Tag: Allen Kopp

He Fell Over Dead ~ A Short Story

He Fell Over Dead
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~ 

They lived on a small farm. They grew corn and wheat, strawberries, peaches, tomatoes, lettuce, eggplant, melons and cucumbers, among other things. Their chickens yielded four or five dozen eggs a week. They sold most of their eggs and whatever happened to be in season to two different stores in the town of Marburg twelve miles away. In the lush season, they set up a stand out in front of their property on the highway and sold whatever surplus they had to passing cars.

Lathrop was fifteen. He had gone to school through the eighth grade, and then he wasn’t obliged to go any farther. He wanted to go on to high school in Marburg but father said he was needed on the farm. Lathrop did the work of a hired hand without any pay. When he was younger, they had a hired hand, but his father fired him when he found he was stealing vegetables and selling them on his own in town. 

Lathrop liked working at the vegetable stand. It was easy work in the shade of an enormous oak tree, and it gave him a chance to see and talk to other people, who were mostly friendly and cheerful. Sometimes somebody he knew from his school days would stop by and he would talk to them, but most of the people he had never seen before. They were just passing by on the highway on their way home from wherever they had been. They would see the stand, and the idea of fresh tomatoes, corn or cucumbers for supper would make them stop.

On a warm Tuesday afternoon in the middle of June, Mr. Wessel, the nearest neighbor, came by. He was happy to see that Lathrop still had a dozen eggs left and some tomatoes.

“How are you doing today, Lathrop?” Mr. Wessel asked as he counted out his money.

Lathrop felt flattered, somehow, that Mr. Wessel would speak to him in this way. Nobody else ever did. “I’m just dandy,” he said jauntily, with a smile. He put Mr. Wessel’s purchases in a wrinkled paper sack and handed the sack over the makeshift counter. 

“Do you ever read books, Lathrop?” Mr. Wessel asked.

“I did when I was in school,” Lathrop said. He was reluctant to say that he lived in a house without books or that he had only gone through the eighth grade and would probably never go any farther.

“You seem like a smart boy. I have many, many books in my house. If you ever want to borrow, drop by and I’ll see if I have anything that might interest you.”

“Yes, sir! I’d like that!”

“You don’t have to call me ‘sir’. My first name is Eldridge, so you can see why people call me Wessel. It’s my handle.”

Lathrop smiled, even though he didn’t know what it meant. “I might just do that, sir,” he said. “Stop by and borrow a book, I mean.”

Late in the afternoon Lathrop was happy. He sold all the vegetables and eggs and had a cigar box full of change and one-dollar bills. He handed the money box over to mother.

“Mr. Wessel came by the stand today,” Lathrop said at the supper table. “He told me I could come over to his house and borrow some books to read.”

“You stay away from him!” father said.

“Why?”

“I don’t like him, that’s why!”

“If you don’t like him, does that mean I’m not supposed to like him, too?”

“If I find out you’ve been over there, I’ll knock your head off your shoulders and feed it to the hogs.”

After supper, when mother was clearing the table and father had gone outside, Lathrop asked her, “Why doesn’t he like Mr. Wessel?”

“He’s heard something about him, I guess,” mother said. “You know how he is.”

“What did he hear?”

“God only knows.”

“Well, I like Mr. Wessel. He’s nice to me. Most people don’t even look at me. I’m only Hodge’s kid and I don’t mean a damn thing.”

“I don’t like you to use that kind of language in the house.”

“Mother, when I was in school, I heard ten times worse than that every day.”

“I don’t want you to be like him.”

“Why did you ever marry him?”

“You never met my mother.”

She laughed then, something she hardly ever did, and Lathrop wiped the crumbs off the table onto the floor.

“I want to go back to school,” he said. “Eighth grade isn’t enough.”

“I know,” she said. “We’ll manage it somehow. And if you want to borrow books from Mr. Wessel, go ahead and do it. Just don’t let your paw find out. Keep the books hidden in your room.”

The next time father went to visit his ailing mother, a trip that always took all day, Lathrop, with his dog Ruff, walked the mile to Mr. Wessel’s house. His heart hammered in his chest as he knocked timidly at the door. He half-hoped that Mr. Wessel wouldn’t be at home. 

Mr. Wessel came to the door and when he saw Lathrop he smiled and motioned him inside. Ruff settled himself on the porch for a nap.

“I hope I’m not bothering you,” Lathrop said.

“Not at all,” Mr. Wessel said. “I’m always glad of visitors.”

The house was cool and dark. Lathrop sat in a large padded chair across from the couch. Mr. Wessel sat on the couch and crossed his legs. He wasn’t wearing any shoes.

After some polite talk in which Mr. Wessel asked Lathrop about his family, his dog Ruff, where he went to school and other mundane things, he took Lathrop into the next room, his “study,” where he wrote and had his books.

Lathrop never saw so many books in one place before. There were shelves and shelves of books, so many books that the ones that wouldn’t fit on the shelves were stacked neatly in rows on the floor.

“Where did you get so many books?” Lathrop asked.

“Some are mine and some belonged to my family. When you’re the last one left alive, you get, by default, everything that belonged to everybody who came before.”

Lathrop wasn’t sure what Mr. Wessel was talking about, but he smiled and nodded his head.

Lathrop looked over the books. There were novels, volumes of poetry, short stories, books on history and books that people had written about their own lives.  

“Do you have anything in mind that you’d like to read?” Mr. Wessel asked.

“I don’t know much about books,” Lathrop said. “In school, I only read what I had to to get by.”

“Have you ever read anything by Charles Dickens?”

“No. I’ve heard of him, though.”

“How about David Copperfield? Do you think you’d like to read that?”

“Sure, I guess so.”

“I read it when I was about you age. I don’t think you’ll have too much trouble with it.”

“Sure, I’d like to give it a try.”

With David Copperfield clutched tightly in his hands, he followed Mr. Wessel back into the front room. They sat again and after they had talked for a while Mr. Wessel got up and went into the kitchen and came back with two glasses of sweet cider and a little plate of walnut cookies.  

After an hour or so, Lathrop realized he had been in Mr. Wessel’s house for over an hour. He would like to have stayed much longer, but he didn’t want to overstay his welcome. He thanked Mr. Wessel for David Copperfield and walked back home with Ruff trailing along behind.

He showed mother the book when he got home and inside the front cover where Mr. Wessel had written his name.

“That’s so you’ll remember who the book belongs to,” mother said.

He hid the book in the bottom of his dresser drawer. He couldn’t let father see it. He would be mad at him for disobeying orders to stay away from Mr. Wessel’s house and would make fun of him for reading such a story book.

That might after mother and father had gone to bed, he began reading David Copperfield in his bed. If father came and unexpectedly opened the door, which he never did, Lathrop could easily thrust it under the covers and pretend it wasn’t there.

He considered himself mostly ignorant and uneducated, but he didn’t have any trouble reading David Copperfield or knowing what was going on. There were some words he didn’t know and the characters talked in a funny way, but Lathrop knew it was just because they were in a different country and the book was written a long time ago. 

The next time he worked the vegetable stand, he overhead two ladies from town talking as they picked out their vegetables. Lathrop didn’t care what they were saying, but when he realized they were talking about father he paid closer attention.

Lathrop gleaned from the ladies’ talk that father had a “girlfriend” in town and she had a small child by him. He paid the rent on the house she lived in and visited her regularly. The ladies had seen father, the woman and their child together at a fireworks display in the park on the Fourth of July. 

“That old coot,” one of the ladies said. “He ought to be ashamed of himself. And she’s half his age, too.”

“She’s the one that ought to be ashamed,” the other lady said. “Damned old home wrecker!”

“Well, you never know about people.”

In a little over a week, Lathrop finished David Copperfield and was glad for a reason to make another trip to Mr. Wessel’s house.

Mr. Wessel asked Lathrop how he liked the book and Lathrop said he was surprised he was able to get through such a big book so fast and with seemingly so little effort. He forgot about the time when he was reading it.

Next Mr. Wessel gave him A Tale of Two Cities, which, he said, was a little more challenging than David Copperfield but of moderate length. Lathrop agreed to give it a try.

When the conversation switched from books to other matters, Lathrop told Mr. Wessel how he hated his father and was sure his father hated him. His father was gruff with him and impatient and turned his head away whenever Lathrop walked into a room. The two of them had very little to say to each other and never talked about anything that mattered.

He told Mr. Wessel his father didn’t want him to come there and borrow books but that he was doing it anyway when his father was away. His mother knew about it and thought it was all right. To Lathrop’s surprise, Mr. Wessel smiled and nodded his head.

“I never got along well with my father, either,” he said.

“What did you do about it?” Lathrop asked.

“Left home and didn’t come back until after he was dead.”

“What did you do away from home?”

“Went to college. Taught high school. Worked in a lumber mill and as a copy boy at a newspaper. I was clerk in a book store. I was even a waiter for about ten months.”

“Did you like that?”

“It made my legs tired.”

“Then what did you do?”

“When my mother died, I got a little money. Not enough to make me rich but enough to keep me from having to work, at least for a while.”

Then, even though he was embarrassed to say it, Lathrop told Mr. Wessel what he had heard the town ladies say at the vegetable stand.

“Do you think it’s true or just gossip?” Mr. Wessel asked.

“I think it could be true. He’s away from home a lot.”

“Does your mother know?”

“I don’t think so.”

Then there were other books: The House of Seven Gables, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Sea Wolf, The Red Badge of Courage, Life on the Mississippi. There was a whole world in them that Lathrop didn’t know existed.

On a stifling afternoon in August, Lathrop was sitting in the wagon in the barn looking at an old newspaper he had found when his father came in. Ruff went to meet him, tail wagging, and Lathrop’s father kicked him. Ruff yelped and leaped out of the way.

“What did you do that for?” Lathrop said. “He only wants you to notice him.”

“I’m going to take him out and shoot him!” his father said.

“What?”

“I can’t stand that dog and I never could.”

“The only reason you can’t stand him is because he’s mine and you know I like him!”

His father wiped the sweat from his mouth with the back of his hand and grabbed Lathrop by the arm and pulled him off the wagon onto the floor.  

“What’s the matter with you?” Lathrop said, trying to stand up.

“Yeah, what’s the matter with me? You’d like to know what’s the matter with me, wouldn’t you? The question is, what’s the matter with you?”

“I haven’t done anything!”

“You’ve been going over to that Wessel’s house. Don’t bother to lie about it because I know you have. What filthy things have you been up to with that man?”

“What?”

“What have you been up to with that Wessel?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! He lends me books. I read them and then I take them back.”

“Yeah, and what do you do for him in return?”

“I don’t do anything!”

He grabbed Lathrop by the arms and turned him around and struck him on the side of the head with the flat of his hand.

“Let go of me, you bastard!”

“What did you just call me, you little chicken shit?”

Lathrop started to run and his father grabbed him from behind and slammed him to the floor. He was straddling him, undoing his belt to thrash him with it when Lathrop pulled himself up and started running again. He nearly ran into the wall of the barn and when he did he saw the big knife in the leather case his father used when he butchered hogs. He pulled the knife out of its case and when his father charged him he stabbed him in the throat. He then stabbed him two more times, once in the side of the neck and then just above the heart until he went down.

Right away Lathrop knew his father was dead. When he caught his breath, he took an old canvas tarpaulin and threw it over him so he wouldn’t have to look at him. Then he thought about all the blood that was leaking all over the floor of the barn that would be very difficult to clean up, so he wrapped his father in the canvas the best he could and pushed the body against the wall. Ruff jumped up and wagged his tail and seemed to think he was helping.  

After he got himself a long drink of water, he went into the house and told mother what had happened. She dried her hands and sat down at the kitchen table and looked at him and didn’t say a word.

He thought about what he could do with his father’s body so that nobody would ever find it. Just burying it didn’t seem the right thing.

Two miles away was an old homestead that had been abandoned for seventy-five years or more, people said. There was an old well that went down two hundred feet, maybe three hundred. Lathrop remembered seeing it when he was seven years old. It had given him bad dreams for a long time.

After midnight, while mother was sleeping the sleep of the innocent, Lathrop went out to the barn and, without too much effort, pulled his father’s body, using ropes, into the back of the wagon. He then hitched the sleepy mule, the one they called Timmy, to the old wagon and set off into the woods along a road that could hardly be called that.

There was no moon. Lathrop could barely see past Timmy’s ears, but he found the old homestead from memory. He pulled the wagon around to the back of where the house once stood and jumped down. The well was right where he remembered it.

A metal plate covered the well. He was able to lift it by one corner and, with a huge amount of effort, slide it to the side far enough to drop a body in.   

He pulled the wagon as close to the well as the remaining foundation of the old house would allow and, pulling on the ropes, maneuvered his father’s body to the opening and dropped it down, canvas and all. He listened for the body to hit bottom, but he heard nothing so he believed that meant the well was hopelessly deep.

He pushed the metal plate back into place and kicked the leaves and sticks that he had disturbed back so that the well would look undisturbed.

When he got back home, it was after three o’clock in the morning. He washed his hands and face and fell into bed, exhausted. He slept until nine o’clock and when he woke up breakfast was waiting for him in the kitchen.

For supper that day mother cooked fried chicken and mashed potatoes, Lathrop’s favorite. She baked a chocolate cake as a sort of celebration and put little red candy stars on top. It tasted so good that Lathrop ate almost half of it at one time.

In the evening it was rainy and cool and the dark came early, as if announcing the arrival of fall. Lathrop laid a fire in the front room, the first since April.

“You killed your father,” mother said, and it was the first words she had spoken about it.

“He was going to kill me.”

“Yes, but you killed him.”

