CONTINUED: Clocked

My first thought was to strangle the beast and hide the body in the basement.  Then I’d leave the front door ajar as if a thief had snuck in.  It seemed unlikely anyone would steal only a clock and leave the silver service untouched, so I wasn’t sure this scheme would fool anyone.  I could also steal our silver and even the Infant of Prague statue.  But I’d never heard of any clocks stolen in our neighborhood, and for certain no Infants of Prague ever went missing.  And come to think of it, since I didn’t have my own apartment, what would I do with a silver service and an Infant of Prague? 

The thief in the night scheme was probably no more sophisticated than simply taking my brother’s baseball bat to the clock and pleading insanity by way of a strange dream that made me do it.  Eventually I had a better idea as I lay there sleepless.  I would poison the clock, making it so sickly my father would become  frustrated and throw it out or leave it to sit quietly on the mantel. 

After everyone in the house was asleep, I tiptoed into the living room, opened the little door on the clock and stopped the pendulum.  Then I moved the hands ahead to 3 a.m. so it would appear the clock gave up the ghost long after we were all in bed.

At breakfast I could see disappointment on my father’s face as he expressed frustration over the clock’s apparent cardiac arrest.

“It never stopped during the test shot … not once,” he said.  “I let it run the entire week that I was finishing the cabinet.”

“Well, it’s old,” I said.  “Give it a rest, like Grandpa.”

“Grandpa’s dead,” he said.’

“Well, that’s what I mean.  Honored in life, but more so in death.  A quiet memory is best.  Either in the ground or on a mantel.”

In the evening Dad hustled the clock over to Gene’s and the two men thoroughly inspected every tiny component and re-made each adjustment to perfection.  That night I got up and stopped the clock again, shoving the hands ahead as though it stopped sometime before dawn. 

When I rose the following morning, Dad was on the phone.

“Gene,” I heard him say, “the clock made it to 4 o’clock this morning.  We did something right last night. We’re gaining on the problem!” 

My father and Gene spent another six hours that night re-adjusting just about every tension spring and turn screw in the clock, I got up and stopped it again after midnight, but this time I set the hands ahead to only 2:30.

The next morning at breakfast my father was devastated, a haggard look across his face, full of worry and concern for his first big clock project.  Myself, I was feeling quite chipper and refreshed after a full two nights of restful sleep.

“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,” said Dad. “The clock only made it to 2:30 last night.    Now we’re going backward.  We’ve made things worse.”

“But maybe,” I said and paused for a beat, “pendulum clocks won’t run in this house.  You know, like maybe the earth’s lines of magnetic flux just are not good for a pendulum here.  Remember the time all the apples fell off the tree out back?  Bad flux, I’m thinking, for anything hanging … or swinging.  You know?”

Dad didn’t appear to be listening.

“I’m not sure if Gene really knows what he’s doing,” he said to no one in particular.  “Maybe I’ll take it in to work.  Herbie the maintenance guy is a mechanical wizard.  Maybe he can help.”

Dad told us later that Dr. Herbie conducted an unbiased exam of the patient and pronounced the time piece hale and hearty.  But after my father’s insistence the clock was sick, Herbie thought a minute and said maybe it wasn’t sitting on the mantel perfectly level. 

“I mean perfectly,” he told Dad.  “Take this six foot mason’s level home tonight and line it up so you’re sure the clock is perfectly level.”  Herbie might as well have suggested Dad line it up with the North Star for all the good it would do.

This night, Dad performed all the checks and re-checks on the clock downstairs on his workbench.  He made no mention of Gene.  Then he very carefully carried the patient up to our living room.  On the mantel he placed the long mason’s level, a device with the width and thickness of a pack of cards, but six feet long.  Embedded in the level was a  bubble that told you when things were perfectly horizontal.  When the instrument and C-clamps and various holding tools were arranged on the mantel, he placed the clock precariously on top and jiggled it a bit to make sure it wouldn’t fall off.  Then, down at the far end of the mantel,  he very carefully slid a pack of matches under the six foot mason’s tool and moved it toward the clock until the bubble pronounced everything true.  He used the clamps to hold all the parts in place.

This was the carefully balanced pile confronting me when in semi darkness I stepped into the living room around midnight to continue my regimen of clock poisoning.

Even if I managed to not make a mistake and cause the assemblage to come crashing down from the mantel,  I wasn’t sure I could remove the clamps and then open the clock  in the dark without making a noise that might wake the household.

“You made one dumb mistake,” came a stage whisper from behind me.

I turned to see my mother sitting in her chair across the room.

“Was it the goofy theory about the earth’s lines of flux?” I asked.

“No, I didn’t hear that one,” she said, “but it sounds like something your father would believe.”

“How did you know it was me?” I asked.

“I’ve been following you around since you began to walk,” she continued.  “You leave a trail as wide as an elephant’s behind you.”

“A trail of what?” I asked.

“Everything,” she said.  “Toys, books, magazines, cookie crumbs, last week’s homework, hair combs, socks, shoes, shirts, Aqua Velva … “

“OK, OK,” I interrupted.  “What did I leave on the mantel?”

