“We’re gonna die!” we yelled in unison.

The car was barreling down the mountain road at sixty-five. A spring breeze blew through the rolled-down windows, the radio was turned up with decibels enough to break the sound barrier, and our eyes squinted in the sun’s flashing pre-sunset glare.

It was great, this feeling of freedom; like flying or shouting at the top of a mountain. We laughed as we yelled and every so often the road twisted sharply enough so that we almost believed the top-of-our-lungs mantra we’d adopted on our road trip.

Bottomless drops became tangled montages of green brush that turned into rolling hills. When we reached a mid-point of the road, we slowed and turned into a barely visible driveway hidden to all but those who knew it was there. Brush on every side walled in the long path, barely worn tire tracks led us onward, the spring breeze that had blown our hair and stung our eyes in our race down the mountain now kissed our cheeks.

Ahead and slightly to our left it rested in the arms of the half acre of cleared land. We stopped, cut the engine, and heard something most of us had rarely heard before in our young lives. Complete silence, a deafening presence.

to be continued . . .

Photo: www.wikimedia commons.org 800px-Mountain_Road_in_Corfu-wikimediacommons.org_.jpg Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ;  www.freepublicdomanpictures a-very-steep-country-road-in-the-southern-appalachian-mountains_w725_h546-free-public-domain-pictures.jpg

They’d been hiking for hours. Sweat trickled down his face from the top of his hairline to his neck, a tiny drop detouring to touch the corner of his eye, momentarily blurring his vision. The intensity of the day’s heat had grown from warm and inviting to suffocating.

“How much longer, Dad?” asked his seven year old son.

He looked three paces back to Corbin. The boy was pushing a wisp of his strawberry blond hair out of his eyes. His freckles seemed to multiply under the hot sun.

He took a breath to answer, then paused. He didn’t really know how much longer. He didn’t know because he had insisted they wander from the trail. He had wanted to teach this little guy, the one who was too comfortable with quiet pursuits, that the world was big and he needed to match its wildness with strength of his own. It had been his idea to take this hike into the woods filled with blackened trees and matted leaves and heard but unseen animals so that his boy would learn about manhood even at this young age. A boy had to learn.

How much longer? As a father and as a man he had never been comfortable with acknowledging ignorance, even to himself. When faced with a question, he always had an answer, even if he really didn’t. Never in his adult life had he uttered the words “I don’t know”.

Upon first discovering their situation, they had hiked on and found the opposite edge of the woods. Progress, he had thought. They would certainly pick up a trail without the obstruction of branches to keep them from seeing far. They hadn’t.

“Dad?”

Corbin’s voice was small in the grand expanse.

He stopped, then turned aside to sit on a large rock near the path.

“Let’s sit down for awhile. Pretty out here, isn’t it?”

As their breathing slowed from the huff of hiking to the soft in and out of rest, a sound, nearly imperceptible, quenched the silence.

Corbin’s eyes followed the sound of a muffled whine, and he slowly got up and tiptoed to where he could better observe its source. It was a puppy, old enough to wander, young enough to need its mother. The mother trotted up from behind some bushes that grew crookedly out of the rocky soil. She sat, nudging the puppy, and licked it with her hot tongue.

“She’s kissing him,” Corbin whispered to his father.

The dog picked the puppy up by the scruff of its neck and followed the distant call of her master.

Father and son watched as the dog trotted off. He hesitated, then reached down and hugged his son, kissing the top of his head.

“Let’s follow them,” he said.

Photos: goodfreephotos.com, 1280px-Dog_nose Elucidate CC by 3.0 en.wikipedia.org Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

“I’m just saying that if everyone does what Norton’s is doing,” Julia swallowed, “there won’t be anyone left to pay the utilities.”

It had been nine months since she had first joined the coop, and Julia was sitting in their quarterly coop meeting. Since the coop had started, they had gained three new businesses.They were bound to run into difficulties here and there, she knew; but when she’d received her last utility bill, she’d nearly fainted. Three businesses had followed Norton’s lead and declared that they could not meet their utility payments, leading to larger bills for everyone else.

Caesar O’Swiffy cleared his throat.

“We all know that Norton’s had unexpected legal expenses,”

“From the lawsuit you filed on account of running into a stack of boxes,” thought Julia.

“And the other three had lower profit margins than expected,” he declared. “I suggest you just calm down, Julia. You seem, hmm, rather unregulated in your comments today. It’s bordering on hateful. What do you have against these four businesses anyway?”

Everyone turned toward Julia, and she sank down in her chair.

