by Shawn Inmon
The old man stopped for a moment and looked out at the trees, then disappeared into the barn. A moment later a flicker of light shone through the cracks in the wood.
I am going to call that real estate office and raise holy hell first thing in the morning. What are they thinking, trying to dump an indigent old man on me?
Brady walked outside and retrieved his bags from the back of the Range Rover. The night air was heavy with honeysuckle and a new-mown field - the smells of spring. Brady wasn’t sure he liked it. He quickly retreated into his fortress and slammed the door behind him.
I’ll explore the rest of the house in the morning. I’m still on east-coast time, and way-past ready to go to sleep.
He searched the house and located one large, well-appointed bedroom after another. Finally, he found a set of double doors that opened into a bedroom even more luxurious than the rest and knew he had found his home for the night. Like the rest of the house, it was furnished and ready.
The master bathroom was epic, of course. There was a jetted tub the size of a small swimming pool and a marble shower with six different shower heads. He was tempted by the thought of standing in it, being massaged by half a dozen different jets of hot water, but decided to wait until morning. Even though the old man was sleeping out in the barn, Brady knew he wouldn’t be able to relax and let his guard down until he was completely gone off the property.
He unpacked the few things he needed to get ready for bed and shook out his nightly dose of sleeping pills. He swallowed them down with a glass of water from the sink, grimaced at the taste of spring water, and went to bed. He opened the latest Grisham on his Kindle and thirty minutes later was out.
Roberts walked along the edge of the meadow, moving so quietly the frogs never stopped their croaking. It was a dark night with only a sliver of moon overhead, but he walked with a sure step. He had been walking this meadow for eighty-seven years and had been going to this particular spot twice a day for the last twenty-five.
Just before he reached the ring of elms he stopped and with some effort, knelt in front of a simple wooden cross planted in the earth. He reached out and smoothed the circle of dirt around the cross, plucking out the barest beginning of a weed.
“Honey, I don’t know what to do. I promised I would never leave you, and I haven’t. Not for a single day. Now I’m in over my head, though. This man says I can’t stay here. I don’t want to leave you, but I’m wandering in the desert tonight. I don’t know what to do. We always said ‘The Lord provides,’ but this time I’m stuck.”
Unbidden, a thought leapt into his head. The Lord provides for those who do for themselves.
“Is that it then, wife? Is that what we have to do? I don’t like it. Not one bit.”
He waited a long time, but no new words came to him and he knew he would hear no more from her tonight. He reached out and picked a few more stray pieces of grass that had sprung up, kissed his hand and laid it gently on the cross.
It was almost midnight, and he had work to do.
He walked back to the barn and retrieved the 100’ garden hose from inside. He climbed into the cab of his ’76 Ford pickup and started the engine. It kicked over immediately and idled quietly. Like the man himself, it was old, but running on all cylinders.
He pulled away from the back of the barn and up the driveway, parking just outside the front door. Reaching in his pocket, he retrieved the brass key and opened the front door. The sound of the key turning was horribly loud in the stark quiet of the night. He stood there patiently for two minutes, three, four, but never heard another sound.
He retrieved the hose from the seat of the truck, walked to the back and stuck one end clear up inside the tail pipe, far enough that it wouldn’t come out on its own. He took the rest of the hose and uncurled it, moving one small, silent step at a time inside the house as he did. He set the hose down just outside the master bedroom, then went back to the Dodge and got the pile of towels he had brought up from the barn.
As silent as death, he opened the bedroom door. Mr. Danks was snoring. A black mask covered his eyes. Roberts checked all the windows, but they were shut tight against the warm night air. He stuck the hose inside the room and shut the door as tight as he could, blocking the gaps with the old towels.
He crept outside and sat on the porch, looked at the stars and waited.
The next morning, Sheriff Adams responded to Mr. Roberts call. When he pulled up in front of the house, he was rolling slow and steady. He already knew this wasn’t an emergency and hadn’t even bothered to turn on his lights.
