~~ Hi All! First of all thank you to everyone who is following the story! Second, I use music when I write (although this is my first fanfic I do write other stuff), so I'm going to be adding accompanying tracks to the documents if you'd like to listen to what I picture would be the proper soundtrack music as it were~~

Queue "From This Valley" by the Civil Wars

Jack Bondurant swilled another batch of Cricket's homemade shine around a few times in a mason jar, smelling the fumes…and nearly burning his corneas on the unholy mixture. It was awful. If only he could get Forrest and Howard to teach him something. He cast a sideways glance at Cricket, who looked reluctantly at him with still the slightest shred of hope that Jack might find something complimentary to say about it. They were trying a new Cornmeal shine recipe that Cricket swore would eventually develop into something sellable…or at least palatable. Jack shrugged and smiled at Cricket. He felt protective of the other boy. "Hell, it ain't so bad." He took a tentative sip and grimaced. The boys were sitting at the edge of the station porch, leaning against opposite posts facing each other. It was one of the best places for enjoying the late summer Virginia sun. Then they heard it. Or perhaps they felt it first, a change in the air. It was Cricket who perked up first, his eyebrows rising and eyes sparkling, but with a quivering lower chin which belied his uncertainty. Cars didn't always sound like that in this part of the piedmont. And it could mean any number of different things. At the very least it hailed the arrival of an interesting visitor. At the most… Jack scrambled to attention to stand with Cricket, who had sprung up to face whatever was coming their way.

"V-12" Jack cooed. "398 cid."

"Whassat mean, Jack?." Cricket chirped. He knew a considerable amount about cars, but a 389 cid was beyond what he was used to working with.

"Faaaast." Jack drawled. "Real Fast."

Roaring up the lane to Blackwater Station, kicking and spitting a fit of dust behind it was a blue Pierce Arrow 1931 Convertible Model 41 with white walled tires.

"Oh shit, boy! Wait till you see this here." Jack hopped off of the porch and went towards the pumps. They weren't strictly full service, but Jack was sure whoever was behind the wheel did not know that. And he wasn't sure someone who drove a car like that was used to pumping their own gas. As it pulled up, Jack could hear the purr of the engine and see the gleam of the paint when the sun hit the hood. Something was strange about the car, most notably the fact that the driver was wearing lace driving gloves….and lipstick. A smile peeled across Jack's face and he nudged Cricket as discreetly as he could manage. "Crick….it's a girl."

Cricket grinned.

When the car stopped at the pump, the window was open, and the brim of a pretty felt hat peeked out of the window, the driver tipping her head gently so she wouldn't bump it on the window frame. She tipped her eyes to the boys, smiling. "Hi, y'all!"

Cricket nodded, gave a half-wave, and shuffled around the car, feeding gas into the pump and moving around to fill the gas tank. Jack had resisted the urge to hop onto the running board and peek inside at the cream leather interior and wooden dash.

"Hi, Miss." He tipped his hat and then removed it with his left hand to place it against his chest. "I'm Jack Bondurant, welcome to Blackwater Station."

"Well, Hi Jack Bondurant." She smiled at him and put out a crocheted white lace gloved hand to shake his. "I'm Alice Ostergaard." Her ghostly pale skin was dotted with freckles across her nose. She made a sheepish face. "Maybe you could help me?"

Jack nodded vigorously. "Sure um…how…how can I help?"

"Well," she sighed and dropped her hand into the passenger's seat, picking up a map. She contorted her lower jaw in confusion. "I'll show you." She put the map in her lap and went to open her door, but Cricket had joined them now and in a show of gentlemanly grace, he swept in and opened her door for her, and she stepped out in low heeled pumps and a calf length crepe de chine light blue dress. Later, when they were all still trying to sort her out Bertha would quietly breathe into Jack's ear over sandwiches and sarsaparilla that Alice looked like something out of a magazine. She walked around to the hood of the car and spread out the map. Cricket blushed when he realized he was staring at the seams of her stockings as they snaked up the backs of her legs. Soon, he wouldn't see her as a "girl" at all, but something else. Better, perhaps.

