Dear Ruby, I realize I should explain why I’m writing an old-fashioned letter instead of talking to you in person. I’m not sure what I want to say. There would be too much silence between words—not a thoughtful pause, but Ausable Chasm without its beauty.
Remember rock climbing at the chasm on our honeymoon? Was there ever anything typical about us?
Our wedding day, when for better or worse was a phrase that had as much significance as a television commercial for the terminally naive.
In black and white, that’s all we had in the 1950’s. Black or white cowboy hats determined whether a character was on the side of the law or not. You said that bullets killed both sides equally. I noticed only action and fantasy.
We were young. I wanted to get a job and protect you forever. As the mom, the cook at home.
“No way,” you answered, sweetness mixed with acid. You needed a career as well.You rerouted my chauvinism and triggered my admiration. However, my ignorance could only be channeled so far.
Our baby. A boy. Lived three hours.
“But, sweetheart, he didn’t have a chance anyway.” I tried to comfort you with facts instead of arms. “His brain and kidneys were not properly developed.” Perhaps I need to say goodbye to both George Henry Sr. and George Henry Jr.You mourned our baby. I lost you.”
Draft Two:
Dear Ruby, In my dream last night I bought a second engagement ring for you. But the ring disappeared when I tried to slip it on your finger. And you got angry as if I were trying some ill-mannered magic trick… No, I can’t admit that. It overflows with insecurity.
Attempt Three:
Dear Ruby, I worked late again the day we reconciled. It had been dark when I entered my brother’s house. His wife left food for me. She is kind, but sometimes feeling sorry for me leaks out of her and stains my ego. Thanks for taking me back. I have something important to tell you. I’m a changed man—odd timing, I’ll admit, but for the first time in my life, I see clearly you have always been the stronger half. Okay, minus the five months when we were separated. You got a break.
Uncle Tim’s hair and beard reminded me of Mom’s homemade spaghetti sauce, thick and red. But he covered it with cottony white to play Santa for our family Christmas party. He already had the belly and plenty of ho ho ho to spare.
Although Great Aunt Frieda, his own mama, said his tummy held more beer than cheer. That’s what made his nose and cheeks match his costume. He admitted he drank too much, occasionally, but he would slow down on his drinking. Really. After the holidays. Of course, seconds later he gulped three tiny glasses of whiskey that smelled so strong I almost coughed.
Then he pulled out a mug from the freezer and poured beer into it. Mom and a lot of the other relatives wondered which holiday he meant. But I adored Uncle Tim. I followed him like the puppy no one in our family had, his hero worshipper. At the age of ten, I was the oldest kid in the family. Well, I had two teenage relatives, but they hardly ever showed up, even at Christmas. My closest younger cousins still wore pull-ups. They played with their new toys in the living room, next to the artificial tree, the kind that’s already decorated and set on the back of a tabletop so nobody can bump into it.
Aunt Frieda got upset if any of the small people spilled juice on her rug or got crumbs on her couch.
So, the babies’ mamas sat on the floor and played with them, just to be safe. The other grownups sat around Great Aunt Frieda’s dining room table, drank coffee, and nibbled on her special oatmeal Christmas cookies. The grownups acted as if they didn’t taste like ground wood mixed with just enough sugar to keep anyone from throwing up. We kids could tell with one look that a starving dog would turn them down.
So, Uncle Tim and I went to the desk in his room to play a nature and geography game we liked. Uncle Tim taught social studies. He told me stories about countries all around the world, and then spread out maps and pictures. He asked me to tell a story, pretend to be traveling along the map, or act something out. It didn’t have to make sense. We had more fun when it didn’t. I got to be good at it, and Uncle Tim smiled when I traced the Great Wall of China with my finger and pretended it turned into marshmallow.
“You could be one of my eighth-grade students.” He cocked his head to one side and ruffled my hair. The compliment made me feel great, but his voice had the slightest slur, not a good sign.“What do you want for Christmas, little girl?” he asked in a fake super-low voice.
“How about bringing Mt. Fuji into my backyard? I could use the climbing practice. Or you could transfer my gym teacher to the Amazon. He said I move like a sick sloth.”
Uncle Tim put down his mug, for a second anyway, and grabbed a crayon out of my property-of-Caitlin, hands-off tin. He kept it on his desk, just for the two of us. “Hmmn, not sure. That’s going to take extra work, and the elves will put up a big fuss, but I’ll see what I can do about it.” He wrote Mt. Fuji in purple on line paper. “But.” He smiled and stroked the fake white of his beard. “I can make sure your gym teacher gets a load of coal in her backyard. Either that or drop off a real sick sloth.”
We laughed so loud Great Aunt Frieda came in and peeked at us with that stop-that-silly-nonsense look. I may be only a kid, but I think Mom nailed it when she said Grandma’s younger sister can take the song out of a canary. “Anything else I can do for you, my dear?” he asked.
“How about transferring the music teacher to Greenland? Or, better, to someplace in the Amazon where they have crocodiles? She told me I had a tin ear, whatever that means. She expects us to be like Schroeder in the Peanuts comics and make great sound come out of a black-and-white drawing.”
Uncle Tim said, “Tin ear is an old-fashioned way of saying you won’t grow up to be a piano tuner, but that teacher gets extra points for rude.” He rolled his eyes and finished the beer in one gulp. “Well, I guess nobody knows why people act the way they do.” He sighed and opened the big Atlas I loved with all the bright colors. “A person is like a map. A map gives you an idea what a country is like: where the mountains and rivers are, the shape of the borders. But the map doesn’t let you see weather, sunsets, wars, the beautiful and the ugly. Do you know what I mean?”
“Kind of. Tell you what I really want, Uncle Tim. No game.”
“What’s that, sugar?”
“I want you to stay awake longer tonight. It scares me when you go to sleep, and then drop over like a book falling off a shelf. I can’t pick you up and put you back like I can a book of nursery rhymes. I mean, I get scared that you are the real Humpty Dumpty, and nobody will ever put you together again.”
Uncle Tim got quiet, and then slammed down his empty mug, almost like he forgot we were having fun. I thought I would have to play with the babies like I had to once Uncle Tim got sleepy.
“Aw, Caitlin, I’m not opening another bottle. No early sleeping tonight.”
And that night, Uncle Tim and I even played ping pong in the basement. Sort of. The men in the family watched sports on television and let us use the table. Uncle Tim and I bounced more balls off the table than over the net. Our game didn’t deserve a score.
***
On the following Tuesday, the phone rang after eleven o’clock at night. Mom answered. I got out of bed and ran into her room to find out who called, but she told me to go back to bed, so I grabbed the kitchen extension and listened. Mom and Aunt Frieda were talking about Uncle Tim. Something bad had happened, something really bad, a car accident. Uncle Tim was in trouble. Big trouble. A mother and her baby had been in the other car. No one got killed. But they had to get stitches. Tim was shook like he never had been in his life. And he faced something called a DUI.
