Cloverdale Park (Love After Death): A short story

The following short story was written by Stephen Cooper, who used to live in Montgomery near Cloverdale Park.

"Cloverdale" got its name from the large clumps of sprawling green clover flourishing everywhere the eye could see, hibernating only during winter's coldest weeks, long after most other vegetation slumbered.

The verdant clumps of clover overtook everything in its wake. It lined the neighborhood’s roadways, streams and gullies and wrapped around the venerable tree trunks, drooping from their branches, creating a constantly cool canopy of shade. Snaking between the sidewalks, the clover sidled up to the mostly old red brick houses, buffeting against their walls, windows and chimneys like an incessant and insouciant green wind.

Nowhere was the clover more omnipresent than in Cloverdale Park, a large circular expanse three times the size of a football field, surrounded by some of Cloverdale's oldest homes, as well as the First Baptist Church of Cloverdale, built 200 years earlier.

The church, a sprawling complex in the Gothic style, was constructed of grayish-white limestone. It sat atop a slope on the park's northwest corner like a castle without a moat. It was only because of the Prometheus-like efforts of its caretakers that the church was the only structure abutting the park to remain untouched by the ubiquitous clover.

The same cobble-stone road encircling the park when the church's cornerstone was laid remained despite intermittent calls, in some instances downright campaigns, by flat-tire sufferers to move to something more modern.

Circumscribed by the cobble-stone was a running path hewed into the park's perimeter 20 years earlier at the behest, and with the financial backing, of one of Cloverdale's wealthiest, fitness-inclined residents.

***

Unchecked within the boundaries of the running path the clover of Cloverdale Park covered everything. Celebrated, it bunched together in wild clumps and bushes but also organized into fat fluffy beds of green. It cavorted with the weeds and wild flowers and clung to the jungle gym, the tin red-barrel trash-cans, and the four wooden memorial benches — one in each corner of the park.

***

Unless it was raining, each day between two and three in the afternoon a tall middle-aged man wearing a beige windbreaker and black slacks would saunter into Cloverdale Park, walk leisurely by the church, and sit on a wooden bench at the park's northernmost corner. From this spot the man had an unparalleled view of the park, the surrounding houses, and church traffic.

He was always by himself without even a newspaper or book to keep him company as he sat on the bench gazing peacefully and quietly at the park and the life teeming about it. He never spoke to anyone that passed, but neither was he surly, offering a friendly grin to anyone that looked in his direction.

He had, however, stopped waving to the children playing on the jungle gym. He did not nod in the direction of the runners and walkers as they passed his perch. He no longer yelled "hey," or "how you doing'" to the mailman. In short, he no longer engaged with the citizenry of Cloverdale, as he knew he would be rebuffed.

Not out of unkindness or indifference, or because of some animus or bias against him. But, because, Charles "Chuck" Steele — which was the man's name — was dead and had been for 5 months.

Chuck wasn't bitter about being dead. He'd enjoyed an interesting and productive life, and his death by massive heart-attack had been quick and painless. The out-of-body experience that first day seeing his physical form strapped to a stretcher, while jarring, was not painful.

But when he ventured outdoors and his neighbor tending his garden looked straight through him, ignoring his salutation like a cool breeze, Chuck had felt pained. Because he realized everything was different. Actually, what he came to realize and, months later, accept, was that everything in Cloverdale was the same; it was he who was different.

And now, after the passage of 5 months — 5 months of being not alive, but not fully dead, at least not the way one would expect — Chuck stopped wondering, stopped questioning what he was. As in life, he accepted his situation and was determined, no matter what, to make the best of it.

Having no direct heirs, Chuck's cousins' protracted legal fight over the Steele mansion and its contents left them in a virtual time-capsule. Untouched since Chuck's heart-attack, the estate awaited a probate judge's decision followed, likely, by many years of appeals.

This allowed Chuck no small measure of comfort because despite being dead he was still able to walk the familiar halls of his ancestral home. He could still enjoy lying in his own bed, even if sleep, including the deep and eternal, did not come.

He liked to slink around the rooms of the Steele mansion at all hours, inspecting, often picking up and holding familiar artifacts. Like his books or his favorite pen. His brown leather briefcase. The decorative yet razor-sharp samurai sword he bought in Japan. Fingering these souvenirs from his life, feeling their texture, Chuck felt more alive than he was, a connectedness to his former self.