“I couldn’t let him hurt Ruff.”  

“You killed him.”

“We don’t need him. We can get along with him.”

“You killed your own father.”

“He got tired of farming and ran off to California or someplace even farther. He hated me and I’m pretty sure he hated you. He doesn’t want us to find him. Anybody who ever knew him could easily believe it of him.”

“I don’t know what to think of a boy who kills his father.”

“You’re as glad as I am that he’s gone.”  

She looked at him in her quiet way and picked up her knitting and sat in her rocker near the fire. Lathrop lay on his back in front of the fire, a pillow from the couch underneath his head, and read a book. Ruff lay beside him. Now he could read all the books he wanted without having to hide. He was going to start to high school in September. It was a fine life.

Copyright © 2024 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Your Time, My Time ~ A Short Story

Your Time, My Time image 3
Your Time, My Time
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~  

(This short story has been published in The Literary Hatchet.)

Severin Dinwiddie was eleven when his family moved into a different house. And a big house it was, with six rooms upstairs, seven downstairs, a spacious attic and a basement divided by concrete walls into separate little rooms.

Severin was an only child and, since he had always liked being alone, the house was perfect for him. There were more doors in the house than he had ever seen, and they all led to interesting places, sometimes into other rooms and sometimes only to other doors. The ceilings were high and the rooms dark. The attic, reached by steep wooden steps, was cavernous and shadowy, lit by a single bulb that hung down from the ceiling. In the kitchen was a dumbwaiter that was no longer used and a dark, narrow staircase that went down into the basement. It was a house, it seemed, that held secrets of its own and that might even harbor a ghost or two. If there were ghosts, Severin was sure to see them.

It was a house in which Severin might be absorbed and forgotten. His father was gone most of the time, a traveling businessman, and his mother was so wrapped up in her fat self that she forgot from time to time that she was a mother. She was enormously obese, called herself an invalid, and once she had installed herself in the master bedroom upstairs, seldom left it. She had a “girl” to wait on her and bring her her medicine or food from the kitchen. The girl’s name was Karla. She used to work as a bouncer in a nightclub and had spent some time in women’s prison. She had tattoos on her arms and a mustache. Severin avoided her. Whenever he saw her, he ran the other way as if she was a cat and he a mouse.

When Severin played his old-time jazz records, his mother complained.

“Nobody listens to that kind of music, you little freak!” she railed.

He needed a place where he could feel free, at least where he could do what he wanted and be left alone. That’s when he began spending a lot of time in the basement.

In the corner of the basement, underneath the stairs, was the perfect space for a small boy to do as he wished. He set up his card table, brought his record player and a few records down, along with a comfortable chair, a couple old quilts to make a pallet on the floor, a few books, and sundry other items. Luckily there was an electrical outlet nearby for him to plug in his record player and an old floor lamp he found that was left behind by the former resident.

Right away he felt safe and secure in the space under the stairs. His mother wouldn’t be bothered by his music, no matter how loud he played it, and he didn’t have to worry about running into Karla. As for his father, there was no chance he’d bother him because he was never home.

Severin tried to think back to the last time he saw his father and couldn’t remember how long it had been. Where was his father now? He might be anywhere in the world, flying in a jet above pink clouds or getting ready to go to bed in a hotel room in some strange, foreign city.

And no matter how many hours Severin spent in the basement—listening to music, reading, napping, or just thinking—his mother never seemed to realize he was gone. She never asked where he had been or how he had spent his day. In fact, he hardly ever saw her. At suppertime, he went upstairs to the kitchen, where he would find a sandwich, some fruit, or a bowl of soup that Karla had left there for him.

After he ate, he would go upstairs to his room and get ready for bed, lingering for a few seconds outside the closed door of his mother’s room, where he would hear her television or the low murmur of her voice as she spoke to Karla. He didn’t much like his mother and didn’t feel any special connection with her. If she died, he wouldn’t feel very sad, except that his father would probably put him into some kind of a children’s home because he didn’t know how to be any kind of a real father. Severin looked forward to the day when he was old enough to leave them.

One afternoon, after he had spent all day since breakfast in the basement, he went to sleep on his pallet on the floor. When he woke up, he noticed a trap door in the ceiling above his head that he had never noticed before. Where did the trap door lead? He wasn’t going to be able to put it out of his mind until he found out.

Standing on the card table, Severin found he could just reach the trap door. He pushed it and it opened easily. There were footholds and handholds enough that he was able to pull himself all the way through. When he stood all the way up, he saw he was standing in the kitchen, but it wasn’t the same kitchen. It was the same, but somehow different. To begin with, the refrigerator was different, the stove, the kitchen sink and the linoleum on the floor. The most striking difference, though, was that four people were sitting around a table: a father, a mother, a son and a daughter. He didn’t know who they were and had never seen them before. The father had a bald head; the mother was a blonde; the girl was about nine and the boy about thirteen.

Severin was confused but mostly he was embarrassed that he was intruding. They were having dinner and they wouldn’t like it that he, a complete stranger, was in their house. He couldn’t explain it even if he tried. He didn’t know what to say to them, but he believed he should say something.

He approached the table. The four people were eating and talking. When he stood close to them, he could see their mouths moving when they spoke, but their voices were muffled and he couldn’t understand what they were saying. It was as if something had suddenly gone wrong with his hearing.

“Hello!” he said, thinking they would all look at him in surprise, but they went right on eating and talking and didn’t look at him at all.

“I’m sorry to be in your house this way,” he said, “but I thought I was in my own house and I don’t know how I got here. I know that sounds crazy, but…”

He stopped talking when he realized they couldn’t see him or hear him and didn’t know he was there. He must be having a dream, he thought, but if it was a dream it was the most realistic dream he ever had.

He went back down through the trap door into the basement, dropped down onto the card table, and went to sleep again on the pallet on the floor.

He didn’t think about the four people again until, asleep in his room in the middle of the night, he woke up and remembered them. No matter how much he thought about them and tried to remember, he didn’t know who they were or where they came from. Did he just think them up out of his imagination? Were they out of a book he read or a movie he saw? Were they ghosts?

The next afternoon, in his basement hideaway, he was going to forget about the trap door, but his eyes kept going up to it. Before he knew it, he was standing on the card table, shimmying his way through the small opening again.

The house was still, as if nobody was at home. He stood quietly in the kitchen for a minute or two and heard nothing. When he was reasonably certain no one was there, he proceeded into the living room and dining room.

Those rooms were the same rooms he was familiar with, but everything else was different: the dining room table and chairs, the sideboard, the couch and overstuffed chair, coffee table, lamps, pictures on the walls, rugs on the floor. All the furniture was neat and straight, everything in its proper place. There was no television, though. (What kind of a family didn’t have a television?)

He went upstairs, his feet sounding too loud on the treads. He didn’t think there was anybody at home, but if he did happen to meet one of them, he would try to explain (explain what?), or he would turn around and run and hope he wasn’t seen.

He made a circuit of all the upstairs rooms, checking the bathroom and each one of the bedrooms. All the bedrooms had beds in them and other furniture he had never seen before. His own bedroom was the same room, of course, but his bed and chest-of-drawers were gone and in their place furniture he had never seen before. He opened the closet door and saw his clothes were gone and somebody else’s clothes in their place.

Believing he heard a door opening downstairs, he crept back downstairs, through the living room and into the kitchen. He was making for the trap door, when he saw, hanging on the wall, something that stopped him in his tracks: a calendar showing the year 1937. He didn’t know much about history, but he knew that 1937 was a long time ago. That would explain why there was no television in the house. Nobody had televisions yet in 1937. Also, that would explain the old-fashioned furniture and drapes and all the rest of it. These people, whoever they were, were from a long time ago, but they were living in his house, or what seemed like his house.

He went back down through the trap door and into his familiar basement hideaway. Out of breath, he sat on the floor with his back against the wall, having the feeling that he had just barely escaped. He had been in somebody else’s house and they were going to come after him. He had seen things he wasn’t supposed to see. Something bad was going to happen if he wasn’t careful. He would never go through the trap door again. He would put it out of his mind.

But he wasn’t able to put the trap door out of his mind. He kept thinking about it again and again. He woke up several times in the night thinking about it. He woke up in the morning thinking about it. The trap door was inviting him to climb through.

And climb through it he did, right after lunch. Since it was Saturday, all four members of the family were at home. The mother was in the kitchen baking a cake; the father was in the living room reading a newspaper. The son and the daughter were nowhere to be seen, probably upstairs in their rooms.

Feeling bolder now, Severin walked up to the mother in the kitchen and stood three feet away, where she was sure to see him. She didn’t see him, though, but went right on mixing her cake. When he went into the living room and stood in front of the couch, the father went right on turning the pages of the newspaper and didn’t look up, even when Severin made little popping sounds with his mouth. That’s when it occurred to Severin that maybe he was the ghost and not them.

Just then the little girl came down the stairs and said something to her father. Severin stood right in front of her where she would be sure to see him, but she walked right past him and went into the kitchen. He had never felt invisible before and found it a most agreeable sensation.

After that Severin began visiting the family every day. In time, he learned their names. The boy’s name was Gunner and the girl’s name was Phoebe. The mother was Marcella and the father Clyde. Their last name was Pettibone. Clyde Pettibone taught history in high school.

After six or eight of these silent and anonymous visits, Severin began to feel more comfortable with the Pettibone family. He sat with them when they were eating or listening to the radio and he had to admit he liked them. He listened to their talk and their laughter and he saw how free and easy they were with each other. There were no temper tantrums, arguing, tears or hurt feelings—all the things he was accustomed to with his own family.

On one of these visits, the mother looked directly at Severin, smiling, and said, “We hear your music.”

Her voice still sounded to him like a voice under water, but her smile told him she didn’t disapprove of old-time jazz.

A few days later she asked him if he’d like to stay and have dinner with them. He nodded his head and she set him a place at the table.

She put the food on a plate in front of him. He saw the food, picked up a fork and tried to eat it, but by the time he put the fork to his mouth, the food had disappeared because for him it didn’t exist. He tried to pretend he was eating when he wasn’t, but he didn’t think he was very convincing.

On succeeding visits, Phoebe and Gunner were able to see him, and then when their father came into the room, he acknowledged that he could also see him.

“Where do you come from?” Phoebe asked. “We haven’t ever seen you before.”

“I live here!” Severin said, but he knew it wouldn’t make any sense to them.

After a while, Severin knew he was beginning to become like the Pettibones. He was fading from his own world and being absorbed into the world of 1937, the world of the Pettibones. When he ate with them now, the food seemed real to him. He put it in his mouth, chewed and swallowed, and it made him feel full. And when they spoke, he could hear their voices more clearly now without the underwater sensation.

“We love having you here,” Marcella said to him. “You don’t have to go back to that other place if you don’t want to. We have plenty of room for you here.”

“Yes, I think I’d like that,” Severin said.

“I always wanted a brother about my own age,” Gunner said. “I’ll show you my stamp collection and we can have a lot of fun together.”

“I’ll teach you to do the waltz,” Phoebe said, “and you can help me with my arithmetic homework.”

“I wasn’t planning on having another son,” Clyde said with a laugh, “but those things happen!”

Severin had much to tell them about his own time, which to the Pettibones was the future, but the more time he spent with them the more he became like them and forgot about his own time. He took the name Severin Pettibone and after a while he forgot he had ever been anything else. Clyde was his father, Marcella his mother, Gunner his brother and Phoebe his sister.

As for the fat-lady invalid upstairs in the master bedroom, it took her a while to realize that the old Severin Dinwiddie was gone and wasn’t coming back. She cried and wailed and called the police and insisted they find her little boy, but secretly she was glad he was gone.

Copyright © 2024 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

A Niece Visits Her Uncle ~ A Short Story

A Neice Visits Her Uncle image 6
A Niece Visits Her Uncle
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This short story has been published in The Literary Hatchet with a different title.)

He heard her voice downstairs and her heavy tread across the floor as if a cow had been let into the house. He saw, without seeing, her fat feet in their white old-lady shoes climbing the stairs and her sausage-like fingers groping the banister. He closed his eyes to give the impression he was sleeping but he knew it was no good. Before he knew it, before he had time to take a deep breath, she was in his room and upon him.

“Uncle Jeff!” she screamed. “How the hell have you been?”

“I was taking a nap. Don’t you ever knock?”

She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. The smell of her perfume almost made him gag.

“You don’t look very sick to me,” she said with a laugh. “I think you need to get out of that bed and stop pretending.”

“I’m a lot sicker now,” he said, “than I was a few minutes ago.”

“No, seriously, honey, how are you? What does the doctor say?”

“He says I’ll live to be a hundred if family doesn’t kill me.”

“Oh, now, you can’t pretend to be a grouchy old bear with me because I know you’re just bluffing. Underneath you’re just a just the kindest, sweetest old man in the world.”

“What can I do for you today, Vera? I know you want something or you wouldn’t have dropped in unannounced.”

“Can’t a gal stop by and see her favorite uncle without having some ulterior motive?”

“In your case, no!”

She grabbed hold of the nearest chair and pulled it close to the bed and sat down and rested her pocketbook on her knees.

“My, it’s warm in here!” she said. “Do you think we could open a window?”

“No, it aggravates my hay fever.”

“I think that’s all in your head, honey.”

“It looks like you’ve put on a lot more weight since I last saw you, Vera. You need to stop eating so much.”

“I don’t eat any more now than I ever did. It’s just my age.”

“What does age have to do with it?”

“A woman my age retains water.”

“It looks more like you retain chocolate cream pie.”

“Hah-hah-hah! You can’t hurt my feelings, no matter how hard you try!”