“About time that worthless kid faced up to his responsibilities,” Aunt Frieda said.
“If he’s that shook, maybe he’s ready to change. Join a twelve-step program. Ever think about that? I’m up to helping my cousin. Do it for him? No. But listen, sure. Hey, it’s not like I don’t understand hard times. I’m a widow. Remember? Cancer took my husband. Now Tim is taking the place of the father Caitlin never knew. I owe it to Tim.”
My heart beat so hard I could feel it pound in my throat. Uncle Tim hit somebody’s car. People got hurt. And then, Mom talked about Dad. To Aunt Frieda. I didn’t remember him; he died when I was a toddler. All I knew was a picture Mom had on her dresser that she dusted all the time, even if she didn’t have time to clean the rest of the room.
“That’s not the same thing. I call because I can’t sleep over all this and you talk about yourself.”
Aunt Frieda hung up without saying good bye. Mom told me she heard every breath I took when I was on the other line, but she didn’t give me a hard time about it. She said she understood why I did it. I didn’t feel sure about much, but somehow I had to help Uncle Tim.
Uncle Tim:
Caitlin talked, but I didn’t hear a word she said. I thought about her words on Christmas Day, about Humpty Dumpty, Humpty Tim, lying on the bed, cracked open and scared to get up. Sure, I felt good to be home again, at least temporarily, until the court decided my fate. However, I wanted a drink but wouldn’t dare touch anything. Finally, Caitlin had raised her voice. “You haven’t even looked at this stuff I gave to you yesterday. There is a story here. I didn’t put these pages together just to be cute you know.”
“Okay, of course. You are already cute.”
“Not the point. You know what? A department store dummy doesn’t stare into space as much as you do.” She shook the stapled papers at me. “Catch the plan, Uncle Tim. Please.”
Then she left. I locked the door to my room. It kept Mama out, even if it didn’t protect me from her words blasting through the wood and exploding around the top, bottom, and sides.
“You got what you deserve. You know that. Your father is dead because he couldn’t give up the sauce. Now you . . .you. . . I don’t know what I ever did to deserve this.”
Mama cried, and I was grateful when I heard her moving away, down the hall, into the dark rooms of this large house. She sobbed for herself. My predicament only got in her way, at least that’s the way I saw it. But since nobody poured liquor down my throat, I couldn’t blame anyone but me. Her tears complicated my guilt. I wanted the emptiness of a blackout right then, but at the same time the notion sickened me. I recalled the dizziness that always came sometime before oblivion, the roller coaster ride at warp speed as it left the ground and reality. Then that horrid night replayed through my mind in an infinite loop: Lights flash against dark, wet early evening streets. People pass and stare—at my car smashed into the driver’s side of another. I see that woman’s face when she gets out of her car from the other side as if it is printed in indelible ink behind my eyelids. She looks at her child in her car seat, at the blood flowing from her temples.
She screams, “Caitlin! Caitlin!”Then, after she determines the child is alive, the woman stares at me. She doesn’t need to say anything. Blood is in her hair. That is what I remember; her 911 call remains a blur. I stand there, helpless. The numb in my head fills my muscles and paralyzes them, too. I don’t get a single scratch. Not one. My car looks as messed up as my life promises to be, but my body could be rubber, numb, and bendable as my beard. My soul collapses long before the cops arrive, assess my drunken state, and cuff me.
Why did the baby have to have the same name as my niece? I tried to divert my attention by looking at Caitlin’s pages neatly stapled together. On the top was a sheet with several drawings. My niece can’t be bothered with details. A real learning sponge, but art has never been her forte. She penciled a stick figure here and there with printed words to fill in the empty spaces. I opened the first page to a primitive house drawing labeled: Aunt Frieda’s place.
A staple at the left corner nicked my thumb as I turned to the second page: a newspaper with an apartment for rent circled. This one looks good, added in red block letters, And Mom says she will pay your first month’s rent. One bedroom. Aunt Frieda can stay in the big old house.” I laughed, for the first time since the accident, glad Mama must be far enough away not to hear. Not that I expected her to say anything other than I’m in a heap of trouble, and that the bars I like so much are going to take on a whole different meaning soon.
The next page showed a stick figure family. Caitlin wrote names under the figures. They didn’t make sense. Not right away anyway. A mother, a father, a boy named Daniel, and an infant named Caitlin. I stared at it for a long time before I noticed words crayoned in yellow at the bottom. Turn to the back to find the answer, Uncle Tim. Printed in small block letters, Caitlin wrote: Daniel is in my class. His baby sister’s stitches are healing, and his mother wants the man who hit them to pay for her car and a lot more, too. But she also wants him to get better. Forever. Not go to jail. Daniel doesn’t know you are my uncle. I love you, Caitlin.
I got my Santa hat out of the back of my drawer and pulled it on. A nasty sleet had iced everything in sight. Not that I’d be driving anywhere. My license waited in time-out until who-knows-when. Mama saw me as I opened the door. “Are you crazy?”
“Probably. I’m on my way to move Mt. Fuji to a very special backyard, and I’m considering transferring a music teacher to the Amazon.” Mama didn’t say anything, possibly certain I really had gone mad. The thin white gloss made walking difficult, so I tread over chilled grass instead of pavement as much as possible. I imagined tracing Caitlin’s Wall of China, except it soon became Tim’s obstacle course, transformed into marshmallow—one step, one blessed step at a time.
Christmas Eve or not, as I watch Phil fiddling with the tree lights, still blank as our bank account, I could just scream. If he hadn’t taken so long setting Teddy’s train around the tree, we wouldn’t be stressed for time like this. There’s no reason a model train needs twenty-five test runs! And he should never sit on the floor that long. Besides, staring at our old gray rug depresses me even more.
Not that I don’t complain.
I set hot gingerbread cookies on the mantle. Franny’s little fingers can’t find them there. One cookie head breaks anyway. Mine feels close to snapping. Phil hasn’t been the same since he came home from the war in ’45. The leg shrapnel I can deal with, but the metal that opened his head, changed our lives forever. I remember when Phil graduated college. He chose to pursue chemistry in graduate school. We had it all worked out. Then, he left for the European front in March, and never finished the program. Part of him seems to be missing.
“Don’t worry, dear, I’ll find the offending bulb,” he says.
I nibble on a cookie I don’t want through a fake smile.
My Aunt Marilyn could have at least given Phil a Christmas bonus. Even if she couldn’t give him dignity. Just a twenty-three-dollar-a-week job at her bakery on the other side of town. Seems to me the doughnut hole is sweeter than Marilyn. Since Phil can’t drive, I need to take him there every morning. In a car running on a prayer and three gallons of gas. With Franny, Teddy and a set of infant twins. At 5AM.
