The Luckiest Block
By Barbara Lipkin

Marigold Lane was the luckiest block in all of Waterglen Estates. Everybody said so.
Until people started to die.

Brenda and Paul Prentice were the seventh couple to move onto Marigold Lane. By that
time, Patti and Alan Franklin, the third couple, were well established as block
organizers. Especially Patti.

Waterglen Estates, an Active Adult Community, rose out of the prairie in sections.
Marigold Lane was one of the last blocks to be completed. The small ranch houses
began at the south end and made their way north in record time. Patti Franklin kept
pace without even breathing hard.

The Prentices were still moving their belongings into the house when the front doorbell
rang. Patti Franklin, small, compact and looking younger than her 62 years stood on
the doorstep with a big, welcoming smile and a clipboard. “Welcome to Marigold Lane,”
she said. “I’m collecting everybody’s names and contact info.” Brenda Prentice,
disheveled and dazed from her move, took the clipboard and wordlessly filled in the
required information.

Marigold Lane boasted 22 houses, each occupied by one or two ‘active adults.’ Patti
Franklin assigned herself the position of block organizer and did a truly amazing job.
There were block parties, patio crawls, Halloween decorating, Christmas Parties, and
Easter Egg Hunts. There were restaurant and theater outings. Once they all went on a
hayride. Marigold Lane and its organizer became legendary in Waterglen Estates. Its
residents provoked envy in the subdivision. “You guys have all the fun,” people said. “I
wish we had somebody to organize our block.”

Time passed. Patti extended her scope and became something of a housemother to
Marigold Lane. She began a monthly newsletter, serving as reporter, editor and
delivery lady. She collected people’s emergency information and delivered updated
lists monthly, door to door along with the newsletters. She was the first to notify the
residents of an ambulance or fire department visit, sending group emails followed by
regular updates and progress reports.

“This is getting a little scary,” Brenda commented to her husband after one such email.
“She means well,” Paul said.

“Oh, I know. I’m sure she means well,” Brenda agreed. “But don’t you think this is all a
bit over the top?”

Maybe, but if so, Patti remained oblivious. Though attendance at her events had
started to taper off, she wasn’t worried. Still, she did slow down a little. She began to
plan only one event a month, instead of two.

The third annual Christmas Party was a moderate success, but life on Marigold Lane
got pretty quiet after that. Alan Franklin noticed his wife looking a bit down in the dumps
and tried to interest her in signing up for a painting class or joining the little theater
group, but that wasn’t really her thing. She craved the excitement of making things
happen.

The Prentices were having a fairly quiet winter also, which was exactly what they
wanted. When Patti knocked on their door one evening to deliver the latest newsletter,
they were relaxing in front of the TV, but they were polite people and tried not to show
their irritation. Brenda made some coffee and they visited for a little while, but Patti
didn’t stay long. Later that evening, just as she was about to get ready for bed, Patti
heard sirens, looked out her window, and saw the ambulance stop in front of the
Prentice home.

Patti raced across the street. Even as she did so, she could see she was already too
late. Paul Prentice was standing outside his house in shock. The paramedics carried a
stretcher out to the ambulance. The body on the stretcher was zipped into a bag.
“Brenda’s gone,” Paul said, dazed and uncomprehending. “We were getting ready for
bed and all of a sudden, she just fell down. She didn’t say a word. She was gone, in a
second.”

Patti took charge. She consulted her emergency contacts list and called the Prentices’
son, who lived close to Waterglen Estates. Then she roused some of the neighbors to
stay with Paul until the son could get there. Later, she organized the collation after the
funeral. Of course, she was sorry that Brenda Prentice was dead, but she took
satisfaction in knowing that she’d been instrumental in smoothing the way for the family.
​
Winter turned to spring by fits and starts, in the usual Midwestern way. Paul Prentice
kept to himself, but the neighbors saw him go out for groceries or walk outside if the
weather wasn’t too bad, so they knew he was alright. On a day that was still cold but
bright and sunny, Paul went for a walk. He noticed his neighbor Bill Hall talking to Patti
Franklin as the two stood by the group mailbox across the street and he waved to them
but kept on going. As he turned the corner, he thought he heard something. He
stopped, turned, and looked back. Bill Hall was lying on the ground, writhing in pain
while Patti crouched beside him. She had her phone out, and by the time Paul reached
them, he could already hear the sirens approaching.

