The Final Chapter

by Darrell Maloney

  No one really missed her.

  They all thought her too grumpy and grouchy to care about.

  When they found out she committed suicide they learned the truth about her.

  She was sick, but not mentally so.

  She’d had terminal cancer. A rare type of cancer which was slowly eating her brain and causing her massive headaches.

  Headaches which caused her incredibly intense pain; the kind of pain which merely laughed at painkillers and their futile efforts to control it.

  That wasn’t all.

  She was also dealing with not one, but two parents in crisis.

  One was in advanced stages of Lou Gehrig’s Disease; the other had lung cancer.

  Neither had more than a few months to live.

  Both had to be spoon fed; both wore adult diapers and were confined to their beds.

  Ms. Nolan was only twenty eight years of age and was dying. She’d never married because she saw her role not as wife or mother, but simply as a caregiver.

  When the power went out and she no longer had a means of recharging her parents’ oxygen bottles or refilling their prescriptions she saw the writing on the wall.

  She gave them each lethal doses of sleeping medication and held each of their hands as they drifted off into eternal blackness.

  In their last minutes she read passages from the Bible to comfort them.

  Then she blew her brains out.

  When the department finally learned her story they attended her funeral.

  Every one of them.

  Every one of them felt guilty for pre-judging the woman.

  Every one of them wondered if they’d have been able to walk a mile in her shoes; to care for her dying parents without ever asking for help, without ever complaining.

  Every one of them vowed to be more compassionate to their fellow humans in the future.

  Since Ms. Nolan’s death no one had the heart to take over the role as evidence clerk.

  She’d done her job well. All evidence turned in before her death was impeccably handled. It was expertly logged, catalogued and filed.

  All evidence turned in since had been pretty much tossed into boxes and stacked in the room in no semblance of order.

  The room was a mess.

  A mess Tom had been promising to dive into as soon as he had some free time.

  John was convinced it was one or the other. Either he’d be asked to sort out records for days on end or sort out evidence.

  It occurred to him that Tom had also recently mentioned the outside of the building needed to be painted.

  The city used to have a contract with a local firm to repaint the building every three years.

  The firm was making arrangements to do the job when the power went out.

  The job was never done and the company was long out of business.

  The painters had all scattered to who-knew-where and the owner was dead.

  Of natural causes.

  That in itself was a rare feat indeed.

  It was going on ten years since the building’s last paint job and the paint was starting to peel badly.

  John hoped that wasn’t the project Tom had in mind.

  John hated painting worse than pretty much anything else in the world. Worse than sour milk, jock itch and rap music combined.

  He was almost relieved when Tom told him his project was to install a privacy fence around the compound’s corn and wheat and hops fields, to include his old property (and John’s new one).

  The work would be strenuous and back-breaking.

  But at least it wouldn’t involve a paintbrush.

  -47-

  John walked into the office to find Tom sweeping up the bare floor in the records room.

  “Where’d all the records go?” he asked.

  “In the file cabinets, where they belong.”

  “Really? But there were thousands of sheets of paper.”

  “There still are. But now they’re out of the piles they were in and sorted out and in files.”

  “But… that must have taken weeks. Who did it all?”

  Sara walked up behind John and said, “Be careful what you say, Tom Haskins.”

  Tom answered, “Sara did most of it. I helped a little.”

  Sara put her hands on her hips and gave him that look only women can make. The one all men fear.

  “Tom…”

  “Okay, okay. Sara did all of it. I helped by staying out of her way.”

  John looked at his fellow deputy and said, “Pretty impressive.”

  “It could have been done long ago if our sheriff wasn’t so pig-headed.”

  Tom said, “Hey, hey, hey. I’m the mayor now. Show some respect.”

  “Okay,” Sara relented. “Let me rephrase that. It could have been done a long time ago if our mayor wasn’t so pig-headed.”

  “I think technically he’s a mayor-elect.”

  “Whatever. He’s pig-headed no matter what title he carries.”

  “How so?”

  “The files had to be sorted by complainant’s last name and date.”

  “So?”

  “So Tom was going through sheet by sheet and making a pile for each complainant, and then was going to sort the piles by date.”

  “So?”

  “So there were almost six thousand complainants. He had piles on every inch of floor space, on all the furniture, and on the days when the wind wasn’t blowing on the patio out back.”

  “So what did you do differently?”

  “I went through them once to sort them by month, then again by day, then again by name.

  “It took me four days.”

  Tom grew brave enough to insert his two cents.

  “I could have finished in four…”

  “Tom!”

  “…Four… years… maybe.”

  Sara looked at John and said, “You’d better be in charge of the fence project, John.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Tom will put each slat up with one nail. Then he’ll go back to each one and put in a second nail. Then a third and a fourth.”

  “Hey, young lady. I was building fences before you wet your first diaper.”

