A Chilling Tale

 

 

 

 

The boys were playing cowboys and Indians down by the creek, shooting each other with rifles they’d whittled out of old fence rails.  They worked their way along a creek that didn’t have a name to where it ran into Sizemore Creek, which was substantial enough to be named after the area’s founding father.  Its waters collected in some sizable pools along the way, so they stopped to skip some rocks across and jumped in to beat the growing heat. 

About then their Aunt Grace, who lived across the field from where they were swimming, decided to make some ice cream with the hand cranked ice cream maker she’d bought out of the Sears and Roebuck Catalog.  She set up in the front yard under the elderberry tree and sent her husband, the boys’ Uncle Warren, into town to fetch a block of ice.  While she was waiting, she mixed up the ice cream makings and sliced a couple of peaches into it.  Uncle Warren got back and took to the block with an ice pick while Aunt Grace poured the mixture into the can inside ice cream maker.  Uncle Warren put ice around the can and Aunt Grace covered it with a gunnysack and started cranking.   With all that work staring him in the face, Uncle Warren said he had to go off across the field to do one thing or another, but she knew he’d be back in time to eat it.

The boys saw what she was doing from across the field, and the idea occurred to them that they’d like some of that ice cream.  They walked over to get some, but she heard them coming.  There was no way those boys could do anything without raising a ruckus. 

     While Aunt Grace was a kind, gentle person, she had one failing.  She was stingy, especially when it came to something she was partial to like peach ice cream.  Her first inclination was to hide the ice cream maker, but being out in the open like she was limited her options, so she sat on it, hiding it under the folds of her dress.  The boys saw what she was doing, which didn’t surprise them any.  They figured she’d try to find some way to hide it, but when she sat on that bucket of ice, new possibilities came to mind.

“Afternoon Aunt Grace,” they said as they came into the yard.

“Howdy boys.”  Her bottom was already cold, and the burlap didn’t help any.

“Whacha doin’ sittin’ out here?” they asked.

“Thought I’d take in some air ‘fore it got too hot.”

“Mama often does that.”

“Your mama’s a wise woman.”

“You think it’s gonna get hotter’n it was yesterday?”

“It just might.”

“Where’s Uncle Warren?”

“Yonder acrost the field.”

Sitting on the ice was getting painful.  She wanted the boys to leave so she could stand up, but she couldn’t think of how to get rid of them without giving the game away, so she sat there squirming.

The boys weren’t going anywhere.  They were having too much fun.

“How’s Uncle Warren’s health?”

 “Tolerable.”

 The burlap was beginning to itch.  She squirmed some more and lifted her bottom up off the ice by pushing down on the sides of the ice cream maker, trying to act casual about it.

“I got to go the outhouse,” Ellis said.  He got up and started around back.

“You go right on, then.”  Aunt Grace was miserable.  The burlap was freezing to her bottom.

“Ellis thinks he’s got the grippe.”

“Mmmm.”

“Don’t tell mama.  He’d rather be sick than take the cure.” 

It was all they could do to keep from laughing.  She was about ready to stand up, then they could have their ice cream, though watching her squirm might have been better.  They were on the edge of victory when Uncle Warren walked around the corner and saw what was going on.

“What you boys up to?”

“We was playin’ nearby and decided to pay a visit.”

“You just keep on goin’ then,” he said.   “We’re too busy to stop and talk to the likes of you.”

“Aw Uncle Warren.”

“Go on now.  Get.”

They walked off unhappy they didn’t get any ice cream but were pleased just the same at the fun they’d had watching Aunt Grace squirm on that bucket of ice.

When they’d gone, she stood and rubbed her bottom, then walked over and pulled a towel off the clothesline.  “Turn ‘round now,” she said to Uncle Warren, and when he did she lifted her dress and dried herself off. 

“You okay?”

“I am.  Thought those boys’d never leave.  I suspect you deserve some ice cream for rescuin’ me.”

“I guess I do.”

They sat in the shade of the elderberry tree eating ice cream and were pleased with each other for the rest of the afternoon.