 “Nothing,” she said. “Specifically, not your car keys.”

“My car keys …”  We left our keys on the mantel at night so cars could be moved if anyone needed to get out of the narrow driveway early the next morning.

“When I didn’t see them on the mantel,” she said, “I guessed why you didn’t leave them.”

“I needed the little flashlight on the keychain to get back to bed …”

“ … without tripping over the coffee table or a hassock,” she said.

“That’s pretty smart, Mom,” I said.  “So now, how will I get to sleep after Dad finds out what I’ve been doing?”

“He won’t find out,” she said.  “You keep stopping that noisy clock every night and I’ll hold the pillow against his ear like I’ve been doing. Eventually, we’ll wear him down.  He’ll find another hobby and we’ll get some sleep.”

 Copyright 2010  David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: Voices

"So it's a big deal when you die, huh Jack?" said Tom as Jack carefully wheeled the metal stretcher through the door into the basement work room .

Well, we try to make it nice for you and your family," he said.

"Memorable, huh?"

"Well," said Jack," not too memorable.  It isn't a wedding."

"No, far from it," said Tom, and even though not a single tiny muscle in his entire body moved, Jack could clearly hear the man speak  as well as the fidgeting in his voice.

"Don't be nervous, Tom," said Jack, "everyone goes through this."

"Will someone come to meet me, Jack?"

Jack had heard this question hundreds of times, but he had no answer. He didn't know what happened after the final curtain. The dearly departed were clueless at this point and Jack presumed Tom would find answers in short order.  Jack knew the dead man would soon stop talking, the chatter simply ending.  The talkative spirits always left their bodies behind and went somewhere, perhaps to a grand induction ceremony in the heavens.    Some of them came back after they were interred and their voices resumed, but in a different way.  In any case, there was never any mention of being visited, picked up, judged, sanctioned, punished or any of the other expectations one might have of life after death.

 "Tom, I have to do my undertaker job now.  Don't be scared."

"It won't hurt, will it Jack?"

"Of course not, you're dead."

"It hurt a lot when they were jumping on my chest in the hospital."

"You were still alive then."

As much as science and medicine  had progressed in the past hundred years,  the basics of embalming had not changed much.  Jack cleaned the body with disinfectant, then replaced the fluids and viscera with preservative chemicals.  Next would come the dressing of the deceased in clothing last worn to a niece’s wedding ten years ago.  Then it was time to pretty him up with natural looking cosmetics made especially for dead folks.

“Not THAT suit,” said the newly dead man as Jack removed the garment from the plastic bag Tom’s sister had dropped off.  “I HATE that suit.”

Jack recognized Tom’s reaction as bizarre, coming from a corpse, but he was used to this kind of behavior.

“Oh, come on, Tom, I think it looks great!” Jack lied.  “It’s the perfect color to match your skin tone … now that you’re dead.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Tom.  “Do you really think so?”

“Yes, of course,” said Jack.  “And the rose colored ceiling lights over the casket will give it a nice warm tone.  It’s a perfect funeral suit.”

“Still,” said Tom, “I’ve never liked Glen Plaid.  My wife bought me that suit without my even trying it on.”

Jack paused a moment, suddenly uncomfortable.  Then, trying to sound as natural as possible, he spoke.

“How’d she know it would fit?” he asked.

“You know Margie,” said Tom.  “Told me it was a 42 Regular and I’d better lose weight and fit into it before Easter.”

Jack felt a pressure in his chest as he fiddled with the aspirator.  He rubbed the spot where the pain gnawed at him. Eating his usual salami and provolone sandwich while embalming might be why he was getting a lot of heartburn lately. 

“Twenty years I was married to that woman,” said Tom, “twenty years of pure hell.  What was it my buddy Artie used to say about his wife … ‘I could have killed her seven and a half to ten years ago and been out of jail by now.’ ”

“You don’t remember how you died, Tom?”

“No, I hadn’t even thought about it.”

“It seems,” said Jack, “that Margie shot you.”

“No!” exclaimed the corpse.  “Well, that’s a hell of a thing!  Why?”

“Don’t know,” said Jack, “but you must have really pissed her off.”

“She’ll go to jail!” said Tom.  “That’s terrible.  She’ll lose the house and have to give away that foolish dog.  And some shyster will take every penny of my hard earned money for  a so-called defense that’ll fail miserably.  She’ll wind up in prison.  You gotta help us, Jack.”

“I can’t help.  Your life is over, Tom, you can’t affect anything any more.”

“But you can,” said Tom.  “Tell the police you spoke with me and I went at her with a butcher knife or something.  That’s why she shot me.  In self defense.”

“I don’t think they’d believe me, Tom.  And besides …”

“But, you gotta try.  For my sake.  For Margie’s sake.  For gosh sakes, man, don’t let her life be ruined!”

“How would I explain my talking with a dead man?” Jack said.  “And besides, she  …  Tom?”

He got no response.  “Tom?” Jack inquired. 

Still no response.  It often happened this way.  The corpse would get excited about something and go howling off into eternity, his soul cursed with a problem he couldn’t solve, and being dead, shouldn’t have worried about anyway.  Like the time Jack was asked by the late Harry Bonaparte … just as Jack was giving him the formaldehyde … to remind his wife to have the snow tires taken off in the spring.

