Step-Cousins

I'd known about Rusty's girlfriend and the landlord for a couple of weeks.

Kelderman told me while laughing his har-har pirate laugh. He wasn't laughing at Rusty, I'm sure, but at people in general, cheating one another: the surprise double-cross, the pretended innocence, the hypocritical revenge that may follow. All this gave the hopeless old drunk sudden, wheezy fits of laughter.

Kelderman was pretending to be crazy , but eventually he'd be crazy for sure. He wore a brace and used forearm crutches to walk and to smash things in his tiny apartment. I never asked how he was hurt but I knew he was a war vet. He'd been a lawyer and disappeared from his wife and kids long ago, according to one of his buddies. At the end of each month we had to support him until his government check arrived. Then he'd shower us with cash.

When Rusty found out that November day, I tried to listen to him, but the pale gloom of my apartment gave me this familiar feeling that we'd all made our fateful mistakes long ago. The present, to me, was misshapen and like a bad dream.

Drugs, endlessly baffling miscommunications with people, broken relationships and resentments...all of it made me feel marooned and there were times I thought I could understand how the stroked out and brain-injured adapted themselves to their crumbling interior.

But Rusty had always been more or less responsible, compared to me and most of the rest of my friends. His politics weren't ostentatiously insane, like a get-up. He volunteered for the Democratic Party, and went to a mainstream church. He rejected Bohemianism, and easily remained oblivious to it.
____
He said it was like wax melting inside. Internal bleeding in that area where you imagine your soul exists, just beneath the rib cage. There are nerve endings inside you, you forget exist.
____
"I went back after work just now to see if her car was still there. On the way, I realized that a part of me wanted it to still be there, parked in his drive. I don't know why. I know the word for it. Don't say it. "

Later he tried again: "It's like a barrel of thick paint inside me being stirred with an oar."

After sharing, he seemed all the more stunned for awhile, staring at the floor with his mouth open. I imagined that since his noon-time discovery he'd been shrinking inside, but now after telling someone, this was his time to slowly come to a stop and reverse himself.

I thought that was what was happening, anyway, as we sat in my one bedroom apartment, this cold, rotting fall day.

There had been one dusting of snow the week before and now the sun wouldn't come out.

I could have said, "He has the drugs. He has the money. It's not about needs, it's about wanting."

Instead I popped open a can of warm beer and set it foaming on the coffee table in front of him. He didn't touch it. I went to the kitchen cabinet and brought out a half pint of Congress Vodka, more to be humorous than hospitable. I set it down too.

Did you know about this, he asked, chewing on his thumbnail. No, I said. It makes me sick.

"I wouldn't be angry with her really, except when I see her again she'll know that I know. And I think she'll flip out and go on the attack. That will be the worst part. Her yelling at me. That I'm a worm or something."

"Screw her! Has she said that to you before, I suppose?"

"No."

"Someone has, then. Or you wouldn't imagine it."

He sat forward and rested his elbows on his knees, giving me an grim, amused smile now.

"Room temperature beer. I like warm beer. I'm used to it here. I'll drink this while you bring me another."

"No, no! I want you to have it, old chum. I've got plenty more. And I want you to stay here awhile. Ten, fifteen minutes, hell."

"I'm homeless. I'll be camping here for a week or two. It's a lucky break for you. I'll get groceries, beer, smokes."

I wouldn't mind some bacon and eggs in the morning. Any company was good after losing my last bookstore job. I depended on people depending on me for my car or for shelter. I had three or four friends who seemed to get in trouble in a rotation. I lived alone but hardly knew it.

Now after drinking some beer he was enlivened but serious again. "I'm enslaved. She's all I care about."

I argued. "It can hurt for years if you find the right girl, but you were weren't enslaved. You were... enshrewed." I knew it was all right to start insulting her now.

"I need to get my stuff out of there while she's at work tonight. Any confrontation, she'll turn on me. She'll claw my face."
______
After the 5:30 news with Frank Reynolds, we put on our jackets and stepped out into the cold. Mine was the only apartment in this fancy building with its own entrance. There was a large, bright and beautiful grocery store across the street, and I loved it at this time of the evening with so many commuters shopping.

I locked the door behind us. The season's first thin layer of snow crunched under our feet on the way to the apartment garage. It was 19 degrees. Under the blue haloed street lights the snow crystals were like an eclipse.

Rusty walked ahead of me with the car keys. He'd wrapped a green hand-knit scarf around his neck and it looked eight feet long. He wore his usual Andy Capp cap.