 

 

 

 

The Gangster

 

Mary Nell’s labor lasted all day.  When her contractions were five minutes apart, she told me to get a move on and I took her to the hospital.  They put her on a gurney and wheeled her away, and there wasn’t anything for me to do but wait, so that’s what I did.  An hour or so later a nurse told me nothing was going to happen for a while and suggested I get something to eat.

I took her advice and drove down Atlantic Boulevard into Long Beach.  I stopped at the first place I came to, which was a bar and grill.  I nursed a beer at the bar while my burger was cooking and had another with my meal.  As I began to relax for the first time that day, another customer came in and sat next to me.  He ordered a Manhattan, glanced at me, and nodded.  I nodded back.  He pulled out a pack of Chesterfields and offered me one.

“Thanks,” I said.  “I need it.”

“Why’s that?” he asked as he shook another out for himself.

“My wife’s having a baby.  She’s in labor right now over at Bixby Knolls Hospital.  They told me to get something to eat and come back in a couple of hours.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off him.  He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him.  He was thin, pale, and had sleepy blue eyes.  His dark, thinning hair was slicked back, and above his narrow mouth his nose looked like he had gone a few rounds in the ring.  That would have been some years back because he looked to be in his fifties.  I took another drag on my cigarette.  He smiled and offered his congratulations.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “it’s nerve wracking, but its nothing compared to what she’s going through.  I’ve been in your shoes four times now.  The first one’s the hardest, you’ll see.  Everything’s going to be fine.”

We laughed and talked, and he bought me another beer.  Then he sent me back to the hospital.  I thanked him for his kindness and was almost out the door when my curiosity got the best of me.   

“Excuse me,” I said, “but have we met?  You look familiar.”

“We haven’t met,” he said, “but you’ve probably seen me.  I’m an actor.”

“Yeah.”  The light bulb went on.  “You play a gangster.”

“That’s right, I’m the bad guy.  I usually get killed half way through the movie.”

“Well, next time I hope you make it to the end.”

He lifted his glass in salute and said, “Me too.”

Our first son was born just after midnight.  He weighed nine pounds, six ounces and was twenty-one inches long.  I was so excited I couldn’t sleep and was at Woody’s Sporting Goods when it opened the next morning.  I bought my new son a baseball glove.  Mary Nell thought it was a silly thing to buy for a baby, but I believe it’s never too early to get them ready for the big leagues.

I wanted to name him Monte, Monte Mustain.  No middle name.  It reminded me of my days in the CCC, but Mary Nell wouldn’t hear of it.  “I don’t like it,” she said.  “It sounds like a cowboy’s name, and I won’t let a son of mine have a name like that.”

I told her about the CCC again, but she didn’t care. She didn’t have any sense of  history.

“I think we should name him Michael. Michael Joseph Mustain.”

I knew I was beaten, so I agreed, gave her a hug, and changed the subject.

“Last night after I brought you to the hospital, I went out for supper at a place over on Atlantic.  It turned out that the man I sat next to was an actor.  He bought me a drink.”

“What’s his name?”

I wanted to say Monte, but thought better of it.  “I don’t know.”

“You mean you had a drink with a movie star and don’t know his name?”

“If he was a movie star, I wouldn’t have to ask his name.  I’d already know it.  He was just an actor.  I doubt if anyone knows his name.”

We quickly realized his name wasn’t important and lost interest in the subject.  Instead we shared our excitement about our new baby and cried with joy until visiting hours were over.  Then I went to the nursery to watch my son sleep. 

Mike is a grown man now with a child of his own.  The world has changed considerably since then, but some things have remained the same.  I still love Mary Nell and have been true to her all these years, and my heart still fills with joy when my boys are happy.  That goes double for my granddaughter.  And sometimes, late at night when I can’t sleep, I might watch an old movie on television.  From time to time I see a familiar face take a bullet in the gut, and as I watch him die, I wish I’d have asked him his name all those years ago.

 

 

 

 

                       Rules of the Road

 

 

 

 

He took his thesis proposal to his faculty advisor’s office and left it with his secretary.  She was very pretty, so he flirted with her and she flirted back.  She asked what kind of car he drove, and he said a Dodge pickup truck.  She said she was thinking about dating someone who drove a pickup truck for a change of pace.  The guys who drove Mercedes and BMWs were becoming tiresome.  He said he’d be willing to help her out.