“What happened, Bill?” Paul asked.

“I don’t know,” Bill moaned. “One minute I was opening my mailbox and the next
second I was on the ground. I didn’t know anything could hurt so much.”

The paramedics arrived and took charge then. Paul watched them drive away. Patti
had already disappeared back into her house. She had work to do.

Poor Bill had a broken hip. He was a widower who lived alone two doors down from the
Franklins. Patti organized the neighbors in shifts, and Bill was kept well supplied with
meals and company during his convalescence. Patti accepted her neighbors’
accolades gracefully. Everyone was shocked when Bill died in his sleep.

Before winter entirely released its grasp on Waterglen Estates, sirens disturbed the
peace of Marigold Lane three more times. Sally Barsanti had a heart attack and
succumbed before the ambulance reached the hospital. Dave Felder fell from a ladder
while attempting to change the light bulb in a ceiling fixture. The fall broke his neck.
Jay Halverson, an elderly gentleman living by himself at the end of the street, slipped on
the icy steps but they said it was the stroke that killed him. Patti Franklin stepped up to
the plate after each disaster and the neighbors all pulled together, but they didn’t smile
as much as they used to.

Marigold Lane didn’t seem like the luckiest block in Waterglen Estates anymore. In fact,
people were beginning to say it was cursed.

Paul Prentice didn’t believe in such nonsense. “There’s a perfectly reasonable
explanation,” he told Annie Felder, Dave’s widow. The most likely being that we’re all
old and these sorts of things tend to happen when we get old.”

The widow nodded. “You’re right, of course,” she said. “Still, my David was in pretty
good shape. He did tai chi exercises every day, you know. His balance was excellent.
I don’t understand it.” Annie shook her head sadly.

Paul patted her arm. As he walked back to his house, he thought about what Dave’s
wife had said. He’d thought Brenda was in pretty good shape, too. She watched what
she ate and exercised sensibly. Her blood pressure was normal. Yet she’d suffered a
heart attack. “Just goes to show, when it’s your time, that’s it,” he told himself. But it
bothered him. Brenda, Bill, Sally, Dave, Jay. He called his friend John, who listened
carefully.

The police chief, John Wright, had been a friend of the Prentices for a long time. He
agreed with Paul that five deaths on one street in the course of a few months seemed
excessive, even for an ‘Over-55’ community. John called the coroner.

The coroner knew the police chief was not a person with an overactive imagination.
He got to work. When he reported his findings back to the chief, Wright called in his
detectives.

The sirens didn’t sound this time. The police car didn’t make much noise driving up to
the Franklin house. Patti Franklin took a last look at Marigold Lane before she entered
the car.

“Murder,” Paul Prentice told the neighbors as the police drove Patti away. “A different
method every time, but the link was Patti. She was with each victim just before they
died.”

“I don’t understand why she would have done such a thing.” Annie Felder said. “She
didn’t even know any of us until we moved here.”

Alan Franklin had been standing quietly with the others. “Patti loved to plan and
organize. It was her whole life. I wonder if she’ll find something to organize in prison,”
he mused.

People moved away from Marigold Lane. The new people had no one to organize
them, which was perfectly fine. Sometimes luck can be bad instead of good. Marigold
Lane isn’t a lucky street anymore.

​​​After retiring from a 20 year career in nursing, Barbara Lipkin began to seriously pursue her life-long interest in the arts, including painting and writing. Her paintings hang in a number of private and corporate collections. She teaches Adult Ed painting and drawing classes. She lives in a Chicago suburb.

* * * 

One Final Note on Life
By C. M. Lanning

The day Death came for me was of much smaller consequence than younger me ever thought possible. And older me is just fine with the way events transpired, for I didn’t want any Pomp and Circumstance.
 
