her a note addressed to Constance Lewis in the shaky handwriting of an old man. While Ruthie watched, she opened it and read the message. “We’ve watched enough. I lied. You’ll never know the whole story.”
She crumpled the paper and said, “I’ll buy your house,”
He’d won the last round. There’d be no novel with a character named Jasper. But there was Ruthie and other stories to be told.
BIO
Sharon L. Dean grew up in Massachusetts where she was immersed in the literature of New England. She earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of New Hampshire, a state she lived and taught in before moving to Oregon. Although she has given up writing scholarly books that require footnotes, she incorporates much of her academic research as background in her mysteries. She is the author of three Susan Warner mysteries, three Deborah Strong mysteries, and a collection of stories called Six Old Women and Other Stories. Her novels Leaving Freedom and Finding Freedom both have scenes set in Ashland. Her tenth novel, Books Inn, is scheduled for publication in 2026.
