Twelve Months

by Steven Manchester

  It was an eerie song, an ancient chant, sung with great emotion. Every time an era was called out, “World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm or Iraqi Freedom,” a woman would wail out in the background.

  Goosebumps covered my body. Bella pressed the front of her body against my back. Though I stood outside the circle, I’d never felt so much a part of something in my life.

  As abruptly as the song had started, it stopped. The emcee stepped up to the microphone and said, “To all the veterans who have honored us with their presence today…welcome home and thank you.”

  It was the first time I’d heard those words and it caught me by surprise. A wave of emotion flooded my chest and head. I felt like crying and will never understand why I fought it back. Though there was no longer any room for embarrassment or shame in my life, I still hid it from the kids. Maybe some foolishness takes more than one lifetime to get past? I wondered.

  The emcee said, “When I went to Jump School in the Army, I was at the edge of the plane’s door when I asked one of the instructors, ‘How much time do I have if my chute doesn’t open?’ He smiled at me and said, ‘The rest of your life.’ Then he kicked me out the door.”

  I laughed again. “This guy really should be doing stand-up,” I whispered to Bella.

  “It’s probably too stressful for him,” she teased.

  “I can see a few of you are confused,” the emcee said, smiling so big that the space between his two front teeth looked huge.

  The crowd quieted.

  “When I smile at you, you don’t know whether to smile back…or kick a field goal.”

  I laughed again. “Damn, he’s good.”

  As the head singer called out in a high falsetto voice, we listened to a few more songs and watched a few more dances. I handed ten dollars to one of the dancers to place into the drum. Just then, Two Bears Standing, an ancient tribal medicine man with wise eyes and a scarred walking stick, entered the arena and offered a mid-day prayer. He’s got to be a hundred years old, I thought.

  As the religious man grabbed for his personal medicine from a rawhide satchel, he asked for blessings from the wind, water and earth. “This is our home together, every nation. We give thanks for smiling upon us.”

  I was taken aback by his obvious faith. What if he’s praying to the same God, but with a different name? I wondered.

  As the medicine man concluded his ceremonial prayer, the emcee looked over at me, or at least it seemed like he did. “The soul chooses to come to earth on a mission to reach the next level of understanding,” he said. “We each come from the all-loving source, but from the moment we enter this world we begin our journey back to peace and oneness.”

  Bella gently squeezed my waist. She’d received the same message.

  The heavyset emcee allowed for a respectful pause before he switched gears and directed the crowd back to levity. “Anybody here ever sit on a love handle?”

  The crowd roared. I struggled to hold back. The pain was too much.

  He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter whether I wear boxers or briefs anymore…everything becomes a thong.”

  There was more laughter. I breathed through it – one, one-thousand…two, one-thousand…three, one-thousand…

  He then explained the itinerary for the afternoon: “We’ll have a contest song which is performed to test our dancers’ skills. Then we’ll have our giveaway. This is an ancient ceremony where a person is honored and in return gives away gifts to their friends. And I’ll also be giving you some tips on the best place to hide presents.”

  Everyone stopped and waited. It was a strange statement.

  “Each year, I hide my wife’s birthday present in the cleaning closet and she hasn’t found one yet.”

  Bella laughed all the way to the food vendors.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  At the open market, while people tried roasted corn and homemade pumpkin ice cream, Madison and Pudge ordered hot dogs and French fries. “They’re all-American kids for sure,” I told their grandmother.

  As they ate, we strolled back through the traders’ booths. By the second tent, I picked up one of the Dream Catchers and read the label: For pleasant dreams, good luck and harmony. An old lady with gray braided hair and the wrinkles of a lifetime of smiles explained, “It is an old Ojibwa belief that the air is full of dreams, good and bad, and that the dream net, or catcher, sorts them out. The spirit bead guides the good ones through the hole in the center, but the bad ones don’t know the way and get tangled up in the webbing where they perish in dawn’s first light.”

  “Wonderful,” I said, “I’ll take two.”

  Madison and Pudge celebrated their bounty.

  “And let me have that pink rabbit’s foot as well,” I added, remembering the day Riley had given me one. I’d teased her that some poor bunny was hopping around the forest on three legs.

  “Who’s that for?” Madison asked.

  “Your mom,” I said. “I’d like to surprise her with it later.”

  She and Pudge each nodded.

  I grabbed the copper bracelet Bella had been eyeing, paid for all four souvenirs and announced, “It’s time to go, guys.” The window of pain tolerance was closing fast. It was so bad now it blurred my vision and made my extremities twitch.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Long before the Quitting Song, we made our way back to the parking lot. At the car, I stopped to catch my breath and looked back at the field. “A different time, different place, different parents…I could have lived that life,” I told Bella.

  She smiled. “I know. Me too.”

  Though I felt physically burdened, I was spiritually relieved. As I started the car and pulled away, I looked in the rearview mirror and asked Madison and Pudge, “So, what did you guys think?”

  “The hot dogs were good!” Pudge said, and Madison agreed.

  I had to laugh.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  That night, I hung both dream catchers in the kids’ windows before tucking them in. “Sweet dreams,” I told each of them.