At night the skies would clear. With the street lights and the heavy traffic and their car lights on Ingersol, all the vapors and smoke caught the light and then floated into into the invisible night.
______
He talked still.

At all these temp jobs, his aim was to be hired full-time. Everyday after work he'd bring my car back and drink with me and tell me his stories of the day.

Everything was a clue to Rusty, and for clues he never had anything more than crumbs. Nothing ever happened, ever. And he'd still have big news. Clues for great expectations or clues for frightening set-backs.

The secretaries shushed when he came into the break-room (that meant they were talking about him, he said, sometimes optimistically, more often he found it suspicious). Or his boss didn't say hello, which meant some job Rusty was promised wasn't going to come through after all.

Except Sherri. She happened along. I don't think she was a very affectionate girl-friend. Someone said that, actually, and their idle observation stuck with me: why, yes. A chief attribute on the plus side would be that your girl be affectionate.

She was an L.P.N. too. I'd been hopeful for awhile when I first learned that.
____
Rusty was a tiresome character but his peculiarities didn't help.

I wasn't a very good friend. At the bars I'd watch while people caught on that he was off, depending on how drunk he was. But it made no difference how drunk they were.

There was one blue-collar place where one of his brothers' friends greeted him warmly. We called it the "cop bar" because there were always some off-duty men drinking there, and Rusty liked to think this made me even more nervous than usual.

He was at home and sometimes he'd offer his hand and bring a rural, obviously alcoholic woman onto the dance floor for a nice slow dance.

We never shared a table with strangers there. I'd sit in a booth and he'd bring a pitcher and pour himself a glass and then return to the bar and stand talking to people for a long time. If I were there to eavesdrop it was disappointing, though I admired his gift for gab here. At my bars he just wasn't right, and sometimes appeared even shy and withdrawn. These friendly people were so down to earth I couldn't open my mouth without them realizing I was 'high hat' or something.
____
In Florida he'd been a newspaper columnist and a supporter of the governor. He blamed the breakup of his first marriage on 'political henchmen'. I knew he wrote regular columns, he'd shown them all to me, with his picture there (always the odd barbershop haircut, so when his hair grew long it grew upwards).

He'd dropped out of college, so having a column was a wonderful achievement. But five years had passed, and Florida was far away. I didn't ask if it was a paying job because I was afraid he would lie and then feel bad.

Still, all in all, we were friendly enough so I could tell him to shut up without him holding it against me. Of course he wouldn't shut up either. I'd have to plead with him at times.
______
We got into my 13 year old, gold Le Sabre and as usual when he turned the key nothing happened. It would always start eventually, he said, but we had to be calm and confident. "Relax now, " he'd say. It always sparked up so I began to believe him almost.

"That's a baby," I'd say.
____
"Let's drive by. I want to see again," he said as we waited for the big garage door to open.

"What a terrible feeling," I said.

He drove over to her landlord's house south of Grant Boulevard, into the monied district with the close trees, curving streets and rising and falling hills. We arrived and pulled into a drive-way two doors down. There was her little beat-up car still, with the landlord's badly damaged Fiat parked behind it.

"Maybe she's not going to work. Maybe she doesn't have to work at all anymore." He took the little bottle of vodka out of his coat pocket, and drank almost half in four gulps. Then he opened the door and threw the bottle so it smashed on the cement between her front and rear tires.

"God-dammit, Rusty. I'm on probation! You can go to jail. But me, I don't go to jail! I go to prison, god damn it."

He laughed, "You're paranoid. Now, can we go get some more vodka?" Rusty's jokes were rarely clever or surprising.

He pulled out and drove away slow and innocent. I got hold of my temper after a couple of stop signs and a left turn, when we could see the traffic light of the boulevard far away but straight ahead.

The heater was working now and I opened a beer. Three sips and I thought how comfortable. "Cold wears me out. My muscles tense until I'm warm again."
____
Rusty had been staying at Sherri's apartment for two months. She was five foot tall at best, a little plump with long, light brown hair framing her round face and falling softly over her bosom. She was surprisingly bright when she wasn't drunk, but this was only when she was provoked. She leaped at contradictions and told funny but mean little stories about her neighbors and co-workers.

He called her his dumpling behind her back, and liked to boast that she wore him out in bed.
_______
The studio apartment was in a three story slum, two blocks from my hermitage. I'd lived there for a few months and left, realizing this was my bleak future and I'd arrived too soon.