“Hello, Bob,” the sheriff said, smiling broadly. “How the heck are you?”
“I guess I’m doing better than the young man inside. He asked me to meet with him this morning at nine o’clock sharp to go over my duties, but when I let myself in I found him as dead as could be.”
The sheriff shook his head and made clucking sounds at what a damn shame it all was.
“Did he look ill last night when he got here?”
“No sir, he looked just fine. I don’t smell anything, but I wonder if there was a gas leak from the furnace?”
“When they sell a house these days, they’re supposed to install those carbon monoxide detectors in every bedroom. Do you know if they did that?”
“Well, the real estate lady said she was going to have them installed, but the last time I saw them, they were still sitting in the kitchen, waiting to be put in.”
“We’ll have to wait and see, of course, but that might be the answer right there.
“Wouldn’t surprise me a bit,” Mr. Roberts said.
“What a shame, and on his first night here, too. How long did it take for this place to sell this last time, anyway?”
“Well, close to five years. Not too many people around here got that kind of money and not too many people from the city that have that kind of money want to live out here.”
“I’m sure Mr. Danks’ heirs will want you to stay on and be the caretaker of the place, don’t you think?”
“I guess they probably will. Nobody else knows this place like me and the missus.”
The sheriff looked at him, cocked his head sideways a bit and thought Old Bob is finally starting to slip a couple of gears. His wife’s been dead 25 years.
Roberts said “Let me know if there’s anything else I can help you with, Sheriff,” and turned toward the barn, his gait steady, whistling his tuneless song.
Author’s Note for Old Man
This is another story sprung from a dog walk. I should probably take a share of the royalties from this book and buy them a nice, beefy bone. One late spring night as I was walking Hershey and Sadie, I was listening to the Pandora app on my headphones. A live version of Neil Young’s Old Man came on. Neil introduced the song with a story about buying a ranch and finding that he had inherited a caretaker, as well. Neil Young let the old man stay with him, apparently, but the seed was planted in my mind. What if the new owner was not so understanding? And what if the old man was willing to fight for what he felt was his?
Lucky Man
Often, over the years, in hallways and classrooms, Mirela would keep a surreptitious eye on him. No cheerleader she, the girl put off the risk of embarrassment and rejection until the clock of attraction came close to the stroke of midnight and she could wait no more. Finally she resolved: it’s now or never.
Brett Mann emerged from Midland High School into the bright sunshine. Someone’s car stereo was blasting Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up, and he bobbed his head slightly to the beat of the song. Two more weeks, then graduation, and he could get the hell out of this little town God had dropped him in and start the life he knew was coming.
He’d broken up with his girlfriend Suzie the month before, considering her a potential anchor that might slow his escape from Midland’s gravity pull. Lots of people talked about getting out of town when they graduated, but few got out and stayed gone. On reflection, he realized he might have dum
ped Suzie a little too early. He was, after all, a healthy, active 18-year-old boy. He had needs.
He was halfway up into the seat of his ’81 Ford F150 when he heard a low feminine voice: “Hi, Brett.”
He stepped down and turned around. The girl looked a little familiar, but he couldn’t come up with her name. “Umm… hi?”
“I know we’ve never really talked before, but with Graduation coming up and all…”
Brett appraised her assets. Average height, average weight, not a bad body, but that nose, holy Jesus, what a beak. Still, it had been weeks. He could always just close his eyes. He gave her the same wolfish smile he had seen Tom Cruise flash in Cocktail.
“Anyway, I’m Mirela. We’ve had a ton of classes together. Freshman English, Literature of the Great Religions, Geometry, Calculus...”
“Yeah, sure, I remember you,” he lied. “Right, Mirela. Great. So, you wanna go for a ride? I’ve got a few hours before I’ve got to be at work.”
Mirela’s face brightened in a smile that almost made her pretty. Almost. She climbed in the passenger side of the truck.