Franny traced herself in the bedroom mirror with nail polish, then played tick-tack toe on Teddy’s belly with my good Sunday lipstick.
At least my parents took all four kids to their house for the day. That’s our Christmas Eve tradition. While the children are gone Santa comes. When Mom and Dad bring them home, we all celebrate. Well, thanks to S&H Green Stamps, Phil and I saved enough for a few toys. But my celebration feels as absent as the tree lights.
Phil:
“Esther, look. I’ve found the problem light. Naturally, it was the last bulb on the line. Don’t you just love these true, real colors?”
She smiled, I think, or was it a twitch? I grab the edge of the sofa and hoist myself up. I’m careful to turn my face away from my wife so she doesn’t see the grimace when I lift my bum leg. But I know I’m not hiding anything from Esther, the realist.
I’d love to tell her about the day last week when I took Franny with me to the corner barbershop because she was driving Esther crazy. I met the president of the state university and learned he lives less than a mile away from us.
“You’re Philip Howard?” he said. “Most interesting. I’m a man of science, not fate. Nevertheless, I’ve got to wonder why I ran across your undergraduate thesis just this morning. Brilliant work, sir. Brilliant. PhD material.”
Before the holidays the barbershop gets busy. While we waited we talked education. Every facet. Esoteric and practical. Even more amazing than our chance meeting, Franny sat humming “Silent Night,” as she colored. I wondered if another kid had taken Franny’s place.
Suddenly she chimed in. “My daddy is the smartest man in the world. And the nicest too.” I’m sure I blushed. But the university president didn’t act like he noticed. Then he allowed me to get my hair cut first while he talked to Franny.
He listened to her five-year-old audacity while the barber complained about how I always waited until I looked like a brown dust mop before I got haircuts. I wouldn’t dare tell him it was because I barely had change left after groceries.
Then when I got up to leave, the president told me to expect a call. There was a teaching assistant position opening. And he would push for me to get it. If I wanted it. As well as a scholarship to finish my education.
I tried not to thank him like a sycophant fool and came home. Silent. Esther would mention the obstacles. Yes, yes, of course, if he called I would tell him about my injuries. No details about the trembling shakes. But as a man of science, he would know. Yes, he would know.
I would know.
I turn away from the lights, too colorful now. Too bright. A seizure trigger perhaps. No, I can’t handle radiance, even for a moment. Not anymore.
Franny:
“A table and chairs just my size. How did Santa know I needed them? But when’s your big present coming, Daddy? I’ve been waiting all night.”
Daddy looks at me funny. “What big gift, sweetheart?”
Now Grandma and Grandpa look at me funny too. Grownups are hard to understand. Daddy looked so excited at the barbershop. And that man with all that gray hair promised. He promised me too.
“Don’t you remember? I told the man at the barber shop how Daddy taught me how everything in the world is made of puzzles, like water was made of an H and a 2 and an O. And how good that was for the smaller things to get along. He asked me questions and laughed, even when I didn’t know what was funny. Then I told him about how after the war, sometimes Daddy shook and fell down, but he always got back up again and talked about how the little parts of everything fit together again. No matter what. Even after working all day for what Mommy says wouldn’t feed a church mouse. Even though I looked and looked, but never saw a single mouse in church.
“Then the man said that I was a good learner and Daddy sounded like a great teacher. And he had the biggest, greatest Christmas present ever for Daddy. And that Daddy showed him good really did still live in the world, and I was the angel sent to show him.
“So, now I’m wondering when the man’s going to get here.”
Mommy looks confused until Daddy tells her about the gray-haired man. She starts smiling, big like the lights on the tree. And Grandma and Grandpa laugh.
Then Mommy and Daddy do something I never saw them do before. They giggle like Lucy and me do when we play boat race in the bathtub.
“Sweetheart,” Daddy says, “Thank you for giving me my big present.”
I don’t understand, but Mommy looks happy for a change, and she lets me and Lucy eat two gingerbread cookies instead of just one.
Mother Red Squirrel peeked out of the family’s treetop home. A fresh covering of snow had swallowed up the sounds of the pine forest. “Tomorrow is Christmas. This is a holy night,” she said to her son as her other chickarees slept in a cozy circle.
“Why is it holy?” he asked.
“Because God is here,” she answered. “And because God is here we are holy, too.”
“But we’re rodents, and rodents aren’t very special.”
“That’s not true. We can scurry down a tree head first. We can smell food planted beneath inches of snow, and see far away. We bury so many pine seeds that some of them become trees. The last pine cone you ate could have come from a tree planted by your great-great-great grandfather’s grandfather.”
“God wasn’t here when my sister was killed by the Tree Marten. I know, because if he were I wouldn’t have cried so much.”
Mother Squirrel’s large black eyes reflected her son’s sadness. “I have seen many young squirrels die, but God loves all of his creation. He laughs with us and he cries with us. God’s son was killed too. There were many who cried that day.”
“I don’t understand, mother.”
“Nobody can understand God, but listen to the night breeze. We have wonderful ears. Wait for a gentle calling. Imagine what our forest homeland looks like to God and put yourself in the center of it.” One of the red squirrel sisters lifted a sleepy head. “What’s going on?” she asked.
Her brother directed her to the opening of their hollow tree. “Come see the new snow, and listen for holy sounds,” he said. The wind slowed and they heard a whispering voice. They could not hear distinct words, but peace had struck each of their hearts in a way they would always remember.
Snow fell avalanche style. Margie didn’t bother to look out the window. Family Christmas celebration would wait until the week after New Year’s Day. It didn’t matter. Her husband Len had left this world. Ten years ago. On December 24. She hadn’t believed him when he told her he didn’t think his weak heart would hold out any longer. So unfair for a man in his fifties.
“We’re seeing the cardiologist on Monday. He’ll find something else we can do,” she had said, as he shook his head, eyes unblinking.
Len. He had seemed to be the lazy half of their relationship. Long before his illness. He always had an excuse for tasks like taking out the garbage. He would lean back and say, “I’ll do it after reading one more page of this book. You need to relax more and stress less, sweetheart.”
Margie often waited until the sun had almost set, then lugged the garbage cans to the curb. So many times.
Len had the energy level of a sloth on sleeping pills, but he was a scholar. PhD. Piled higher and deeper in anything on a metaphorical cloud. Nevertheless, he often bragged to his friends about how his wife could shoot a basketball from half-court and win the game with five seconds left.
Margie qualified the statement. “That happened once. When I was a sophomore in college” She couldn’t understand how she could love Len and be totally irritated by him at the same time. What could he do? It had to be more than cat lounge. She complained. Often.