“Nothing. I have nothing against them. I just don’t want to use my profits to pay for their electric. . .”Julie’s voice faded under Caesar O’Swiffy’s gaze.

“I didn’t realize the depth of your selfishness, Julia,” Mr. O’Swiffy countered.

Members of the coop began mumbling to each other, but Julia didn’t stay to find out what they were saying. She wanted some chocolate, wanted it now, and the candy dishes set out at the beginning of the meeting were empty.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Julia stared at the wall wondering how everything could have gone so wrong. After the meeting three months before, the one from which she had walked out, things had gone from bad to awful.

A series of events including unexpected expenses with the meal programs had led to her finding it necessary to lay off some of her employees. Julia, herself, had taken a cut in pay and could barely meet her mortgage while she juggled bills from the coop. As it was, she was eating breakfast and lunch at work to save on personal grocery expenses, and her cat refused to eat the generic cat food she was now buying and most days had taken to hiding under the couch. 

Her alarm woke her gently, as always, but each morning she had begun to feel alarmed at the sound of it. Allmart employee morale had sunk to an all time low, and although Mr. O’Swiffy had tried to encourage and support Julia by increasing her allotment of Dove Chocolates, Allmart became a place where dissatisfaction was palpable.

There was a knock at the door, and Lexie stepped in quietly.

“Thank you for hiring me back,” she said as she sat some papers down on Julia’s desk.

Julia waved away her thanks.

“I shouldn’t have fired you in the first place. You were – are – one of my best workers. It’s just when Mr. O’Swiffy kept suggesting things about you, I lost my focus.”

Lexie nodded imperceptibly.

Julia looked at Lexie who looked steadily back at her. She opened the store account book and threw up her hands.

“Look at this! I don’t even know where to start. I feel like I don’t know anything about running a business anymore! And, and I’m losing my self-respect,” she finished softly.

Julia jumped up, bumping her knee on her drawer.

“This is where the trouble started,” Julia mumbled as she caught sight of a Dove caramel milk chocolate just inside the barely opened drawer. “Mr. O’Swiffy offered chocolate provided by the coop . . .”

“I miss your cookies,” interrupted Lexie.

Julia sat back down in her chair, the cushioned desk chair, the one where she belonged as owner of Allmart.

“Maybe I need to withdraw membership from the coop.”

Lexie looked hopeful.

“It was such a good idea, though. I hate the thought of losing those connections.”

“Must they be lost if you aren’t in the coop?” Lexie answered, raising her eyebrows.

“Maybe if we hired a different accountant, one who sticks to accounting,” Julia pondered softly, reaching for her phone, “though I do love it when Mr. O’Swiffy brings me chocolate.”

As she picked it up, something new dawned on Julia; or maybe she had known it all along. She would always love chocolate with a love bordering on desperation. There would be days when chocolate would be just the thing to carry her through until she got home to the soft cuddles of her cat (although at this point it would take at least a month of coaxing to get it back to its former self). But as wonderful, alluring, and oh so amazing as chocolate was, there was something it wasn’t. Necessary. And on those days when Julia could almost believe it was, it was not necessary for someone else to give it to her. She would find a way or make one to get it herself.

The clerk behind the counter at Allmart waved cheerfully to Julia as she stepped over the threshold of the store. She nodded an acknowledgement and headed straight to her office. She nodded, because that was what was allowed. If she had waved, it could have been interpreted as something other than a greeting according to the manual adopted by the coop three months ago. Heaven forbid she stop to chat. Julia stopped the thoughts strolling through her mind. No, she told herself, she would not be negative about a regulation intended for her own protection.

It had been exactly six months since her first meeting with Caesar O’Swiffy. The first delivery of chocolate had been wonderful, and it really perked up the entire staff. Julia was glad she had joined the business coop. Mr. O’Swiffy, their accountant, seemed like a dream come true.

The fourth week after that first chocolate delivery had been icy, and three employees were in fender benders; one, a rear end bump at a stop sign, and the other two, minor crashes on side streets. Julia, herself, had had a near miss. So when their accountant had suggested providing transportation to workers who faced some difficulty getting to work, everyone in the coop had agreed. It was worth it to keep their employees safe and, besides, it would minimize hours missed due to taking care of car repairs.

That icy week had made everyone hesitant to make the short run to the McDonald’s down the street over their lunch breaks and those who hadn’t packed a lunch had gone without. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. There was chocolate in the break room, and some of them had a few pieces. The next coop meeting had resulted in a lunch provision to employees. Breakfast soon followed.