But the mansion became too quiet for him and he felt cooped up, claustrophobic. And so, the best part of Chuck's newfound existence, or non-existence — Chuck's greatest enjoyment — came from his daily walk to old Cloverdale Park, just around the corner. There he would spend one, and just one, blissful hour. Sitting and watching all the action. Ensconced in the clover.

***

Before his passing and after, Charles "Chuck" Steele was well-known in Cloverdale. August Steele, Chuck's grandfather, a banker and Cloverdale Baptist Church's greatest patron, was memorialized by a plaque and bronzed likeness adorning the church's vestiary. Sandy Steele, August's son and Chuck's father, was a prominent commercial lawyer who, like August in his later years, became devoted to the maintenance and upkeep of the church, its grounds, and adjoining Cloverdale Park.

Chuck followed his father's footsteps into law.

Chuck flourished professionally. Smart and the product of wealth and good genes, he was a handsome man with a hearty, healthy constitution. Chuck could often be seen on Main Street in a flashy suit and not 10 minutes later, he'd be spotted again in soccer shorts and a tank top, running around Cloverdale Park, nodding, grinning, beckoning to all.

It was unsurprising then that at just 40 years of age, everyone in Cloverdale agreed that Chuck had passed far before his time. There was also consensus that despite having been cut short, it had been a life well-lived, as Chuck appeared to enjoy a charmed existence. He had had more reasons than most to be "happy" — as much as the word means to feel or show pleasure or contentment.

However, while by no means had he been unhappy, Chuck always longed for something, something more. Late at night, when the clover crept and most in Cloverdale slept, Chuck knew deep down — down where it is uncomfortable to go — that something important was missing.

***

Henrietta Darvish or "Yetta," as she came to be known, lived twenty-five sadness-filled years wracked by so much tragedy that, by and large, the people of Cloverdale believed it a blessing when they heard she'd been killed.

Yetta was diagnosed with cancer at just eight years old. She beat the cancer but her left leg had to be amputated below the knee, and this occurring before advances in prosthetics, Yetta was forced to use a cane and wear an unattractive stumpy black boot, just to get around.

While other children ran, jumped, and swung from the clover-draped trees of Cloverdale Park, Yetta would sit by herself on one of the park's wooden "memorial" benches, reading. Sometimes she was joined when one of the nuns felt sorry for her or had been on their feet too long. But for the most part, Yetta sat alone.

When class was over for the day, Yetta never joined her schoolmates spilling out of the church's breezy vestibule, their excited high-pitched tweets melding with the park's acoustics; a frenetic flock of free birds feather-shaking before the flight home. Instead, clutching the top of her cane, Yetta was slow and studious as she navigated the cobblestone road home. Having taken a number of tumbles after the loss of her leg, Yetta planted her cane in the ground and applied enough pressure to be sure it would anchor her before straining to drag her heavy left foot/boot up and forward, then down, ever so gently. After stepping naturally with her right foot, she began this laborious, regimented process — the only way she could walk — all over again.

The other children were not kind and would imitate her using an exaggerated simian-like gait. They chanted "Yeti, Yeti" or jeered the ridiculous but no less stinging, “Yeti Spaghetti.”

***

Once a proud Victorian, the Darvish house had long bowed to disrepair. Peeling, its forest-green paint exposed battered beams of dull-grey decaying wood. The lavender-colored shutters, once regal, had metamorphosed to a sickly, pinkish hue. The wraparound porch was on the brink of total collapse. It was a grim house to come home to.

The clover made it grimmer still as it clustered over the house's blighted facade in unruly tassels like diseased Christmas ornaments. The clover grew a darker color over the Darvish house than elsewhere in Cloverdale Park. More of a deep purple color than green, black in places.

The clover mimicked the dark mood of Yetta's father, Lionel Darvish. A physically imposing cantankerous man with jet black, unkempt hair, Lionel, was a millionaire many times over due to family money and good investments.

A recluse, Lionel was rarely seen, employing servants, assistants, and lawyers to satisfy his needs and to tend to his affairs, including the maintenance and upkeep of his only child.

But Sandy Steele and the Cloverdale City Council tried, once, unsuccessfully, to force certain cosmetic compromises on the Darvish house. Lionel's testimony on the stand was just the way he was off of it. Brooding and terse, Lionel did not mince words to confront, chastise, and condemn.