Then of course there was the frequent argument. The one where Margie hit Len where it hurt him most. His family. Too many black sheep. A brother in prison. Two more who should be. Why he didn’t like to admit his last name, Crimm. Change the last letter and it could become crime. She bit her lip and was almost sorry it didn’t bleed. They never had time to make up. “Forgiveness,” Margie whispered to herself. “The only gift I really want for Christmas.”
The phone rang.
“Margie,” the voice called. “I have a huge favor to ask of you.”
“Sure, what do you need, sis?”
“A young woman named Dara is on her way from up north. She’s not far from your place, but she doesn’t think she can make it to mine. Okay if she stays out the storm with you?”
“Tell her to stop. If the snow settles soon, we will be at the celebration. If not, I would need more than my little Honda to plow through this stuff.”
“Thanks, Margie, I can always count on you.”
Her sister gave Margie an every-hair description of Dara Nubes. “Black straight hair, pale skin, large bustline, a continuous smile…” Her voice faded and disappeared.
Margie punched in her sister’s cell number. She didn’t get to the final digit before the doorbell rang.
Already. Dara had arrived.
“You are a lifesaver,” Dara said slipping off her boots. “The interstate is backed up for miles.”
“I am glad to help.”
“Awe! I smell something delightful cooking. Oatmeal walnut cookies.”
Margie opened her mouth, but nothing came out. This was the first batch of oatmeal walnut cookies she had ever made. She didn’t have much confidence in the baking world. This was an experiment. For Christmas at her sister’s. If it worked, wonderful. If not, no one needed to know about it. And what kind of sense of smell would someone need to recognize walnuts and oatmeal in a cookie?
Dara rushed to the kitchen, opened the drawer where Margie kept her kitchen linens. She opened the oven and handed the two thickest potholders to Margie. As she lifted the pan to the top of the stove, Dara oohed, “Could you give me that recipe. The smell shouts delicious.” She placed one hand on Margie’s arm.
Margie relaxed as if she had stepped into a whirlpool bath. Warmth. It didn’t come from the weather. Maybe she would figure it all out later and enjoy the moment. Some kind of psychic had visited her house, but at least she was a pleasant one.
“These cookies are lifting off the pan perfectly,” Dara said. “Do you bake often?”
“Not really.” Margie hesitated. “Not the kind of calories I want to wear.”
“Gotcha. Not when there’s so much you can do with a spinach salad.”
“Would you like one? I have some leftovers in the refrigerator.”
“Made the way Les liked them. With so much Caeser dressing the vegetables drown.”
“That’s exactly the way he put it.” She stared at Dara, then blurted out, “How do you know so much about me? And Les? I…I…”
“Your sister is a wonderful friend.”
“Yes. I know. But did she tell you this much about my husband?”
Dara didn’t answer the question. She paused before saying, “You are more valuable than you think. And Les is sorry.”
“What?” Margie wondered how she could stammer so much speaking one word.
“Okay. Let me try again. My name is Dara Nubes. Your sister has never met me. She does not know who or what I am. But all is well. More than well.”
“I’m sorry. I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Les knew he put off facing his heart condition too long. And it was his biggest regret because he knows it hurt you.”
“How can you know this? Who are you?”
Dara handed Margie an envelope that seemed to suddenly appear in her hand. “A message for you. It’s why I am here.”
Margie took the envelope and stared at it. Inside was a handwritten note. When she looked up, Dara was gone. The front door had not been opened.
My dear Margie: Look inside the old chest in the bedroom. I saved all the letters you sent me when I was in the army. There are some other treasures there, too. And, my dear, please go back to sports, something super active again. Girl, you’ve still got it. You are only in your fifties. Sure, we’ll meet again, but not for a long time yet. My guardian angel told me when that will be, but it’s against heaven’s rules to divulge secrets. I am sending an angel to deliver this message. Let’s forgive one another, Les
Margie opened the chest. Inside were coins and jewelry, some possibly worth a fortune. There also were journals in Les’s handwriting from thirty years ago. Page one: Today I met a girl. She let me know I am worthwhile even if my family couldn’t do it. Her name is Margie…
A friend is a gift you give yourself. (Robert Louis Stevenson)
BETWEEN CHESTER AND ME
Mom and her friends said Chester’s dad was nuts for sending him to an expensive private school after he failed third grade in public school. Again. Especially since the money he spent on out-of-parish tuition could have replaced that worthless pickup truck he drove. But I pretended I didn’t hear. Mom didn’t care what I thought anyway. She said I may be eight years old, but I could give out eighty-years-worth of opinion. Seems to me I wasn’t allowed to have one different notion about anything, much less too many.
“We get nasty notes about how much money we owe,” Chester told me, his mouth so full of crooked teeth, even I stared, and I was his best friend. “But Dad always pays. Late maybe. Just has to borrow a little once in a while.”
“So, doesn’t change a single game we play,” I said. “Uhm. You can’t come over today. I’ve got a doctor’s appointment, just for a check-up. See you at school tomorrow.”
I ran off before Chester saw the lie in me. I wish he wouldn’t tell me about his money problems. His dad’s dark shaggy beard and one pair of paint-spattered jeans told me he didn’t have much, unless he owned more than one pair of pants with a star-shaped tear in the knee with copper flecks of something on the seat. Chester wore old clothes like the ones we gave to the Salvation Army, things that were too shabby to wear, but too good for rags. Mom said I should never say anything mean to him. But I shouldn’t bring him home either.
“Stacey, Chester’s not all there. Do you know what I mean?” she said.
“Not all where?” I lifted the lid to the sugar jar and tapped the sides. I thought about sucking on one of the crystal chunks that fell into the center, but I didn’t really want it. Besides, it would fall apart as soon as I picked it up. Just like most of my arguments with my mother.
“Don’t pretend ignorance,” Mom said. “You never know what someone like that is going to do. Besides, it wouldn’t hurt for you to play with another girl now and then.”
I knew better than to argue anymore. I always ended up with extra chores if I did. But Mom didn’t understand. The other girls wanted to be fashion designers or actresses. Or they played with dolls in boring lace dresses and talked for them in voices that sounded like they’d been sucking in helium balloons. I never understood how someone could prefer fancy-pretend to football. Of course, some of the boys would think they had to be bosses. I hated that. Chester never played by those rules.
Once I broke a string on a brand-new gold yo-yo. I tried to tie the broken part back on but knew that wouldn’t work. I was just being stubborn and trying to prove a point about how I lost good birthday money on a piece of junk. So, I got mad and hurled the worthless thing at a fat old tree. Chester grabbed the two broken halves and covered his ears with them.
“Hey, Stacey? Look, my head’s winding the string.” He squatted down and stood up again until he got dizzy. Then he stuck his tongue out at me, and I laughed so hard I forgot to be in a bad mood.