“You’re going to get so fat you won’t be able to make it through the door. What will you do then?”

“We don’t need to talk about my weight. I know you’re just trying to embarrass me and it won’t work.”

“Go to the top of the stairs and call Esther,” he said, “and tell her to come up here.”

“Oh, we don’t need Esther, uncle Jeff! I wanted to have a little chat, just you and me.”

“I want my nurse here.”

“She’s not a nurse. I doubt if she even has a high school diploma.”

“You either get her up here like I said, or you can get back into your fancy Cadillac and drive off into the sunset.”

“Oh, very well! But I don’t know why we need to have her here.”

“I might need a witness.”

“Witness for what?”

“In case I decide to rise up out of this bed and kill you.”

“Oh, dear, you are such a card! I’m happy to see you still have your sense of humor!”

She stood up and went to the top of the stairs and shrieked down: “Esther, he says he wants you to come up here! Right away, please!”

“With a voice like that,” he said, “you could go out to the cemetery and wake the dead any night.”

“Don’t you think I would if I could?”

“All right, sit your fat ass back down and tell me why you’ve come.”

She smiled bravely. “I will tell you,” she said, “that no matter how much you berate me with that evil tongue of yours, I will not let you get under my skin.”

“That’s very noble of you.”

“I have more important things on my mind.”

“Hah! I doubt it!”

Esther came into the room just then. “Did you need something, Mr. Talmadge?” she asked.

“I just want you to sit with us for a while and take a load off. I want you to be here to show my niece the door when it’s time for her to go.”

“Yes, sir.”

Esther sat in the chair across the room, next to the window, held her elbows and looked at the floor. She could be as invisible as she needed to be.

“I can’t very well talk over family matters with a domestic in the room,” Vera said.

“Why not?” uncle Jeff asked.

“It isn’t very nice.”

“So? Esther has heard things before that are not very nice.”

“Well, very well, since it seems I have no other choice.”

“You don’t.”

“It’s about Ricky.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“Ricky has got himself into trouble with some other boys.”

“Ricky is forty. I think he no longer qualifies as a boy.”

“He’s not forty. He’s thirty-nine.”

“Well, what did Ricky and these other boys do?”

“They were all at the river, drinking and whooping it up. You remember what it was like to be young.”

“If you say so.”

“There were four boys and one girl. It seems they all pleasured themselves with the girl one at a time.”

“Very gentlemanly.”

“The girl was willing, Ricky says. She was drunk as a skunk. She took her clothes off and was dancing naked around the campfire. Well, the boys were all drinking and, with the girl dancing naked as she was, they started to get ideas.”

“Is she underage?”

“Oh, no! She’s as old as Ricky.”

“So, she was willing, they were all drunk and whooping it up and they decided to take things a little farther that usual and have a little more fun than they were used to.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Well, what happened? They didn’t kill her, did they?”

“Oh, no. Nothing like that. When the party was over and they all sobered up a little and went back to town, the girl wasn’t so willing anymore. She went to the police and told them she had been gang-raped. She gave them a list of the boys’ names. She had some bruises on the inside of her legs and some fingernail scratches on her arms.”

“All very sordid, I’m sure.”

“I need your help, uncle Jeff. You’re the only family I have left, the only person in the world I can turn to for help. I need eighteen thousand dollars.”

“What?”

“I have to retain a good lawyer to defend my Ricky in court. Eighteen thousand is just the beginning.”

“Why can’t he use a public defender? If he’s innocent, that should be good enough.”

“I don’t want to risk it. I want to get somebody who will really fight for him.”

“If you think I’m going to sit down and write you a check for eighteen thousand dollars, you’re crazier than I thought.”

“It’s not as if you don’t owe me.”

“Owe you? How do I owe you?”

“Ricky and I are your only living family. When you die, we’ll be the only ones to weep over your body down at Hartsell Brothers’ Funeral Home.”

“You flatter yourself, Vera.”

“You’re old and soon you’ll die. We know you have money and you’re not going to be able to take any of it with you.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Just what are you planning on doing with all your money when you die?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know!”

“Don’t you think Ricky and I are entitled to at least some of it?”

“I don’t hear you, Vera! I think I’m starting to have another one of my spells.”

“You live in this big twelve-room house all alone. Why does any old man living alone need twelve rooms, I ask you?”

“Some people need lots of space.”

“I think that’s very selfish of you. There’s a lovely new nursing home opening up downtown. I hear the accommodations are lovely. With just one little phone call, you can get your name on the list and you’ll be able to move in as soon as they have an opening. Doesn’t that sound heavenly?”

“And what would I do with this big house with its twelve rooms?”

“Ricky and I would be happy to move in and take care of it for you.”

“Hah! I just bet you would!”

It was time now for tears. She took a wad of Kleenex out of her purse and dabbed pitifully at both eyes. “I’m afraid they’ll send Ricky up for a long time. It isn’t his first offense, you know. Things will go very hard with him this time.”

“Ricky’s been a habitual criminal since he was five years old. I knew it was only  a matter of time before he was called to a reckoning.”

“Don’t say that! If you had ever been a mother, you’d know what it’s like to be faced with the prospect of having your only child being locked up for life.”

“Do you want some advice?”

“No, but I know you’ll give it anyway.”

“Find out the name of the girl, the woman, who says Ricky and the other boys violated her.”

“I already know her name. It’s Willie Walls.”

“Something tells me she’s trash.”

“What else would she be?”

“Offer her a thousand dollars to drop the case. That’s probably more money than she’s ever imagined having in her life.”

“A thousand dollars?”

“Tell her she can have a thousand dollars to drop the case or risk going to court and losing and not getting anything.”

“I’m not sure that’s wise, uncle Jeff.”

“If it goes to court, they’ll get her on the witness stand and it’ll be her word against the word of the four boys. She’ll be humiliated. They’ll bring up everything she’s ever done or said in her life. They’ll bring in every person she’s ever known who might have any dirt on her, and there’s probably plenty, if she’s the kind of girl who gets drunk and dances naked in front of a bunch of boys at the river.”

“I guess it’s worth a try.”

“It might keep Ricky out of jail this time.”

“So you won’t give me the eighteen thousand?”

“I already said I won’t. I’ll advance you the thousand dollars to pay the girl, but you’ll have to sign a note promising to pay it back.”

“I think that’s very hard-hearted of you.”

“Was that all you wanted, Vera? I’m getting tired.”

“I wasn’t going to tell you, but I think it’s probably good for you to know. I’m dying. I might only have a short time to live.”

“Who says?”

“The doctor says. Who do you think?”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“I have a fatty liver.”

“Not just your liver.”

“I might need an operation.”

“Well, have the operation, then.”

“I’ve been worried sick. Not about myself but about Ricky. I’m afraid I’ll die with him in the mess he’s in. With me gone there’ll be nobody to help him.”

“So, what is it you want me to do?”

“Sign your house over to him so it’ll be his when you die.”

“What? Why would I do that?”

“I’m not asking for myself. I’m asking for my child. I could die easy if I knew this fine old house was in his name. And even if he goes to jail, maybe it won’t be for long and when he gets out he’ll have this haven, this refuge, to come back to.”

“I’d laugh if it wasn’t so ridiculous. Do you know how long it’d take Ricky to lose this house in a poker game or sell it for practically nothing to get money to buy drugs?”

“He’s not like that now. He’s grown up a lot. You’d hardly know him. He’s really a very fine young man now.”

“Yes, a fine young man who rapes women at the river.”

“Oh! You can insult me all you want, but I won’t stand by and do nothing while you insult my child!”

“If there was ever a child who needed to be insulted, it’s Ricky.”

“You’ve always been so filled with hatred, uncle Jeff, I don’t know what keeps you from choking on it!”

“Esther, my niece is leaving now. Take her downstairs and show her the door.”

“I don’t need to be ‘shown the door’, you old bastard!”

“Don’t let it hit you in the ass on your way out.”

“All right, I’ll go. I should have known I was wasting my time trying to reason with a senile old fool like you. I want you to know one thing, though. You’re not holding all the cards in the deck.”

“Are you threatening me, Vera? Do you think it’s wise to threaten an old man who holds most of the cards in the deck?”

“I’ve been to see a lawyer about you!”

“About me? How you flatter me!”

“As your only living relative, as your next of kin, I can start a court proceeding to have you declared incompetent. Do you know what that means, uncle Jeff? If the court agrees with me, I gain control of all your assets. I can put you in the nursing home of my choosing or in the state mental institution if that’s the way the wind blows.”

“Oh, my! You’re scaring me now, Vera!”

“Oh, yes, I can put you away, uncle Jeff, and please believe me when I tell you I won’t hesitate for one second! Not for one second! Ever since I was a small child, I knew what a mean, contemptible person you are. When I was as young as ten years old, my poor mother, your sister, used to sit in the front parlor and cry over the way you treated her and, as young as I was, I would pat her on the shoulder and say, ‘There, there, mother, he doesn’t mean anything by it. He’s just been disappointed in the way life has turned out for him and he takes it out on the whole world. I know you love him. We all love uncle Jeff, no matter how mean a son-of-a-bitch he is.’ And she would just smile her sad smile and take my hand and wet it with her tears.”

“All right, Vera. I think you’ve put the fear of God in me. You can go home now.”

She stood up and began gesticulating, growing ever more agitated. “You disapproved of my husband. You always thought you were better than us. And then from the moment Ricky was born you laughed at him and said he looked like a gorilla and wasn’t right in the head. What do you think that does to a child’s self-esteem?”

She gasped for breath and put her hand on the bed post to steady herself. “My greatest fear now,” she said, “is that I’ll die before you and I won’t be there to celebrate when you draw your final breath. I was just telling Ricky a few days ago how I wanted to dance on your grave. How I wanted to…How I want…How I hoped…”

Her mouth gaped open, but the words seemed to have stopped coming of their own accord. She grabbed the middle of her chest with both hands and, with a startled expression on her face, rolled onto the bed to the floor.

“Esther!” uncle Jeff called.

But she had seen and heard all that had happened and was at the ready. She knelt on the floor and rolled Vera onto her back. Vera’s body shook with tremors; she made gurgling sounds in her throat.

“Is she all right?” uncle Jeff asked from the side of the bed.

“I think we need an ambulance,” Esther said.

“It might all be an act. I know what she’s like.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I don’t want that old heifer dying in my house. Call an ambulance and tell them to come and get her and to send about six strong men. She’s roughly the size of a small elephant.”

When the ambulance arrived eight minutes later, Vera was unconscious. She was colorless and dead-looking, her carefully coiffed hair askew. They strapped her onto a stretcher and administered oxygen.

Half an hour after the ambulance had left, Esther went up to uncle Jeff’s room to make sure he was all right.

“You’re not to let that woman into the house again, you understand?” he said.

Esther smiled. “If she decides she wants to come in, I won’t be able to stop her.”

“Then I’ll buy you a gun and teach you how to use it.”

“Yes, sir. I sure would hate to shoot her, though.”

“I’ll come downstairs for dinner. Set the table in the dining room. I’m not sick anymore. I have a long way to go to one hundred.”

Copyright © 2024 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

The Doctor Dispenses Drugs from His Office ~ A Short Story

The Doctor Dispenses Drugs from His Office image 6
The Doctor Dispenses Drugs from His Office
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This short story has been published in The Literary Hatchet with a different title.)

Patsy Ruth Quilley moved to a new town, far away from the old one. At age thirty-four, she was looking for a new start in life. Her marriage had failed, her career was on the ash heap, and she had two small children to raise on her own. Summoning all her courage, she loaded all her possessions into her old car and drove the hundred and fifty miles to the new town, barely knowing where she was going or what she would do when she got there.

After spending three nights in an unsavory motel (along with children Cullen and Corinne), she found a small, four-room house to rent close to some railroad tracks on the edge of town. The rent was reasonable and the house seemed clean and decent enough. The previous tenant, she was told, was an old man who had occupied the house for years until the grim reaper came and took him away.

After the move and after paying the rent for the first month on the house, she had only a few dollars left. She was fortunate to find a new job in less than two weeks.

His name was Dr. Boren. He was an older doctor with a booming practice on Main Street. Everybody went to him and he never turned anybody away. He needed an office assistant, somebody to manage appointments, answer the phone, and do anything else that needed to be done. He hired Patsy Ruth after talking to her only a few minutes. He had a good feeling about her, he said, and he was never wrong about those things.

Dr. Boren was the type of doctor who didn’t write prescriptions. He kept a well-supplied drug closet in his office and distributed whatever drugs his patients needed, whenever they needed them. The drug closet contained at least three-quarters of million dollars in drugs of all different kinds, Dr. Boren said.

In her third week in the office, Dr. Boren gave Patsy Ruth the key to the drug closet and told her how important it was to keep it from ever falling into the wrong hands. She must guard it with her life and never let it out of her sight. Patsy Ruth smiled solemnly and crossed her heart. Nobody would ever get the key away from her. She’d die before she’d ever let that happen.

She didn’t like the job at first—she felt she was being pulled in a hundred different directions every minute of the day and she was sure Dr. Boren would fire her for the mistakes she was making—but after a few weeks she settled into the routine of the place and found the job more to her liking. She didn’t have to struggle so much to stay on top of things, and she was able to do everything that needed to be done before closing time and was even able to take a lunch break every day of an hour or more.

Finally she was getting her life back in order. Cullen and Corinne were doing well in their new school and making new friends. Every morning they willingly got out of bed and got themselves ready to meet the bus down the street. Patsy Ruth gave Cullen the key to the house, since he was the older one, and told him what to do if he and Corinne got home first. He was to lock himself and Corinne inside and never open the door to anybody, no matter how hard they knocked. He had the number to the police, the fire department and the ambulance. He could call Patsy Ruth at the office if he ever needed to just hear her voice.