Up and down the halls people left their doors open and roamed from one party to another. Every room with a bed had four people sleeping on the floor. The mixed up smell of home cooking was close and personal, at once confusingly reminiscent and revolting. Rusty knew everyone but ignored their calling his name as we passed on our way to Sherri's apartment.

He had his key ready but discovered the door was unlocked. I followed him into the darkness and he felt around the wall for the light switch. We had to adjust our eyes, slowly realizing the little studio had been sacked.

It was vandalized, completely sacked by someone furious. Rusty stepped quickly around the corner to the kitchen, and called back, "They turned the oven up all the way."

Heavy bags of garbage were torn open and dumped. A bag of flour had been swung 360 degrees, over everything. The refrigerator door was open and everything inside was opened and slopped on the walls and floors. Large forgotten Tupperware was opened and dumped on the bed.

I peeked into the bathroom and her tall wicker shelf of beauty products was pushed over, resting on the wall behind the toilet. There was writing on the mirror. Whore, slut, bitch, helter skeltor.

Was it lipstick? I touched and it smeared. It was blue.

"You know what?" he called. "I was the last to leave. I forgot to lock the door."

Kelderman had seen us and followed. Now he stood in the door with his two metal forearm crutches. He stared, open-mouthed, struck sober. His black framed glasses were crooked on his face but he balanced himself and pushed them back on his nose with his wrist. He licked his lips and hobbled in closer, blood-shot eyes wide open.

"Jesus Christ, it's hot in here."

I pulled another beer from my winter coat pocket. It popped and foamed. My heart was pounding and I chugged as if I were quenching a thirst, instead of settling my nerves.

"They wouldn't have made much noise except for the toppled shelves in the bathroom and all those little bottles falling." I said.

Kelderman said, "The TV is still there. VCR..."

Rusty kicked around some blankets, looking for something. He found his back-pack. His suits and an attache case in the closet were left untouched.

"Wait. What the fuck do I do now? She's going to think I did this."

"Why would you do this?"

"She's screwing the landlord."

Kelderman said, "You finally told him, did you."

"This looks like woman's work to me," I said.

Kelderman's eyes looked damp. Sometimes an emotional drunk.

"I know you were gone all day, Rusty. I've had my door open and I'd have seen you. Maybe he has another girl on the side. Or maybe she did this herself, who knows? Though if she did I doubt she's coming back."

"Look. They left my JFK and Lincoln Brigade pictures alone. My back-pack, my briefcase. "

Kelderman's low growling laugh came back. "What, do you feel left out?"

There was a half a minutes silence. Then Rusty said, "Yes. Completely."
______
Some sickly looking speed freaks and metal heads started collecting at the door, looking over Kelderman's shoulder and exclaiming obscenities. A short young black woman's face appeared for a moment. Her mouth went ajar and she pulled back away just as a smile came over her face, like she was going to go tell her friends and have a belly laugh. Kelderman turned around and swung one of his canes. "Get the fuck away from here!" They all obeyed. Then he used his stick to slam the door closed.

He used one of his canes to remove a soiled chair cushion and sat himself painfully down. I sat on the floor. I was sorry I only had one other beer left and Kelderman was going to ask me for it and I was going to say no.

But then he told me to go down to his room and bring a couple from the freezer.

Rusty couldn't sit, though.

"Get your stuff and let's beat it," I said. "We can figure this out back at my place. I've been out too long. "

"I feel like cleaning all this up. Like I did this. Like I'd better. Now she'll come in and see I've moved out and what will she think?"

"Forget it." Kelderman said he wanted to go to the Savoy. This was a hotel downtown with golden hand-rails and a glittery bar The bar-maids were ex-strippers but they had class appeal for the traveling business man.

But what really interested him---he often said after a newspaper article had appeared--- was that Tiny Tim lived there. He said that he wanted to compare how long and dirty their fingernails were.

Now he showed me all the hundred dollar bills in his wallet and offered me one. "Let's go and forget this. Rusty, you're going forever. To the Savoy! To forget!!"

The hundred dollar bill wasn't even tempting, somehow. Anyway I knew Rusty had money. "We'll go tomorrow. Maybe. No promises."

Rusty swung his backpack over his shoulder and picked up his suitcase. "Huh. You know, coming over here I was planning to do something like this. I was going to break a window, maybe."

"No you wouldn't," Kelderman laughed. Outfoxed by the Fates, I thought.