When you’re young and think about dying, if you can even begin to process the very thought, pushing back ignorance and fear, you figure the world will stop. It may seem arrogant, but that’s how young minds think. Invincible and the world revolves around them. It’s a bit charming when that doesn’t dominate the entire personality.
 
But as I grew older, and a few friends even called me wiser, I began to realize with seven billion people on this dust ball that the vast majority of those people would continue on drinking and marrying as if I’d never existed in the first place. And the acceptance of that idea began to provide me a bit of comfort. For when young and beautiful, attention is craved and desired. But when old and wrinkled, to be left alone by the rest of the world is serenity.
 
So it came to be that I got sick. That’s a common thing when you get old. The body just can’t fight things off like it used to. Now don’t get me wrong. Some folk can plow the field until they’re 99 and die in a rocking chair on the front porch, a moderate amount of strength remaining with them until the not-so-bitter end. I was not one of those people.
 
When the doctors gave me my diagnosis at the age of 82, I had a choice to make. I could fight like Hell for another four to six months of life contained to a hospital bed and owe it all to a cure worse than the sickness, or I could make my peace, enjoy my last weeks until Death came for me. I chose the latter.
 
I didn’t have much in the way of a bucket list because my life was plenty exciting up until this point. As a writer for the biggest newspaper in the country, I traveled the world covering wars, interviewing diplomats and documenting the course of history for the better part of 65 years.
 
That’s right, my writing career was one whole human old enough to retire, and I’m damn proud of it.
 
I wrote the final words of heroic soldiers as they lie dying on the Earth. And I delivered questions to powerful, though not always righteous, souls whose decisions impacted millions beneath them. The thing both had in common was at the end of life, they’d walk the same path, the path I too ended up walking.
And, at the ripe age of 80, I laid my pen to rest. I’d said all I had to say. Well, almost all. But the final piece of my writing could only be accessed once I’d made the journey no living body could make, and yet one every soul would.
 
The day I started that journey began like any other. I was up at 6:30 a.m. sitting on my porch and watching the first pink and orange hues begin to dot the horizon. I knew from the unsteadiness both in my hands and my heart that this would be the last one I saw. And I was okay with that; this sunrise was as spectacular as the thousands in my life that came before it.
 
I’d already set my Earthly affairs in order with lawyers and folk smarter than I. They assured me my possessions and things I couldn’t take with me would be left to the designated few I’d chosen.
 
With limited strength, I tidied up around my house. With a guest as potent as Death, I surely didn’t want the place looking sloppy. My military father had raised me better than that. Bed made every day, sheets so tight one could bounce a quarter off of them.
 
And at last, when I felt my endurance dwindling, I sat down on the couch and breathed a deep sigh.
 
I never considered in all the times I wrote about a personified Death that it would see my work. But somehow, it did. And as my long life passed before me, good moments and the bad, my words began to fill the air. Every article I’d ever written, words that would remain long after I made the journey were poured over me as though I were a clam in the deep sea. And then I was free. Free of pain, free of sorrow, free of every earthly thing that ever weighed me down.
 
Death helped me up off the couch, and no muscles creaked or bones popped. We walked to the front door in a world where my house was the only one. Gone were the neighbors, and all other of man from the world.
 
All that remained was a dirt path over a seemingly endless pasture under a bright orange moon and all manner of twinkling stars beyond my ability to count.
 
“This is the path,” was all he said and motioned me forward.
 
The path we walk at the end of life materializes differently for all, but we’ll all end up walking it regardless.
 
So I walked through the dirt and grass with bare feet that felt no pain. No bugs crawled up to bite me. No snakes struck my heel. And I walked at peace, breathing clean air with a mind at ease.
 
Time isn’t measured on the journey at life’s end. You just walk onward until you know when to stop.
 
At some point, I came to a wooden bench next to a rolling stream. I sat down and found some paper and the pen I’d put to rest. This is where I wrote my last few notes, having completed the journey.
 
To whoever reads this, know I am happy. If there were regrets, I don’t recall them. And that’s just fine by me.

C. M. Lanning is an Arkansas journalist living in Fayetteville. He’s been published in Nebo and Foliate Oak. Lanning has accepted a publishing offer for his novel The Last Fire Mage, and it will be released soon.