With the provisions had come more paperwork, though. Julia had found every increasing demands on her time to follow coop regulations and to record any deviations from them.

Julia looked up at the sound of a knock on her door.

“The mail came early,” Julia’s assistant, Lexie, said as she walked into the office. “Umm, let’s see, not much here except a few flyers and something from the business coop. The electric and water bills are usually here by now. Would you like me to make some calls and see what’s holding them up?”

“No, Mr. O’Swiffy said we would get a lower rate if the businesses in the coop were billed all together, so the coop is taking care of it now. You have to admit it’s more streamlined.”

Julia slit open the coop’s envelope with her letter opener. She held the contents up for Lexie.

“See? Here are those bills. We just pay the coop instead of the electric and water companies now.”

Lexie bent over and peered at the multiple lines in small print.

“What’s this?” she asked, pointing.

“It’s the charge for the coop to pay the bills.”

“And this?” persisted Lexie pointing to another line.

“That’s the charge to help any business in the coop should they they fall short a month.”

“Doesn’t that negate your savings?” Lexie asked under her breath.

Julia laughed.

“You’d better not let Mr. O’Swiffy hear you. He’d be offended. This is his baby, you know.”

“Hear what?” asked Mr. O’Swiffy as he entered Julia’s office and tossed a Dove sea salt caramel dark chocolate on her desk.

Picking it up and unwrapping it, Julia thought that she could find it in her heart to love this man.

Lexie quickly left as Julia answered, “I was just explaining about the utility charges arrangement.”

Caesar O’Swiffy massaged his back and carefully sat in the chair in front of Julia’s desk.

Julia jumped up.

“How’s your back, Mr. O’Swiffy? I heard you had a run in with a stack of boxes. Here, take my chair. It’s padded.”

The accountant moved to Julia’s chair as Julia sat in the one she reserved for office visitors.

“Thank you, Julia. Yes, it was at Norton’s Grocery during inventory.”

“Why were you there during . . .” Julia began, but Caesar O’Swiffy cut her off.

“I think it’s important, Julia, that the staff is made aware of expectations. That,” Caesar O’Swiffy waved in the direction of the door through which Lexie had recently left, “assistant needs to be reprimanded for her lack of support for our efforts.”

“Oh Lexie’s fine. She’s always been a great employee and is an excellent assistant,” Julia replied.

“Hmmm, we shall see,” Mr. O’Swiffy countered. “Our efforts here are only because we want to make things easier on everyone. Don’t you want to make things easier?”

“Of course!” Julia assured him. No one had ever accused her of a lack of compassion and no one ever would.

“Everyone needs to be supportive. A house divided against itself, well you know the rest. It’s employees like that who bring everyone else down.”

“Lexie has never broken a rule, Mr. O’Swiffy,” Julia defended her assistant.

“Rules can be broken in thought as well as deed,” Caesar O’Swiffy cautioned her.

He placed a stack of papers on Julia’s desk and stood.

“I’ll be back next week to check on staff compliance,” he said, tapping his finger on the papers he’d brought.

Julia stood as he left, then sat back down, then realized she was sitting on the wrong side of her desk.

to be continued . . .

It was going to be one of those days, she thought; a day when chocolate would be more than a treat. Chocolate would be a necessity. First of all, she had slept through her alarm clock which wasn’t alarming in the least. It clicked on the radio that told her the news and the weather and offered a song or two. Today those voices had seeped into her dreams, and she had dreamed of a train crashing into a burglar and a state legislator who were having a heated argument while it rained sporadically. Then she had burned her ear with her curling iron, spilled coffee on the cat, and stepped in a puddle walking from her car to Allmart, a store her great-grandfather had started.

He had opened it under the family name, but for reasons still unclear to her, her father had decided to change the store’s name to something more generic and all-encompassing. It was an average store, but it was under her management, and Julia felt a sense of pride over the variety it offered and customer service it provided. Sure, there were larger stores of its kind and smaller ones, too. But this was the one where Julia had learned about business. This was the one for which she was responsible. This was the one she owned. She was satisfied.

Caesar O’Swiffy peeked his head into her office as he knocked lightly on the door.

Seeing him, Julia stood quickly, bumping her knee on a not quite closed desk drawer.

“Mr. O’Swiffy! I didn’t realize you were coming today,” she said, surreptitiously glancing at her desk calendar.

Caesar O’Swiffy softly laughed in his low, reassuring voice.