In class, Chester would suck in air through his teeth and fold his arithmetic papers like an accordion. Sometimes his answers were so wrong the other kids laughed their heads off. Then it would take Mrs. Craftwood at least five minutes to quiet everybody down. But I wouldn’t laugh, even if Chester said something really funny, like the time he asked if the earth was hollow like the globe in the science room.
“Yeah, hollow like his head,” Jerry Freeman whispered. Then he stared at me. “Are you going to marry Hollow Head?” Every freckle on Jerry’s face flashed malice.
I tripped him when he went to sharpen his pencil. He bruised his elbow when he fell into another kid’s desk. I claimed it was an accident, but I didn’t look the least bit sorry. Mrs. Craftwood sent me to spend the afternoon in the principal’s office, and I had to sweep floors after school, but it was worth it.
Chester kept a tiny, gray velvet box hidden in his pocket. A ring with a big white diamond lay in a soft spongy space inside. He said it belonged to his mom. She died and went to heaven not long after he was born.
“You can’t touch it, Stacey,” he said. “Only I can do that ‘cause it belonged to my mom. I like to hold it and pretend she’s right next to me. Dad said she had hair dark as molasses and a voice that made the angels cry.”
He rolled the ring in his palm, then held the jewel to the sun, as if he could see more than a few sparkly places. Then he carefully put the ring back inside, and we ran to find swings next to one another on the playground. If there weren’t any, we climbed the monkey bars, and he never seemed to care that I always beat him to the top.
One day in the lunchroom, Mrs. Craftwood saw Chester take the ring out of his pocket. She dragged him to the principal’s office. I threw away the other half of my bologna sandwich and followed them. They didn’t close the door. I saw everything.
“This ring had to be stolen,” Mrs. Craftwood told Mrs. Austin, “because this boy’s father is incapable of affording something like this.”
Mrs. Austin glared at Chester. “Stealing is a sin, son. You should know that.”
After school when Chester’s dad got to the principal’s office I sat outside the office and listened again. I knew that he had a job in a big, important office a long time ago, but the company closed one day, and he never found another job like it. Then after his wife died, he moved into an old four-room house on the edge of town and did odd jobs now and then. Folks said he didn’t seem to care anymore. But when he charged into Mrs. Austin’s office, it was clear he cared about something.
He didn’t say anything while she and Mrs. Craftwood accused Chester of stealing. Then he asked if either one of them took a close look at the ring.
“Why should that be necessary?” Mrs. Austin asked.
“Because it doesn’t take much light to see the truth in that diamond. Let me guess. Came in a gray box. Smells a little like grass stains and peanut butter.”
“What are you talking about, sir?” Mrs. Austin said.
I had to cover my ears because Chester’s dad got so loud. And this time the door was shut. He’d slammed it when he went inside. Hard.
“Would a real diamond look as scratched up as the side of a matchbox?”
“Please lower your voice,” Mrs. Craftwood said.
“Not until you return his mother’s ring.”
I wanted to lean into the door and catch everything that went on, but then Chester’s dad started talking about how his wife deserved better, and so does Chester. Wasn’t so exciting anymore. Something I couldn’t explain made me feel strange, almost like I walked into the boys’ dressing room by mistake. So, I sat on the bench outside the door and waited for what seemed like a long time.
“Thank you,” Chester said as his dad opened the door. Simple, like nothing was ever taken from him in the first place. He didn’t even see me right away because he was too busy slipping the ring on and off of his finger.
But his dad’s face looked so red it must have hurt. I could have sworn it burned right through his whiskers. He stopped when he saw me. “Stacey, you’re a good kid. Chester’s crazy about you. Don’t ever get too big for yourself.”
“I won’t,” I said. But I thought that was a strange thing to say.
Chester never did come back. He went away to a special-needs school on the other side of town. Mom said it was time for me to start playing with normal children.
“What’s normal?” I asked, and Mom accused me of being smart aleck.
But this time I wasn’t.
After that, I decided it was best to be vague about what I was doing. Sometimes I went to Chester’s house and we explored the woods behind it. We hoisted ourselves into the trees with lower branches and hunted for birds’ nests and woodpecker holes. He carved our names into a young beech tree.
“Someday when we’re old enough, let’s get married,” he said. “We’ll come back here and I’ll draw the heart and put the date on it.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But let’s look for salamanders down by the creek now.”
“Okay. But why can’t we ever go to your house to play?”
“Mom said I had to play outside. She’s cleaning.”
“You said she was sick last time,” he said.
“That’s because all she does is clean. And that much cleaning would make anyone sick.”
I stopped going to his house as much because I got tired of lying. To Mom. To Chester. Then one day I told Mom I was going for a long bike ride all by myself. I went to Chester’s house, but no one was there. When I peeked into his house it was empty, blind-dark. On the way home I felt mean, like somehow, I made Chester move away. I stopped at our beech tree in the woods, took a sharp rock and etched a shallow, lopsided heart around our names. It didn’t look very good. I’m not sure why I did it. Playing house never appealed to me. And Chester and I were never boyfriend and girlfriend.
But when I went to my cousin Janet’s wedding that summer, I thought about what it would be like to be a grown-up getting married. Maybe just for that day I would be willing to wear a lace dress, one made by a silly third-grade girl who grew up to be a fashion designer. Of course, I didn’t want to marry just anybody. The groom needed to be special, someone like Chester, who could give me a fake diamond, yet be real inside.
“I don’t understand you. You don’t understand me. What else do we have in common?” Ashleigh Brilliant
I doubt my brother even noticed that I faced the wall, a book to my face when he came into the bedroom. Randy and I weren’t exactly on brother-love, best-buddy speaking terms, not since I needed to hide my gas money in a locked box in the trunk of my ancient Toyota. Anything else of any value my girlfriend held for me. I slept with my phone and charged it as needed at her house.
Besides, I didn’t want Randy to see the expression on my face when he opened his sock and underwear drawer. He spent a lot of time in that drawer, and believe me, it wasn’t to change socks or underwear.
“What the…” He pulled out an empty bourbon bottle with a skull and crossbones picture glued to the front. I’m not much of an artist, so I copied and pasted one from clip art.
“You finally found your brand,” I said looking him full in his face, absolutely not a pleasant picture. He hadn’t shaved in weeks. His color mimicked a semi-rotten tomato. Except the tomato would have smelled better.
“This was not empty when I left it.”
“Are you sure? My guess is your memory is as long as a beer commercial. And that a drink serving is measured in bottles not glasses…”
“I am doing just FINE, Stan!”
“Right,” I said, sitting on the edge of the bed in case I needed to move out of the room quickly. At least he still knew his younger brother’s name. “I saw your grades. Congratulations, you almost made it to a 2.0 this quarter. You started the term with how many courses?”