  They wished me the same and I smiled, knowing I was going to sleep like a baby.

  As I closed the door, I thought about Sophia, my young friend who had recently died, and a smile overtook my face. Sweet dreams, beautiful, I silently wished her…and thank you.

  Before I turned in, I had a painful confession to make to Bella. “As far as Disney World, I really don’t think I can do it. I just don’t have it in me.” I was too sick and was getting worse by the day.

  She placed her head on the pillow next to mine and struggled to hold back the tears. “It’s okay, Don. You’ve already done so much they’ll remember. It’s okay.”

  I hoped she was right, but the reality of it hit me like a sledgehammer. Tears filled my eyes as I realized, there are a million things that will have to go undone.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Bella and I made love two nights later – for the last time. It was the slowest, sweetest, most tender experience we’d ever shared.

  Chapter 18

  My physical body was disappearing right in front of me. I stared in the mirror at the stranger looking back. I’ve become a shadow of the man I used to be, I decided. A skeleton wrapped in flesh, my face was gaunt with protruding cheekbones and sunken, yellow eyes with dark circles beneath. A mustard-colored pall to my skin finished off the early Halloween costume.

  On the inside, even the pain medication wasn’t helping anymore. But if Dr. Rice ups the dosage again, I’m going to turn into a drooling, non-functioning buffoon. Even with the constant exhaustion, random vomiting, dizziness, nausea, pounding headaches, muscle weakness and loss of feeling in my extremities, I decided to bear the intense agony for as long as I could.

  We’d planned to take the kids camping at Strawberry Park in Connecticut, but I just couldn’t do it. “No working on the puzzle tonight,” I told them. “We’re heading outdoors.”

  “I don’t thin
k it’s a good idea, Don,” Bella said, trying to put a stop to it.

  I gave her a kiss on the cheek and insisted that we camp in the backyard. As a consolation, I told the kids, “If they get their parents’s permission, your neighborhood friends can join us.”

  Within the hour, Audrey and her little brother Ian arrived with sleeping bags in hand. Darlene and Jenny, and Kali and Jake also joined the camping party. I had to laugh. “Any more and we won’t be able to fit in the tent,” I told Madison and Pudge.

  Bella graciously offered up her spot and headed for the house, saying, “I’ll just be a few yards away if you need me.”

  There was only one rule and I laid it down from the start. “No rap music!”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  It was unseasonably warm for the late spring. After I fumbled to get the fire lit and the sleeping bags properly aligned, I pulled out my shoebox from the bedroom closet and showed it to the kids. “When you get old like me, the things you remember aren’t things at all,” I told them. “They’re experiences and the people you shared them with.”

  They nodded, but it was important that they understand.

  I emptied the box in front of me for all to see. “But here are some reminders,” I said and picked up a silver dollar. “In the military, there’s a tradition that the soldier who gives an officer his first salute shall receive a silver dollar. Many moons ago, I got this one halfway around the world. It’s a great symbol of respect.”

  The boys “ooohed.” The girls were less impressed.

  I picked up the pearl earring and the seashell earring, and told them the story about the rainy day Bella and I met, as well as the gift I’d received on my recent honeymoon.

  This time, the girls did the cooing.

  I showed them a Crayola masterpiece Madison had drawn of herself, Pudge and me.

  “Oh, Poppa,” she said and sat in my lap.

  I pulled out a trophy that read, World’s Greatest Dad, along with the white rabbit’s foot I’d gotten from Riley.

  I looked up at the kids and tried to explain what their mom meant to me, what family should mean to them.

  Pudge stopped eating corn chips long enough to process the information. I was happy for that.

  Skipping over the check from the Daily Telegram, I picked up the mysterious treasure box and Madison nearly jumped out of my lap. “There’s a secret for me and Pudge in that box…something we’ll get when we’re older,” she told her little friends.

  I kissed her head. Not much older, I thought. “That’s right,” I said. “And remember what I told you guys – whatever you do, whoever you become…Poppa’s already proud of you and that’s never going to change.”

  Madison nodded and kissed my cheek.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  On appearance, it was the typical backyard camp out, no different from what many people do each summer. But everything felt different.

  As the kids roasted marshmallows and laughed at each other’s silly stories, I surfed wave after wave of pain and laughed right along with them. I remember the faint hum of streetlights playing background music to a pair of dueling crickets. The campfire danced in my grandchildren’s hypnotized eyes, warming my heart. I could feel the weight of Madison lying on my chest, her breath caressing my cheek. There was a great sense of peace in it, as if it were a glimpse of heaven, reminding me that there was nothing to be afraid of. I watched as Pudge scavenged for a missing watch that never worked, the flashlight’s beam searching wildly from within the dark tent. And perhaps as some primitive defensive instinct, everyone was huddled closer.

  As the night grew darker and more still, Madison said, “Poppa, can you please tell us that scary story Mom talks about…the Liver and Onions Man?”

  “No. Your brother will get too scared,” I said, remembering my mistake with The Blue Devil story.

  I felt Madison’s hand on my arm and looked down. “Please, Poppa,” she begged, “the Liver and Onions Man story?”