Patsy Ruth was resigned now to being a single mother. She told herself she was finished with men, after years of being locked in a miserable marriage. She would always put her children first now and forget about herself. She had given up on the idea of men in all their forms.

Then she met Gale McIlhenny.

He came into the office to see Dr. Boren. He was in town for only a few days, he said; he was away from home and from the doctor he would ordinarily see. He didn’t have an appointment, but he hoped the doctor would somehow work him in. He had picked up a bug on the airplane and felt terrible. He had a cough and a sore throat and he was sure he was running a fever. He hoped the doctor would give him something to keep it from turning into the flu.

She took his name and told him the doctor would see him, but he would have to wait until the doctor was free.

“I don’t mind waiting!” he said with a disarming smile.

He took a seat in the waiting room and she went on with her work. Without looking directly at him, she knew he was stealing little glances at her and smiling.

The next day when she was on her way to lunch at the café up the street, she met him coming toward her on the sidewalk. He smiled as if he knew her.

“Hi, there!” he said, taking off his hat.

“Oh, hello!” she said. “You’re the man in the office yesterday!”

“That’s right!”

“I didn’t expect to see you again!”

“Just doing a little window shopping.”

“Is your cold better?”

“My cold?”

“Yes, you wanted to see the doctor for your cold?”

“Oh, yeah! I feel some better today.”

“I was just on my way up the street to get some lunch.”

“Lunch? Yes, it is lunchtime, isn’t it? How about if you let me buy you lunch?”

“Well, if you have nothing better to do, I guess there’s no law against it.”

She blushed right down to the roots of her hair.

It wasn’t really a date, she told herself. Nothing to get excited about. He was just a nice man and he didn’t know anybody in town. He was undoubtedly lonely. He was just a little too good to be true, though: handsome, well-dressed, obviously educated and cultured. He was about thirty-five, dark-haired, blue-eyed and angel-faced. The kind of man you might go your entire life and never meet.

When lunch was over, he walked her back to Dr. Boren’s office and shook her hand like a business associate.

“I enjoyed lunch tremendously,” he said.

“Me too!” she said. “Thank you so much!”

“I’ll be in town for a week or more. Would you like to have dinner one evening?”

“Yes, of course, I would!”

“All right, then. I’ll call you in a day or two.”

She watched him walk away, expecting never to see him again.

He called her the next day, though, and asked her to have dinner with him the next night at a new French restaurant in town. She readily agreed.

“Tell me where I can pick you up,” he said.

She wasn’t quite ready to divulge to him that she was a divorcee with two growing children. She would save that information for another time. She didn’t want to scare him off before they even got to the starting gate.

“Pick me up at Dr. Boren’s office,” she said.

“Around Six o’clock?”

“Fine.”

The day after the dinner at the French restaurant, she knew she was in love. Gale was everything she wanted in a man, and so much more. She never expected in a thousand years to find anybody like him. He was a gentleman—so unlike Mike, her former husband, and unlike any other man of her acquaintance. He was funny and charming, intelligent and a good conversationalist. She could easily see herself marrying him and spending every minute with him until she died. And when she died, it would be in his arms!

But, wait a minute! She really didn’t know anything about him. In the four hours they spent together at the restaurant, he didn’t reveal anything about himself. He didn’t wear a wedding ring, but that doesn’t always mean anything. A lot of married men don’t wear a ring. She wanted to ask him about his personal life, but she didn’t want him to think her presumptuous. If he wanted her to know, he’d tell her. Those things could wait until they knew each other better.

The next time they saw each other, she told herself, she would tell him about Corinne and Cullen. How could she keep them hidden? Most people in their thirties have children. Why would he be surprised? If she told him the unvarnished truth about her past, maybe he would do the same about his.

On Friday afternoon, right before closing time, he called her at Dr. Boren’s office. He was going to be in town longer than he thought, at least for one more week, and maybe two. He had a comfortable room at the motor lodge. He wouldn’t be able to see her on the weekend—he was going to be tied up with work—but he’d be sure and catch up with her early next week.

She was happy, of course, that he was going to be in town longer than expected, but a little hurt that he didn’t want to see her on Saturday or Sunday. Not even a shout-out or a phone call.

She spent the weekend at home with Cullen and Corinne, trying not to think about Gale, about where he was and what he was doing. Really, why should she care? He was so noncommittal, so mysterious, and he had said nothing to indicate that he was interested in marriage, or in even getting to know her better. She was acting like a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl with a crush on her English teacher. After all she had seen and been through in her life, she ought to know better.

On Monday she went to work at Dr. Boren’s office in a better frame of mind. She had undertaken a large dose of reality over the weekend and considered Gale nothing more than a chance acquaintance. Just another man out of the many men she’d meet in her life. There was no deeper meaning in anything he said or did. When he went back to wherever he came from, she would forget him in a few days.

He called her on Monday morning at ten o’clock and asked her to meet him for lunch. When they met, he was all smiles and charm. She was happy to see him, of course, but much less the gushing adolescent than she had been. She answered his questions politely, but didn’t have much to say otherwise.

“You seem kind of quiet today,” he said.

“Well, you know, it’s Monday morning. Blue Monday.”

“No, it’s something more than that. Something’s bothering you. I want you to tell me what it is.”

“It’s nothing. You should try the pea soup here. It’s really good.”

“I was going to ask you if you wanted to take a little trip with me, but now I don’t think I will.”

“A trip where?”

“Too late now.”

When he walked her back to Dr. Boren’s office, he again shook her hand.

“Call you in a day or two,” he said.

The next afternoon she received a bouquet of roses with a note that read: Hope Tuesday Better Than Monday. Kindest Regards, Gale McIlhenny.”

Kindest Regards? She wondered if he was real or if she had just imagined him.

She didn’t hear from him again until Thursday morning. He called and asked how she was feeling.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“Did you get my roses?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Did they cheer you up?”

“Yes.”

“Would you like to have dinner with me this evening? I have a little matter I want to discuss with you.”

“Well, I suppose I do, if I can arrange a sitter.”

“Sitter? You didn’t tell me you have kids.”

“I have two. A boy and a girl.”

“Well, no matter! Can I pick you up at the office about six-thirty?”

“If the sitter isn’t available, I’ll have to bring them with me.”

“Bring who?”

“My son and daughter.”

“Oh, that’s not so good! I wanted to be alone with you tonight.”

“Just kidding. I’ll be alone.”

“Fine. See you then.”

He was a little late, but she wasn’t overly concerned. If he didn’t show up, it would be a chance for her to end the odd little relationship and never see him again. If he were to call her again, she wouldn’t take any more calls from him.

Finally he arrived, thirty-five minutes late.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “I got tied up on the phone.”

She wanted to ask him again what kind of work he did, but instead she said nothing.

“Just down the highway from the motor lodge is a steak place I’ve been wanting to try,” he said. “Do you know about it?”

“I’ve been there once or twice.”

“After we’ve eaten, we can go to my room and talk privately.”

They had a lavish, candlelit dinner in a cozy booth that made them feel like they were alone. He ordered a bottle of red wine and made sure her glass was full at all times.

“Tell me about yourself,” he said. “I hardly know you. Do you like working in a doctor’s office.”

“It’s all right. It’s better than some of the jobs I’ve had.”

“What were they?”

“Better forgotten.”

“As we move along in life,” he said, “we discover that much of what we’ve lived through is better forgotten.”

Emboldened by the three glasses of wine, she asked him if he had children.

“Oh, no!” he said with a little laugh. “I’ve never been married. I leave that to the others.”

“Don’t you like women?”

“Sure, I like women! I like everybody! Right at this moment, I love everybody in the world!”

“Why haven’t you ever kissed me?”

“There’s no reason, I suppose,” he said. “I just haven’t.”

“Don’t you like me?”

“Of course, I like you! Why would I be here if I don’t like you?”

“You tell me!”

After dinner, he took her to his room at the motor lodge. They sat and talked for a while and then he ordered a bottle of champagne. When it was delivered, he poured two glasses to the brim and handed her one. She emptied it and he filled her glass again.

“You said you had something you wanted to talk to me about?” she asked. “Isn’t that why you wanted me to come to your room?”

“There’s plenty of time for that,” he said.

“I’m divorced, you know.”

“You don’t have to talk about that if you don’t want to.”

“I moved to this town to get away from everything I knew and to start over.”

“Most admirable,” he said.

“What about you? Have you ever been divorced?”

“I’ve never been married. Remember I told you that earlier.”

“Oh, yes! You’ll have to forgive me. I’m not used to drinking. It does things to my brain. First wine and now champagne. A lethal combination.”

“Not too lethal, I hope.”

“Oh, no! Hah-hah-hah! I think I’ll live.”

“Would you like to take a nap? You can lie down on the bed if you want to.”

“Oh, no! I have to get home.”

“Why?”

“Two little ones. I told you about them.”

“Oh, yes. Just try to relax. They’ll be fine.”

She went to sleep then, and in a little while she was aware of Gale picking her up and carrying her to the bed. He’ll kiss me now, she thought. He’ll finally kiss me.

She expected him to take off her dress and then and the rest of her clothes, but she blanked out at that moment and the rest of what happened was unknown to her.

It was early morning. The sun was shining through the window beside the bed. The birds were singing in the trees. She gasped for air and sat up, not knowing at first where she was. The first thing she was fully aware of was that she was still wearing her dress and she had been asleep in somebody else’s bed. Whose bed? What happened to that man I was with?

She stood up from the bed on wobbly legs and ran into the bathroom because she was uncontrollably sick, in a way she hadn’t been since she was a small child. When the sickness passed, she wiped her face with a wet washcloth.

The clock told her she still had plenty of time to get to work without being late. It was Friday morning. Dr. Boren was counting on her to be on time. He was a stickler for being on time. She didn’t want to spoil her spotless record.

Her purse was still on the round table near the door. As she approached the purse, she saw a bill sticking out of the top of it: a hundred-dollar bill. Partly underneath the purse was a piece of paper on which a note was written. She picked it up and began  reading: I had to leave early this morning before you woke up. I hope you don’t mind. It’s been wonderful knowing you. Maybe we’ll meet again at some time in the not-too-distant future. I’m leaving you money for taxi fare. All the best, Gale McIlhenny.

She arrived at the office fifteen minutes before her starting time. She thought she would have to use her key to get in because the office wasn’t opened yet, but the door was standing open. She went inside, hearing strange voices coming from Dr. Boren’s private office.

When Dr. Boren heard her, her came out of his office with two uniformed police offices. He looked white-faced and shaken.

“Why, what’s the matter?” she asked. “What’s happened?”

“We’ve been robbed!” Dr. Boren said.

“Robbed? No!”

“The thieves emptied out the drug closet. Three-quarters of a million dollars in drugs!”

“Who would do such a thing?”

“Have you checked your keys?” Dr. Boren asked.

“My keys? What about my keys?”

She took her key ring out of her purse with her house keys, car keys and office keys. The keys to the main door of the doctor’s office and the drug closet were the only keys that was missing. All the other keys were there. Nothing else in the purse had been disturbed. Gale was such a careful gentleman.

Copyright © 2024 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Yellow Bird ~ A Short Story

Yellow Bird image 1
Yellow Bird
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This short story has been published in The Literary Hatchet.)

Lonnie awoke to the smell of cooking food. When he got out of bed and went into the kitchen, mother turned from the stove and smiled at him. She was wearing her red silk dress with the white buttons instead of the usual old chenille bathrobe.

“Sit down and have some bacon and eggs,” she said.

“Why are you so dressed up?” he asked.

“Eat your breakfast while it’s hot.”

While he ate, she sat across from him and drank coffee and smoked her cigarettes.

“What are you going to do today?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Read comics and watch some TV, I guess.”

“Don’t you think you should get outside and get some exercise and fresh air?”

“I might ride my bike to the park.”

“Don’t you have anybody to go with?” she said. “Isn’t it more fun with friends?”

“Sure. Is anything wrong? You’re acting funny.”

“We need to have a little talk.”

“What about?”

“Do you remember my friend Tony? You met him once when we were having lunch downtown.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

She looked down at her hand holding the cigarette. “Well, he and I are going away together this morning. He’s coming by to pick me up.”

“Going away? What do you mean, going away? Where are you going?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Will you be back in time for supper?”

“No.”

“Does father know?”

“I wrote him a letter. He’ll read it when he gets home from work.”

He looked at her searchingly, as if her face might reveal something her voice wasn’t saying.

“So, when will you be back? Next week sometime?”

“I don’t think so, honey.”

“Why not?”

“I think it’s time for father and me to go our separate ways. I’m going to file for divorce so I can marry Tony.”

“Can’t I go with you?”

“Father and I discussed it and we decided it would be better for you to go on living here. Father wants you to stay with him.”

“I’d rather be with you, though.”

“Don’t you want to keep going to the same school you’ve gone to since kindergarten?”

“I don’t care if I go to school or not.”

She laughed and flattened her cigarette out in the ashtray. “You don’t mean that,” she said.

“Yes, I do.”

“Now, I need you to be a good boy and not a difficult boy. This is hard enough as it is.”

“But why can’t I go with you, wherever you’re going?”

“See, that’s the thing. Tony and I are going to be unsettled for a while. I don’t know where I’ll be while I’m waiting for my divorce.”

“Can’t you stay here while you’re waiting for your divorce?”

“It doesn’t work that way, honey. One of us has to leave and it has to be me.”

“Is it something I did?”

“Of course not! I don’t ever want you to think that.”

“Is it something father did?”