* * * 
​​
Something New
By John Sheirer

The knock on Jenn's apartment door was firm and insistent, like a police knock. Had she committed any criminal acts of late? She couldn't recall anything worse than a made-up character in a nonfiction personal essay; along with a few random semicolon infractions.
 
The pale-complexioned men at her door both wore dark suits and neckties. Sunglasses would have completed the cliché, but their eyes were bare, one set blue, one brown. One was tall and the other not. Tall man wore a nametag reading Smith. Not tall was Jones. A small drone rested on the sidewalk behind them, its tiny copter blades still but poised for potential motion at any moment.
 
Jones shoved a copy of Jenn's recently published book just inches from her face. She leaned backward slightly, a reflex.
 
"Are you the author, ma'am?" he barked.
 
"Umm, yes," Jenn replied.
 
"We're from Amazon," Smith said, his voice a higher-pitched imitation of the other man's clipped tone.
 
"Does that make you Amazons?" Jenn asked.
 
Smith stifled a sigh. "We get that a lot, ma'am."
 
"You don't look South American," Jenn replied.
 
"That one, too," Smith said, his voice flat.
 
Jones jumped into the brief silence: "Your sales have been poor since publication, so we've come to collect."
 
"Collect what?" Jenn asked.
 
"Collect what you owe us," he said.
 
"What do I owe you?" Jenn asked.
 
Jones produced an Amazon Kindle Fire tablet from his breast pocket and slid his fingers across the screen just out of Jenn's line of sight. After a moment's calculation, he said, "Seventy-two dollars and forty-six cents."
 
"For what?" Jenn asked.
 
"As my partner indicated," Smith said, all business in a Joe Friday way, "your sales are poor."
 
"I haven't checked lately," Jenn replied. "Things can't be that bad. My Aunt Sally said on Facebook that she bought a copy just last week."
 
Smith averted his eyes to look into the far distance while Jones spoke: "Your Aunt Sally lied to you, ma'am. Probably just being nice. None the less, Aunt Sally's a liar."
 
"We're not running a charity, Ma'am," Smith said. He sighed an unstifled sigh this time, and not in what could be interpreted as a sympathetic way. "Seventy-two dollars and forty-six cents," he continued. "We need it now."
 
Jenn thought about her student loans. An MFA in creative writing isn't cheap, even from a mediocre school such as the one she attended. Most of the classes were online, some available only through AOL. Who knew AOL was still a thing? Her current part-time teaching gig at the local community college didn't pay much or offer health insurance. The nagging tightness in her chest needed a doctor's attention, and doctors also don't run charities. Not in this country, anyway. She had considered driving for Uber, but her car was on the verge of repossession. If Uber ran credit checks on their potential drivers, then she wouldn't make the cut.
 
Seventy-two dollars and forty-six cents was food she wouldn't be eating.
 
She lifted her right index finger toward Smith and Jones, the universal signal for, I have an idea. "Wait here, please," she said, all business herself now, and she scurried back inside the tiny apartment that she was subletting with questionable legality from an unemployed friend with an MFA in dance.
 
After ten seconds, just as the Amazon men started leaning toward the door to look for her, Jenn returned with a mid-sized cardboard box.
 
"I've got these," she said, holding the open box out to the men. "Fourteen copies. That's all I have left from the twenty-five I ordered for myself when it was first published."
 
Smith and Jones peered into the box. Inside were one dozen plus two copies of Jenn's first and only book, a novel full of love and wisdom and wonderful syntax. She had devoted five years of her life to that book, drafted it on a dying laptop, once shiny and new, given to her by her parents ages ago when she went off to college. She had revised it countless times, worked out difficult plot points in the shower, nurtured the main character to hard-earned insights, first envisioned the ending while on a bad eHarmony first-and-last date with a guy whose name she used for the protagonist's unlikable ex-husband, pushed herself to keep going through seventeen publisher rejections, and finally won acceptance from a crowd-funded, start-up publishing company based on another continent that paid her an advance in an impressively thick stack of foreign currency, each bill bearing the face of a deceased king. The local bank gave her three new, crisp $20 bills in exchange for all those dead kings. She spent all three on one printer ink cartridge.
 