“Please. Have a seat,” she said as he shook her hand and sat in the chair across from her desk.

He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a Dove caramel milk chocolate, tossing it on her desk. He had remembered she liked chocolate.

“Actually, our meeting was scheduled for next week, but I happened to be in the area  and thought I’d see if we might go over the books today.”

He said it in a way that sounded like the most reasonable request in the world.

It was the most reasonable request in the world.

Julia made a quick phone call to her assistant and assured the accountant hired by the newly formed business cooperative she had joined that they could, indeed, move the meeting.

She cleared off a table in the conference room while she made fresh coffee and as the lovely caramel chocolate melted in her mouth.

The meeting had gone smoothly and was over in less time than Julia had anticipated. It would be nice to have a second set of eyes look things over, especially at tax time. Mr. O’Swiffy had quickly gone over the store’s profits and losses and commended her on her management skills.

“One thing, Julia,” he said after they had returned to her office and settled into their respective chairs. “I noticed there isn’t much for the staff.”

“Much . . .?” Julia attempted to follow Mr. O’Swiffy’s train of thought.

“Oh, you know, something to keep them happy in the break room. For instance, do you think a few packages of chocolates every week would perk people up a bit?” He laughed and gestured out the window. “Especially on a day like today!”

Julia followed his gaze. The rain was coming down steadily now. It made her long for the warmth of her living room. She wished her cat was there to jump into her lap like a purring blanket. Chocolate would be wonderful. She had thought so, herself, this very morning.

“I agree it would be a nice addition, Mr. O’Swiffy, but I need to count costs here as you saw from the books. I do bring in cookies every once in a while, and the employees seem to like that,” she offered.

“Oh, Julia. There’s no need to worry about it yourself. I’ll just enter it as a regular delivery from the coop.”

“You can do that?”

Julia’s heart lifted in a way it hadn’t all morning.

“I can do anything and I will. For you, Julia. We want to keep everyone happy,” Mr. O’Swiffy reassured her as he stood.

He started for the door, then turned.

“I nearly forgot. You will need to sign here,” he pointed to a line on a paper he quickly pulled from his briefcase, “to authorize it.”

“Of course,” Julia replied, signing on the line indicated.

As the door closed quietly behind the accountant, Julia sat back in her chair and smiled. Oh yes. Necessary chocolate. Just what the doctor ordered. And the rain began to subside while the sky temporarily cleared, just as the weather forecaster had predicted.

to be continued . . .

THE END OF THE SENTENCE

When I first moved onto this street – Plato Street – so very many years ago now, I had no illusions of it being anything other than what it appeared to be: a run down street in a run down part of town whose inhabitants chose because they could afford nothing better. Nothing better. That was what we all believed as we sat in our own raggedy run-down houses sitting on our own weedy, wilting, waste-filled yards perched on the crumbling street that historical rumor and historical rumor alone had said was once something worthwhile. We had taken our assignment, some full of rebellion, others with acquiescence, and lived it because, whether we admitted it or not, we believed it was ours to accept. We lived our days full of an image of our neighborhood and ourselves that said we could not do better. We could not be better. We branded that image into our brains with a thousand little acts and a million little thoughts. No one did it for us.  We did it ourselves.

Then Sally moved in. She didn’t accept that image. She didn’t even seem acquainted with it, and when any of us would attempt – even remotely – to show it to her, she seemed puzzled. Maybe it was an act. Maybe she saw it, the picture of our neighborhood, as clearly as everyone else did and simply ignored it. We’ll never know because we never really got to know Sally. The little that we did learn of her, though, was like a blast of Arctic air on a sweltering day. She treated us like the people we could be, not like the people we had become. She jolted us from our hazy lethargy and sent shivers down our collective spine.

Plato Street: simply the pitiful result of a vain thought that the property could never be improved. We thought that image was as immovable as the street, itself. That image hung over us as faithfully as the sun rose every morning; a permanent presence we’d grown to accept as completely as corn stalks in the summer or dead leaves in the fall.  How strange, how funny, how amazing it is that we lived with that image believing it to be as real as the stars in the sky. It wasn’t.

The End

There was a long silence and I nearly passed out from keeping my breathing shallow enough to escape detection. The screen door slammed, then slammed again.

“Ah,” Sally breathed with a noise that sounded like a very long stretch. “The first lemonade of the season; home-made and sweeter than the law allows.”

She said it with a laugh in her voice.

“What do you think Dad would have thought of what we’re doing?”