I draped his suits over my arm and he asked me to get his two prize pictures. "Don't break the glass in the frames."

"Why don't we smash the JFK? You wouldn't look as guilty then. And you need to get over your mourning anyway. It's been thirty years."

"I've had that since I was nine."

Rusty was like me in some ways, only he'd never learned to drink as much, which seemed to me to be part of the problem. He didn't read anything worthwhile either, in my drunken, burn-out opinion. Also he was the only person I knew who had no interest in music. It meant nothing to him except on the dance floor when he was drunk and bravely trolling.

Out in the brighter light of the hallway I took a closer look at him. He looked over my shoulder, sighed and rolled his eyes. He locked the door, then slid it under the door. "So long, Ramona. Or Edna or whatever your name is."

That sad, closed mouth smile of his as we started back to the car.
___
Rusty didn't snore. I was watching TV until dawn and looked behind me. He was wide awake. The phone had rang three times this night, but she hung up on the machine. Or, it might have been someone for me. The last call was twenty minutes after the bars closed. Now another hour had passed.

My private entrance directly to the outdoors made me feel vulnerable. The darkness helped.
______
In another universe she'd come over here and somehow explain everything.
____
It was 3 a.m. I sat up drinking beer and watching Turner Movies. I was caught up in this horrible vortex of "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf" because I was waiting for "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" to come on, at four.

If he could sleep through a drunken Elizabeth Taylor screaming her head off, wait until Ethel Merman came on as the ultimate hectoring, howling, slugging mother-in-law. Her greatest role.

He spoke, then, as friends do in the dark. I muted the hysterical screaming argument on the Tv. I didn't mind him speaking now.

"I'm finished with Commtron. The boss takes my ideas and passes them off as his own. He had an unscheduled meeting with his boss right after we talked once and then a week later I was reassigned and they took my suggestions.

"And everyone is careless. They don't give a crap because their jobs are safe. They resent me. I admit I'm a little meticulous, and that takes extra time, but in the big picture, you know. It's best. When I go into the break room the women all shut up. I make them nervous."

"I thought you said it was a good sign, they all get quiet."

"How can I tell?" He sounded a note of urgent helplessness, which surprised the hell out of me. Like someone might finally divulge a secret he hadn't been let in on.

"Well that's just it, " I said. "You can't tell but you rush to conclusions."

"I'm going to take a few days off and have the agency reassign me. It'll upset my step-mom if she finds out though. And my step-dad."

"Huh?"

"What?" he asked.

"Oh. I forgot. So many steps."

His parents had both died by the time he was ten. His mother first, and then his dad re-married. Then after he was gone, his step-mother also remarried--Rusty was 12 or 13--- and that good man became Rusty's step-father.

Two steps-parents. Then they divorced when he went to college.

"If I don't call him often enough, he'll look for me. Once he spent two hours driving around town, business to business, so he could take me out to lunch. He's worried I'm working below my potential. He wanted to lecture me. Then I wouldn't let him pay the check. 'No, this is on me', I said"

"I hope you said thanks for the advice."

"My step-mom wants me back in local politics. Maybe if we elect Bilgey.

"Did I tell you about Thanksgiving? Almost her whole family. Big, chaotic family now. Double-wide cousins. My brothers, two of my sisters and their kids. One of my nephews is is 19 now and he was giving me some shit. 'Rusty, everyone knows you're a loser.'

"Jesus."

"My sister was embarrassed but instead of defending me she tried to justify herself. 'Why don't you have a car yet, or a phone? Don't you know how to save?'

"Oh well, it serves me right. I was tipsy, trying to persuade my nephew's girlfriend to fix me up with her sister. Actually I think his girlfriend admired how I sat back and took the abuse---my other sister and my brothers joined in and I just sat back, you know, taking it. I think she admired that. She smiled at me with her eyes."

He laughed. "She knows I've got something up my sleeve, man. She knows." He meant he would hit the big time someday, in some way.

"I need to get my good shoes fixed. There's a shoe repair shop on University, across from where the Galaxy used to be. Next to where the Town and Country restaurant was, do you remember that place? On the other side is the lamp shade store."

In all my 34 years I'd never heard of anyone getting their shoes repaired. Yet I'd seen the place, it'd been in business all my days and I always wondered who patronized it. I guessed my late grandfather may have. It was there close to the pharmacy where he drank his daily bromo-seltzer after work.