They began by having dinner at her place.  Afterward she did a numerology thing with his name and said he’d never have much money.  He thought that was perceptive.  Then they had sex, but not in her bed.  They did it in the spare bedroom because she didn’t want his aura disturbing her sleep.  He thought that was odd.

They went to a restaurant on their second date.  She thought he should pay.  He said guys who drove Mercedes and BMWs paid.  Guys who drove pickups trucks went Dutch.

And that was the end of that.

 

 

 

Hogback Creek

 

 

 

Mom was afraid to let me fish alone, but by the time I was eleven Dad said it was time.  “The boy can handle himself.”

“But it’s dangerous being out there all alone.  Something could happen and there’d be no one to help him.”

“He learns fast.  I’ve watched him and he knows what do.  It’s time he goes out on his own.”

“But….”

“I know it’s hard.  I wouldn’t have the first idea how to raise a girl, but you do.  You’ve got to trust that I know what I’m doing.   And you’ve got to trust the boy.  The world can be a threatening place, and I want him to walk through it with confidence and not run away when things get tough.  Don’t you?”

“Well, sure.”

“Then he’s got to practice.  There’s some risk involved in living, and I want him to learn as much as he can while he’s still under our wing.”   

“I know you’re right.  It’s just hard.”

“You’re a good mother.  We’re a good team, you know.”

“Yeah.”

 We usually fished the streams on the eastern slope of the Sierra from Lone Pine to Bishop.  My favorite was Hogback Creek, twenty miles south of Independence.  It was less than two feet wide, but its course could be seen for miles, a dusky green line of chamise, manzanita, and jimbush arching over the creek bed as it wound across the dun landscape of an alluvial fan and disappeared into the valley below.  I fished it with a pole I’d shortened to two feet.  I crawled in under the brush, hacking my way to the water with a machete Dad bought me at a war surplus store.  The best I could manage was occasionally kneeling in the thorny maze.  More often I slithered in and lay on my stomach.  Sometimes the pole was useless and I held the line in my hand.  If I could keep from shaking the brush and staying out of their line of sight, I might catch a sixteen inch rainbow in water six inches deep.  Sometimes the fish were longer than the creek was wide.

One time I was on my stomach baiting my hook when I heard a rattlesnake.  It sent a chill up my spine.  I held still, looking around, and there, not three feet away, a rattler lay coiled under a clump of jimbush ready to strike.  I wished I could tell how long it was.  I remembered a snake could strike only a third of its length.  If it was less than four feet, I was safe, but I couldn’t tell.  My heart pounded and I knew I should stay calm, so I breathed deeply, but it didn’t work.  I was scared.  I remembered Dad saying that when he was a kid and came across a rattlesnake, he’d pick it up by the tail and snap it like a whip, popping its head off.  Some of the stuff Dad came up with was pretty funny, but I knew for sure that only an idiot would pick up a live rattlesnake.

I was afraid to move.  The snake striking hmein the face was a monstrous thought.  I lay there for what seemed an eternity, but the snake wouldn’t go away.  I realized I would have to do something.  I thought of my fishing pole.  I held it in my left hand.  I wasn’t very good with my left, but I knew I would have to try.  Very slowly I moved the pole toward the snake using only my wrist, and after a while it began to ache.  I thought the pain might make the pole shake, so I concentrated with all my might and inched the pole toward the snake.  I came in from the side.  I was sure the snake could see it, but that might be a good thing.  If it struck at the pole, I could back out of range.  The prospect of doing that kept me tense.  I was soaked with sweat and my heart pounded against the ground like a sledgehammer.  For some reason that made me think of poetry, the stuff I’d studied in school that year.  Keats and Shelley and their suffering, tender hearts, their throbbing, pounding hearts just like mine, and I remembered a poem about a beautiful woman without mercy.  What a bunch of bullshit that was.  It was this snake that didn’t have mercy, and I hoped to Hell I would be around next year to read more of that corny stuff.