Jack didn't know why, but after a body arrived at the cemetery, he might hear the dead person speak again, but  not see them  And while each of their bodies was buried beneath the proper headstone,  not all of their voices returned.  .  Even to Jack, some of the dearly departed were mum for eternity.  Others talked incessantly.  Jack wondered if the silent ones had gone to some place better, or possibly worse.  He wondered if one place might be heaven and the other hell.  He had a sense the other quiet place might be heaven, but although the talkers down here in the graveyard always appeared to be trying to work out a problem by mainly talking to themselves, they seemed happy enough.

Weeks later Jack walked down a deserted lane of the cemetery on a lovely summer afternoon, lovely except for the heartburn he didn’t seem able to shake, the pain sometimes feeling like a hot coal inside his chest.  He listened to the voices coming from a variety of dead spirits, some over two hundred years old.  Jack imagined the  dead sitting on their headstones ass they spoke to themselves.  Not often did they address each other  They were very self absorbed, evidently unaware that only an occasional visitor heard them.  It was difficult to interrupt them with a question.  Some Jack had never reached. It was like listening to someone on the radio. You couldn’t ask a question, couldn’t talk back.  You just listened and learned the strangest things, sometimes interesting, sometimes not.  A former town mayor from a century ago had been the source of much of Jack’s knowledge of the area’s unrecorded beginnings and political intrigue.

Approaching Tom’s headstone, Jack could hear the fellow was now back on line, still talking about Margie.  As Tom droned on in his monologue, he didn’t seem to be listening very much to Margie, as she chattered away in the grave next to him.  As in life, evidently, they were like two ships passing in the night.

“I should have at least tried to get away with it,” said Margie, “rather than shoot myself.  My dress was absolutely ruined!   Why didn’t I wait a few minutes and think things out?  No, I had to immediately go out in a blaze of glory!”

“I can’t imagine her doing anything to mess up her hair,” said Tom, interrupting himself, listening with one ear.

“I could have said he came at me with a knife,” said Margie.  “I might have beaten the rap.  I so much miss the dog.”

“You know what I think,” said Tom to himself, “even if her lawyer didn’t steal all my money, she probably would have given it to him when she married the bastard.  She was always a big flirt.”

“Hush up, Tom!” said Margie, “I’m trying to think this through.”

Jack’s heartburn was worsening and he was getting quite irritated.  “Tom, Margie,” he said, “what does it matter now?  You’re both dead and gone.”

A buzzing in his ears that Jack hadn’t noticed until it stopped became quiet.  How odd, he thought.  Only now did he remember a buzz in the background throughout his entire life.

Tom was correct, Jack now decided.  That suit looked terrible on him.

“Well,” said Tom, “that’s a hell of a thing.  For you to tell us we’re gone.  We’re right here.  With you, Jack.

Jack was confused.  He hadn’t expected to actually see all of these folks sitting on their headstones.

“I can see all of  you,” he said.

“We can all see you now,” said one voice after another from everywhere around him.

The cemetery’s caretaker found Jack dead of a heart attack, leaning up against Tom’s headstone, a quizzical look on his face.  It was too bad, to die suddenly like that.  But at least Jack could now have a proper conversation with the dead.   And besides, he could sense Margie giving him the eye.

copyright 2010, David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet,  South Carolina

CONTINUED: Jump

Mary Anne took her sneakers to work in the morning.  She left the job on time that afternoon, putting on the footwear before closing up her desk and locking it.  As she drove on to the bridge she realized she needed to go to the bathroom.  But that wouldn’t matter in less than five minutes.

On the bridge she pulled to the side of the road and purposely scraped her car against the railing to ensure she was as close as possible.  Without hesitation, without stopping for even a breath or a thought, she put the car in Park, opened her door, walked ahead a few feet and turned to face the bumper.

Beyond her car, Mary Ann saw a pickup truck slow to a stop instead of pulling around her. She felt her face burn with embarrassment to have a witness. She sucked in her breath and began to run back toward her car, to jump behind the wheel and flee.  At the last moment she changed her mind.  Stepping on the front bumper she launched herself up to the roof where she turned quickly and jumped over the railing.

In pure fright MaryAnn’s eyes opened the widest in her life and she could see the river below, the green lawns running down to the water’s edge, the blue sky and the puffy white clouds of a gorgeous summer afternoon.  She seemed to hang suspended above it all, as if God wanted her to realize what she was giving up.

“Did you think you could get away from me?” said the voice as MaryAnn hung over the river.  “Take a trip to eternity without me?  Fat chance! We’re going to wait right here until I’m ready.”