The men hesitated, stared into the box, exchanged glances, looked in the box again.
 
Smith said, "This is not the way we usually conduct business." Jenn detected, for the first time, a slight hint of humanity in the way he inserted the word "usually" into that sentence.
 
"This is all I have," Jenn said in a small voice. "This is everything."
 
Jones asked, "Fourteen copies, you say?" Jenn nodded. He handed his Kindle Fire tablet to the Smith, who swiped his right pinky finger across the smooth glass for an agonizing half minute.
 
"That'll work," Smith finally said, more to his partner than Jenn. "Let's saddle up."
 
Jones turned and retrieved the drone, lifting it to shoulder height. The taller Smith took the box of books from Jenn, secured the flaps with a few expert rip-and-tugs on a roll of packing tape, and then attached the box to the underside of the drone with mechanisms that looked remarkably like buzzard talons.
 
Smith then pulled a remote control from his pocket, extended a small antenna, twisted a few dials, and the tiny propellers buzzed to life. Jones heaved the drone into the air. It dipped momentarily under the weight of Jenn's life's work in multiple paperbacks, motors grinding at a slightly deeper pitch and nearly scraping the ground. Smith worked the remote and applied some generous hip-action body English while nibbling his tongue. The drone then it righted itself, buzzed industriously, rose above the scrubby trees, banked over the nearby buildings, and was gone from sight.
 
All three watched it go and stood for a moment in reverent silence.
 
"Ma'am," Jones said, nodding to Jenn.
 
"You have yourself a nice day," Smith said in her general direction. And then they turned and walked away, their steps purposeful, dedicated to their next task.
 
Jenn watched them leave, and then a strange look passed over her features--not exactly inspiration, but something close. She spun on her heel and strode back into her apartment with at least the same sense of purpose as the men from Amazon, perhaps even more.
 
Her ancient laptop rested in its usual spot on the kitchen table. She pressed the power button, relieved to hear that familiar tone, like an piano chord played with a violin bow, assuring her that the faithful word processing machine would glow to life at least this one more time. That tone told her that the world was full of possibilities laid out before her like pages of an unwritten second book.
 
Today would be the day she would start something new, a new book that featured a determined protagonist making the most of a dangerous, unpredictable world.
 
Perhaps she'd set the book somewhere exotic, maybe near a major river in South America.

John Sheirer lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, and has taught writing and communications for 26 years at Asnuntuck Community College in Enfield, Connecticut, where he serves as editor of Freshwater Literary Journal (submissions welcome). His books include memoir, fiction, poetry, essays, political satire, and photography. Find him at JohnSheirer.com.  

* * * ​​

Uncle Doug
By William Wilcox

I watched the bleak white fields pass by as we headed over to Wisconsin. The drive to
Cloud Lake always took an eternity. I could see the stubble of the cornrows, one after the other,
with a few shivering cows clustered together here and there. I imagined being the king of an
underground city, hidden beneath the snow. I stared out into the barren fields and clumps of
trees, wondering where the entry to the hidden kingdom might be. Probably in the trees, but it
would have to be fir trees or the secret city would be exposed on winter days like this. The
people would sneak out in scavenging parties and blend in with the surface people, bringing back
supplies to build our city within the massive cave.

I’d never been to a funeral before. Nobody I knew had ever died before. Grammy and Granddad
died before I was old enough to know them. My sisters, Sandy and Kate, talked about them all
the time, how Granddad would give them treats and bounce them on his knee, and how Grammy
used to call me a “rascal” when I’d try to grab her glasses as a baby. Dad’s parents were long
gone before my sisters were even born. They were country people. Dad had grown up by a
crossroads about twelve miles outside of Colfax. Dad didn’t talk about his parents much. My
grandfather farmed and my grandmother taught in the one-room schoolhouse Dad attended. Now
we were making the trip to Cloud Lake, because Mom said we needed to say good-bye to her
Uncle Doug.