"All right," Alice began. "So…we're here….I think." She pointed to the turnoff to Blackwater Station on the map. "Right?" She searched the boys' faces for recognition. "Um, yeah," Jack said. "Here's where you turned…and this area here is right where we are." She nodded. "All right, perfect. So I'm trying to get to the McLure house? Which I think is here," she pointed to an area on the other side of the pond at Blackwater Station. Close by. "Red McLure was my grandmamma's brother. He died a few years ago." Along with everyone else, she thought. "At any rate, I'm moving there, but I need to find out where it is first."

Jack's thoughts were moving faster than he could command them. Shit shit shit. What the hell was he supposed to tell this girl? His head was spinning. He couldn't imagine this girl living in that house on it's best day…but now? "Yeah, yeah, um…we knew ol' Red. Kinda kept to himself a lot…but he's been gone a long time and the house….well I don't think you can live there. It ain't the house it was when he lived there. We had a bad flood last year and the house is in a valley. Damn road was washed out, and there was flooding. I can take you to see it?" He watched her face fall…."But I don't know if it'll help ya. I'm sure you can live there sometime...but somebody's gonna need to do some work on it before then."

She paused. "Well, shit." She'd given up worrying about profanities. It seemed no one cared anymore, and she'd been raised around it anyway. Truth to tell, she had enjoyed her childhood, traveling out and living in rustic logging camps in western Virginia. Then, home had been Williamsburg, but it took quite a bit of serious involvement on her father's part to be on site making sure everything ran smoothly, so they lived in logging camps any time it wasn't "winter". She walked around the car, leaving her map carelessly on the top of the hood, and plopped down on the running board, resting her chin on her hands and her elbows on her knees.

Cricket spoke for the first time "Where'd you drive from?" He asked.

She sighed "Charlotte." Even saying the name filled her heart with dread. Only ghosts back there. Her father's, primarily. And the sounds she'd never get out of her head. When he'd come to her with his voice flat and dead and said "They're taking the house," she'd been upset, but as a Virginian by birth who had spent most of her time there, not heartbroken. Her father's house in Charlotte was his prize, not hers. Bought with timber money and built of stone. And it was just a house. She'd sat there alone for six months after he was gone while the bank's grace period ran out with the clock. His timber company had folded in '29. And since the house was being built by the senior Ostergaard himself, it had been, as had everything else, a work in progress, an homage to perceived perfection. So when the timber company finally folded due to the depression, they held out as long as they had with his vast savings, but keeping up with appearances was paramount. They weren't moving and they weren't changing, seemed his mantra. She bought her big, beautiful car for her birthday and let it sit in the driveway. She had dresses enough for three years even if she wore each one only once. And then the buying had to stop. Paintings he refused to sell. She donated the paintings to a museum in Richmond. Sent them home. North Carolina had betrayed her. Virginia was home. She would remember her nights packing just as she remembered the crack of the gunshot and the pooling of bright red blood on the white marble floor. She and Lettie sitting at the empty dining room table watching the sun set and not bothering to turn the lights on. Resting over lemonade after hours and hours of packing. And then she had remembered she could escape into the woods back home, somewhere quiet her favorite uncle had lived. Any place was better than Charlotte. Shame, disgrace, regret. If a fast car couldn't take you away from those things, what was it good for? So, there, alone, homeless, she felt a peace she couldn't recall having felt since she was a child. She looked up at Jack Bondurant, "Is there a hotel around here?"

Queue "The Carnivale Convoy" - Composer Jeff Beal

Jack smiled "If I tell you, will you promise to come back here for dinner? Meet my friends and folks?" She put out her hand to shake in agreement with his terms. Then she said goodbye to Cricket, to whom she was formally introduced. He checked the oil as a last measure, and they left the side of the hood up so the boys could watch the engine turn over and hear the car start. Then they closed up and left her with specific instructions to the hotel, and more important to Jack, directions back. She smiled on the way down the drive. They couldn't be much younger than she was at twenty-four.

As she pulled out of Blackwater Station and was flying down the road, Forrest and Howard glimpsed her behind the wheel of the gleaming car as they passed in the jalopie. While Howard stared openly at her face, Forrest, his view blocked by his brother's big gawking curly head, could only catch a glimpse of her hand, dangling delicately in it's white lace, turning orange in the now fading sunlight, fingers open slightly as the air pushed by the speeding cars rushed past between them.