Brett pulled the F150 out of the school parking lot, throwing a little gravel. He drove them out of town—a short trip—and then circled around the familiar back roads. After a few minutes, he pulled down a side road and then turned onto yet another that wasn’t much more than a trail. A couple hundred yards of pothole avoidance put them out of obvious public view.
He turned the engine off and turned to her, trying to look past her nose and just focus on what he wanted. He slid over against her. Her eyes went wide with fear, but she didn’t move away. He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him, kissing her hard. When he pulled his mouth away, she said “Oh, Brett. I’ve always hoped… I mean, I…”
He kissed her again, hard, mostly to shut her up. He reached down and unzipped her jeans, and again she didn’t stop him. Before she knew what was really happening, Brett’s jeans were around his knees. Losing your virginity in the front seat of an F150 is unlikely to ever be graceful or romantic, and it was no exception for Mirela. After just a few moments of increasingly frenzied thrusting, Brett groaned and slid off her.
Less than a minute later, his jeans were buttoned up and he had begun turning the truck around to heading back into town. He hadn’t said a single word since she had gotten in his truck.
Back at the school, he pulled beside the lone car in the school parking lot, assuming that it was hers. He kept the truck in gear, eyes straight ahead.
“So, Brett,” Mirela said, “are we going to see each other now? Are you going to call me?”
As if snapping out of a trance, he realized she was still sitting beside him.
“Oh, yeah. Of course I will. I’ll call you soon.”
“OK. Well, ‘bye, then.”
Mirela waited a second as if for a kiss, then realized it wasn’t coming and climbed out of the truck. Before she could find her keys and unlock her car door, he was gone.
Brett saw Mirela in the halls several times over the next two weeks, trying to avoid eye contact.
When she did manage to catch his eye, he acted as though he didn’t recognize her. He graduated, left town, and got on with life, just as he’d planned.
There would be better women, with better noses.
Brett spied a parking spot right by the front door of the school, pulling his restored ’55 Corvette into the space. The blacktop was in poorer repair than he remembered, probably due to frequent maintenance levy failures. He showed his teeth in the rear view mirror, checking for stray food, then tucked his Dior sunglasses under the visor. Leaving the top down on the ‘Vette, he straightened his tie, ran a hand through his thick hair and looked at the small crowd gathered by the front door. He smiled inwardly at the sagging physiques and bald heads of his former classmates. Over the door was a handmade sign: “Welcome MHS Class of ’88.”
Brett made it safely past the group without having to do much more than nod to a couple of people. He pulled open the double doors that led into the lobby of the school. Why the hell did I even bother to come to this thing? There’s no one here I care about ever seeing again.
If he been more honest with himself, Brett would have admitted that he looked forward to the ego strokes that would come from returning home as a conquering hero. Instead, he told himself he did it as a commitment to his old school.
He walked to a table that had several rows of name tags, found his, and tried to decide where he could attach it without damaging his grey Dolce & Gabbana suit. A middle-aged bottle blonde materialized beside him, vaguely familiar.
“Brett. Brett Mann! I was hoping you would show up!” Her enthusiasm and volume, once virtues in an 18-year-old head cheerleader, weren’t wearing well a quarter century on. Now she used too much makeup, and too obviously was fighting a desperate rearguard salon action against grey. One more person trying too hard to hold on to something long gone.
Brett let his eye wander discreetly down to the nametag affixed to her matronly bosom.
“Hello, Mindy.” Brett flashed his shark’s smile. “It’s nice to see you.”
“OMG, Brett, you too.”
What middle-aged person is so pathetic as to speak aloud in text-speak? He wasn’t sure what his kids had replaced ‘OMG’ with, but he knew that by the time a phrase reached his ears, it was already out of style with Gen Y.
“You’ve been the talk of the Reunion Committee every time we’ve met,” she gushed. “You’re our most famous alumni.”
Brett dimmed the wattage of his smile modestly.
“Oh, I guess I got lucky here and there.”