“I’ll catch up. I’ll get that certification I promised Mom.” Randy was 28 years old, eight years older than I was. This time he decided he would go into radiology as a technician. Eventually. He plopped onto his bed instead of arguing further. “I just feel trapped right now. Don’t feel free. Need a change of scenery. Something.”
Nope, not trapped yet, I thought. Besides, you’ve had too much rat poison to see you are the one who set the trap.
Strange how he didn’t say one word about my editorial comment on the front of the bottle,. He only noticed that the bourbon was drained. I had flushed the contents down the basement toilet. Hope it didn’t damage the pipes.
He reached inside his wastepaper basket. We each had our own. His was full—fuller than I knew. An unopened bottle lay at the bottom. “Going out for a while. If Mom asks, tell her I’ll be back later.” He knew Dad wouldn’t ask. He had given up on Randy a long time ago. Once I overheard Dad tell Mom that she had gone through sixteen hours of labor with him. She could continue to hope. His part had been a lot easier, so he could say adios to the bum. Sure, Randy was a rat and a jerk, but I thought that was a pretty mean thing to say to Mom.
Randy waved goodbye. That was the last I saw of him until we got a call from the police two days later. My brother had blown more than twice the legal limit; then he passed out.
Mom screamed as she repeated something about blood all over the road. It happened to come from a large dog that had run in front of the car. A horrible picture. Fortunately, no other person had been with my brother when he was arrested.
No one. That struck me for the first time. He didn’t have friends. None that I knew anyway. He’d had a girlfriend or two, but the relationships never lasted long.
I looked for old pictures of Randy and me as we were growing up. There weren’t many. We didn’t have a large family, and no one was good at taking photos. He smiled in the earlier shots, but never in the ones taken since he hit high school. I wondered about that, but didn’t feel free to ask my parents. Dad had already cut him off. And Mom never talked about such things. The ten commandments had all the answers. Psychology was reserved for folk who talked to themselves and got answers in different voices.
When I came home from school one day a few weeks later Mom said she had good news. “Randy is going to an in-patient program. And if he graduates, he doesn’t have to go to jail.”
“All right.” I wasn’t ready to move my good watch and Grandfather’s saleable baseball cards back into the house yet. But I was genuinely glad to hear it.
Then, one night at about eleven in the evening I had turned out the light and climbed into bed when my cell rang. I usually look to see who is calling, but I was so surprised I just answered.
“Is this Stan Weeks?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Sorry to bug you. This time of night and all. My name’s Shelby. I’m a new friend of Randy’s. From Elmcast House. I got sprung yesterday and your brother asked me to call. Was so nervous. I had to work up the courage.” The tone and inflection of her speech shouted uneducated inner city.
“Okay.” I wondered why she hadn’t called the previous day, but as she hesitated so often I could almost hear her gulp, I was shocked that she had contacted me at all. And that piqued my curiosity.
“You know…not many of us make it. Ten percent. Maybe. Took me three gosh-miserable tries. I ain’t proud of it. Your brother’s gonna make it up to you… and everybody. He said he’s really done wrong by you.”
“Glad he’s reformed,” I said, my cynicism leaking out and my grammatical sensor secretly tearing her apart.
“He’s been so honest,” she said, her words suddenly pouring out. “I mean it must of tore your family apart when that minister raped him when he was fourteen. Just a kid. Tender and bleeding. He didn’t know there was men that done that.”
I sat upright. My Ten Commandments family knew nothing about it. Our minister WAS God. Although as I remember him I didn’t care for his self-righteous tone. I couldn’t tell when he was reading Scripture and when he was reading the word of Reverend Knows-It-All. And Randy’s smile in the photos evaporated just about that time.
“Shelby?” my voice must have stammered.
“You okay, Stan?”
“Yes and no.”
“Did I say something wrong?”
“Not at all. Will you be keeping in touch with Randy?”
“You bet.”
“And will you keep my number, too?”
“Sure.”
“Good. Then let me know how Randy is doing. You, too.”
“Okay. Bye.”
My phone went black, like the darkened room. Silent. Like all these years had been. I wondered if Randy was awake or asleep. And if he had finally discovered freedom, whatever freedom meant to him.
originally published in Piker Press on March 31, 2015
“I have lost friends, some by death—others through sheer inability to cross the street.” —Virginia Woolf
NO ORDINARY RECITAL
Jack:
Songs I recognized from at least twenty years ago rose from my daughter’s kitchen CD player. Amy seemed to prefer a beat to match her syncopated movements. So-much-to-do, although she never let anyone know what that so-much was, only some vague importance to taking out the garbage.
She stirred a pot to the rhythm of a rock band. She hummed as she turned up the oldies. However, when she turned to me, she reacted as if a snake-oil salesman had opened her back door, and then he had the audacity to sit at her kitchen table with a cup of her freshly brewed coffee.
My grandson had brought me the cup, as if it had been some kind of prize, before he left with my son-in-law for rehearsal. I’d visited because Mikey had invited me, the grandpa he wanted to know but didn’t. Yet.
Temporarily, I had moved in with Amy’s brother, at least until I could get back onto my own two feet. Amy saw the possibility of my walking a straight line as likely as a change in the Law of Gravity.
I had played keyboard, guitar, violin—you name it, lead guitar in a band, taught myself trumpet. I’d worked in an everyday office by day and ruled the stage at night. Before I lost just about everything. To king alcohol. A few months in jail.
The sweet jazz quartet calling from the player in a niche in the corner could have been the news reporting earthquakes downtown, or worse in my daughter’s backyard. Ten feet from the back door. Two feet from where I sat now. Then again, I felt an earthquake tremor begin in my chest and work its way to my stomach. My coffee grew cold. My daughter grew colder.
She stared at me with that look I recognized. Can’t-count-on-you-Dad didn’t need to come to her lips. Instead, the anger showed in her eyes, voice, the tight pull of her lips.
“So, you say you’ll be at Mikey’s recital Friday night. On time.”
“Yes.”
“And you will be sober.” She leaned over the table. “Not, but-I-only-had-two-drinks. Two quart-sized drinks?”
I had talked to Mikey. Before I’d set foot in the house. He’d run out to meet me. “Oh, Grandpa! My recital. It’s going to be great. You know what Daddy told me?”
I’d admitted I didn’t.
“Daddy said you played violin, too. You played really, really good. Could you play for me now? When we get inside.”
“How about some other day?” I’d answered. “Right now. I’m way too excited to hear you play.”
A partial truth. My heart wasn’t ready for music yet. It reminded me too much of what I’d thrown away.
I’d put my hand on his shoulder and Mikey didn’t pull away. He didn’t have the storehouse of empty promises in his memory his mom had. Her brother, too. He had taken me in—to a bed in his basement, next to the hot water heater. The upstairs door remained locked. I had to knock to get in. I’d stolen from both my children. I admit it. Giving back wasn’t easy.