  John turned to Tom and said, “About that, Tom… I was hoping to hit you up for a few days off. I haven’t had any in over a year and I’m pretty beat.

  “Any chance the fence can wait for a week or so while I get some R and R?”

  Sara smiled and started to say something but changed her mind.

  John said, “What? Did I say something wrong?”

  She said, “Yep. Now you’ve done it.”

  “Done what?”

  “You did the same thing I did two weeks ago when I asked for a couple days off.

  “Now you’re gonna get the whippersnapper speech.”

  Tom smiled and John groaned. And sure enough, Tom started, “You mean to tell me a young whippersnapper like you needs some time off when an old guy like me hasn’t had a vacation in three straight years?

  “I thought you were a Texan, John. I thought you were rough and tough and hard to bluff. I thought you were a United States Marine, by God.

  “I must be mistaken about that. Because every other Marine I’ve ever met was the first one to the job site and the last one to leave.

  “And they never, ever, complained about being tired or needing time off.”

  John rolled his eyes, knowing he should have known better.

  “You’re absolutely right, Tom. A little hard work never hurt anybody.

  “How long do you think it’ll take to put up that fence? Two days?”

  “I’m a little hard of hearing, son. Did you say nine straight days, from dawn to dusk?

  “Because if that’s what you said, you hit it right on the money.”

  “Sure,” John replied rather dejectedly. “That’s what I said.”

  Sara caught John’s eye and winked at him.

  It didn’t make him feel better.

  It
would later, when she ratted Tom out.

  Later she would tell him Tom confided in her he thought the job would take only three or four days, but he was planning to tell John it would take a lot longer just to mess with him.

  John would be happy to hear that later.

  Right now he was just depressed.

  But John was a fighter.

  And he was indeed a former United States Marine.

  He was therefore tough as nails and not afraid of hard work.

  “Might as well get started,” he said.

  “Good job, whippersnapper,” Tom bellowed. “Meet me at the edge of town, at that big orange box store.

  “Shoot. It’s been so long since it closed I can’t remember the name of it.”

  “Home Improvement Depot?”

  “That’s it, whippersnapper. I’ll meet you there.”

  -48-

  John was surprised when he walked into the huge home improvement warehouse.

  Everything was covered with a fair amount of dust.

  Seven years worth, in fact.

  Other than that, though, it looked pretty much as it did the day the power went out.

  The snack racks next to each cash register were empty, as were the glass-fronted refrigerators once stuffed with bottled water and sodas.

  Everything else was still in place.

  Tall shelves contained everything one needed to build a house from scratch, or to complete pretty much any home improvement project.

  John said, “Will you look at this? It’s amazing this place hasn’t been cleaned out.”

  “Well, when the blackout first happened the only things people were interested in were things they could eat or drink.

  “Everyone was too busy trying to survive to worry about replacing their living room carpet or their lighting fixtures.

  “Now, there’s no need to upgrade your home. If you don’t like where you’re living all you have to do is look around. Chances are there’s a better house in a better neighborhood that’s empty and free for the taking.”

  “So where are the fencing supplies?”

  “Aisle 15, but that’s not where we’re going.”

  “Where are we going then?”

  “To the back dock.

  “I already checked the place out.

  “Aisle 15 has all the pickets, but they’re on pallet shelving that goes almost to the ceiling.

  “Their forklift doesn’t work. I tried it.

  “And I don’t particularly want to climb twenty feet off the ground to toss them down to you. You’d miss half of them and they’d break.”

  “I could climb up and toss them down to you.”

  “You’re clumsy. You slip and fall on flat dry floors. You’d fall on top of me and kill us both.”

  “Good point.

  “So, I take it there’s a truck on the dock with fence pieces?”

  “Dang, whippersnapper. You’re smarter than you look. Of course, you darn near have to be, don’t you?”

  “Hannah says I’m smarter than the average bear.”

  “You smell like one too.”

  “Damn, Sheriff. You’re really on a roll today, aren’t you?”

  “I missed you. Or at least I missed picking on you. And it’s Mayor. Or Your Honor. Your choice.”

  “I’d rather go unload the truck by myself.”

  “Good idea. Get the cedar pickets. They last longer.”

  “Don’t they cost more than the pine?”

  “Yes. But we’re not paying for it, so who cares?”

  “Isn’t there something rather unseemly about the county sheriff and his deputy pilfering fence pickets?”

  “Nope. The city declared this property abandoned and seized it three years ago.

  “Then it decreed it was fair game for any of its citizens.

  “That’s us. Citizens, you and me.

  “And it’s not sheriff and deputy. It’s mayor and minion.

  “So now I’m a minion?”

  “Sounds better than flunky. That’s what you get for wearing a yellow t-shirt. You look awful in yellow.”

  John started to say something but knew he had no chance of winning this particular conversation.