When Rusty was broke he never asked his family for help, so he had to be frugal. This deeply frightened me: like a glimpse of the end of my road. Scratching out a living was not for me, I'd have to cheat or something. Marry rich. The world seemed cruel to Rusty. And my other impoverished friends were crazy and by this time, starting to get government checks.

"You can take my car, just don't go looking for trouble."

"I'm innocent. She'll just have to take my word for it. She has an enemy and she'll know who it was. "

"Say. That's right," I said, a little surprised. It was like a knot coming undone just by pulling it. I was buzzed and slow on the uptake. It made sense. "Probably served her right, too."

"No. That shouldn't happen to anyone."

I let that go, feeling tricked.
_____
Tomorrow the sun would be out at last, was the forecast. Warm through the windows, and an end to a month of Sundays.

Rusty would have groceries and I'd be able to start on a new beer buzz. He'd take the car to get his shoes cobbeled, and maybe in the evening we'd get Kelderman into the car and take him to the Savoy and run into the down and out Tiny Tim.

Sherri would be forgotten already, even by Rusty, if we went to the Savoy.

Or, then again, all hell could break loose. Maybe Sherri and her landlord lover would hunt us down.
____
Life as a drunken spectator would never lose it's appeal to me. This couldn't last though. The world couldn't remain as cockeyed as all this.
___
Now at last Virginia Woolfe gave way to It's A Mad, Mad World, but I was unlucky and couldn't keep my eyes open anymore. Rusty slept and when I went to bed I was pleased he'd be out there in the morning.

Mr. Winrick

Luke 4 [20] And He closed the book, and He gave it again to the minister, and sat down. [KJV]

When Mr. Winrick still worked at the bank he persuaded my dad to open a Buick dealership in Oakapolohka, although a previous venture had failed.

I was five, six or seven and all I remember is Dad bringing home a new car every night. Jerry and David waited for him to arrive at dinner time. Gazing out the living room window,they'd see him pulling up and they'd gasp and yell and run outside.

Electras, Rivieras, Wildcats. "Does the top come down?"

Dad was a bear but a bear you could rush and outflank. Neighborhood kids wondered at us, all the years we were growing up, why his low growling and eventual thunder-clap didn't frighten us more.

We knew to back off, we noticed when the sound of his voice changed. The time to back off was when it was too late. But all the bear could do was make us abashed. He didn't ever kill you, like he threatened to weekly. He could put up with a certain amount of back-talk also.

The business started to fail, but then Mr. Winrick found Dad some partners and helped in other ways until Dad finally got out.

Then Mr. Winrick retired from the bank and sold us his house. No one knew it was for sale.

It was the one house in town my mother had always admired the most, a two story white colonial with green shutters and a large back yard for us. She couldn't believe it. Dad would build a white fence around the back yard, where she thought there should always have been a white fence.

For the next ten years, when we were arriving home after a long car-trip she would wake us in the back seat and, over our groaning, start to sing.

"Oh look everyone, we're home and isn't it beautiful, our very own little house on the corner. Let's stop just a minute and look."
_______
Mr. Winrick and his wife, Harriet, had lived at the corner of 9th and "B" since the late 1940's. They planned to move to the western edge of town, where there were woods and close curving roads and it wasn't so awfully close to the cemetery and the elementary schools. Those were the reasons my Dad offered, but he may have been kidding.

We arrived for a tour after church. My dad said "Hello, Buford!" and introduced my mother and my brothers and me. I had a sister on her way. Mom and my teacher and every woman in town told me she would "arrive" very soon now and asked what did I think of that?

Mom asked God for Jane and God agreed. That was explanation enough for me. I don't remember being curious, concerned, or interested until the upper cabinets were filled with baby bottles. And it gave me a small amount of fame for awhile, is all.
_____
Mr. Winrick called my Dad "Edward", instead of "Ed". He was formal and kindly.

I liked it when my dad talked to older men. I enjoyed a casual belief that Dad was at some toddering risk but would always handle himself exactly right. There was a funny solicitousness between men of different generations, a tolerant sense of superiority going both ways.

This day Mom was very happy but perplexed during the car ride home. Mr. Winrick had repainted one side of the house white months ago but left the other three sides weathered and cracked. Also there were little black twigs all over the lawn since the last summer storm.

"Oh that picture over the mantle!" she suddenly laughed.

My older brothers laughed too. David joked he would do the same someday.