Eternity waited below while the voice lectured MaryAnn.  But she wasn’t listening.  Her mind’s eye saw the scene she’d just left behind, someone getting out of his car and looking toward her.   Had he been a little earlier on the scene, he might have caught up with MaryAnn and talked her down off the roof of her car.  How MaryAnn wished the man had done so.  For she no longer wanted to be dead.  She wanted to live, but she was already over the railing and falling, although for some reason she was arrested in mid air and the whole world around her was unmoving as though  a button had been pushed and the tape stopped.  MaryAnn was not relieved.  She was in the act of dieing and she was terrified.  She wanted the tape to start up again so that her death would soon be over.  It was supposed to last only seconds, but at this rate it could go on forever.  She could feel her heart beating at a speed she had never before experienced.  Her head felt like it would explode with pressure.  Her nipples signaled the freezing cold her body now felt and her bowels had already loosened, evidently in anticipation of their uselessness at the moment of death.  And that mocking voice that had been with her since her mother’s funeral got louder and louder.

“You can’t do anything right!”  it said. 

“Let me go, Mother!”  her soul screamed.

“You’re not going anywhere, Fancy Lady,” the voice hissed.  “You can’t lose me.  You’re dead, you little bitch and I’ve got you now!”

MaryAnn fumed and her anger mixed with her terrific fear in an awful combination of hate.  Her stomach threw its contents up into her throat, but a scream from deep within pushed everything out from her mouth at high speed,   Lunch sprayed out over the river and as it descended to the water it looked like flames. 

The world was moving again.  Mary Ann was not.  The man who had left his car and ran toward MaryAnn was now leaning over the railing.  He must have crawled up on the roof of her car.  MaryAnn saw the man wore a bright yellow hard hat and at that moment he threw a leg over the railing and jumped, landing next to her on the scaffolding.

“Don’t move!” he shouted at MaryAnn while he dialed his cell phone.

Her blouse and underwear had somehow been pushed up to her neck and the man quickly pulled her shirt down to her waist.  Soon a crew appeared above.  They hauled her up like a sack of potatoes in a paint spattered tarp.  The crew and ambulance technicians were quite nice to her.  So was the man in the hard hat.  That surprised her since he had risked his life to rescue a woman who had been so ready to throw her own away.

A  psychiatrist  was her first visitor at the hospital after she was settled in a room for the night.  MaryAnn spoke with him for an hour.  She had never met a psychiatrist before.  He heard about all the troubles in her life.   But she never mentioned the voice.

When the doctor left and closed the door, leaving her alone, MaryAnn felt the fear return.

“Almost, honey,” said the voice of her mother when the room wound down to a deadly quiet.  “We’ll have to find another way to have you join me.”

“I’m not coming with you, Mother,”  MaryAnn said to the wall in front of her.

“Of course you are, darling,” said the voice.  Where did you think you were going when you jumped off the bridge … to heaven?”

David Griffin copyright 2011

CONTINUED: Going Home

From farther back in my mind blossomed the memory of  a winter night in high school when I’d stood on a downtown corner in my hometown and let my eyes follow the steeple of Grace Church up into the dark sky among the stars.  I stared upward, fascinated by no more substance than tiny little pin pricks of light splayed across a blanket of darkness, a void I’d been told was the endless universe.  It was a marvel how black nothingness could titillate the emerging intellect of a 15 year old.

God was up there, or so I’d been told in my Catholic school classes.  And some day I’d go home to Him. But not just yet, thank you.  From the heavens beyond the top of the steeple my thoughts rushed back down to where I stood rooted in the snow, my head dizzy with the night and a girl.  I had walked from the North side of the city halfway home to Cornhill and clomped through snow that stopped falling ten minutes before when the clouds gave up the sky and allowed the Milky Way to dust its light upon my upturned face. 

Snow had come down all evening and piled up over a foot.  Plow trucks were out to clear the roads, but the sidewalks wouldn’t be shoveled until early the next morning, making the walk more of a trek. No matter, I could hike to the Arctic Circle after such an evening. She had kissed me.  My world would never be the same. 

In the hour after our lips met I became convinced that nothing was more important than a kiss.  As simple and chaste as ours had been, it more than touched me. It astounded me. I wondered why all the men and women I saw each day didn’t use their time to kiss each other over and over.  Maybe I wasn’t allowed to, but certainly adults had the freedom to just stop in the middle of their work or chores, throw their arms around each other and kiss.  I wondered why they didn’t.  And of course I wondered about more than kissing.   Instead, people worked at jobs they disliked, saved money for boats they would soon tire of and planned vacations that would wear out a drill sergeant. As for me, I told Fred in this monologue of my youth, given the opportunity I’d try to kiss every girl in sight, assuming I found any who wanted me. I was busy in school most days, but I could start kissing right after I finished my newspaper route before supper.

From the seat next to me on the bus Fred laughed at my improbable reverie. “I remember that feeling.”

I laughed.

 “The tingle,” he said. “What it was all about.”

I looked sideways at him and held on to the back of the seat in front of me as the bus began to move more like an airplane, swerving from side to side. Past him through the window I should have seen the lights of shopping malls, but there was nothing except the agitated swirl of snow. 

“Yeah, you’re right,” I said.  “It was kind of like a tingle.”

He gestured out the window at the snow. “Just like Christmas. Like going home.”

Fred was the perfect companion for this trip.  In fact, it had been his idea.  He was one of those guys who without much ado grew up to be a nice person.  In fact, he almost certainly had been born that way. 