“Lucky?” An octave higher. Mindy’s voice was probably the bane of all dogs’ existence. “Don’t be so modest! The youngest CEO in the history of Consolidated Financial, married a supermodel, then you wrote that book… that book… oh, damn. What’s it called?”
“I’m Brilliant, You’re Not Bad Yourself,” he said, a bit miffed. But why should she remember? She’s probably never read anything more sophisticated than People.
“That’s right!” she said, clapping her hands. She was even enthusiastic that Brett remembered the title of his own book. “And that was a Best Seller, wasn’t it?”
“Thirty-two weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list,” he agreed. “The sequel, I’m Still Brilliant, How About You? will be out soon.” Hearing footsteps, Brett looked over Mindy’s shoulder and saw three Mindyesque middle-aged women rushing toward him, squealing. He felt a chill run up his spine as though someone had run over his grave. Before the overstuffed, over-rouged, over-everything trio could rehash the gushfest, Brett took action. “Excuse me, Mindy, I’ve got a really important phone call I’ve got to take,” he said, making a dash for the boys’ bathroom just down the hall. He closed the door behind him with a whoosh and leaned against it, letting out a sigh of relief.
“Attack of the cheerleaders, huh?”
Brett had thought he was alone, but looked up to see a beefy, red-faced man smiling at him.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare ya. I’m Bill. Bill Stinson,” he said, extending a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt. I didn’t go to school here, I just married into it.” He laughed at his wit.
“Pleased to meet you, Bill. I’m Brett Mann.”
“Didn’t mean to interrupt, Brett. I’ll leave ya to it,” the large man said, leaving the bathroom, still chuckling. This was going to be eternity in an afternoon.
Brett walked to the basin, turned the cold water on and splashed it on his face, glancing at his reflection in the same mirror he had used decades earlier. He waggled his eyebrows slightly at himself, satisfied, and tested the new cell phone app he had downloaded. It made his phone ring with a touch of the power button: the perfect social parachute for bailing out of banal conversations with forgettable ex-classmates.
He cracked the door open slightly, peeking out to make sure that Mindy’s posse had found some other ball of yarn to play with. They had.
Smoothing the wrinkles from his jacket front, he put his game face back on and stepped outside.
“Hello, Brett.” A throaty contralto.
Jesus Christ, he thought. Is everyone here a goddamned ninja?
The woman who had spoken was standing slightly in the shadow of the lockers. All he could see was an enigmatic smile, but his first thought was that she was beautiful.
“Don’t worry, I don’t expect you to remember me,” she said. “I’m Mirela Marko.”
Brett felt his interest stirring. “Mirela Marko, Mirela Marko…” His memory lived down to her expectations. Who the hell was she? She moved out of the shadows. The beauty he had thought he had seen evaporated.
Fifty-foot pretty, five-foot ugly, he thought to himself. He reached in his pocket for his phone, ready to trigger the ring and escape.
She reached out and put a hand on his.
“Don’t worry, I won’t keep you long. You don’t need to make a getaway.”
Brett laughed hollowly, shaking his head as if that was the farthest thing from his mind.
“So, Brett, how’s your life been?” She paused and smiled. When she smiled, she almost made it back to pretty. “Never mind, you don’t need to answer, I already know. It’s been great. Phenomenal. You have led a blessed life. In fact, that’s exactly what you’ve done. I know, because that blessing came from me.”
Nutjob alert, Brett thought.
“Uh, okay. Well, Mirela, it was really good to see you again…,” Brett lied as he turned to leave, not bothering to fake his phone’s ring. She put a firm hand on his shoulder, stopping him.
“You don’t want to leave just yet, Brett. You need to hear what I have to say.”
He narrowed his eyes and cocked his head at her, but stayed put.
“I know you don’t remember me, and that’s all right, because I remember you, and I’ve been waiting for this night for so long I can’t believe it’s finally here.”
He took one small step away from her, but something kept him from going any farther.