I didn't know what anyone was talking about. I hadn't noticed anything. Mom turned in the front seat and asked, didn't I notice? She told me Mr. Winrick had a picture of himself over the mantle and there was a little light shining down on it. Everyone laughed some more and my Dad's bluish/gray eyes sort of shone but he tilted his head like maybe this wasn't fair.

"He was an admiral and spent a few years at the Pentagon."

Jerry asked, why is he called Mister?

"I think he thinks it would sound silly, to be called Admiral. Anyway Buford was a wheel."

"That's Air Force slang, Dad."

"Maybe started that way, Jerry. Anyway, he was already a submarine commander when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He was there."

Mom said, "I'm sure it was his wife or daughter who had his portrait put up like that. His daughter Janine is in one of my bridge clubs. And in P.E.O."

David sat up, alert. "Come on, Mom. What's P.E.O. stand for?"

Any mention of P.E.O. , he always demanded to know.

"I don't know, " she said quietly while looking at the houses we drove by.

Jerry, the oldest, quietly stated, "Yes you do." Dad straightened up and looked in the rear-view mirror at him.

David said, "Mom, I'm going to find out some day. So why not tell me. Hey if you don't, I'll say I learned it from you. Come on, Mom!"

Dad looked at my mom. She was smiling, looking ahead, shaking her head. She made a little cough and Dad said "David, don't blackmail your mother."

"Honestly," she said, "they whispered it to me on my first day but it was so loud there, just before the luncheon, I didn't hear quite right. But I nodded and then I had to whisper to the next pledge ---Oh, my Lord. Ed!--- I told her what I thought I heard. Oh, Lord!" Dad laughed so I laughed too because his laughter was always tickling "And now I'm embarrassed to ask again, ever since. So, David, you'll never find out from me.

"And Jerry, do you hear that? I do not know."

"You're the president. Yes you do."

"Jerry!" Dad warned.

"President!??" I scooted up to her shoulder from this middle area of the back seat and asked how could that be?

The whole damn family exclaimed and explained at once. When it was over I looked to David and he repeated it all to me slowly and calmly. There isn't just one "President". Lots of groups elect presidents.

Mom returned to the subject of the house. She wondered again at Mr. Winrick's half-hearted attempt to paint it and then started to dream aloud what all she would do with the kitchen and the living room and two baths. Everything there was comfortable but old and worn.

"Private Entrance Only!" David suddenly exclaimed.

"No!"

"How do you know? You said you didn't hear, Mom."

"I know it's not that."

Dad reminded us then, "If it wasn't for your mother I'd drop you all off in the country for some farmer to pick up."

"Parents Eat Out, " Jerry said. This was a sore point we had with our parents, they're eating out alone, though it only happened six times a year, if that.

"Yes, no, maybe so," my mother replied.
_____
But Mr. and Mrs. Winrick did not move to the hilly, forested area west of town after all; they moved next door to an upstairs apartment above Mr. Winricks aging sister.

She was Mrs Doosenbury, a widow. She looked ancient but was very tall and stood up straight.
I came to understand over the years that Mr. Winrick and his sister did not get along. Or rather, the day came I was finally old enough to have it casually mentioned in my company. The animosity was not on the surface. She hadn't spoken to her brother in twenty years, supposedly. It had something to do with money or it was due to some unfortunate off-hand remark about the late Mr. Doosenbury.

She was once the town librarian. You could see a picture of her framed at the library, taken in the 1940's. She looked elderly even then. Or, as David said, like she was prepared to be elderly. Then there was another picture I saw of her as a young woman with long brown hair, wearing a floor length black skirt and a blouse with a big bow. I was sometime in the Lusitania era.

Now Mrs. Winrick explained that the house was so big and with their children grown, there was no sense in all that work keeping it up, or moving to an even larger house.

They liked the neighborhood, so close to the downtown. Our street was the outer most ring for the town's holiday parades. It was a very wide street with pretty lawns, hedges, ever-greens and Dutch Elm trees.
___
Years passed. My sister Jane had turned five. On summer nights I was allowed out until eight or nine or ten, and I began to notice "Buford" (as we called him now) had a schedule of sorts. I'd see him at ten o'clock arriving home alone and fumbling with his key to the outside door that led to their upstairs apartment. The whole house was dark , then finally the kitchen light came on.

Jerry looked for chances to use new expressions he'd learned. Once he said Buford was "tipsy".