“Fred, I’ll bet on the day you were born … and I do remember it was in the same hospital on the same day as me—

“Don’t start that twin brother stuff again,” he said laughing, “like when you tried to get me to buy you a beer.”

“Fred, I never did that,” I said trying to appear shocked.

Now we were both laughing.

“I bet you started making friends right off the bat … in the delivery room,” I said.

I could see that mischievous look settle in Fred’s eyes. “I started with the nurses.”

 “I’m sure,” I said

 “I had to say Hello to Mom first, of course.”

“You no doubt planned a party for that evening in the nursery,” I said. 

 “Don’t you remember it, Dave?  You were there.”

“Actually,” I said, “it was early to bed for me in those days, very early”

Fred and I could always riff on any theme handed to us.  But now I was feeling just a bit woozy and said so.

 “Your mind is still in and out of things,” he said. “No need to worry, it’ll clear up.”

We had met in our senior year of high school when our two schools were thrown together by the Catholic Diocese for reasons that never made any sense to us.  We were in different home rooms and didn’t pal around much that year. After graduation we lost track of each other while  Fred went to work in the family business and joined the National Guard to get his draft obligation out of the way.  I attended a small local college.  Two years later in the mid 1960s we each traveled to New York City to live.  I took a job and Fred moved down for a year to study mortuary science.  His family owned a funeral business.  One Friday night we discovered each other on the bus headed home and became friends for the short time we lived in the city.

“You must have been a hell of a kid,” I said.

“When I was a youngster,” he said, “I’d wake up early Christmas morning and I couldn’t go back to sleep.  Most years I didn’t expect anything in particular under the tree, but I knew there’d be a surprise and I couldn’t wait to tear the wrappings off.”

“I know the feeling,” I said.

“All the week before I would … tingle, just thinking of Christmas morning and the rest of the day.  We’d come back from church and have a special breakfast with something extra nice from the bakery.  And then a day with the relatives coming over to visit.  My father would pop in and out depending on how many souls were called home that day.”

“I never thought of what a funeral director did on holidays,” I said

Fred chuckled.  “The march to eternity doesn’t stop.” 

“Right to your front door,” I said.

He nodded. “At least when they’re down, they stay down.”

“Lost their tingle,” I said, “for good.”

 “You never lose your tingle,” he said.  “Never.”

What I liked best about Fred was the relaxed attitude he carried, more generous and deep seated than mine.  I’m sure his was real.  People who got to know me soon realized I was laid back only on the outside.  Inside I continually agonized over one thing or another, often afraid and very unsure of myself.  But Fred’s personality was always real.  He had the true spirit of a man who knew himself and his capabilities.  He must have faced his demons earlier in life than most and learned  to accept himself.  It allowed him to accept others and come to terms with the world as presented to him.  No doubt that’s why he so enjoyed life.

I remembered stopping one night at the Olcott Hotel on West 72^nd Street where he lived with roommates from the embalming school.  We planned to go out for a few beers.  The 1960s was a more formal time in Manhattan and while I waited in the living room for Fred to finish dressing, a few of the many mortuary science texts that lay about caught my eye.  I began to read a history of embalming.  Although  the Egyptians were known for their excellent embalming skills, it turns out the hot dry climate was more responsible for their success in the  preservation of  400 million mummies over almost six thousand years.

"What're you reading?" said Fred as he came into the living room and stood in front of the long mirror near the front door.  He fastened the top button of his shirt and tied a perfect four-square knot in his tie.

"A text book from your embalming school," I said. “Did you know that embalming wasn’t often done in colonial America?  But it became popular during the Civil War because Mr. Lincoln wanted the war dead preserved and shipped home to their families for a proper burial.”

“Yes, I knew that,” he said. “I’ve often thought of it when I went down to the train station for a soldier’s coffin.”

“Viet Nam,” I said. “It’s terrible and it’s just begun.”

“Hey” he said, “I thought we were going out for a few beers.”

“Well, at least your text books are interesting,” I said.  “My engineering texts were quite dull.”

 “I’m amazed you can pick up all of that in ten minutes from a textbook,” he said.

“I read all the time, Fred. Not a big deal.”

“I wish I was a natural student,” he said.

“Fred,” I told him, “you’re a natural person.  That’s more important.”

And so off we went that evening.  First to Patrick J. Flynn’s down at Columbus Circle near the Lincoln Center and West 65^th Street.  And another block farther west we found a bar across from The Julliard School.  We took care to choose places for their pleasant surroundings and cheap prices.

But now as I stared out the window into a blizzard of white I thought of all the walking about the city I could no longer do. I would never again be a young man.  And neither would Fred.

Everything seemed so long ago.  Memories overtook my mind like dreams.  They were jumbled and confused, perhaps because of what I’d been through in the past few weeks.