Uncle Doug and Aunt Sally were the only really old people I knew. Well, there were the
Plimptons who lived behind us in the city, and they weren’t nearly as old as Uncle Doug was.
And mostly us kids only knew old man Plimpton because he’d say hello over the back fence as
he mowed his yard. I didn’t know Mrs. Plimpton hardly at all. She seemed cheery the few times
I saw her. I was in their house once when they had our family over for Christmas cookies, and
they had a big sailfish mounted over their fireplace. They moved away when I was still little.


Uncle Doug had been just a boy during the big Cloud Lake fire, which Mom said wiped out half
the town. They think it was started late in the afternoon, May 15, 1906, by a spark from one of
the saws at the Cloud Lake Lumber Mill. Uncle Doug and Grammy had huddled with my great
grandmother in their buggy on the south side of Cloud Lake and watched as the fire swept
through the town. When night fell, the fire lit up the sky. People said they could see it as far
away as Colfax and Chetek. My great grandfather joined the rest of the men in town as they
tried to no avail to pump water into the fire. The only thing that saved what was left of the town
was that the wind changed directions a little in the middle of the night so it pushed the fire out of
town. The fire destroyed over 100 homes, a dozen businesses and two churches. Uncle Doug
said he had never seen anything in his life so amazing and tragic.

As soon as he was eighteen, Uncle Doug had enlisted in the infantry and served in World War I.
He never saw any action, but he almost died of the flu he caught on board ship on the way over.
He also got to see Paris, where he saw the Eiffel Tower and took a liking to the wine. He said it
was the first time he had been around people who didn’t speak English, and he didn’t care for it.
It made him feel intimidated and out of place. And he missed Cloud Lake, and he wanted to get
home.

Between the wars Uncle Doug had been in the Civilian Conservation Corps, Mom said, which
was something President Roosevelt came up with to keep people working during the Great
Depression. He had gone out west where he led a contingent of ‘boys’ (who were men mostly in
their twenties) as they built trails and dug pits for outhouses in national forests. The boys slept
together in big, smelly tents and worked ten- or twelve-hour days to made $30 a month to send
home to their families.

During World War II he’d been assigned to a stateside post. He was a full colonel by then, and
he and his young bride were housed in a large, stately home on post at Fort Stewart, Georgia. A
young, black steward – a private – was assigned to tend to his needs. Uncle Doug said that part
made him uncomfortable – that he mostly just let his steward run amok because he wasn’t
comfortable giving him orders. It felt too much like slavery. That’s when Uncle Doug started
collecting war souvenirs. He was the quartermaster at Fort Stewart, and he put the word out he
was interested in military souvenirs. When soldiers came back with souvenirs from Europe or
the Pacific and they were sick of lugging the stuff around, they’d get word that Col. McKenney
would happily take the stuff off their hands. He kept all the stuff he collected in a padlocked
shed out back of his quarters. Sometimes Uncle Doug would let his steward give him a hand
carrying stuff out to the shed.

And Uncle Doug was mayor of Cloud Lake once. Dad asked him what party he was, expecting
him to answer ‘Republican’ or ‘Democrat.’ Instead, Uncle Doug answered he was a ‘wet.’ He
said there’d been an effort “by all the old ladies” to shut down the town’s three taverns during
the fifties, and he had fought on the side of keeping them open. He won by a dozen votes. The
wets defeated the move to make Cloud Lake a dry town, and Uncle Doug was voted out after one
four-year term. Uncle Doug told Dad he had enjoyed the excitement of politics and being a
bigshot around town. People said he didn’t hurt the town much, but he didn’t help it much
either. But the taverns stayed open.

Uncle Doug said he’d had enough and retired from the insurance business in 1965.


When I was little we’d go see Uncle Doug and Aunt Sally pretty often. They always had licorice
candies out, which I liked. Aunt Sally had a sweet tooth, Mom said. They lived in a little white
house just a block off Main Street in Cloud Lake. In case Aunt Sally ran out of candy, there was
a ten cent store on Main called Ray’s Dairy that sold all the best candy – Bonomo’s Turkish
Taffy, Slow Pokes, Mary Janes, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Pixie Sticks, wax lips and pop bottles and
Nut Goodies. Dad’s favorites were the Pearson’s Salted Nut Rolls. He said he liked the way
they were both sweet and salty at the same time. There were only a few streets in Cloud Lake,
which, obviously, sat at the edge of a lake, which was just on the other side of Main Street.
There was even a small beach about a quarter mile up the road, so any time we went for a visit in
the summer we always brought our swimsuits. Dad would walk us down there and watch us
while Mom stayed back to chat with Uncle Doug and Aunt Sally.