  Instead he headed to the rear of the store to check out the tractor trailer full of fence pickets.

  Tom called after him, “While you’re doing that I’m going to load bags of secrete and fence posts until my pickup cries uncle.”

  An hour later both pickups were full of heavy lumber and concrete mix.

  Both rear bumpers were riding low to the ground.

  Both pickups groaned when they pulled out and again every time they crawled up a hill.

  Both trucks had working radios, but the pair didn’t talk again until they got to the compound.

  By then Tom had tired of being a smart aleck and was all business.

  It wouldn’t last long.

  “Let’s go wash up a bit and get some supper. Then we can come out and line up the posts. We should be able to get two hours of work in before it gets too dark.”

  John was surprised, and more than just a little bit pleased, to see a long line of post holes, already dug, in a straight line eight feet apart.

  The line went on for at least a hundred yards.

  “Who dug the holes?”

  “Jordan and me. Took us the better part of two days last week.

  “That’s a good boy Scott’s got there. Didn’t complain once. Worked hard to outdo me. Darn near did it, too.”

  “How deep are they?”

  “Two feet. The fence posts are eight footers. That’ll put ‘em at six feet above ground.

  “And they’re eight feet apart so we can use wall studs for cross pieces.

  “That’ll make ‘em a little bit sturdier than fence rails.”

  “If you say so. Have you really done this before, Tom?”

  “Many times. It’s a piece of cake if you know all the tricks of the trade.”

  “There are tricks of the trade for building a privacy fence?”

  “Son, there are tricks of every trade. Including fence building.

  “Now, do you want to go see your wife and get something to eat or not?”

  “Yeah, I kinda do.”

  “Then get the lead out, whippersnapper. We’re burning daylight.”

  -49-

  John’s glorious homecoming consisted of a quick kiss from Hannah, who promised him something nice later if he didn’t use up “all his energy.”

  He knew what that meant and made a mental note not to.

  After dinner he and Tom were back at the fence site with two additional helpers: Scott and Jordan.

  “I measured it all out,” Tom said as they placed a fence post next to each hole.

  “It’s just over five hundred yards of fencing.

  Jordan whistled.

  “That’s a lot of fencing.”

  “Yep. But I took inventory at the store and they’ve got enough to cover it.

  “A hundred and ninety posts, three hundred eighty bags of secrete. Just over three thousand six inch pickets.

  “The hard part is gonna be lugging it all over here, two pickup loads at a time.

  “The installation part is gonna be easy.”

  Jordan whispered to his father, “Somehow I doubt that.”

  Before it got too dark to see they’d placed a fence post next to each hole and Tom made a hash mark on each post exactly three feet from the bottom.

  The next morning the crew met again at the site just after dawn.

  They needed no coaxing from Tom, since all of them understood the importance of working before the central Texas heat grew unbearable.

  Jordan asked about the hash marks Tom made on the fence posts the night before.

  “What’s that for?” Jordan asked.

  “That’s where we’re hammering the bottom rail. Go ahead and get started if you want.”

  “What? But it’s lying on the ground.”

  �
��Right.”

  “We have to put them in the ground before we hammer the rails on.”

  “Says who?”

  Jordan was at a loss for words.

  “Because… because… well, because that’s how it’s done. Everybody knows that.”

  “How many fences have you put up, boy?”

  “None.”

  “You know how many I’ve put up?”

  “No.”

  “A lot more than none.

  “Now, put the bottom rails on all the way down the line. Once they’re on we’ll drop the posts into the holes.

  “The bottom rails will help stabilize the fence while the concrete is drying.”

  This time it was Scott who was skeptical.

  “Are you sure about this, Tom?”

  “Positive.”

  “But how are we gonna lift a hundred yard long fence to drop the posts into the holes?”

  “We don’t have to lift all hundred yards of it.

  “We lift the first four posts, one of us on each post.

  “There’s enough flexibility to allow us to place the end post in the ground. Then we leapfrog over each other and place each post in its respective hole.

  “Once they’re all in their holes we’ll level them and anchor them.

  “It’s easier and quicker this way.”

  John asked, “Are you sure about this, Tom?”

  “Trust me. I’ve been on this earth longer than any of you, collecting wisdom and knowledge.”

  John shrugged.

  He looked at Scott, who shrugged also.

  Jordan just looked confused.

  He was too young to know any better and would just go with the flow.

  Despite the doubts of everyone not named Tom, the lift of the hundred yard long fence went surprisingly well.

  The fence leaned, since there was no means to make the posts stand upright in the holes.

  But that was the next step.

  “Now what?” Scott asked.

  “Now we split up.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “We have to level each post and anchor it to the ground.

  “But that’s a two man operation. If you and John want to start digging the next hundred yards of holes, Jordan and I will start the leveling.

  “You’ll need a break after awhile. Your arms and shoulders will start to burn and then get tired.