“Did you used to live in Florida or California?” Mikey had asked. “Or was it another country?”
I’d bit my lip. I’d lived ten miles away before I passed out on the job. Mikey had no memory of me at all in his seven years of life.
Since then I’d managed to get a car, guaranteed only to be a car. I had my license back. I had a job, more of a pity offer with pittance pay.
Respect? That was going to take more time.
Amy: three days later
Mikey’s recital is about to begin. I know I should have told him about the call about his grandfather’s death. Jake, my chicken-husband won’t do it. The police swear the accident wasn’t Dad’s fault. He was stone sober and wearing his seatbelt. Probably wasn’t paying attention, however, as the semi crossed the middle lane.
Damn! I’d like to think something positive about my own father. And my insides feel just about as cold and empty. Maybe I didn’t give him much of a chance to apologize.
Mikey’s group is up last. Jake told him the best gets saved for the end, so nobody needs to follow it and feel less-than. Mikey thought that made sense. Of course, he believes in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Jake says. “Are you okay? Or at least as okay as anybody can be…under the circumstances.”
“We can’t just pretend Dad beamed up into a spaceship.” My voice doesn’t leak sarcasm. It explodes it.
“Mikey doesn’t have the same complicated memories you have. You can’t shield him from hurt. You can’t assign your feelings of guilt to Mikey either?” Jake’s voice is soft, but he doesn’t blink.
“What guilt?” I raise my voice and the lady in front of us turns around.
“Sorry,” I say to the woman, feeling heat rise to my cheeks. Guilt. Maybe. Dad tried to apologize. He said something about making amends. He could have been talking to an oncoming train.
Jake pats my hand. “I could have been kinder, too.”
I want to swat him but don’t. Not here. His words are like a fresh stab in a seeping wound.
I hear each musical presentation, the way I hear a passing train while waiting for safe passage. Yet I wonder if safe passage exists.
Mikey’s group appears. He doesn’t seem to see us right away. I don’t wave and make a point of the fact his newly discovered grandfather is missing. Then, Mikey begins his solo, an Irish song I recognize from forty years ago, when I was small. I asked Dad to play it all the time, and then danced across the floor.
My son’s technique and timing improved. He adds style I didn’t know he knew. Jake looks at me with his brows pulled together. He shrugs. Apparently, he wonders when Mikey transformed from a good violinist at age seven to a prodigy.
He is beaming as he leaves the stage. Several people grab and hug him before he gets to his dad and me, but his eyes seem to scan the back of the auditorium.
“Mom, Dad!” he calls. “Where did Grandpa go? He was here a minute ago. Why didn’t he tell me he was going to be part of the show?”
“He. Did. What?” I ask.
“With all those lights around him. In the back. You’d think everybody would be turning around to look at him! But I got it, the way he held his fingers on the strings and moved the bow—to make the song sound better. He didn’t seem so far away. He felt right next to me. I’m not sure how. For real. Not sure I could play the same way again without him.”
“You’re sure that was Grandpa?” I said, “because…” I choke on words that won’t fit together.
When we get to the car it is locked. However, Dad’s violin is lying across the back seat.
“A gift,” I whisper,” from Grandpa. “That was his. I’d recognize it anywhere. I knew Mikey would hear the story of his grandfather’s death in a different way now, a way he would be able to accept long before his dad and I could. Mikey believed in miracles.
Now I needed to believe in forgiveness.
originally published in Piker Press on May 8, 2017
My great aunt, Marty Pestil, was a natural at tending to the dead. She got bodies ready for the all-night watch when folk gathered to make sure no bugs, dogs, or ghosts could get to the ripe-for-decaying flesh. I helped my aunt since I didn’t have no other place to go. My aunt took me in when my mama started talking to wallpaper flowers. Papa had walked off before I was born.
I never got schooling, but not many people did in mountain-tucked Gray Valley, Kentucky during the early 1920’s. We picked up a common-sense kind of learning. Aunt Marty taught me her trade. She said living and dying fit together the way bare-treed winter followed full-blossomed summer.
Almost everybody agreed, but some folk thought Aunt Marty turned the winter dying part into a show.
Men took care of the departed men and boys. The man who took care of the dead in Gray Valley looked the grim job. He wagged his finger so hard at my aunt it about blurred his whole arm.
“You act like you was bigger’n God—it just ain’t right. Pretending you can step off into the afterlife with the dead.”
My aunt stared him down. She didn’t argue. “Our job is to open the next world. When the silver coins fall off the eyes of dead folk, their souls got to be ready for the hereafter. Ain’t no more I can say about it.”
He backed off, groaning, like there ain’t no sense talking to a crazy lady. It wasn’t ‘til later I learned he got picked accidental-like to prepare the dead and hated every second of it.
Aunt Marty said the folks that set themselves for eternal damnation didn’t want to go, and Aunt Marty had to say somebody from the underworld would come for them anyway, so they may as well scat before the rotting set in, and their souls smelled, too. Besides, St. Peter listened to a good story. Usually they ran for that last chance.
I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere. I got to be known as Lost Lacy. Hank Ross was my only friend. Hank helped my aunt and me with our truck garden. His papa owned the General Store. The Ross family didn’t care that Aunty Marty talked to floating souls.
Sometimes Hank and me would cook together. I thought of him as my connection to the earth and sun, to breathing, to the smell of boiling turnips and hot sliced pork.
“I like when you don’t have your hair pulled so tight on the top of your head, like it’s caught in a trap,” Hank said. “Relax once in a while.”
I shrugged. “It don’t make sense to hoe, pull weeds, or move bodies with hair in the way.”
Besides, I traveled from death to death the way a butterfly goes from flower to flower, especially when typhoid or scarlet fever hit. I guess Aunt Marty and me was lucky we never got no bad sickness. Butterflies get to drink nectar—I touched the cold skin of folk that followed both Beelzebub and St. Michael.
No matter how many times Aunt Marty handed me the magic coins and I rubbed them over my fingertips I never felt nothing special in them. They’d been used to close so many eyes. Everybody thought old Miranda Mill had been best friends with the devil. She cursed and stole and some folk even say she got away with killing her own husband.
I could have sworn I saw a body twitch as Aunt Marty talked honest to it, even though it was as hard-cold as a middle-of-February icicle.
Eleanor Case, the old schoolmarm, brought extra lunch-bucket food for the kids that didn’t have nothing. If angels ever wanted to borrow a human body, Miss Case is the one they’d use.
Bodies all just looked dead to me.
Aunt Marty told me I would inherit her gift. I didn’t want it. Maybe the magic coins knew how I felt and that’s why they wouldn’t let me know their secrets.