“No, it isn’t anything father did, either. It’s grownup stuff. I wouldn’t know how to explain it to you if I could. When you’re older, you’ll understand better.”

“But why Tony?”

“Because I love him and I believe he loves me. He’s the man I should have married in the first place.”

“Then why did you marry father?”

“I was young and I didn’t know him very well.”

“So, is that what grownup people normally do?”

In a little while there was a honk out front. Mother went into the bedroom and came out carrying her suitcase and the jacket that went with the red dress.

“I want you to come out on the porch and see me off,” she said, taking Lonnie by the hand.

Tony had parked his shiny blue car at the curb. When he saw mother and Lonnie come out of the house, he got out of his car and smiled and waved. He was wearing a coat and tie like church. He stood beside the car smiling, looking like a picture in a movie magazine.

Mother let go of Lonnie’s hand on the porch and bent over so that her face was close to his. She didn’t have to bend very far because he was almost as tall as she was.

“Everything will be all right,” she said with what she thought was a reassuring smile. “I just need to get away.”

“But for how long?” he asked. He was about to cry but didn’t want to with Tony looking  on.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“When will I see you again?”

“I don’t know that, either. I’ll call you just as soon as we get to where we’re going and we can talk on the phone. I’ll know more then.”

He nodded his head and looked away.

She opened her purse and took out some money and put it in his fist. “Here’s a little mad money,” she said. “Buy yourself something special. Something impractical.”

She laughed for no special reason then and gave Lonnie a kiss on the cheek and held him for a few seconds in a squeeze and when she let go of him she ran to Tony like a schoolgirl.

On any other day, Lonnie would love having the house to himself, but with mother leaving unexpectedly it felt lonely and empty. He tried watching TV but wasn’t used to watching during the daytime and wasn’t interested in any of the shows that were on, so he took mother’s advice and rode his bike to the park.

He saw some people he knew but didn’t speak to them; he didn’t want to have to talk to anybody. He went to the most secluded part of the park near the war memorial and sat under a tree. It was so quiet and breezy that he almost went to sleep and ants started crawling on him, so he got up and went back home.

He hoped mother would somehow be there, having changed her mind and forcing Tony to bring her back, but everything was just as he left it. He ate some leftover fried chicken for lunch and wondered how to spend the rest of the day.

When father came home from work at the usual time, he found the letter from mother on the kitchen table. He unfolded the letter and pulled out a chair and sat down and read it.

“Did she tell you about this?” father asked Lonnie.

“A little,” Lonnie said. He shrugged and opened the refrigerator door to see what they would have for supper.

“Did you see what’s-his-name?”

“You mean Tony? Yeah, I saw him.”

“I have grounds for divorce now,” father said. “She ran off with her lover.”

“She said she’d call.”

“I don’t know what to think about a mother who abandons her only child.”

“It’s all right with me,” Lonnie said, “if it’s what she wants.”

“When she calls, tell her I’m going to see a lawyer to start divorce proceedings.”

“I think that’s what she wants, anyway.”

“I hope she rots in hell.”

In August for his fourteenth birthday, Lonnie  received a large bird cage with a yellow parakeet inside, delivered by a white truck that pulled up out in front of the house with a screech of brakes. It was a most unusual and unexpected gift. Mother wrote on the card: Thought you could use a pet. Much love, as always.

He didn’t know how to take care of a parakeet so he walked downtown and bought a book on the subject and a couple of different kinds of birdseed that the woman in the store said any bird would like. If he won’t eat none of it, the woman said, bring it back and we’ll try something else.

In the attic was an old birdcage stand with a hook. Lonnie had seen it before but never knew what it was for. He was surprised somebody hadn’t thrown it out long ago, but he was glad now they didn’t. Everything eventually has its purpose if you wait long enough.

He named the bird Toppy. It didn’t mean anything; it just seemed like a good name for a bird. Toppy hopped around inside his cage, sang little musical trills, drank water, ate birdseed and pooped aplenty. He seemed happy enough.

Lonnie hoped every day that mother would come home, but he knew it was an unrealistic hope. In the real world, mothers didn’t return home after running off with another man. It didn’t even happen in the movies.

Everybody thought father would get married again after the divorce, but he liked being single, he said. When marriage-minded ladies called to invite him over for a home-cooked Sunday dinner, he told Lonnie to tell them he was in Moscow or in the hospital for a lung operation.

He got an old woman, a Mrs. Farinelli, to come in two or three days a week and clean the bathroom and the kitchen, wash the clothes, shop, and usually cook a little food. She had a son on death row in prison and another son who was a priest. He paid her money in cash so she wouldn’t have to pay income tax on it. She was neat and quiet and never complained.

Mother called Lonnie a couple of different times when she knew father was still at work. When Lonnie asked where she was, she said they were still moving around, still unsettled. She sounded distant, preoccupied, not the mother he remembered. He believed at last that she didn’t care for him and was trying to phase him out of her life because she had a whole new life now.

Summer ended and Lonnie started ninth grade. He mostly didn’t like school—he never had from the very beginning—but he knew he had to make decent grades and get through to the end; there was no other choice anymore. Only dopes and losers quit high school.

A couple of times, on his way to and from school, he thought he saw mother in passing cars, but he knew later it couldn’t have been her. She would have at least waved to him.

On Christmas and birthdays, he always received cards from her with money in them. He couldn’t send a card to her in return because he didn’t have her address, but he knew that’s the way she wanted it.

As the months and years went by, he stopped thinking so much about her. He stopped thinking long ago that she would return and father would forgive her and everything would be just as it was.

Lonnie and father never had much to say to each other. They had occasional arguments and disagreements but for the most part they stayed out of each other’s way and got along as well as any father and son living alone in a house had a right to.

Toppy lived inside his cage and thrived and seemed happy. Lonnie sometimes felt sorry for him because he lived in such a small space and didn’t have the company of other birds. He thought about opening the window and letting him fly away, but he knew the world would be too much for Toppy and he wouldn’t survive on his own for very long.

Lonnie came to the end of high school and was glad for that that phase of his life to be over. Father dressed up in his one blue suit and came to the graduation ceremony by himself and sat toward the back of the auditorium surrounded by strangers. Lonnie thought several times about mother and wished she could be there to see him get his diploma.

He didn’t care to go on to college, at least not right away; he had had enough of school for a while. He thought vaguely that one day he would get married and have children of his own, but he was in no hurry and didn’t much care one way or another. He didn’t like the idea of having a marriage that would one day end in divorce.

A few weeks after graduation, he got a job in a hardware and paint store. He didn’t like it very much, but he got used to it and after a year or so he got a promotion and a raise in pay. He moved into sales and found it more to his liking than working at a counter and answering questions from customers.

As for mother, Lonnie didn’t hear from her again after the card he received on his nineteenth birthday. He didn’t know where she lived or if she was alive or dead. The best thing he could do, he told himself, was to stop thinking and wondering about her.

The years went by and Lonnie found himself at age twenty-one. He still lived with father in the house he grew up in. He went to work every day, as did father, and the two of them went their separate ways and lived their separate lives.

On a Friday morning in October father collapsed soon after arriving at work. He was rushed to the hospital, where he died two hours later. He had an enlarged heart and had smoked cigarettes, a lot of them, since he was thirteen. He was forty-seven.

The funeral was well-attended, despite a steady downpour. Relations of father’s that Lonnie had never seen before came from out of town, with stories of father when he was a child. The company father worked for sent an impressive arrangement of flowers. Father’s boss and a couple of his coworkers came and introduced themselves to Lonnie, slapped him on the shoulder, expressed their condolences, and told him what a great guy father was.

At the gravesite the rain kept up. Lonnie wore a raincoat and an old man’s hat he found in the closet and used a borrowed umbrella to keep himself dry. The minister droned a few words and the casket began its slow descent into the earth, indicating that the service was concluded and it was time for everybody to go home.

As the crowd was dispersing and Lonnie was about to make his getaway, a woman emerged from the crowd and approached him. She was wearing a long coat, dark glasses, and a scarf wound around her head like a refugee. It wasn’t until she came toward him, stopped and smiled that he knew it was mother.

“You’re all grown up now,” she said.

He looked at her, feeling almost nothing. He brought the umbrella down in front of his face to keep her from looking at him, sidestepped, and sprinted for his car as fast as he could before she had a chance to come after him.

At home, he felt a tremendous sense of relief now that the funeral was over and all those people had gone away. He was truly alone now, for the first time in his life, and he wasn’t sure what he was going to do with himself. The house was his now and there would be some insurance money after the funeral expenses were paid. He was a family of one, a free agent. He might never return to his job at the paint and wallpaper store.

He went into his bedroom and closed the door and took Toppy out his cage and lay on his back on the bed, holding the bird on his chest. Toppy tried his wings a couple of times as if confused at being out of the cage and then settled down and nestled on Lonnie’s sternum contentedly. His little eyes blinked and he looked with what seemed like comprehension right into the eyes of the only human person he had ever known.

“Don’t ever leave me,” Lonnie said. “Please don’t ever leave me.”

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Enough About Me ~ A Short Story

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Enough About Me
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

Mrs. Doris “Dodie” Cunningham sat alone in her darkened house in a cloud of cigarette smoke. It was a summer day, late in July. She was aware of some unusual sounds in the back yard and she didn’t know what it was. Oh, yes, she remembered now. Little Leland was having some friends over. They were playing a game or something, as children do, with all the requisite screaming.

After a half-hour or so the sounds ceased suddenly, so she went to the back door and opened it to make sure the children weren’t getting themselves into any mischief or hurting each other. After all, she was the mother and she was supposed to keep the little brats in line.

Opening the door revealed a small boy sitting hunched over on her back steps. He had short brown hair and wore a striped shirt. When she stepped out the back door, he turned around and looked at her.

“Hello,” she said. “Do I know you?”

The boy shook his head and looked away.

“Well, since I don’t know you, I might ask you why you’re sitting there on my back steps.”

“We were playing but they left,” he said.

“Who left?”

“Leland and Jonathan.”

“Well, I know who Leland is since he lives here, but I don’t know who Jonathan is.

“He’s just a smart-aleck kid.”

“So, the three of you were playing and in the middle of it Leland and Jonathan left. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Where did they go?”

“I don’t know. They played a trick on me. They told me to hide my eyes and when I did they ran off and didn’t come back.”

“That wasn’t very nice, was it?”

“No.”

“Little Leland invited you and this Jonathan kid over to play and then Leland and Jonathan abandoned you?”

“I don’t mind.”

“It would be my guess that you don’t like Little Leland very much.”

“You’re right. He’s an asshole.”

“You have this feeling way down deep in your interior parts that he’s not to be trusted.”

“How did you know?”

“What about Jonathan?”

“He’s even worse.”

“Why do you play with them?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know that many people.”

She flipped her cigarette over the porch railing. “Can’t you just go on home? I mean, instead of waiting for those two little shits to come back?”

“My mother told me to stay here until three o’clock. She’s coming to pick me up then.”

“Can’t you walk home?”

“It’s too far and I’m not sure if I remember the way. I’d get lost and then my mother would be upset with me.”

“You’re new in town, I take it.”

“Yeah.”

“I can drive you home if you’d like.”

“No, that’s all right. That would only confuse my mother.”

“Well, you might as well come in, then. You can’t sit out there in this awful heat until three o’clock.”

She led him into the living room and pointed to the couch where he might sit.

“Would you like me to call your mother for you and tell her she needs to come a little earlier than planned?”

“No, she’s not at home. She had an appointment.”

“Oh, I see.”

Realizing the room was depressingly dark for a July afternoon, she opened the blinds.

“Would you like a soda or a drink?” she asked.

“No, but I would like to use the bathroom.”

“Well, make yourself at home,” she said. “It’s through the dining room and down the hall.”

He was gone for about two minutes and when he came back his shirt was tucked neatly into his pants.

“I just realized I don’t know your name,” she said.

“It’s Ricky.”

“Richard?”

“Yeah, but everybody calls me Ricky.”

“Well, that’s a good name. I never met a Ricky I didn’t like. How old are you, Ricky?”

“Eleven.”

“You’re getting close to that dangerous in-between age.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s where you’re halfway between childhood and adulthood. You like to think of yourself as all grown up, but the adults around you keep telling you you’re still a child.”

“Oh.”

“Well, just relax,” she said. “You might as well enjoy yourself while you can. I’m not a wicked witch in spite of appearances to the contrary.”

He laughed feebly and leaned his head all the way back. “You have a pretty house.”

“Well, I like to think so.”

“It’s big.”

“Yes, it’s big. When Big Leland buys a house, he buys the biggest and the best that money can buy.”

“Who’s Big Leland?”

“He’s my husband. He’s Little Leland’s father.”

“Do you have a dog?”

“No, I don’t have a dog. I have two children and that’s enough in the way of pets. Besides Little Leland, there’s Cecelia. She’s only eight. You probably don’t know her, do you?”

“No.”

“Her character has already been formed. At her young age, you can tell exactly the kind of woman she’ll be, and it’s not a pretty picture.”

“Oh.”

“Well, now that the whole can of worms has been opened, I might as well tell you that I’m not really the mother of Little Leland and Cecelia. I’m their stepmother.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t you find that interesting?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll bet Little Leland never told you he had a stepmother, did he?”

“No, he didn’t. What happened to his real mother?”

“Well, the rumor is that she died, but I have reason to believe she’s hiding out someplace.”

“Why would she do that?”

“If you knew Big Leland, Little Leland and Cecelia, you’d already know the answer to that question.”

“I have a dog,” he said.

“What’s his name?”

“Skippy.”

“What kind of a dog is Skippy?”