I finally got the pole over the snake’s head.  I hoped I had leverage to bring it down hard and hold it against the ground.  It wasn’t a sure thing, and I didn’t want to be under all that brush with a pissed off snake, but what choice did I have?  I snapped the pole down.  It caught the snake behind the head and held it against the ground.  My heart rate doubled and the pressure behind my eyes throbbed like someone beating on a big bass drum.

I pinned it.  I rose to my knees, my back pushing against the thorny canopy.  I could feel blood running under my shirt, or was it sweat?  Who cared?  It was better than being bitten in the face.  I pulled my machete out, leaned over, and lopped the snake’s head off.  I backed out of the undergrowth using my fishing pole and the machete to drag the body and severed head after me.  I dug a hole with the machete and buried the head.  It was still dangerous, and I didn’t want someone coming along and stepping on it.  Then I flung the rest of the snake into the desert as far as I could.  I looked down and saw mud on my crotch and realized I’d peed my pants.  I rinsed off with water from my canteen as I walked back to the car to wait for Dad.  I knew I would tell Dad about the snake. Mom was another story. 

“You did good,” Dad said.  “Were you scared?”

“Yeah.”

“I’d have been.  You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll probably get the shakes in a while.  Delayed reaction.”

“Okay.”

“Catch any fish?”

“Yeah, but I don’t know where they are.  Must have dropped ‘em.”

“It’s not important.  Not a word of this to your mother.”

“No problem.”

“We better get back,”

We drove back to camp, and it was a year before I fished Hogback

Creek again. 

 

 

                            

         

The Honeymoon Account

 

“I wish we were going to Mazatlan,” she said.

“Me too,” the soon-to-be groom answered,

“Darn.”

“We’ll make it there, honey.  Don’t worry.”

 “I know.  It’s just that going now would be more romantic.”

“Don’t worry, baby, we’ll make romance wherever we go.”

 “Aren’t you the big talker.”

 “That I am.  Let’s stop over there.”

They pulled into a Gulf Station where she went into the ladies room to straighten up, comb her hair, and check her make-up.  She was a trim young thing, stylish, and hopelessly in love with the big oaf driving.  He sweat a lot and rumpled his clothes, so he changed shirts in the men’s room and put on a tan tie with a splash of orange running down the middle, out of style four years ago.  He was an intelligent, cuddly bear kind of guy who didn’t care how he looked.   He’d owned a tweed sports coat in college.  He still had it.  It was the only one he owned, but she’d forbidden him from wearing it, so he borrowed a suit from his brother who was only a step or two ahead of him in the fashion race. 

They were riding in his blue International pickup truck.  Miles and Yolanda, on their way to the Justice of the Peace in Pacific Grove.  Miles was a family name, which wasn’t as English as it sounded because his family had come from France a hundred years ago.  Miles was his grandfather’s name and his uncle’s.  No one knew how it snuck into the family.  His dad worked for PG&E and his mom was a housewife in Arbuckle, rice-growing country, four miles from the middle of nowhere.  Yolanda, on the other hand, wasn’t a family name. She was the only one of her sisters who didn’t have an ordinary name like Jane or Mary.  She was the oldest, born in San Francisco before her mom and dad quit being hippies and moved to the east bay.  She thought her mom probably decided on her name when she was standing in line at Baskin-Robbins stoned out of her mind.

There is no Justice of the Peace in Pacific Grove today, but there used to be.  His office was just down the street from the ice cream parlor in a building that’s an art gallery today.  Both of their families were there, along with Tony and Fran, who was pregnant and ready to pop.  Tony was supposed to take pictures but forgot his camera.  That made Yolanda’s mother happy because she had an Instamatic in her purse.  She bounced around posing everyone, which was a disarming experience because everyone thought she might be in the throws of another acid flashback.  And Dickie Hart was there.  He’d hitchhiked over from Santa Cruz and was hitting on both of Yolanda’s sisters at the same time.  There was a dose of double trouble.

When the ceremony ended, the party caravanned to the Rocky Point Restaurant where Yolanda’s father spent a month’s salary feeding everyone.  Dickie wanted to ride with Yolanda’s sisters, but there wasn’t room, so he had to go with Tony and Fran.  That upset him and caused him to drink too much, not that he ever needed an excuse. 