It was Yetta who got it the worst. Common knowledge in Cloverdale was that Lionel blamed her for the death of his wife, Charlotte, Yetta's mother, in childbirth. When the cancer ate at Yetta's leg, Lionel told her it was no worse than her own cancerous existence — one that robbed him of his Charlotte.

So merciless was Lionel in the treatment of his only daughter. As the Cloverdale Chronicle's headline blared after the killing: "Capital Clubbing Case Witness: When Yetta cried, Lionel chuckled." Reports of the medical examiner's expected testimony sounded just as bad: "Cudgel used to crush cranium: M.E. says father used cruel crashing blows to cave in own daughter's head."

But after the first blow it really wasn't so bad Yetta thought at the time. And this is what he has always wanted, so why not "Honor Thy Father" as the nuns preached?

For 25 years since Yetta was born, and lived, and his precious Charlotte died, wasn't this moment foreordained? Curiously, with each crack of the cudgel Yetta began to believe maybe this is what she herself wanted. What she had always hoped would happen.

The only disturbing part was all the blood. Great pools of it surrounded her bruised and battered body. Yetta watched as they mopped it up. At first she hid in her closet peeking out the crack, but when she realized these first-responders could not see her — that she really was dead — she came out. And watched.

She was so mesmerized by the spectacle and the fact that no one could see her that, at first, she didn't realize she was standing without her cane and that her boot, a constant dead weight, was gone.

Where every day for more than two-thirds of her life she had stared down at an ugly, black leather appendage, there instead was a beautiful, healthy, ordinary leg. It had all the parts: foot (with five toes), shin, knees, and thigh. The sudden reappearance of her leg blunted the shock of realizing that there she was, standing there, dead. Murdered by her own father.

And now, she was some kind of spook, a zombie, maybe worse. She should have been distraught. Apoplectic, at least, at the unfairness of such an end.

But she wasn't. Instead she felt rejuvenated, reborn. Hopping on her new leg, Yetta marveled at its musculature, its sturdiness. And she walked, normally and naturally, for what seemed (and in some ways was) the first time, all around the cavernous Darvish House.

***

Ambulating on both old and new leg after her murder, Yetta spent the bulk of those first days in Lionel Darvish's dark wood paneled library, reading. Lionel had forbidden Yetta admittance to the large luxuriously appointed library when she was alive. But now she was dead and he was in jail with his minions long gone, so Yetta could do as she pleased.

And it stayed that way. Some Darvish descendent descended on Cloverdale two years after the killing and tried to sell the ghoulish house but no one would buy it; its grisly appearance and real life crime-story too much for the market to bear. Defunct, it sat, year after year, empty — but for Yetta — on the southernmost tip of Cloverdale Park.

With Lionel out of the picture, Cloverdale church's clergymen forced the issue of the Darvish house's caretaking. It was freshly painted. The crumbling porch was torn down. Then, rebuilt.

An incongruous, cheerful, charming, white picket fence was added, and looked out of place. Flowers were planted, and eventually, reluctantly perhaps, bloomed.

At first, the gardeners came every week to battle the dark clover enveloping the house's exterior. With powerful chainsaws they chipped and they chipped causing the clover to fall in chunks; big brambles that littered the ground before being bustled away.

But the clover was never beat. Always, it bounded back, bigger and bulkier than before. Eventually, the gardeners gave into it. And so too did the real estate company -- as no matter how many times the price was lowered, the Darvish house wouldn't sell. Rumor was, it was haunted. Haunted by that poor, murdered Darvish girl. Crippled she was.

***

Yetta did not discover her love for running right off. Although she didn't remember, she supposed she must have run at some point as a young girl. But with the passage of seventeen years since her amputation, she had plum forgotten. Running — to willfully thrust one leg in front of the other — was so foreign. So fabulous!

She started simply watching from the library's spacious window seat overlooking the park; a comfortable deep brown leather recliner, it still smelled like Lionel's fragrant cigars, the only “pleasant” thing about the man. Reclining, Yetta would look up from her book and watch as the runners inhabited the park, circling it all hours, day and night, running. She became familiar with the regulars and their routines, and soon, she was able to recognize them far-off — all the way on the opposite side of the park even — just by gait.

One of these regulars drew her attention most. He was athletic and attractive and when she spotted him on the track she put her book away, pressed her nose to the pane, and watched.

The man was like an artist manipulating a canvas the way he ran, mastering the track, bending it to his will.