David, who was four years younger, said, "Yep. Never quite drunk."
____
If Dad was up and saw Buford he'd sometimes call across the drive-way to come join him on the screen-porch. The two men talked quietly and eventually my brothers sat at their feet while I weaved through everyone in circles until Dad reached out and pulled me to sit on his lap.

We knew Dad was in the Navy. It seems to me now we all heard it rather indifferently. The bigger question was how a small town hoodlum like him managed to marry a beauty queen like Mom.

Ask him what he did in the Navy and he'd say "I typed a lot". And once he'd kicked a rat off a dock into the Sea of Japan.

They talked Navy, now. The Admiral would say something like: "You watch it for awhile and you'll think it's a damn yaught!"

My oldest brother Jerry went and got a book with the words to "The Lucky Bag", and asked Dad and Mr. Winrick if they remembered.

Shoe of middy and waister’s sock,
Wing of soldier and idler’s frock,
Purser’s slops and topman’s hat,
Boatswain’s call and colt and cat,
Belt that on the berth-deck lay,
In the Lucky Bag find their way;
Gaiter, stock and red pompoonont,;;
Sailor’s pan, his pot and spoon,
Shirt of cook and trowsert's duck,
Kid and can and “doctor’s truck,
And all that’s lost, and found on board,
In the Lucky Bag is always stored.''

"Two hundred years before our time, Edward."

"Just nonsense to me."

"Same here," Buford said. "Sorry, Jerry!"

"You two don't know what the Lucky Bag is?"

"Sure," Dad said. "It's the Lost and Found on a ship."

Buford laughed. "It was the name of our school year book but I'll be damned. I never knew that's what it was. "
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I liked to visit Mrs. Doosenbury for candy, and then after a few years growing up, to look at her history books about all the Presidents. Harriet was usually there visiting in the daytime, drinking iced tea.

Mrs. Doosenbury produced a scrap-book of old newspaper articles and had me read this, from 1922.

Chased by a Mule


Dr. M.S McCreight reports a peculiar accident which happened on Wednesday to Buford Winrick, who lives in the vicinity of Liberty church, a few miles southwest of Oakapalohka.

Mr. Winrick was chasing a calf which had gotten out, and trying to get it by the halter strap, when a mule jumped out of its pasture alongside the road and chased the man and calf. It bumped right into Mr. Windrick and either bumped or kicked him on the forehead, also on the right leg, breaking the bone just above the knee and twisting the knee and jamming him up generally in pretty bad shape. He crawled, dragging the broken limb, for perhaps 150 to 200 yards to the house and managed to get up to the home and ask the operator to call Dr. McCreight. The operator also called Mr. Winrick's folks, who were attending a social affair in the neighorhood.

"That," she tapped at the photo of the young man, "is my brother as I remember him. He wanted to go to Chicago and be a gangster."

Harriet smiled, "Oh, Mary", and Miss Doosenbury said,"Oh, yes he did, Harriet. That mule knocked a little sense into him I guess."

Everything else in this scrap-book had to do with weddings, birth announcements, until it finally veered off wildly to modern times. There were stark color photos of Jackie Onassis. Glossy from Life Magazine, other-worldly from the check-out aisle magazines.

Harriet laughed and said "Wait a minute, we're not through with you, John. I have something more to show you."

She led me upstairs to see his medals and read about all of Mr. Winrick's war experiences. His framed photograph was there but without the little light shining down on it. The apartment was close and it was a still day. Loud electric fans hummed.

Oakapalohka knew her native son, Winrick, very well in 1943.

"For conspicious gallantry and intrepidity in action in the performance of his duties in the USS Amberjack during a war patrol of that vessel..." he has been awarded the Silver Star Medal. The citation further states: "As Assistant Approach Officer, his outstanding skill, excellent judgement and thorough knowledge of attack problems assisted his Commanding Officer considerably in conducting a series of successful torpedo attacks, which resulted in the sinking and damaging of enemy ships totalling more than 43,000-tons. In addition, he was of great assistance in conducting a successful reconnaissance of four enemy positions and completing a vital special mission, contributing immensely to the success of his vessel in evading extremely severe enemy countermeasures..."

___________________________________________________________________________________

One day Mr. and Mrs. Winrick took Jane and me to see the ducks and swans at the cemetary pond. The two of them made their way up the hill to the Wishing Well, so we followed.

Buford gave Jane a penny to throw in. "If I gave you a nickle would you throw it in the wishing well? Yes? What about a quarter? Ha, ha. I didn't think so."