They were seated in front of a picture window that looked out across the Pacific.  The cliffs dropped on each side of them to the rocky beaches below, providing the perfect setting for everyone to start drinking and have a good time.  In the midst of the gaiety, one of Yolanda’s sisters pointed out the window and screamed.  There was the bride walking along the edge of a cliff with her arms spread wide like a tightrope walker’s.  Miles, who thought she had excused herself to go to the bathroom, jumped up, ran out into the cold, and pulled her to safety.  Apparently she had downed one too many Mai Tais.  After half an hour of cajoling, he bundled her up and took her to their motel where she spent their wedding night spread eagled on the bathroom floor.

They slept in the next morning, ate lunch instead of breakfast, and left on their honeymoon.  Yolanda didn’t feel well, so she dozed most of the day, mumbling about the beaches of Mazatlan while Miles drove east over the Tehachapis to Barstow and made a left on Route 127.   They arrived at the Furnace Creek Ranch at seven that evening.  Miles was annoyed that they didn’t have any vacancies, and Yolanda went ballistic because he hadn’t made reservations.  “Who knew Death Valley would be crowded?” he asked as if he was defending a reasonable position.

It was the same story at the Furnace Creek Inn, which was “it” as far as accommodations were concerned for a hundred and twenty miles.  They drove back to the Furnace Creek Ranch and snuck into the communal showers, which brightened their spirits a little.  He drove down the highway and pulled into the parking lot at the Texas Springs Campground where they curled up in the cab of their pickup truck under a picnic blanket he kept stashed behind the seat.  He woke up around three-thirty because the truck was rocking.  At first he thought someone was jumping on the bumper, but soon realized it was the wind.  A gale was blowing out there, kicking up one heck of a sandstorm.  Sand was leaking into the cab, and everything in it, including his beautiful bride, was covered with grit.

“Screw this.”  He started the engine, which woke up Yolanda.

“What’s going on?”

“Now there’s a sandstorm.  We’re getting out of here, if you don’t mind.”

“I’ll get out and direct traffic.”

He headed west on Route 190.  It was slow going until they climbed into the mountains where the sand cleared and they could see the stars.  Once over the mountains he turned south on Panamint Valley Road instead of going straight ahead to 395.  He thought it might be faster that way.  He stopped in Trona for gas as the sun came up.  It was a dingy little town, everything in it worn and gray and covered with silt.  A sheriff’s cruiser pulled in behind them with all of its lights flashing.  A burly, mean spirited deputy climbed out, hitched up his gun belt, and walked over to Miles.

“Whacha doin’ in town this time a the mornin’?”

“I’m getting gas, officer.   

“Got any ID?”

He took his driver’s license out of his wallet and handed it over.  “What’s going on?”

“There’s a strike up at the borate mine.  There’s agitators and been some violence.  One way or the other, we don’t want you involved.”

“Me too.”

He handed his license back.  “After you fill up, leave town.”  

Miles had never been kicked out of a town before, and he didn’t know whether to be insulted or honored in some macho kind of way.  But he wasn’t going to argue.  He drove out of town with the deputy following close behind.  They drove on in silence for a while, then he slammed his fist against the steering wheel. 

“Damn that Tony.  I never should’ve listened to him.  Who ever heard of going to Death Valley on your honeymoon?”

Yolanda relaxed a little, tucked her jacket behind her head for a pillow, and closed her eyes.  She smiled the smile of someone who’d been right all along.  She pictured herself lying on the beach in Mazatlan listening to Jimmy Buffet and drinking a pina colada.  They’d just saved the price of two nights lodging, and she was going to put it in their honeymoon account as soon as she could get to the bank.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

      The Gordian Knot

 

It was late when they got home from Sacramento because it had poured the entire way. They were tired, so they took quick showers and went to bed.  “God I’m glad I changed the sheets before we left,” she purred.  “I love the feeling of fresh sheets more than anything.”

“Anything?”  he asked.

“I thought you were man enough not to be threatened by fiber textiles.”

“Oh yeah.  I like fresh sheets, too.”

She laughed and turned on her side.  He moved closer, his knees behind hers, his stomach touching her back, and they lay there like two spoons in a drawer.  His arm was draped across her side, his hand cupped her breast, and he nuzzled the nape of her neck.  She responded with a sigh that meant nice try but not tonight.  He nuzzled her again, which meant I’ll be back tomorrow.