His stride was strong and sure as he ran with exacting mechanical precision, his muscular legs gliding harmoniously forward with unsparing economy: each footfall like the last, no physical movement wasted. The man's bearing was erect, his head and back at a perfect 90- degree angle. His eyes stared unwavering, ahead, at the ground to come. As he passed by Yetta's window she could see his smile, blissful and relaxed, as he constantly, unhesitatingly, moved forward.

***

She was scared and embarrassed her first time running. It was silly because she was sure, as dead as she was, that no one could see her. But still, she was self-conscious. The faded pair of blue athletic shorts she found buried in one of Lionel's clothes drawers fit fine because she was able to tie and pull tight the elastic band around her waist. She also had plenty of cotton t-shirts and socks to run in, so that wasn't a problem.

Running shoes were, however, an obstacle. She would have to steal some. Yetta felt bad about this having never stolen before, but she reminded herself she was dead now and... not in hell... at least not yet. It was foolish to think that one pair of purloined shoes was gonna push her down... over the edge. So one day she slipped out of the Darvish house and, walking in the shadows of the clover — even though no one living could see her — she went up to Cloverdale Church.

Yetta knew that every third morning the nuns met for group calisthenics in the area of the park directly in front of the church. During these sessions the sisters wore white athletic shoes that clashed with their flowing black habits, giving them a humorous penguin-like look.

When finished they would all leave their shoes in a defined spot in the church's vestibule set up for that very purpose. It wasn't hard for Yetta to find and make off with a pair her size.

***

Appropriately attired, Yetta walked through the clover to the running path, a short distance from the Darvish house.

After so much hobbling and moving her body only out of necessity — running — moving her body because she wanted to, because she could, made her feel righteous. It made her feel free. She enjoyed the stirring vibration of her legs rhythmically striking the ground.

The cool air refreshed her cheeks as blood pumped through her extremities, warming her core. It was this feeling that drew Yetta to running, this incredible feeling of self. Although dead, Yetta felt more alive than ever. Navigating the track, legs thrusting forward like pinions, Yetta was master of the universe.

***

It took a few runs but finally she was able to tune out the other runners, walkers, and lollygaggers. Running, walking, talking, still alive, they didn't bother Yetta. They couldn't see her and didn't know she was there.

But then one day as she was running, running at the northernmost point of the park, a man sitting on a bench — a nondescript middle-aged man — a man she barely noticed who was busy impersonating a statue, suddenly looked up, looked directly at her, and smiled.

She thought she must be mistaken but when she passed him again there was no mistaking it, he was staring at her, gazing, ogling ... he could see her! Chills ran down her spine. She ran faster. As fast as she could. Right to her house across the park. Throwing open the door, she ran inside and slammed it shut, hoping, praying, that the man — whoever he was — was not still watching.

***

The next day the man came back. Yetta saw him from her window where she had been waiting, watching for him. He was wearing the same dull clothes, a light-weight beige jacket and dark pants, and, after strolling into the park, he made a beeline for the same bench as before. Sitting there, on the bench, the man looked out on the park and the clover, transfixed, staring into space.

***

Months passed, and still the man came to the park every single day, taking his same position on the bench by the church. Yetta noted his comings and goings but since that first time he smiled at her she did not muster the courage to go out to the track again, even when she was sure he wasn't there. During this self-imposed exile she immersed herself in Lionel's library's extensive collection of books. But the books were not enough. They did not satisfy her, and, she knew, she accepted that all the reading in the world could not substitute her need to run. To sweat. To fill her lungs with air. Her body ached from the lack of exertion. Her muscles, slack from sloth, craved activity.

***

"This is my park. You need to leave. Now." Holding Lionel's black revolver, her hand shook, as she pointed it at the man in the windbreaker. Startled to life almost, Chuck about fell off his bench. Looking in the direction of the voice — the first one to be directed at him in five months — he appraised its speaker. She had pale skin and dark raven-colored hair. Her lonely, almond-shaped eyes were pitch black. She wore no lipstick, but her lips were smooth and red anyway, and now, having uttered their threat, they pursed. She was waiting, anticipating Chuck's next move.

Conspicuous, covering them, the clover drew closer.

Stephen Cooper is a former D.C. public. defender who worked as an assistant federal public defender in Alabama between 2012 and 2015. He has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers in the United States and overseas. He writes full-time and lives in Woodland Hills, California. Follow him on “X”/Twitter @SteveCooperEsq

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Cloverdale Park (Love After Death): A short story