I saw my children at different stages of their lives, from babies to the present day.  I saw my wife as I have always seen her. For the past fifty years she has been for me the girl I first met one night sitting across the table in a college bar.  I remembered my career, my accomplishments and my frustrations and failures.  There came a dream of an evening as I sat alone in front of a Christmas tree, all the lights shining out from fragrant branches.  I was in a wonderful room with a huge fireplace and handsome furniture.  Books lined two of the walls and I sat near the fireplace at a polished desk.  But the larger part of my mind was depressed and disappointed.  An agony gripped me and gnawed at my heart.  The sheer contrast between my good fortune and my depression stripped me of any happiness.  I didn’t realize I had a glass of whiskey in my hand until I threw it at the Christmas tree. I never drank again.

When I awoke, I felt older.  My arms and legs ached, the vague familiar echoes of age.

I glanced over at Fred.  Beyond him I could see my reflection in the darkened window.  My face seemed much wider than I remembered and my hair appeared lighter, what there was of it.  Fred didn’t look a great deal older than the last time I’d been with him in early 1965.  In fact, not a lot older than the photo in his obituary, which suddenly came to mind.

I glanced down at my hands and they were those of an old man with age spots, pronounced knuckles and veins bubbling up from the back of each.  When I pushed up the arm of my hospital gown there were more spots, dark and large.

 “Where are we going, Fred?”

He smiled.  “Home, Dave.”

“You mean Home, don’t you, Fred?”

“I mean Home, Dave.”

 “I have to say I’m a bit scared,” I said.

“I know the feeling,” he said.

“I always thought maybe my Dad would come for me.”

“He’ll be there. And everyone else.”

“I have to ask you, Fred.  We haven’t seen each other in over fifty years. Why did you come for me?”

He glanced my way with a quizzical look on his face.

“We were friends,” he said.  “And I was an undertaker.  I still love the business.  I still love to bring people home.”

I thought it was very nice of Fred to accompany me on my final journey.  From nowhere a thought occurred to me with a twinge of guilt and before I could stop myself I spoke.

“I was in love with your wife at one time, Fred.”  I wished I had caught myself before saying it.  He turned and looked at me with a blank expression.

“I didn’t know that,” he said.

I looked out the window and there was nothing there, not even snow.  “When she and I were in the Sister Veronica’s sixth grade class together.”

He nodded and his smile returned.  “And how long did your young heart yearn for her?”

I sighed.  “Until I met Linda in the seventh grade.”

He nodded again, slow this time in a sage manner. “And what did my wife think of your undying devotion … fickle as it turned out to be?”

“I never told her, of course,” I said. “I was  an eleven year old Catholic boy in a Catholic school with occasional thoughts of entering the priesthood.  I couldn’t go around announcing my love to all the pretty girls.”

“You mean you were too chicken to tell her.”

I laughed. “Since you put it that way … yeah.”

“I know how you felt,” he said. “How does one explain such yearning?”

I knew Fred loved his wife in the same way I felt toward mine.  My wife had captured my heart and defined my life.  She was everything to me.  The tingle in my life. 

“We were both very lucky men, Fred.”

“I know,” he said. ”We were blessed.”

Out the front window of the bus the snow had stopped.  I could see lights ahead, concentrated in a small circle as if we were in a tunnel. The circle of light grew larger. 

“I’m down for the count, Fred.  Is that right?”

“Down and staying down,” he said with a smile.

“I don’t feel as though I’m ready for this,” I said.

“Sure you are, Dave.”

“I feel breathless, Fred.”    

“Because you’re not breathing, Dave,” he said. “And you’re not supposed to be.”

“I haven’t … done everything I need to do.”

“You’ve done everything you could.”

“I should have prayed more.  A lot more, come to think of it.”

“Your entire life was a prayer, just like mine,” he said.

“No, I mean—“

Fred glanced sideways at me.  “I know what you mean.  But everything we did was a prayer.”

“Do you mean,” I said, “like when I helped old ladies across the street?”

He laughed gently.  “No, I meant what you spent most of your life doing.”

“Thinking of women?”

“Not only that,” he said. “All of your yearning.  For a red bicycle when you were 8 years old, to kiss every girl in sight when you were fifteen, for the courage to tell people you loved them, for your academic success, for the woman you married, for the jobs you wanted, for the success of your children.  Yearning was just that reflection we saw dimly. Desire was the tingle. It was our lifelong prayer and exactly what He wanted.”

“I thought I had to be heroic,” I said.

“No,” said Fred, “each of us is just a part of the dance, the great dance of his creation.  He wanted you to join it, to bring your yearning as much as you were able.”

I sighed. “You make it sound like finding my way to heaven was actually much easier than I believed.”

“That’s right,” he said. “It was.”

Rest in peace, Fred Heintz, III.  You are missed.

copyright 2014. David Griffin  

            The Windswept Press

                                          Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

          www.windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: Persuasion

When my brain began to work better, I grabbed a pencil.  “Suicide” I wrote on a small pad of paper and passed it to her.  She looked down at my one word note and then stared up at me.  Her head nodded once and she tore the slip of paper off the top of the pad, stood up and walked it over to our supervisor Alan at his little desk under the stairway.  She came back to the table, sat down and began to write a series of words and phrases on the pad’s newly exposed top sheet.  She passed these suggestions back to me.

But I was in conversation with the woman and did not want to miss a single word she had to say or especially any sounds I might hear in the background.

“I have my late husband’s gun,” she said.