When the mood passed, he said, “Jerry told me we need a new roof.”

“I told you that a week ago.”

“I know.”

“Didn’t you believe me?”

“I did.  Sort of.”

“Which is it?”

“I wanted to talk to Jerry before we talked about it.”

“Why?”

“I figured the two of us are smarter than you.”

“So where does that leave you when you’re flying solo?”

“Not as smart as you.  I thought we’d established that” 

“We have.  I just like hearing you say it.”

“Feel better?”

“Completely affirmed.  Now can we go to sleep?”

“I just thought of something.”

“Look out.”

“If I recognize you’re smarter than me, that realization must be spawned from a superior intellect, which means I’m actually smarter than you.”

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.  It only means you’re an idiot.”

“Which proves my point.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re not smart enough to recognize I’m smarter than you, but I’m smart enough to recognize you’re smarter than me, so that means I’m the smartest.”

“Oh go to sleep.”

“Are you capitulating?”

“Never.”

He nuzzled her neck again.

“Never.”

They laughed and slept soundly through the stormy night

 

 

 

 

               

 

 

                                           Footsteps

 

                                 I hear footsteps on the hallway floor

                                 It’s my daddy at the bedroom door

                                 He creeps in softly thinking I’m asleep

                                 To straighten my covers and warmly keep

                                 Me snug and safe through the night

                                 Along my journey in slumber’s flight

                                 His stubbled cheek brushes my face

                                 And on my forehead he’ll lightly place

                                 A kiss so soft, then there’s two

                                 And he’ll whisper, “I love you”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Lee-Enfield Rifle

 

 

It wasn’t the drought or the dust storms or the barren earth that caused Joe McCrae to fail as a farmer like he would want you to think.  He failed because he didn’t have the aptitude for success.  Good intentions and hard work were never enough when he was involved, so he moved his family off the prairie into an abandoned house on the outskirts of town before they starved to death.  The town merchants, a sympathetic bunch under their leathery exteriors, offered him a job as the town night watchman.   He knew it was charity, but he was so far down he took it anyway.

He made his rounds every night, rattling locked doors and peering in the darkened windows of closed stores.  He went into the alley and rattled the doors back there, then took a break and walked a quarter mile out of town to a roadhouse a where he drank coffee rather than the bootleg whiskey they served in the back room.  He sat quietly studying his brew, thinking about how he didn’t even have a gun to carry.   He wondered what he would do if a real criminal came into town.  Then he’d walk back into town and go on his rounds again, dejected more often than not.

His brother, who we called Uncle H, had enough success for both of them.  He walked out of his daddy’s fields at the age of thirteen and got a job jerking sodas at Mr. Palmer’s Drug Store.  He owned the place by the time he was twenty-five.  After his mama and daddy got over him leaving, he reclaimed his place as the family favorite.  That was a sore point as far as Joe was concerned.  He’d stuck it out, mostly out of a lack of imagination, worked hard, and did what his daddy expected of him, but no one seemed to notice.  When their daddy died, he left his Lee-Enfield rifle, the one he took off a dead Englishman during the Great War, to Uncle H.  It was the passing of the baton.  It was Uncle H’s most prized possession, and Joe’s pot simmered over that one. 

Time moved along without anyone noticing.  There was nothing to set one day apart from the next until the afternoon Marvin Fuller drove through town.  Marvin was a small time bank robber who had just made an unauthorized withdrawal from the Farmers National Bank and Trust over in Purcell.  His escape route brought him right through the middle of Sanger with half a dozen speeding vehicles full of irate, heavily armed citizens in close pursuit.  Before the dust settled, Uncle H had grabbed the Lee-Enfield rifle, hopped in his Model T Ford with Joe in the passenger seat, and they joined the chase.  They caught up with the posse out on Route 9 between Middlesberg and Taber, where Marvin had been run to ground.  Uncle H got off several shots at a haystack across the field where Marvin was said to be hiding.  Joe didn’t get a chance to shoot because he didn’t have a gun, and he didn’t want to embarrass himself by asking to borrow the Lee-Enfield.

