Page 64 of Poison Wood

I think about Martha Lee telling me she’d overheard fighting that night. Summer saying Rosalie and Crowley had fought over money.Follow the money.Martha speculated it could have been a boy from St. Matthew’s at the school over Thanksgiving break. But Martha could have been wrong. Maybe it hadn’t been a boy.

Maybe it had been a man. A man who disappeared after he was fired. He vanished, yes, but what if he never left the school?

Natchitoches Gazette

By Robert Sevier

November 16, 2002

Natchitoches, Louisiana

Headmaster Fired From Poison Wood Academy

Headmaster Archibald Crowley was fired from Poison Wood Therapeutic Academy for Girls. According to sources at the school, Mr. Crowley worked as headmaster from April 2000 to November 2002.

Poison Wood has been plagued with issues concerning their headmasters. Several have quit over the past years.

In September of 2002, it was discovered that Mr. Crowley had been funneling school funds into a private account for at least a year. He was ultimately terminated in early November 2002. Some say the firing should have happened sooner, after a horrific accidentinvolving one of the students on Halloween 2001. A story I reported on at the time.

It is believed Mr. Crowley fled to his home country of England in order to avoid being charged with embezzlement. His whereabouts are currently unknown.

Poison Wood Therapeutic Academy for Girls

Kisatchie National Forest

October 20, 2002

Jasmine

Dear Diary,

Oh my god Baldy gave us quite a lecture in the dinner hall tonight. No Halloween in the graveyard this year. Thank god. After last year, nobody needs to be out there. But the younger girls all moaned about it. Dumbasses. Then I got dared to salute Baldy after his speech and since I never back down from a dare, I did it. And he started screaming and I told him he needed to get laid and he literally exploded and turned red and told me to wait in his office. So I saluted him again and the girls fell out laughing.

I hate going to his office. It’s sooo boring. I’ve been like a thousand times.

But this time, I was snooping around in his desk and found a letter. A love letter. Gross. And when I heard him coming in I thought about putting it back, but I didn’t. I kept it.

Chapter Fifteen

Riverbend, Louisiana

Friday, February 15, 2019

10:32 a.m. CST

The sun is high and bright, but it’s still freezing as my sneakers bite into the gravel under me. My breath shows in the cold morning air. I like the way it feels in my lungs. It hurts, but it’s clearing my head. I need to move. I need my body to find a rhythm in the running so I can focus.

Sleep didn’t catch me until well after midnight. When my mind finally stopped trying to make sense of the avalanche of information from yesterday: the journals, my father opening my mail, which possibly triggered his heart attack, Laura Sanders, Heather Hadwick, Katrina, Summer, Poison Wood. Crowley.

I trip on the even ground as I cross the dam of the sixty-acre lake. I can’t lock all this away in a hidden suitcase anymore.

And on top of it all was the voicemail I woke up to from Erin, not Carl, letting me know they will be in town tonight and asking if I will meet them at the Kingston Hotel downtown later. She warned me that the Halloween prank and Lisbeth Warrington’s death were starting to make the rounds.

Summer, Kat, Nurse Grace, Martha. Someone is talking.

The three dogs trail me off-leash, hopping through the dormant grass on either side of the dam, stopping to sniff and lift a leg every fewseconds. A few wispy clouds reflect off the water. I helped my father and my uncle build this lake when I was in grade school. Saturdays were spent picking up sticks while my father whistled to me over the grinding engine of his bulldozer and pointed to protruding roots and limbs that needed removing. I pushed and pulled things from this land every weekend. Now I’m here doing the same thing, but this time with my memories.

I stop and catch my breath, rest my hands on my knees.