“Is it a rifle or a pistol?”  I asked.  I wanted to know how complicated it might be for her to shoot herself.

“A pistol,” she said.  “A revolver. Six shot.  I’ve fired it.  He insisted I learn to use it and took me to a firing range 3 or 4 times.”

I wondered how many potential suicides had not taken place because the person couldn’t figure out how to use the gun … to load the clip or open the cylinder or snap off the safety.    This would not be such a case.  She definitely knew how to use the gun.

This situation could go either way.  On one hand I might talk her out of what she was planning.  She could then assure me she would be OK, hang up and go on with her life.  On the other hand, she might be holding the gun as we spoke.  The call could end abruptly when I heard a gasp or a whimper followed by a final explosion and the clatter of the phone as it dropped from her hand to the floor.

Because of our strict confidentiality policy, I couldn’t send an ambulance or police car to her location to intervene.  Our small band of volunteers had never allowed Caller ID on our phones, so we never knew who was calling or from where.  Because of our web page on the Internet, we sometimes received calls from other parts of the world.  Alan liked to take calls from France and practice his French.  Calls from elsewhere in the U.S. were more likely.  The woman might be calling from another coast rather than another country.  But most likely she lived less than fifty miles from our office.

 In any case, she was calling because she wanted help, but she could not easily admit it.  She wanted to tell me why she felt so terrible, but beyond my words of kindness she was not ready to accept the professional help she needed.  I suggested a number of times she see a professional, but on each occasion she rebuffed  my offer to help her connect with someone.  Eventually, she appeared to become tired of speaking with me.

“I need to get off the phone,” she said.  “I don’t think I’m going to kill myself today.”

“Where’s the gun?” I asked. 

“I’m holding it.”

I was silent for a moment, letting her statement echo in the void so she would hear it.

“You haven’t told me your name,” I said, as gently as I could.

“Charlotte.  My name is Charlotte.”

“Charlotte,  I can send emergency help,” I said. “You could give the gun to them so you won’t be tempted to use it in the future.”

“How can you send anyone?” she asked.  “You’re not supposed to know where I’m calling from.”

”I don’t,” I said.  “I was going to ask you to tell me your name and address.”

“I certainly don’t feel comfortable giving you that information.  I don’t even know you.”

“You just told me you wanted to kill yourself,” I said.  “You know me well enough to tell me that.”

She laughed softly.  “I guess that’s true.”  She took a deep breath.  “Will they take me to a psych ward?”

“Probably.  You haven’t told me where you are, so it may depend upon the town you live in.”

“My God,” she said,”the neighbors will talk when they see the ambulance pull up outside.”

I swallowed hard.  I had to tell her the truth.

“It won’t be an ambulance,” I said.  “It will probably be the police.”

“The police? Oh, no.  I don’t want that.”

“You have to understand,” I said. “When I call your town’s emergency services, I’ll have to tell them you have a gun.  That’s only fair to them.”

“For God’s sake, I wouldn’t shoot them.”

“I’m sure that’s true, but they won’t want to take any chances.  They’ll send the police.”

I looked over to Iris as I spoke into the phone.  She sat across the table, listening.  She shrugged her shoulders and mouthed the word, “Depends.”   I guessed she meant it depended upon the town, the police department, maybe a lot of things.

“Look,” Charlotte said.  “I’m not going to hurt myself.  I’ll put Jack’s gun back in the closet.”

“But what if you’re tempted in the future?  What if you start to feel bad and …”

“I’ll call his brother.  Larry will come and get it and we won’t have to worry about it again.”

“Yes, but today you were depressed enough to almost commit suicide.  You may feel that way again.  You could step in front of a train.  Don’t you want to get help?  So that you don’t do anything like this again and risk your life?  Don’t you want to feel safe?  To know you’re doing what you can to avoid hurting yourself?  Getting rid of the gun?  Going to the hospital to spend a few days and getting some help?”

There was silence on the other end of the phone.  It seemed to last a long time.

“So, if a policeman comes to the door,” she said, “how will this work?  Do I just hand him the gun?”

“I wouldn’t have it in my hands,” I said.  “Just to be careful, you could place it on a table and point to it so he could see you weren’t ready to fire it.”

Alan had come from his desk and sat down at the end of our large work table.  He’d been listening intently but had not made any comment.   Now he rose and came to stand next to me.  In a loud whisper he said, “Have her put the gun outside the door.” Then he went back and sat at the end of the table.

“Are you in an apartment or a house?” I asked Charlotte.

“An apartment in Bedford,” she said, naming a nearby town.”

“Is there a hallway outside your door and is it very busy?”

“Yes, there’s a hall.  No it’s not busy.”

“After I call the police, you could place the gun outside your door so the policeman will get it when he arrives, before he meets you.”

“You mean on the floor?”

“Yes, I guess. Why not?”

“This is complicated,” she said.

“Not so much,” I replied.  “Stay with me, Charlotte.  We’re going to get through this.”

“It would just be so easy to end it here,” she said.

“No, it wouldn’t,” I said.

There was silence on her end.

“Charlotte, talk to me.”