“I think he’s part collie and part something else.”

“So he’s a big dog.”

He leaned forward and held his hand two feet from the floor. “About this big.”

“Do you let Skippy stay in the house?”

“He can come into the basement as long he leaves his fleas outside.”

“A good policy.”

“Except he doesn’t have any fleas because he wears a flea collar.”

“I’ve always liked animals,” she said. “They’re innocent and pure, whereas people are corrupt and vile.”

She leaned forward and lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out in a cloud above her head. “I’m a little drunk right now,” she said. “Maybe more than a little. Your mother would probably be shocked to know that I invited you into my house while I’m drunk. Maybe we should just keep that between ourselves.”

“I don’t mind,” he said.

“You’re a good sport. I could tell that the moment I laid eyes on you.”

He watched her as she walked over to a side table and poured herself a shot of whiskey. “I’d ask you to join me, but I think we’d be a little premature on that one. Maybe when you’re older.”

“You drink whiskey?” he asked.

“Oh, my, yes!” she said. “I’m the champion whiskey drinker.”

“Does it taste good?”

“No, it tastes like crap, but I don’t drink it for the taste.”

“What do you drink it for?”

“Oh, it helps to get me through the day, I suppose. It gives me the courage I lack.”

“Oh.”

“I’ll bet your mommy doesn’t drink straight whiskey, does she?”

“I’ve never seen her if she does.”

“What about your daddy? Is he a good father?”

“I guess so.”

“What does he do for a living?”

“He’s a painter.”

“You mean landscapes and portraits and things like that?”

“No, he paints houses and sometimes he drives out into the country and paints barns.”

“Is there a lot of money in painting barns?”

“I don’t know.”

“Of course not. You wouldn’t know. When you’re eleven years old, you don’t think about things like that, do you?”

“No.”

“I’d like to be eleven again,” she said. “I’d live my life in an entirely different way. I wouldn’t marry for money. I’d go away somewhere and be an artist. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do. Some women aren’t cut out for the domestic scene. I’m one of them.”

He yawned.

“But that’s enough about me,” she said. “Tell me about yourself. What do you like to do?”

“I don’t know. Watch TV and read my comics, I guess.”

“You’re a reader?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m a reader, too. When I was younger, I’d read a novel a week and I mean the good stuff too. Not cheap junk that passes for fiction nowadays. It’s good that you’re a reader. It teaches you to think and figure things out for yourself. I don’t think Big Leland has ever read a book in his life. And just try to get Little Leland or Cecelia to read a book on their own! Impossible!”

“My sister reads books from the library. Books she doesn’t have to read.”

“How old is she?”

“Thirteen.”

“Do you get along well with her?”

“Sure.”

“Any other brothers or sisters?”

“I have a brother, Harvey. He plays tricks on me and makes fun of me. He calls me names.”

“How old is Harvey?”

“Sixteen.”

“You don’t like Harvey very much, do you?”

“Not at all.”

“You’d like to punch him the face. Hurt him.”

“Yes, I would.”

“One day Harvey will get exactly what he deserves and you’ll be there to see it. One day he’ll come groveling to you because he wants something from you, and you won’t be inclined to give it to him because he wasn’t nice to you when mattered.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“When I married Big Leland and took on his two kids as my own, I knew I would live to regret it, and I have. Regretted it, I mean. I’m thankful that the first Mrs. Big Leland had sense enough to stop after two kids. She had her tubes tied after Cecelia was born, you know. Otherwise there might have been half a dozen.”

“I’m not ever having any kids,” he said.

“That’s very wise. More people in the world should adopt that attitude.”

“I want lots of animals around me.”

“Live on a farm, maybe?”

“Yeah. Out in the country.”

“Where people like Little Leland and your brother Harvey can’t do mean things to you?”

“Yeah.”

“And since we’re back on the subject of Little Leland—or at least I am—I have to warn you about him.”

“What about him?”

“You’re a smart, sensitive boy. You don’t need friends like Little Leland. He’ll never do you anything but harm. You’d be better off to have no friends at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“He will lead you astray, hurt you or cheat you.”

“Why will he do that?”

“Because that’s what he does. People like him. And when you think that he’s only a child and just getting started, it’s frightening. What will he be like when he’s a grown man? I pity anybody who falls under his spell.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Of course you don’t. You’re too young and innocent, but the more you associate with Little Leland the more you’ll see it.”

“I don’t know. He seems all right to me.”

“That’s how his kind always gets started. He seems all right at first so you aren’t able to see the terrible thing that’s coming. I know this because Big Leland is exactly the same way. Little Leland is a miniature version of Big Leland.”

“Why do they both have the same name?”

“Big Leland wanted an exact duplicate of himself.”

“Oh.”

“And that’s exactly what he got.”

“They’re both turds, aren’t they?”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” she said. “If I had a criminal nature and wasn’t afraid of going to jail, I’d sneak into his room at night when he’s asleep and strangle him with the drapery cord.”

“Big Leland?”

“No, first I’d take care of Little Leland and then I’d go to work on Big Leland.”

“You could poison both of them. That might be better.”

“Yes, I’ve thought of that, but it would have to be a poison that can’t be traced. I don’t want, under any circumstances, to go to jail.”

“I have an uncle in jail,” he said. “He didn’t kill anybody, though. I think he stole some checks.”

“But you know what? I don’t have to kill Big Leland and his demonic offspring. I have something better than that.”

“What is it?”

“Do you know what an embezzler is?”

“No.”

“It’s a person who systematically steals money from his employer. Small amounts, to be sure, but over time the small amounts turn into big ones.”

“Oh.”

“Big Leland is an embezzler. In the last three or four years, he has embezzled a half-million dollars from his employer.”

“And he doesn’t want anybody to know?”

“That’s right, he doesn’t want anybody to know, but soon the whole world will know because I’m going to tell them! I have the phone number for the FBI right beside my phone!”

“Won’t Big Leland be mad if you tell?”

“Of course he’ll be mad, but by the time he finds out he’ll be locked up in the hoosegow!”

“What’s that?”

“You are young, aren’t you? It’s the jailhouse.”

“Oh.”

“And when Big Leland goes to jail, Little Leland and Cecelia will come crashing down, too. They will  no longer have the life of privilege and ease that they have now. Little Leland will go to military school and Cecelia will go into the convent. And not only that, but they will both have to live with the stigma of having a convicted embezzler for a father.”

“Did you hear that?” he asked.

“Hear what?”

“I think I heard my mother’s car horn.”

“I didn’t hear anything.

When the horn sounded again, they both stood up. She went to the front door and opened it and looked out.

“What kind of car does your mother have?” she asked.

“A black station wagon with red trim.”

“Well, this is her, then.”

“Would you like a drink of water before you go?”

“No thanks.”

“I’ve enjoyed our little talk. Will you come and see me again?”

“I guess so, if you want me to.”

He was ready to go out the door when she surprised him by taking his hand and shaking it.

“Tell your mother she’s a very lucky woman.”

“Why is she lucky?”

“To have you for a son.”

“I don’t think she would agree.”

She watched him go out and get into the station wagon with a blonde-haired woman and then she closed the door and locked it.

It was only a few minutes after three o’clock. There were still several hours of summer daylight before the nighttime drinking could begin. She emptied her old bottle and opened a new one and took a small sip straight from the bottle. In a little while she’d go into the kitchen and make a pitcher of martinis.

Copyright 2023 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

The Power of the Dog ~ A Capsule Movie Review

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The Power of the Dog
~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp ~

The Power of the Dog is a thought-provoking “Western” that you probably didn’t see at your neighborhood multiplex along with all the superhero movies and romantic comedies. It’s an “art” film for grownups, with complex themes and fascinating characters. It’s based on a novel by Thomas Savage and directed by Jane Campion.

The story is set on a cattle ranch in Montana in 1925. Brothers Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George Burbank (Jesse Plemons) own the ranch. They seem to have everything they need—they live in a big house—but it’s a lonely life and a hard one.

Of the two brothers, Phil is definitely the strong one. He’s a bit of a brute and kind of intimidating. He isn’t too particular about his personal hygiene. When George suggests, kindly, that Phil have a “bit of a washup” before he comes to the table for an important dinner with the governor, Phil is offended and doesn’t show up at the table at all.

As the story unfolds, though, we see that Phil is really a diamond in the rough. He has studied classics at Harvard. He knows music; he plays the banjo well. He and George have learned cattle ranching from a person that Phil speaks of often, a fellow referred to as Bronco Henry. We never meet Bronco Henry because he is dead. We learn that Phil is besotted by the deceased Bronco Henry. Was there a special relationship between them? Apparently there was.

There is a middle-aged widow nearby who cooks for the cowhands. Her name is Rose (Kirsten Dunst). Brother George feels sorry for Rose, and when he asks her to marry him, she accepts. She has a willowy, pale-faced son named Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), about twenty years old. When Rose marries George and she and Peter move into the ranch house with Phil and George, the plot turns on Peter.

Peter is nothing like the other young men on the ranch. He is artistic. He makes paper flowers for the tables. At first, Phil is contemptuous of Peter, calling him “Miss Nancy.” Phil and Peter avoid being in each other’s company, but that soon changes when Phil makes special overtures to Peter. They begin spending a lot of time together, much to Peter’s mother’s dismay. Phil and Peter ride off together into the hills. Soon they develop a special bond, which might be likened to a father-son relationship or a close, loving friendship. Phil braids a special rope for Peter. Peter tells Phil he wants to be just like him.

The Power of the Dog is, as far as I can see, a perfect movie. It does what movies seldom do. It offers something we have rarely (maybe never) seen before and stretches the boundaries of the cinematic artform. More to the point, it’s a movie for people with functioning brains.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Cemetery Christmas

Cemetery Christmas
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

Calvin Horne took the wreath out of the back of his car and walked down the hill with it slung over his shoulder like a garden hose to his parents’ grave. It was the day before Christmas and he didn’t want to be in the cemetery; didn’t want to be reminded of death on a joyous holiday. Christmas was about birth, about what’s good in the world.

He hadn’t been especially close to either of his parents. His mother, dead two years, was a difficult and obstinate old woman. The two of them, Calvin and his mother, could hardly be in the same room together without a clash of wills. His father had been dead for twenty years and was only a distant memory.

He trudged down one hill and up another one. It was there, at the top of the next hill, where his parents were buried. His mother had generously offered to buy the plot for him on the other side of her, but he declined the offer. (He wanted simply to vaporize into the air as if he never existed at all.) Now that space was occupied by a stranger that his mother, in all probability, wouldn’t have liked.

His parents had a large and rather ostentatious granite headstone as tall as a man’s head that his mother bought and paid for. In the middle of the stone, at the top, the name Horne was etched in large letters. Below were the names, birth and death dates of Byron and Julia. Under the names were two intertwined hearts with an arrow shot through them and, in fancy script, the ironic words Together Forever. They were together, he was sure, only in the sense that they were both dead.

He took a deep breath, a little winded from his climb up the hill, and pushed the legs of the wreath’s tripod into the soft earth in front of the headstone. Now, if his sister or any other family members came snooping around, they wouldn’t be able to say he hadn’t discharged his duty to his parents at Christmas.

The wreath seemed secure enough to withstand any winter blasts, so he pulled his gloves back on over his frozen fingers and was just about to retrace his steps back to the car, when he heard someone coming.

“I hear voices in the cemetery, don’t you?” a voice said.

He turned and saw a large woman in a fur coat and fur hat coming toward him. “What?” he asked.

“I said I hear voices when I’m in the cemetery. Don’t you?”

He thought she might be making a joke, but he wasn’t sure.

“No, I don’t hear any voices,” he said. “All I hear is quiet.”

“Yes, the quiet of the grave,” the woman said. “Do you need any help?”

“Why, no,” he said. “I was just leaving.”

“What are you doing here today?”

“I came to put a Christmas wreath on my parents’ graves.”

The woman looked down at the headstone and nodded. “They’re dead,” she said.

“Yes, that’s why they’re buried in the cemetery.”

“I’ll bet you were a good son.”

“Well, I can say I at least tried.”

“Do you have other family?”

“A sister and a son.”

“How old’s your son.”

“Twenty-two.”

“What happened to your wife?”

“We got divorced. She’s married to somebody else now.”

“What does she…

“I think that’s enough questions,” he said. “Especially since we don’t know each other.”

“Are you in a hurry to get away?” she asked.

“No more questions, I said.”

“I’ll bet you have a girlfriend waiting for you someplace, don’t you? Or maybe a boyfriend?”

“Let’s just say that’s for me to know and you to find out.”

“Okay. I get the picture. You don’t want to talk to me.”

“Well, it’s cold and it is Christmas.”

“Not today. Today is the day before Christmas. Tomorrow is Christmas.”

“Yeah. Enjoy your walk through the cemetery, or whatever it is you’re doing. I’ve got to be going.”

“Can’t you stay and visit a while?”

“No. I did what I came to do and now I need to go.”

“Haven’t we met before?” she asked. “A long time ago.”

“It isn’t likely.”

“I feel as if I’ve always known you.”

“We’ve never met, I’m sure of it.”

“Do you find me at all attractive?” she asked.

“What kind of a question is that? Of course I don’t!”

“What’s wrong with me?”

“I have to be going.”

He started to move away and she stepped in front of him.

“Could you spare me some change?” she asked.

“No, I can’t spare you any change. I don’t have any change. I might ask why you need change in a cemetery, wearing a fur coat, but the honest truth is I don’t care.”

“That’s not very nice. I thought at first you were a nice man.”

“Well, I’m not!”

“Where is your Christmas spirit?”

“It disappeared as soon as you started talking to me.”

“Don’t you like me?”