Mrs. Winrick was quiet but seemed in a good mood. Jane went back down the hill to the swans and I followed the couple to a burial plot with a brand new stone and unbroken ground.

It had their names and their birth dates. Harriet Winrick. Buford Winrick. They explained to me in soft tones that people usually buy their own plots, to spare others the expense. They seemed proud and pleased. There was an inscription. "First, Love God". Harriet seemed dreamy.

They pointed to where Miss Doosenbury would rest. It was away over there, a couple of hills toward the grey, besmirched looking greenhouses adjacent to Forest Cemetary.

That autumn I overheard that Buford had bought his wife a fur coat. Then one day I was outside and the couple came out and I saw the coat. Harriet was holding Buford's arm and she looked small. She leaned into him. As they reached the cement stairs leading down to the walk and their car, Buford turned and gave me a smile and a friendly wave.

A week later my mother called for me to come in and told me to try to keep the neighborhood kids quiet, especially around the Doosenbury house.

A few weeks later my sister and I saw Buford coming home at dusk. Jane asked where was Harriet and I shushed her. Buford said "that's all right" as he worked the key in the door. He looked up, as if to heaven, and went inside without answering Jane.

Myself, I'd recently learned to the expression "passed on", and the sound and meaning of the phrase settled me. But Jane was five, too young for sideway glances at the eternal. I took her to the other side of the house, ready to say what happened to Harriet, but she'd either forgotten her question or kept it to herself, for Mom or for Dad.
__________________________________________________________________
One night Buford was charged with assault downtown. Dad read the paper and said only "Thursday afternoon?"

We learned Buford had broken a man's glasses. Later we heard that this man was a stranger and there had not been a fight at all.

I arrived home from school one day and David reached out and took my glasses. He put his palm on my forehead as I yelled in protest and he told me, "You're healed. You don't need these anymore, Johnny! Look at that clock on the mantle. Can't you see that the time is at hand?"

Mom intervened.

Dad traveled these years. Mom kept score and usually by Friday if any of us had got in trouble we'd bargained with her not to tell.
___
Mom and David in the kitchen. They both seemed to be laughing and arguing at the same time. Mom had been doing the dishes. Her hands were wet and sudsy, on her aproned hip now. "Who is this woman!"

"Mrs. Wormak. My English teacher."

"But she's not even in P.E.O. !! How would she know? And worse, why would she tell? Did she tell everyone or just you?"

"She told the whole class. She says it's a sorority for housewives."

"It's not 'Protect Everyone', anyway. If she's an English teacher she should know 'everyone' is one word. P.E.O. means "Protect Each Other". And it's not a 'sorority', that makes it sound silly, she means for it to sound silly.

"This is a very old organization, David, before most women got to go to college and it's mission is to help women get into college. The official meaning is "Philanthropic Educational Organization." P.E.O. Our little chapter is giving five scholarships at your school this year. FIVE. Go tell Miss or Mrs. Wormack to..."

"Go explain herself to your judicial committee?" These were Watergate days. He was kidding, as usual.

"That was a secret. It's just mean."

"Yeah, she seemed kind of proud, come to think of it."

"It's almost like that, you know. Trying to put people down."

"Do you wonder who told?"

"What? Do you know? Oh!" She waved him away. "That's just awful. Awful. I am so mad...Wait, I'm not finished with you, I have something more to say. Come back.

"I want you to ask her tomorrow what she thinks is the difference between 'protect everyone' and 'protect each other'. "
_______________________________
Admiral Winrick smoked outside in his undershirt now and paced the sidewalk, habitually opening and closing his fists over his head.

"Do you think he's trying to catch bugs flying out of his hair?" Jerry asked me.

For weeks, for a Spring and a Summer, Mr. Winrick was like this. He would also seem to be making a transparent but nervous attempt to look normal by gesturing with his hands and moving his lips. Like he could somehow fool us that he wasn't alone.

There were fairly loud denouements. For instance once I heard him exclaim, "As big as life!"

Finally, as I understood it, the Navy came to pick him up. We never saw him again.
_________________________
After his death I took my brothers to see the grave. They were in college and high school now.

On the stone there was that religious inscription. "First, Love God".

My brother David said, "Modest". My brother Jerry said "Frugal!" They had some game of matching one another synonym for synonym.

"Pious."

"Devout. Devoted."

David concluded, "Well. I liked them both."

"I wonder what Dad thought of Buford," Jerry said. "You know, he almost ruined Dad."

"Not to hear Dad tell it." David said.