“This doesn’t feel good.  They’re going to come and take me away.  They’ll keep me tied up in a hospital forever.  I don’t want this.  I want it to end.  I want it to be over, God damn it.

I thought I heard a metallic click.

“This is far easier,” she said with a whimper.

“No!  No,” I said.  “Maybe easy for you, but it would be terrible for other people.  Charlotte, it would be terrible for me.”

“For you?”

“I don’t want to go home later today knowing I couldn’t help to save your life.  That I wasn’t good enough to talk you out of it.”

“How did this get to be about you?” she asked.

Iris looked across the desk at me with the same question in her eyes.

“What does it matter?”  I said.  “Whatever it takes.  Please don’t hurt yourself, Charlotte.  Please don’t, for my sake.”

“OK, OK,” she said.  “Stop whining.  I’m not going to do it.”

“Please let me send emergency services to your apartment.  Tell me you’ll go with them to the hospital.”  I could hear the whining in my voice, but I didn’t care.

“OK, OK.”  She gave me her last name.  I had to ask for her address, which she gave up in pieces.  It was like pulling teeth.

“And your phone number in case we get cut off?”

“We won’t. You don’t need it.”

“Charlotte is your name and phone number in the book?”

“Yes … it is.”

“And you’re going to make me look it up?” I said with a laugh.

I wrote everything down and passed it to Iris, who began to dial the Bedford Police Department.  I told Charlotte my co-worker was calling the “emergency services,” so I could stay on the phone with her.

“I’m OK now,” she said. “I’m going to hang up.”

“No, please,” I said.  “Let’s stay on the phone together until they get to you.”

“Really,” she said, “it’s not necessary.  I’m OK.”

“I want to speak to the person who comes for you,” I said.  “I need to do that.”

“Why?” she said.

“Just so I can tell them to be as helpful to you as possible.”

“Well … let me lay the phone down so I can put the pistol out in the hallway.”

There was a click and then a dial tone.  She’d hung up on me.

I immediately dialed her number and got a busy signal.  Maybe she was trying to call me.  I hung up, explained to Iris what had happened and we waited a few minutes for Charlotte to call us.  I watched the clock and gave her three minutes … what seemed a very long three minutes.  Then I dialed her number again.  It rang four times and went to message recording.

On another phone Iris was already calling the Bedford Police Department.  She reached the same desk sergeant she had spoken to a few minutes before and explained we’d lost contact … hopefully temporarily … with Charlotte. 

Iris looked over at me.  “He’s radioing the information to the cop who’s just climbing the stairs to the apartment,” she said.

I rang Charlotte’s number and again got the message record facility.

I waited a minute or two and then dialed again.. 

“Hello?”

“Charlotte, is that you?”

“I didn’t mean to hang up on you,” she said.  “I wasn’t thinking.”

“That’s OK.  Are you all right?”

“No.  I think I just shot a policeman.”

“What!? Didn’t  you put the pistol outside the door?”

“That’s what I was doing,” she said.  “I opened the door and he was standing there.  He grabbed for the gun and it went off.”

 “Open the door and see how bad off he is.”

“Oh, no.  He’s pretty upset.  He’s shouting and swearing like there’s no tomorrow. I’m afraid he’ll hurt me.”

Iris now stood at her desk, the phone cupped in her ear.  I waved to her.  “Charlotte accidentally shot the policeman,” I said.

“I know.  But she missed,” said Iris. “He pushed the gun down and the bullet just missed his foot.  Have her open the door.”

“Charlotte,” I said.  “Open the door.  You didn’t shoot him.  The policeman is OK.  ”

“Then why is he yelling?” she said

“I don’t know.  Maybe you just winged him.”

Iris shook her head from side to side. “He’s not hurt,” she said, softly.”

“If the policeman will promise to not scare the hell out of Charlotte,” I said to Iris, “I’ll have her open the door.”

“Tell her,” said Iris, “to open the door.  Now.”

“Charlotte, did the policeman stop yelling?  You can open the door now.  He won’t hurt you.”

Alan jumped up from his end of the table. 

“Where the hell is the gun?” he shouted. Alarm was written across his face.  “Who has the damned gun?”

I hadn’t thought about where the gun was.  When the policeman grabbed the weapon and it went off a few minutes ago, I guess I assumed he took possession of it.  But I didn’t know that to be true for sure.

“Charlotte,” I said.  “Charlotte?”

The clunk of the phone on a hard surface was followed by the creak of door hinges opening.  Then a loud bang.  And another and another.

Charlotte opened the door with her late husband’s revolver still in her hand and the policeman shot her.  Two in the chest and one in the face, exactly as he had been trained to do with someone who had shot at him a few minutes before.  He said later she was aiming at him and was about to squeeze the trigger.  I can’t believe that.  Most days  I don’t believe it.  Some days I wonder.

The end result was what she intended when she pulled her late husband’s gun from the closet.  That was before her moment of hesitation when she decided to call our Hotline for help.   Before I convinced her life could get better, life could go on.   Before I talked her into accepting help rather than take her word she was OK.  Before I persuaded her the policeman wouldn’t hurt her.

copyright by David Griffin, 2015

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

www.windsweptpress.com