“Oh, your Dad would have thought it a great adventure, I’m sure. Though he probably wouldn’t have wanted us here, he would’ve given us credit when he saw we got through safely enough.”

“I miss him.”

“Me, too.”

More silence than I could stand.

“I wish we could go back, Mom.”

“Mmm. Well, we never did get around to selling the place, did we? How ‘bout it? Let’s go back, Court. I’m missing our little mountain cottage more than anything. Of course, there will be a lot of work, you know. . .”

“I know, I know. . .”

“Grass grown shoulder-high, tree branches helter skelter, leaves all over everything.”

I guessed there was nothing more to say because they didn’t say it.

I went back down the alley the way I came, and crossed over to my side of the street.  Sniff saw me coming. I felt her hawk’s eye on me.

“Do you know that boy’s name? Sally’s boy?”

“C.T. That’s what he told me to call him,” she answered. Then she scrunched her eyes at me.

“Why?”

“Just curious,” I replied.

The next week there was a realtor’s sign in Sally’s yard. The place sold within a week.

At her going away party, I cornered her.

“Why?” I asked.

“Why what?”

“Why’d you move here?”

She thought for a minute, then looked me in the eye. “About three years ago my son and I decided to explore our roots. You know, mill through old cemeteries, read faded obituaries, tour places our ancestors lived. We thought we could learn from them.

“The bad and the useless, you know, can’t be undone. A person can’t redo yesterday.  However, we thought that maybe we could continue something of the good they started.”

She stopped abruptly and looked at me.

“But then, as neighborhood monitor you knew that.”

I smiled until my face hurt.

to be continued . . .

OVERHEARD

It was one of those late Spring days when life wraps its fresh sweetness around every tree branch and bud; its tendrils wind through the grass, full of earthy, musky fragrance. The air nearly sings out loud with the intensity of the lushness of hope. No one in his right mind can stay indoors on those days because doing so would be like whacking himself with a wet fish; slimy, crazy, and slightly painful.

After I’d finished my breakfast burrito with hot sauce and two cups of coffee, I sauntered out to the front lawn. I had to cut down since my stomach started giving me trouble.  Coffee used to be my mainstay for breakfast: four cups and a piece of toast with orange marmalade. I suppose, though, after awhile an old leather bag gets so soft it gets loose at the seams. That was my stomach. Loose at the seams. So I had to cut down, you see, from four cups to two.

I turned and looked at my house as I had done every day for the past week. Although I’d grown kind of fond of the weathered look my house gave the property, I had been feeling more than a little pressure to fix it up. The drip that burst the pipe came over a month ago in the form of chocolate. Sally had brought me some frosted brownies without the frosting and some cardboard squares of sample paint colors. Since she had them with her, I looked through ‘em. It’s kind of like buying a lottery ticket, only not as exciting. I chose gray with dark gray trim so it would hide the dirt. Sally said she’d get some neighbors together if I would supply lunch. That was asking a lot, I tell you, but being the generous person I am, I consented. About a week ago now a bunch had come and painted my old house. Sniff had played the lottery, too, but she chose white with green trim. I secretly hoped for a little dust storm.

I started down the street at a slow pace. Being the unofficial monitor of the neighborhood did not require speed. Gladys and Manny and were back from Marv’s Café, already poking in the garden they had planted. Julie was already at work and Ashley was heading out the door. Over the winter she’d gotten a job at the flower shop five blocks away. I cleared my throat in that friendly way I have, and she waved back.  We all started choking on fumes as Sweet Beat rode past on his Harley. I made a mental note in my monitor’s mental notebook. The boy was up before noon. I looked at Manny and he raised his eyebrow (he had just the one that went straight across the top of his eye sockets.). I scratched my chin in response.

I was still puzzling over that when a child’s voice made me stop in my tracks. I was, by now, in the alley behind Sally’s house and could hear a conversation as clear as weak tea with no sugar.

“Do you think they’ll ever know, mom?”

“Probably not.”

He laughed then, and mused, “To think all this could have been mine.”

Sally chuckled, too.

“Yes, Court, in another time and another world it would have been yours. Still, your great great grandpa, my great grandpa on my mother’s side, may not have been the type to care one way or another about the fortunes of his descendants.”

“He did leave the stock. You’ve got to give him credit for that.”

“Yes, Court, for that I would thank him if I could.”

“Why don’t we use it?”

I nearly fell over.

“We like our independence.”

The boy persisted, “How much are we worth again?”

Sally answered without a moment’s hesitation. “We’re priceless.”

to be continued . . .