The strangest experience I had was when Ida Mae’s twin sister, Carrie Mae, died from a seizure caused by a high fever. Ida shook like a thunderstorm had formed inside her and was getting stronger and stronger, until it tore her apart from the inside. Aunt Marty must have noticed, too. Real slow, as if she was trying to soothe an injured bear, she reached over and patted Ida’s arm.
“I got a message for you. And it’s real important. Your sister says that she would have run out into the cold rain to pick apples even if you hadn’t had a hankering for them. She wanted some, too. And the fever—this is the important part—the fever didn’t have nothing to do with getting soaked through.”
Ida’s eyes opened about as wide as her face and she choked, “But how do you know about the apples? I never told.”
“Your sister’s telling you she can’t go to her eternal reward until you know her dying ain’t one-bit your fault.”
Then Ida dropped onto her sister’s body and sobbed. Aunt Marty didn’t stop her until I saw the slightest light, no brighter than a candle flame flicker, pass through Ida and out through the wall.
“But you didn’t send Carrie’s spirit into heaven,” I whispered to Aunt Marty.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Ida Mae done it.”
Ida Mae told her best friend that story. Versions of what happened got spread around the county. My aunt and me turned into either witches or messengers from the Almighty, depending upon the notions of who heard. Some thought we was gods, the kind that shouldn’t be approached ‘til there wasn’t no choice.
I loved my aunt. I would have been an orphan without her. But, the magic coins knew her, not me. Besides, in a month or two I would be sixteen-years-old. And all I saw ahead was more burying.
“Pick you some happiness if I could,” Hank said one spring day as we searched the woods for some poke for a salad.
So, I told him about how I wanted to do something different than travel from one pine box to another. “I wouldn’t mind rendering hog fat over a hot stove all day, if I could work for the living.”
“How about you and me getting married?”
“Ain’t never thought about it.” I looked at the basket of fresh-picked poke, good-for-you in early spring. Poison later in the season.
“I’m mighty crazy about you, and I think we can work together. Maybe even create living folk.” He turned red as a over-ripe tomato.
Hank made sense. Marrying him could change my life. A lot. “Think we should tell Aunt Marty together?”
He looked at me like I was a tadpole that turned into a full-growed frog fast as ice melts in a hot pot. “Should we tell her right now?”
“Yup. No point in waiting. She’d figure us out anyway.”
“Then I think it’s time you knew the secret.” He put his arm around my shoulder. “How do you think Aunt Marty makes them coins magic?”
“I figured she had some kind of special power over them. They don’t look no different.”
“She learned how from my papa. It’s a business we do most folk don’t know about.” He sat on a huge rock at the edge of the trail. “True, you seen these coins when they been put on the eyes of folk to keep them closed, when the time’s come to look inside and see the whole of themselves. Just before they open before eternity. You don’t know how the magic forms before that happens.
“The magic comes from inside a person. You’ve got to care about what you’re doing. A lot. And keep caring. All the time. But that ain’t how it ends.”
Hank pulled a coin from his pocket, like the ones Aunt Marty used. Then I put the poke on the rock and let Hank drop the coin into my hand. It warmed immediately. I suddenly felt drawn to Hank’s eyes. Strange how I’d never seen them the same way before. His eyes was the color of a lake at noon when the sun shines. I noticed how his smile seemed to come straight from his soul.
When Hank and I walked into Aunt Marty’s cabin, my aunt wasn’t in her cane rocker, like usual. She lay in bed, her face white as a bleached sheet.
“Ah, you are both here,” she said, as if her voice came from far away.
I took her hand, cold as snow.
“Good, you have found your path. I feel it.” She whispered, but her smile filled her face. “One last request. Lacy, you will send me on to my eternal reward. Then you and Hank will live in this house together. Promise?”
We both nodded. Aunt Marty’s body shook once and then remained still. We got her lying as peaceful as if she was taking an afternoon nap. Then I dropped an aspirin in a bowl of soda water and wiped her face. Hank waited outside the door while I done the full washing.
When I placed the coins over her eyes to keep them closed, the coins told me what to do. I called to Hank to stand by my side. A wavering light appeared.
“Follow the light. Your mama is waiting.”
The brightness turned around and came back into me.
Hank grabbed my hand and the light jumped into him, too. When I looked at our arms I saw the fresh skin of our youth turn the same sun-gold, and I realized we’d been given power.
We used our magic in the truck garden to grow enough vegetables to feed us, the poorer folk in town, and the young’uns in the orphanage in the valley.
Ida Mae took over for Aunt Marty, and when she got married her husband led the men to their destiny. They knew the secret of the coins, but they didn’t talk out loud to spirits like Aunt Marty did. They talked to them silent, soul to soul.
The magic coins never made our lives perfect, but they made us rich in a peculiar kind of way. As of this telling, Hank and me have been married sixty years. We had five girls and four boys, and each one of our kids had two or three young’uns, and they ain’t stopped growing the family. Our sons and daughters all know how the coins work. They continue to make better whoever they touch, so that nobody knows where the goodness starts or ends.
I think that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
originally published in Piker Press on January 13, 2014
All creative people want to do the unexpected. Hedy Lamarr.
Bailey, an elderly leprechaun, found a magical four-leaf clover wedged under a pot of gold that belonged to his family.
“Hmmn,” he said to his wife Ginger. “Where did this come from? What should we do with it?”
“Let’s check out the rainbow on the other side of the house. See what we can find when we follow it. Go someplace new and different. This may be some real fun.”
“Okay. As long as we don’t need to go to a Walmart in Ohio, I’m with you.”
Magic works in strange ways. The trip took minutes.
“We are at a Walmart outside Cincinnati! Ohio, my dear, Bailey. How in tune can you be? Whether you want to be or not.”
They landed invisibly and a man with a HELP sign found the magical clover. He tried to pull off a leaf. Instead, it mysteriously shaved his beard. He tried again and he was instantly bathed. One more pull, and his clothes were changed and clean. By the fourth try his heart was healed and he remembered who he was, how he had lost his job and gradually everything he owned.
“I’m going to wake up any minute,” he said, trembling.
Bailey approached him and magically calmed the man long enough for him to put aside his sign and step to the other side of the building. However, the man was still convinced he was dreaming.
“Jack! Jack Harris, is that you?” Another man called as he approached the store. “I haven’t seen you in a coon’s age. You won’t believe this, but I need an accountant. Yesterday. Got a moment?”
The man held out his hand. Jack took it.
Bailey smiled. Ginger linked her arm to his. “Our job is almost completed,” she said. “Well, we’re going to need to explain magic to our Jack first. Then do another resuscitation. It’s a good thing CPR is included in our training. It doesn’t begin and end on St. Patrick’s Day. Do we need any ordinary fare at Walmart before returning to Ireland?”
terrypetersen 