Mom said the town had grown up because of the lumber mill, but farming was what had kept the
town alive. In the summer there was a little bit of tourism with the few people that spent
weekends at their lake places, but mostly the town was focused on farming. Besides Ray’s
Dairy, there were only a few other businesses on Main Street. There was a Coast To Coast
Hardware Store, which wasn’t just a hardware store – it pretty much served as the department
store for the town, selling clothing for men, women and children, as well as a few accessories,
and bicycles, toys, washing machines, refrigerators, stoves and televisions. You never knew
what you might find at the Coast To Coast. My sister Kate teased me that I’d better be careful or
I could get lost in there. Cloud Lake also had a small diner with a soda fountain, a barber shop, a
beauty salon, a storefront realtor, a bank, and, at the end of the main drag, Kylinger’s Funeral
Home and a Shell station. Dad joked that if you blinked as you drove through you might miss it.


Uncle Doug had a ruddy, round face with a few dark splotches. He hiked up his pants, so there
was a paunch both above and below his belt. (Dad used to call that “Dunlap’s Disease – because
his stomach done laps over his belt.”) Uncle Doug wore a bolo tie over his plaid shirt. I had
never seen a bolo tie before. It looked like a piece of polished turquoise with two shoe strings
hanging from it. He said he had gotten accustomed to wearing them when he’d lived out in the
Dakotas as an officer in the CCC in the thirties. He joked it came in handy “when I needed to
get dressed in a hurry, he-he.” (Dad looked uncomfortable as he chuckled a little at his joke,
Mom frowned and glanced at Aunt Sally as she brought out lemon bars, but I think I missed the
joke all together.)

On one of our visits, when I was still in first grade, Uncle Doug patted me on the head and asked
me, “Hello short stuff, you look like a Twin – are you one of the Twins?” I wondered why he
thought a six-year-old would be playing for the Minnesota Twins. I guess my Twins hat threw
him off.

“Yeah, Uncle Doug,” I humored him. “I’m a Twin.”

“Well, you must be a short stop, then, eh, short stuff?”

“Yep, a short stop. You got it.”

Uncle Doug had hunting trophies throughout his house – deer and moose and bear heads peering
out from polished wood – which I thought were kind of nifty and spooky at the same time.
Sandy and Kate hated the trophies. They thought they were gruesome. Though I had mixed
feelings about them, they made me think of how much I would like to go hunting some day with
Uncle Doug. He said I could go when I got older and could carry a rifle for a mile. That day
would never come during Uncle Doug’s lifetime.

But to me the best part of visiting was getting to see the basement. Uncle Doug had a military
museum down there. Evidently the collecting he’d done during the World Wars was only the
beginning. He went to yard sales and flea markets and got his hands on a few Civil War and
Spanish American War souvenirs as well, and he gave Dad and me a guided tour while Mom,
Sandy and Kate stayed upstairs. Uncle Doug had a full confederate officer’s dress uniform,
complete with a sword. He had several muskets and rifles from both the Civil War and Spanish
American War eras and a Spanish flag he said had been captured in Cuba.

The stuff from the World Wars was more interesting to me, though, as he led us around the
room. He had a stack of German helmets with bullet or shrapnel holes in them. He had a full
Nazi SS officer uniform. It didn’t have a hole in it. Too bad. Uncle Doug also had a formal
Nazi dagger, with a swastika on the handle, which he said had belonged to Goebbels. I had no
idea who Goebbels was or how Uncle Doug knew the dagger belonged to him. Uncle Doug had
also collected hand guns, rifles and machine guns. There were even about a dozen artillery shells
about as tall as me he said had been fired but turned out to be “duds.” He even had a mortar.
Dad said he was surprised Uncle Doug didn’t have an old jeep or a tank parked out in his
backyard. Uncle Doug delighted himself with his collection, and it delighted this six-year-old as
well. I think Dad was interested, though he had seen it all before – much of it first hand in the
war.