  I thought about my grandfather’s frightening tales. Even though I got scared, I still loved them. What the heck, I thought. It’ll give them something to remember me by.

  “Does everyone want to hear it?” I asked.

  “YES!” they yelled.

  “Okay,” I said, knowing it’s now or never. “I must have been no older than you guys when I jumped out of my bed and ran to my parents’s bedroom. I’d spotted some psycho looking through my window again. His eyes were dark brown and the right one was lazy. And he smelled like onions…so strong it brought tears to my eyes. He looked just like a man who worked for the gypsy carnival that visited every summer. The more I thought about it, he looked like every scary man I’d ever seen. Even my dad said monsters existed and just because they weren’t under the bed, it didn’t mean they didn’t hide amongst us. In fact, he said he’d met many of them… even a hungry cannibal once.

  “The first time I saw the psycho looking through my window, I thought I was dreaming. But the nightmare was real. I woke both my parents. My mother didn’t believe me, but my dad got up right away and checked the house – inside and out. But he didn’t find anything and told me to go back to bed. I laid awake for a long time that night… afraid to fall asleep.”

  I searched their eyes. They were already transfixed on the tale.

  “Suddenly, someone was knocking on my bedroom wall; three loud knocks that sounded like a hammer had made them. I sat up in bed and waited for the worst. Seconds later, there were three more knocks. I froze. Though I wanted to run out of the room, I actually couldn’t move my legs. You see, my bedroom was on the second floor and the knocks were coming from outside. I pulled the covers over my head and worried myself to sleep.

  “In the morning, I woke up to an army of fat, black spiders running around my bedroom ceiling. There were dozens of them; bigger than any spiders I’d ever seen. I yelled again and my father came running. As he started smashing them with an old slipper, he told me to calm down – but I couldn’t. He said it had been cold out and the things had probably come in to get warm.

  “Or to get away from something that scared them, I thought.

  “That night, the local news reported a terrible crime had taken place in our neighborhood. A body was found face down in the Taunton River; the authorities claimed it was still under investigation. I overheard my dad talking about it in the kitchen. He said he’d heard that the floating corpse was missing both eyes and its liver and that the fish had nothing to do with it. I ran to my father and told him it had to be the man who’d been staring in my bedroom window. He just laughed it off.”

  The kids were completely hypnotized.

  “Two weeks went by without the psycho peeking into my bedroom window. I think it was a Saturday. My dad and I were at the carnival, and I was taking a ride on the carousel when I looked up and saw the psycho staring right at me. I had to look twice to be sure. It definitely looked like him – only this man’s eyes were blue. Then I smelled it…onions. That’s when I knew it was definitely him! I tried to scream out and warn the other kids, but I couldn’t. Nothing would come out. With a big smile, the psycho jumped on the carousel across from me and started to make his way toward me – slowly.”

  The kids squeezed closer to each other.

  “While I tried to scream, he kept walking toward me – smiling. I was paralyzed in fear. Suddenly, someone jumped up alongside me and nearly gave me a heart attack. It was my dad, trying to put a good scare into me. When I finally caught my breath, I looked up. The psycho was gone.

  “Once I could speak, I told my dad. Right away, he searched for the man, but he never found him.

  “That night, a young man was discovered dead in a gutter, three miles from our house. His body was almost melted from the acid that had been poured over him. His eyes and liver were missing. Authorities quickly connected the murders and put out a warning: killer on the loose!

  “The next night, I shut the blinds on my bedroom window and pulled the
covers up under my chin. I swore I could still feel his eyes staring at me, and I wondered what color they were tonight. I couldn’t take it, so I slipped out of my bed and tiptoed to my parents’s room where I fell asleep on the floor.

  “Two days later, a young girl was found cut up – her eyes and liver completely removed from her body.”

  I paused for an extended moment, shaking my head – as though the memory was real and still bothered me. The kids held their collective breath for the conclusion.

  “When my dad came home from work, he yelled for my mom – asking if she was cooking liver and onions.

  “My mom said she wasn’t; that even though she knew he liked it, she couldn’t handle the smell.

  “He said he thought it was strange because he could smell onions when he walked in.

  “I swear I tried to scream out…but I couldn’t. Instead, I stood paralyzed and waited. As I closed my eyes tight, they stung with tears. I loved my dad too much to watch…”

  I stopped and didn’t say another word.

  Every kid, except for the little guy, Jake, was shaking in his or her sleeping bag. “But then what happened, Mr. DiMarco?” Jake asked.

  “Nothing,” I said, grinning. “That’s where I ran out of story.”

  “It’s just made up,” Madison told him, trying to convey courage, as I’d always taught her.

  For a moment, there was silence.

  Jake leaned in from the campfire’s shadows and smiled. “Awesome story,” he said. “Awesome!”

  I laughed, thinking, It’s one they’ll never forget and maybe that’s the real point of any story…whether it lasts fifty-eight years or twelve measly months.

  Madison and Pudge were now laying side-by-side in the same sleeping bag. Scary stories can’t be all that bad, I thought.