“I have no opinion of you one way or the other.”

“My brother, Ogden, will be along to pick me up any minute. He went to buy some cigarettes. When I tell him how you insulted me, he’ll be awfully mad.”

“I didn’t insult you!”

“You did! You said you found me unattractive and you didn’t want to talk to me.”

“If you hadn’t spoken to me first, I would never have said anything to you at all!”

“Well, how are people supposed to get to know one another?”

“They’re not!”

“Can I come home with you?”

“No!”

“I’ll bet you have a beautiful home, don’t you?”

“None of your business!”

“I’ll do anything you want!”

“None of your… I don’t want anything from you except for you to stop annoying me!”

“If you get to know me, I’m sure you’ll like me.”

“Dear Lord, why me?”

She lifted her arms up and put her hands behind his neck, locking her fingers at the back of his head.

“Stop that!” he said. “What do you think you’re doing?”

He took hold of her wrists and forced her to release her grasp.

“You don’t like women at all, do you?” she asked.

“It isn’t any of your business what I like! When I leave here, I’m going straight to the police station and tell them there’s a crazy woman in a bearskin coat accosting people in the cemetery. They’ll send a squad car out here and pick you up.”

“Well, you don’t have to be so unkind about it!”

Down the hill she saw Ogden, her brother, lurking behind a tree. She called to him, he spotted her and began walking up the hill. In less than a minute, he was standing before them.

“Who’s this bozo?” Ogden said with a sneer. With his fat face, fur coat and fur hat, he was the male equivalent of the woman.

“He wanted to leave, but I kept him here,” she said.

“Good work, Bootsie girl!” Ogden said.

“Your names are Bootsie and Ogden?” Calvin asked.

“Yeah, what of it?” Ogden said.

“He insulted me, Oggie!” Bootsie said.

“Oh, he did, did he? How did he insult you?”

“He doesn’t like me. I offered to go home with him and do anything he wants, but he said he’s not interested.”

“Well, that’s not very gentlemanly, is it?”

“Oh, I get it.” Calvin said. “She’s a whore and you’re her pimp.”

“Ooh! Some words are so ugly, don’t you think?” Ogden said.

He pulled a small gun out of his jacket and pointed it at Calvin.

“You’re wasting your time robbing me,” Calvin said. “I only have about two dollars.”

“Prove it!” Ogden said. “Give me your wallet!”

Calvin removed his wallet and handed it to Ogden as if it was something he did every day. Ogden opened it; after he had thoroughly examined its interior, he looked back at Calvin with hatred.

“You’ve got two lousy dollars? And no credit cards? What kind of a loser doesn’t have any credit cards?”

“I always pay for everything in cash.”

“You’re a deadbeat, you know that?”

“I told you it wouldn’t do you any good.”

“How about if I drive you to your bank and you withdraw about two thousand dollars from your account and give it to me and Bootsie here as a Christmas present?”

“What makes you think I have two thousand dollars in the bank?” Calvin said.

“Fellows like you always have lots of money in the bank.”

“The bank is closed for the Christmas holiday.”

“Well, isn’t that that just too convenient!”

Bootsie whispered in Ogden’s ear. His bewildered expression faded and he smiled. “I’ll bet you’ve got an expensive watch, haven’t you?”

“I have a Timex. It cost twenty-nine dollars and ninety-five cents and I’ve had it for six years.

“All right, Mr. Smart Aleck! Hand it over!”

Calvin unfastened the watch and gave it to Ogden with a smile.

“All right!” Ogden said. “I have two dollars from you and a cheap watch. If that’s the best you can do, I’m going to have to kill you and if I do nobody will find your frozen body at least for a couple of days, since it’s a holiday and all.”

“No, don’t kill him,” Bootsie said reasonably. “He’s not worth it. Just let him go.”

“And he’ll go straight to the police.”

“We’ll be long gone by the time they get here.”

“He knows what we look like, for Christ’s sake!”

“So what? Do you really want to spend the rest of your life in the penitentiary? I don’t think I do! Only a crazy person would kill a guy over two dollars and a cheap watch.”

“I can’t just let him go without doin’ nothin’ to him,” Ogden said.

“Just kick his ass good.”

“No, I know!” Ogden said. “I’ll make him strip naked and he’ll have to walk home with his best parts on display for all the world to see.”

“You really are sick, you know that?” Bootsie said. “Nobody’s going to strip naked! It’s too damn cold for that shit!”

“Hey! You know what?” Calvin said. “I just saw two police cars turn into the cemetery. They’ll be on top of us in about one minute!”

Ogden and Bootsie turned all the way around in confusion and, seeing nothing, began running down the hill to get away.

“A couple of professional criminals!” Calvin said to himself and laughed.

He picked up the gun where Ogden had dropped it beside the trunk of a tree and slipped it into the pocket of his coat. He doubted the gun would even shoot, but it would be an interesting piece of evidence to turn over to the police so they could know he wasn’t just making the whole thing up.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

The Christmas Guests ~ A Short Story

Oh, Christmas Tree

The Christmas Guests
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

The party crowd was attentive as tiny Chickpea Knuckles, thirty-seven inches tall, stood beside the Christmas tree on her little platform and sang a medley of Christmas standards in her throaty contralto voice: “Rockin’ ‘Round the Christmas Tree,” “Blue Christmas,” “Jingle-Bell Rock,” “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.”

At the end of Chickpea’s act, the audience erupted into enthusiastic applause. Mrs. Griselda Pinkwater, sitting on the front row, beamed with satisfaction, almost as if the applause was for her. She had every right to be pleased, for she was the one had who brought Chickpea to the forefront.

Now that the musical part of the program was finished, everybody stood up. Mrs. Pinkwater became surrounded by well-wishers. Sylvia Peat, her enormous breasts trussed up inside her green silk dress, took hold of Mrs. Pinkwater’s wrist in her talon-like hands. She reeked of her expensive perfume. “Lovely Christmas party, my dear!” she gushed.

“Thank you, my dear!”

“Where did you find the adorable midget singer?”

“You don’t expect me to give away all my secrets, do you?” Mrs. Pinkwater said.

“Do you think she’d sing at my New Year’s soiree?”

“You could always ask her. She doesn’t sing for free, though.”

“Is she terribly expensive?”

“With your millions, I don’t think you need worry about the cost.”

Just then Enid Goode approached from the right. She was as tall and as broad as a female warrior. “Where did you find a family of midgets?” she asked. “You clever thing, you!”

“Well, it’s a long story,” Mrs. Pinkwater said. “My husband and I had the Knuckles family in our home for Thanksgiving dinner. We found them simply entrancing. When I discovered that the father, Quincy Knuckles, was headed for jail, I took pity on them.”

“Oh, dear! I hope the little man didn’t kill anybody!”

“Oh, no. Nothing like that. He busted into a pawn shop.”

“Why did he do that?”

“He saw a banjo in there that he thought belonged to him.”

“A bedroll?”

“No, a banjo.”

“Here comes the Mrs. Carlotta Knuckles, the matriarch of the midget clan,” said Mrs. Pinkwater. “She is so sweet! You will absolutely adore her!”

She snagged hold of Carlotta Knuckles and pulled her into the circle of ladies.

Carlotta was wearing a slinky, gold-colored evening gown that Mrs. Pinkwater had had bought for her. She carried a long cigarette holder, taking occasional puffs on a cigarette that had gone out a long time ago.

“How do you do?” Carlotta said, looking up shyly at the ladies—all in various stages of drunkenness—that surrounded her like a forest of redwood trees.

“Isn’t she just the most precious little thing?” Betty Rowley said.

“What’s it like being a midget?” Shirley Faraday asked.

“They prefer ‘little people’,” Mrs. Pinkwater said. “It’s more respectful.”

“What’s wrong with calling them midgets? That’s what they are, isn’t it? How many are in the family?”

“Besides the incarcerated father, there’s mother, daughter and son.”

“How old is the son?” Enid Goode asked.

“He’s twenty-one, I think.”

“Where is he? I’d love to see him.”

“Twenty-one is a little young for you, isn’t it, Enid?” said Betty Rowley.

“I’ve done a lot worse!” Enid said, and all the ladies laughed.

“Well, he’s really still a boy!” Mrs. Pinkwater said.

Just then the boy in question, Bixley Knuckles, walked past, bearing a tray of drinks over his head. Mrs. Pinkwater tapped him on the shoulder and he turned around and looked at her.

“You don’t have to serve drinks,” she said. “You’re a guest.”

“I like doing it,” he said. “It gives me a chance to hobnob.”

Shirley Faraday ruffled his hair. “He’s so cute I could just eat up him!” she said.

“Hey!” Bixley said. “Hands off!”

“The ladies like you,” Mrs. Pinkwater said.

“Of course they do, but that doesn’t mean they can paw me whenever they feel like it!”

Mrs. Pinkwater leaned over and whispered in Bixley’s ear: “All these dames are crazy and they’re all kind of drunk. Don’t take them too seriously.”

“I should say I won’t!” he said and then he was gone.

“I’d like to wrap him up and take him home,” Shirley Faraday said.

“And what would you do with him when you got him there?” Betty Rowley said.

“I don’t know. I’m sure we’d think of something.”

The crowd of ladies dispersed to freshen their drinks or to use the ladies’ room.

“How are you holding up, dear?” Mrs. Pinkwater asked Carlotta.

“All right, dear.”

A waiter came by with a tray of canapés, bent over and thrust them toward Carlotta.

“Try one,” Mrs. Pinkwater said. “They’re delicious.”

Carlotta took one each hand and began munching on them. “I have something to tell you,” she said, “and I hate to say it.”

“What is it?

“My midget husband, Quincy Knuckles, has escaped from jail.”

“Oh, my goodness! Are you sure? How did it happen?”

“He’s three feet tall. When the guards opened the doors, they were preoccupied and didn’t look down. He escaped right under their noses.”

“Oh, dear!”

“But that’s not the worst of it. When I was in the kitchen a while ago, there was a knock on the back door. I thought it was going to be another liquor delivery, but when I opened the door who do you think was standing there?”

“Let me guess.”

“It was Quincy.”

“Where is he? What did you do with him?”

“I took him upstairs and hid him when nobody was looking.”

“Oh, dear!” Mrs. Pinkwater moaned. “We’re harboring an escaped fugitive!”

“Not only that! He’s cross-dressing!”

“He’s what?”

“He’s dressed as a woman.”

“How is that going to help?”

“The police are looking for a male midget.”

“Keep him hidden and we’ll decide what to do with him when the party is over.”

“He wants to come down and join the party. He’s been in prison since Thanksgiving. He’s lonely.”

“All right, but keep him in the background. If any of my guests begin to suspect he’s more than he seems to be, he’ll have to leave. I won’t have my party ruined.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Carlotta said.

Carlotta introduced her “sister,” Corabelle, from New Orleans, to all the guests. They were charmed as she spoke to them in a soft Southern accent. When one of the male guests, Clifford Clifford, asked Corabelle to dance, she graciously accepted without the slightest hint of embarrassment.

“Where did she learn to dance like that?” Mrs. Pinkwater said to Carlotta as they stood off to the side and watched as Corabelle and Clifford Clifford moved around the floor.

“She’s always been a good dancer,” Carlotta said.

“She moves effortlessly as if she dances every day of her life.”

“What a lovely compliment!” Carlotta said. “I’ll be sure and tell him what you said. He doesn’t very often have a chance to feel good about himself.”

“And where did he get the dress and wig?”

“It’s a long story. He bought them for a lodge function that he attended as a woman. And not one of his lodge brothers recognized him, either!”

“If I didn’t already know he was a man,” Mrs. Pinkwater said, “I’d never suspect.”

“It makes me so proud!” Carlotta said.  

When Corabelle finished dancing with Clifford Clifford, others wanted to dance with her but she declined.

“I’m all fagged out for the moment, gentlemen,” she said. “I have to get myself a refresher.”

“Remember I have the next dance!” Finch Baggett called to her.

“You got it, mister!” she said.

“And I have the one after that!” Trent Trill announced.

“Oh, you kid!”

“I never expected her to be so popular with the men,” Mrs. Pinkwater said. “And they’re all married. Their wives are looking on with dissatisfaction, if they’re not too drunk to notice.”

“It’s the novelty of the thing,” Carlotta said.

“And wouldn’t they be surprised to know that the thing is not what they think it is?”

“Oh, you kid!” said Carlotta.

At the buffet table, Bixley spotted Corabelle and they began sparring playfully. When Corabelle got Bixley in a headlock, Mrs. Pinkwater and Carlotta broke them up before they gave away Corabelle’s secret.

“Let’s show them our tumbling moves,” Bixley said. “They’d love it.”

“Can’t,” Corabelle said. “I’m wearing a dress, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“So?” Bixley said.

“Go get me a glass of that champagne, sonny boy,” she said as she sat down to eat the plate of food the maid prepared for her.

The party didn’t begin to break up until after midnight.

“The best party ever!” one guest after the other said as they thanked Mrs. Pinkwater and went out the door.  

“We fooled ‘em,” Quincy said, removing the wig and kicking off the pumps. “That’s the most fun I’ve had in a long time. Get me another glass of that champagne.”

“Not so carefree, mister!” Carlotta said. “You’re a wanted midget, you know.”

“I can be a woman for as long as I have to be.”

“And what happens when they pull off the wig and lift up the dress and discover you’re really a man?”

“I guess I’ll worry about that when the time comes.” 

“My husband will be home from his business trip in two days,” Mrs. Pinkwater said. “I suggest the entire midget family stay here until then. I have plenty of room.”

“Oh, we couldn’t impose!” Carlotta said. “Christmas is in three days!”