The last time I’d seen Uncle Doug that fall, he was in the hospital in Eau Claire. Mom pulled me
out of fourth grade for the day to go see him. She said he had a stroke. All I knew was he cried
a lot and mistook me for a little girl – one of his other young relatives I guess. He didn’t seem to
be the same Uncle Doug at all, looking all small there in the hospital bed, with medical tubes
going every which way and creepy machines that whirred and beeped all the time surrounding
him. He looked like an object rather than a person. It made me uncomfortable seeing him that
way.

Mom took me for a double vanilla ice cream cone on the way home.


Now they had him in an open casket at the little Presbyterian Church. (Mom used to joke that
Cloud Lake had all the main religions – Presbyterians, Lutherans and Catholics.) The casket was up at the front of the chapel, where Uncle Doug had rarely attended services. I was too scared to go up there to see him. After some discussion about how creepy it was, Sandy and Kate went up and said their goodbyes. They were much older than me though. I was afraid. I was afraid of ghosts. I was afraid Uncle Doug might open his eyes and sit up. I was afraid of dead people, I guess. I stayed back with Dad when Mom and the girls went up. All I could see was Uncle Doug’s nose sticking up out of the casket. It wasn’t so red anymore.

Undertaker Kylinger sat next to Dad while the ladies carried on. He had jet black, slicked back
hair and brown teeth and wore a dark, pin-striped suit. “It took me all day to fix him up,” he
muttered, barely audibly.

“Excuse me?” Dad replied.

“I’m sorry. Were you close kin to old Doug?” the undertaker asked Dad.

“Not really,” Dad said. “He was my wife’s uncle. No direct relation to me.”

“Well, good thing,” the undertaker said, taking Dad’s response as a signal he could confide in
him. “He was a crazy old coot. Do you know he had a basement full of unexploded shells from
the war? He could have gotten us all killed. We might have lost half the town. What if there
had been a fire?”

“Well, he seemed to know what he was doing,” Dad said. “Besides, there wasn’t.”
​

It wasn’t too long before old Minister Tom Witherspoon told us all to go sit down. He was a
rickety, feeble old man himself who looked like he might be one of Undertaker Kylinger’s next
customers. He gave a nice talk about Uncle Doug, only he called him “Dave” throughout the
service. “Dave” had been a fine man who had served his country in two wars. “Dave” had been
one of the best mayors Cloud Lake had ever had. “Dave” had been a loving and devoted
husband to Sally. “Dave” had loved the outdoors and was always happiest when he was close to
nature.

I looked over and saw Mom shaking like jelly and turning red. I thought at first she was
overcome with grief, but then I saw her bite her finger. She would do that when she was trying
not to burst out laughing. Dad, Sandy and Kate noticed her about the same time, and that set
them off. Sandy and Kate were kicking their legs and kept their heads down. Dad looked like he
was going to bust a gut. He was red as a tomato and his face was all squinched up. I thought I
was going to fall out of the pew. We must have all looked really grief-stricken.

Dad had to gather himself up since he was a pallbearer. Outside in the cemetery, old Minister
Witherspoon managed to get Doug’s name right before they lowered him into the ground. There
were no more hitches. It was a nice, quiet service on a gray day. They were lucky they had a
warm enough day to do the burial. Sometimes in the northern climate they would have to wait
weeks or even months for the ground to thaw enough to put a body down. But there was no
problem for Uncle Doug.
​
Afterward, we had brownies and delicious lemon bars down in the church basement, and on the
way home Dad and Mom bought us all double ice cream cones even though it was winter.
During the drive I thought about how I would mobilize my cave people to defend against
invaders from space to save all people both above and below the ground.

A former newspaper writer, the author has been involved in other endeavors in recent years, including contributing to the roots music blog twangville.com. The author lives in the mountains near Front Royal, Virginia.

* * *