Marvin Fuller’s career came to an end that afternoon.  The posse took him and his two henchmen into Middlesberg where they laid them out on planks, propped them up, and posed for a dozen photographs standing around the corpses with their rifles cradled in their arms.  Joe stood in the rear because he looked naked without a gun.

The next morning Sanger was astir with visitors wanting to see the rifle that shot at Marvin Fuller.  “Think you winged him?” someone usually asked.

“I had him in my sights,” Uncle H lied. 

While they were in the drug store looking at the rifle, the curious would buy a soda pop or plug of tobacco, so he kept the rifle close at hand.

Joe was sick of it, H and that rifle getting all the attention.  The rifle should have been his, or part his, and he should have been able to get off a shot or two himself.  He brooded about it until the night he jimmied the lock on the drug store’s back door.  He made his way into H’s office, located the rifle and fondled it before he laid it on the dry goods counter.   He walked to the storeroom and brought back a piece of oilcloth, wrapped it around the rifle, and walked to the back door.  He checked to see if anyone was in the alley, then stepped off the porch and hid the rifle under the steps.  He looked around again, took a deep breath, and ran off to tell H someone had broken into his store.     

“Son-of-a-bitch,” Uncle H said.  “No tellin’ who took it.  There’s been a couple dozen people in to seen it.” 

The sheriff wasn’t hopeful.   “There ain’t nothin’ to do but keep our eye out and ears open, though it ain’t likely it’ll show up.” 

Joe knew he had to be cautious, so the next day he built a pine box and took it on his rounds.  He put the rifle in the box with the oilcloth wrapped around it, nailed the lid shut, and brought it home.  He buried it on the other side of the truck garden in line with the east wall of the house, a hundred paces out.  He dug down four feet in case someone was to plow there.  He thought about the Lee-Enfield a lot after that, but was he too scared to dig it up.  There was never really a need.  Having it was enough.

Joe’s burden had always been to take care of his children, but they’d grown up and escaped at the first opportunity.  They’d done better than expected, considering they’d been reared in the wake of his failures in a bleak house devoid of charm and cheer.  The girls married and moved away, one to Oklahoma City, the other to Los Angeles.   His boy enlisted in the Army when he turned seventeen, six months after Pearl Harbor.

The stories about the growing prosperity in Southern California called to Joe.  It was one last chance, so he and his wife, Ruthie, boarded a Greyhound bus and came west.  He found a job in Compton running a nailing machine at the Southern Heater plant, building shipping crates for water heaters.  It was the first regular paying job he’d ever had.  The Lee-Enfield rifle had to stay behind, but he dreamed of it most nights.  He wanted to bring it to California where he could enjoy it away from H’s prying eyes.

 It was 1951 before he went back to Sanger.  He went alone on the Greyhound bus, his wife being the sedentary type, to dig up the rifle and bring it back to California.  He didn’t tell H he was coming.  He didn’t tell anyone.  The bus dropped him off in Winston and he walked the last four miles to Sanger.  It was dusk when he arrived.  He walked to the alley behind the stores on Main Street and went to an unlocked shed where Cyrus Miller kept his tools.  He grabbed a pick and shovel and walked to the edge of town where he had lived in that run down house for so many years.  But things had changed.  The house was gone.  The ground had been grated and a paved road ran through where his garden and chicken coop had been.   The foundations for several houses were poured on both sides of the road, and he had no idea where the Lee-Enfield rifle was buried.  “Shit,” was all he could of to say. 

He was leaning on the shovel in the growing darkness, surveying the unfamiliar landscape when something unusual happened.  For the first time in his life, Joe let go of one of his negative obsessions.  Who knew why?   Clinging to them had given his life meaning, as downtrodden as it was.  Maybe he was tired of being a loser.  Maybe he was just tired.  His mind filled with thoughts of his children and his grandkids and his decent job.  And it didn’t snow in Los Angeles.  Life ain’t so bad, he thought.

He put the pick and shovel back where they belonged and walked to Winston in the dark.  The next afternoon he took the Greyhound bus to California and spent the rest of his days a little happier, except when the Republicans were in office, and he thought about the Lee-Enfield rifle a little less each day.