“You’d be doing me a favor,” Mrs. Pinkwater said. “I hate being alone at night.”

“Your husband wouldn’t want to find us here when he comes home.”

“He won’t mind. He enjoys having company.”

“Well, it’s awfully kind of you, but I don’t know.”

“Quincy can remain your sister Corabelle for as long as you’re here. If the police come snooping around looking for Quincy, just tell them she’s your sister visiting from New Orleans. If he can fool all my party guests, he can fool the police.”

“I think it’s a good idea,” Quincy said. “I don’t relish the idea of being thrown back in the can and spending Christmas in jail.”

“I don’t know how we’ll ever repay you for all your kindness to us,” Carlotta said, on the point of tears.  

“Can I sleep in that little bedroom in the attic overlooking the back yard?” Bixley asked. “It makes me feel like the captain of a ship.”

“How do you know about that room?” Mrs. Pinkwater asked.

“I did a little exploring while everybody was busy,” Bixley said. “I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“I can sleep anywhere,” Chickpea said, “as long as there are no snakes.”

Mr. Pinkwater, when he returned from his business trip on the day before Christmas, was not surprised to find the midgets installed in his home, but he was surprised to discover Quincy Knuckles as a woman.

“This is Miss Corabelle Hamilton, from New Orleans, Louisiana, come to spend Christmas in our home,” Mrs. Pinkwater said. “Quincy Knuckles is no more.”

Corabelle stood up and offered her hand to Mr. Pinkwater. “It’s an honor to meet you, sir.” 

“I don’t think that’s the same person at all,” Mr. Pinkwater said to Mrs. Pinkwater when they were alone. “I think they’re playing a trick on us.”

“We’re going to have such a lovely Christmas!” Mrs. Pinkwater said. “They’re like the odd children we never had.”

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

My Christmas Eve That Year ~ A Short Story

I Want to Spend Christmas with You
My Christmas Eve That Year
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~ 

My parents got their divorce the summer I was fifteen and sold the house we lived in. My mother, my little brother, and I moved into a small, four-room flat in an old apartment building downtown. It was on the fifth floor and there were no elevators, so that meant we were constantly walking up and down the stairs.

The flat wasn’t big enough for me to have my own room, so we moved my bed into a little space off the kitchen, which was originally meant to be a pantry. It was tiny and cramped, but the best thing about it was that I had my own window with a good view of buildings and trees far off in the distance. I liked to lay in bed at night and look out at the sky. The best nights were when there was a full moon. When there were thunderstorms, it felt like the lightning was going to come in through the window and zap me into oblivion.  

Now it was Christmas again, or almost. Our first Christmas in the apartment. Our Christmas tree stood in the corner of the front room, aglow with multi-colored lights and loaded down with tinsel and ornaments, stacks of presents beneath its branches. A sprig of holly hung in the doorway into the kitchen. On the front door was a wreath that would probably be stolen before Christmas morning ever arrived.

My little brother Georgie, age six, jumped up and down on the couch and screamed. He was wholly invested in Christmas. It was snowing out, he didn’t have to go back to school until after New Year’s, and he believed that Santa was going to be especially generous with him this year.

“You’d better calm down,” I said. “Santa will pass you by if he gets word that you’ve been bad.”

“I haven’t been bad!” he screeched.

My mother came in from her bedroom, where she had been putting on makeup and fixing her hair. She was afraid I was going to divulge the great secret that Santa doesn’t really exist.

“What did you just say to him?” she asked, looking at me threateningly.

“I didn’t say anything,” I said. “I just told him he’s giving me a headache.”

“Get down from there, Georgie! You know you’re not supposed to use the couch as a trampoline! The couch is for sitting, not for jumping.”

“All this Christmas stuff is making me puke,” I said. “A person can only take so much.”

“Well, it’s too bad you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be excited about Christmas,” she said. “I guess you’ve grown too sophisticated for your family.”

“He’s grown too sophisticated!” screamed Georgie.  

“Shut up!” I said.

“When do we get to open the presents?” Georgie screamed.

“For the eighty-seventh time, we will open the presents on Christmas morning after we’ve had a good breakfast.”

“Why do we have to wait so long?”

“Because I said so, that’s why!” She sat on the other end of the sofa and patted her hair in back.  

“I want to open one now!”

“No! We’ve been all through that a dozen times. You have to wait like everybody else.”

“Tomorrow’s Christmas and we haven’t heard anything from daddy yet,” I said.

“No, and you probably won’t, either. He’s probably laying up in some hotel room, drunk as a skunk.”

 “Drunk as a skunk!” Georgie screamed.

 “I thought he’d send at least send us a present.”

 “You’re old enough to know you can’t count on him for anything.”

“We always had a good Christmas with him,” I said.

“I know, but those days are over. Your daddy is out of the picture now. He was the one that wanted the divorce.”

“I’m going to the movies tonight,” I said. “It’s a Christmas Eve horror double feature.”

“I don’t care what it is,” she said. “You’re not going to the movies on Christmas Eve. You’re going to spend the evening with your family.”

“But I’m meeting someone.”

“Call whoever it is and tell them you can’t make it.”

“Is he going to be here?”

“He has a name, you know.”

“Is Regis going to be here?”

“Yes, he’s going to be here in time to eat dinner with us and later we’re all going to church.”

“I don’t feel like going to church.”  

“You feel like going to the movies but you don’t feel like going to church?”

“Church gives me a headache.”

“You’re insane.”

“If I am, I get it from you. Insanity runs in your family.”

“I think Regis is going to ask me to marry him.”

“Why would you want to marry Regis?”

“Why shouldn’t I marry him? He’s the sweetest, kindest man I’ve ever met and he’s got a good job.”

“He sells washing machines in an appliance store.”

“Someday he’ll be manager. There’s really good money in that.”

“What about daddy?”

“What about him?”

“You’re going to marry Regis without telling daddy first?”

“You’re a smart boy, but you just don’t seem to understand. There is no longer any connection between me and your daddy. We are kaput!”

“What does that mean?”

“Your daddy and I are finished with each other. All ties are severed.”

“All ties are severed!” Georgie shrieked.

“If you marry Regis, does that mean we can move out of this crummy apartment?”

“Not right away. Regis will probably move in here with us. His business hasn’t been so good lately. He’s a little strapped for cash at the moment. He expects things to pick up next year, though.”

“If Regis moves in here with us, I’m moving out.”

“Why don’t you like Regis?”

“He belongs to a bowling league.”

“A lot of men belong to bowling leagues.”

“He’s old!”

“He’s forty-three.”

“He wears cologne that smells like bug spray.”

“I’ll get him to stop wearing it after a while.”

“He has hairs sprouting out of his ears. Haven’t you ever noticed that?”

“Of course, I’ve noticed it. His grooming isn’t the best. That’s because he lives alone. All that will change after we’re married.”

“I think you should check with daddy first before you marry Regis. He might want to come back. If you marry Regis, it’ll be too late.”

“Your daddy is not coming back. Ever.”

“You might be surprised.”

“It’s time for you to face reality.”

“I am facing reality and I don’t like it.”

“I think I see Santa way up in the sky over there,” Georgie said, standing at the window.

“You’re hallucinating again,” I said.

“It’s too early for Santa,” mother said. “He won’t come until we’re all asleep. He doesn’t like for people to look at him.”

“I can certainly see why,” I said.

“I hope he remembers everything I wanted,” Georgie said.

Mother went back into the bedroom and in a little while came back out in her red Christmas dress that in my opinion was too tight. She had dowsed herself in perfume. When she saw me lying on the couch staring at the ceiling, she decided I needed something to do.  

“I want you to go down to Friedlander’s market and buy a carton of eggnog for tonight,” she said, digging in her purse for some money. 

“I don’t like eggnog,” I said.

“Well, are you the only one here? Regis says it’s not Christmas without eggnog.”

“Regis says. Regis says. What else does Regis say?”

“Can I go to the store, too?” Georgie asked excitedly.

“No! You stay here and help me wrap Regis’s present.”

“Regis, Regis, Regis,” I said as he went out the door. “He’s certainly a big man around here, isn’t he?”

The snow was falling heavier now. Cars made hissing sounds on the pavement as they passed by. Last-minute shoppers were still keeping the stores busy. With the setting of the sun, Christmas Eve had officially arrived.

The store only had one carton of eggnog left, so I grabbed it and went and stood in the long line to pay. When the cashier smiled at me and wished me a merry Christmas, I gave him a sour look.   

When I got back home, Regis had arrived with presents for all of us. He was throwing Georgie up near the ceiling and then catching him on the way down. Georgie squealed with delight. Mother stood at the stove and beamed her approval.

Regis had brought Georgie a stuffed elephant and some other toys. My present from him, still wrapped in a big box with a red bow, was at my place at the table. Before I sat down, I picked up the box and set it on the floor.

“Aren’t you going to open your present from Regis?” mother asked.

“I’ll open it later. I have a headache now.”

When we were all seated at the table, mother insisted we join hands while Regis said grace. Regis’s hand felt clammy and unclean in mine. When he finally let go, I wiped my hand back and forth along my leg before I touched any food.

While we ate, I could see that mother was wearing a diamond engagement ring. This, of course, would be her Christmas present from Regis. So, it was official, then. He had proposed and she had said yes.

Regis talked about his day at work and laughed while we ate. Mother didn’t say much. Georgie kept looking out the window for signs of Santa. When Regis seemed to have run out of things to say for the moment, mother looked at me and said she had something she wanted to tell me and Georgie.

“What is it?” I asked with a sick feeling.

“Regis has asked me to be his wife and I’ve consented. We’re going to be married on New Year’s Eve.”

“What’s the rush?” I asked.

“I think it’s so romantic to be married on New Year’s Eve,” she gushed. “It will be a new start of a new year for all of us.”

She turned and looked at Regis. There were tears in her eyes. Regis took hold of her hand and pulled her in for a kiss. I knew he was getting ham grease all over her.

“I think I hear Santa’s sleigh outside!” Georgie said.

After we finished eating, mother told me to go put on my dress pants and a white shirt for church. She would help me with my tie before we left for church.

Except there wasn’t going to be any church for me. I grabbed my coat and hat and ran out the front door before she had a chance to see what I was doing.

The snow must have been five or six inches by that time. I still had on my tennis shoes and I could feel the snow soaking through to my socks after a few steps, but I didn’t mind. I needed to talk to daddy.

I knew that Colson’s Drug Store, about four blocks down from where we lived, had a pay phone. I had a pocket full of change especially for that purpose.

Right after the divorce, daddy gave me his private number where I could reach him any time. If I ever needed him, all I had to do was give him a call.

There were a lot of people at Colson’s, mostly at the pharmacy counter. Nobody paid any attention to me as I went all the way to the back, where the pay phone was.

I was sure he would answer. He would probably figure it was me calling on Christmas Eve.

The phone rang ten or twelves times, but finally he answered.

“Hello,” a little groggily.

“Daddy?” I said. “Is that you?”

“Who is this? Is this Evan?

“Yeah, it’s me. Evan.”

“I couldn’t hear you very well at first.”

“Can you hear me better now?”

“Yeah, I hear you fine now.”

“Well, since it’s Christmas Eve, I wanted to call and wish you a merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas to you, Evan!”

“Do you know where we’re living now?”

“No.”

“In an apartment downtown, on the fifth floor of an old building.”

“I’ve been wanting to come and visit you and Georgie, but I wasn’t sure where you were living. How’s Georgie?”

“He’s fine. Waiting for Santa to bring him everything he asked for.”

“Where are you now?”

“I’m in Colson’s Drug Store, near where we live. Do you know where that is?”

“Yeah, I’ve been to Colson’s a few times. Don’t you have a phone in the apartment?”

“We do, but I didn’t want mother to know I was calling you.”

“How is your mother?”

“She’s fine, but she’s the main reason I wanted to talk to you.”

“She’s not sick, is she?”

“No, she’s not sick. She’s getting married on New Year’s Eve.”

Daddy was silent for a moment and then he laughed. “Who is she marrying?”

“His name is Regis. He’s a creep. He smells funny. I don’t like him.”

“Maybe that’s because you don’t know him very well.”

“I want you to come and get me.”

“What?”

“I said I want you to come to Colson’s Drug Store and get me. I want to spend Christmas with you.”

“Wait a minute, Evan! I’m afraid that’s not possible. I’m not living in a very nice place. I don’t even have a tree.”

“That’s all right. I don’t need a tree.”

“If your mother doesn’t know where you are, she’ll be worried.”

“I’ll call her from your place.”

I started to cry like a blubbery crybaby. I hadn’t meant to cry, but I couldn’t seem to help myself.

“Is it that bad?” he asked.  

“Mother just isn’t herself. I don’t want to be around her. She acts like Regis is some kind of a god. They make me sick.”

“All right. If it’s that bad, I’ll come and get you.”

“How long? How long will it take?”

“Give me a half-hour or so.”

“Colson’s Drug Store. I’ll be waiting outside for you.”

It was still snowing, harder than ever now, but I didn’t mind waiting in the snow for a half-hour. People coming in and out of Colson’s looked at me and then looked away. Maybe some of them thought I was going to try to rob them. I tried leaning back against the building, crossing my legs and putting my hands in my pockets. I tried to look casual, but I felt conspicuous. 

I wasn’t sure what kind of car daddy would be driving, but I looked at every car. One of them would be him.

The half-hour passed and then an hour and then two hours. I was determined to wait as long as it took. I would wait all night. I would still be waiting on Christmas Morning if I had to. My fingers and toes were numb. I could no longer feel them. I wasn’t sure if they would ever work right again or not. I didn’t much care.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997