Stella, Get Your Gun

We were assembled at the graveside when Jake decided it was time to speak. Up until then, he had functioned mainly as an emcee, letting Uncle Benny’s friends tell the stories of his many kindnesses and good deeds. But as we stood around the AstroTurfed grave site, contemplating this final rest stop for my uncle, Jake seemed to take charge. It was time to say goodbye, and Jake was there to ease the transition.

“A priest, in this case me,” he began, “a Lutheran pastor, who shall go nameless for the sake of protecting his sterling reputation, and our Benny were all out fishing in Benny’s boat over on Kerr Park Lake one day. It was hot and we had consumed a fair quantity of Benny’s favorite brew when the pastor felt the call of nature.”

Everyone was smiling at Jake. Even my jaded cousin Nina beamed up at him benevolently.

“So the pastor gets out of the boat, walks across the water, steps ashore and visits the Porta-John.” Jake’s eyes twinkled. “Then he walks back across the top of the water and steps into the boat, not a drop of moisture on him. A little time goes by, and then it’s my turn. I hop out of Benny’s skiff, walk across the water and return the same way.”

I scanned the group of mourners and found they were all smiling, wrapped up in Jake’s tale and seeing their old friend through familiar eyes.

“Well now, Benny, he can’t stand it. He says, ‘Youse guys ain’t the only ones with faith. I can do that, too!’ So he hops out of the boat…and sinks like a rock! He comes up sputtering, mad as hell. ‘All right,’ he says, ‘how’s come youse guys can walk on water and I can’t?’” Jake chuckled. “I looked at the Lutheran pastor. He looked at me and says, ‘Reckon we shoulda shown him where the stepping stones were, huh, Jake?’ he says.”

The congregation laughed. Jake laughed, too, but his eyes were warm as he looked over at Aunt Lucy and the rest of us who stood by her. “Yeah, we all loved Benny. He was a good man, but he was only serious about a few things—his family, his friends and fishing.”

Jake moved to stand beside the open grave site, resting a hand on the closed casket. “Benny’s hooked the big one now. He’s moved up to fish with the pros, and us amateurs, well, we’re gonna miss the hell out of him.” Jake smiled at Aunt Lucy. “But we can all take comfort in this certainty,” he said. “Benny’s with the big guy himself, fishing that vast and comforting expanse they call eternal life. And one day, we’ll all be together again, because that’s how it works. No one is ever lost to us, not really. They’ve just gone on ahead to scout the territory.”

Jake looked out at the congregation. “All right,” he said. “You guys on the left of the casket are group one. You people over there are group two. And you people in the back, you’re group three. Now, when I point to you, start singing. I think you all know the words…. ‘Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.’”

With that, Jake smiled gently, raised his arms in the air like a band conductor and motioned. Like sheep we began to sing, right on cue. And as the casket was slowly lowered into the ground, we filed past the grave, tossing pink carnations in on top of Uncle Benny and singing the simple, sweet song we’d known as children. But that was not why I felt such an urge to escape from everyone and everything. What sent me over the edge was the fact that Jake Carpenter had taken me in once again.

He had managed, with his goofy joke and his stupid song, to lull me into an unguarded moment in which every happy memory I’d ever shared with Uncle Benny came flooding back with a suddenness that took my breath away. Jake had forced me to feel the vast emptiness of losing the one man who’d ever truly understood me.

This new pain melted into all the feelings I’d so carefully sealed away, leaving me stranded in my old hometown and feeling like a shipwreck survivor. I was home, but I was a stranger. I’d expected to find things just as they’d always been, only better, softened by the pink glow of my very selective memory. But now, when I needed to come home and feel safe, I found myself trapped in a nightmare.

I stared out of the funeral home limo as we drove home, watching the familiar neighborhood pass by the rain-streaked window. Aunt Lucy and Uncle Benny lived in a blue-collar Italian neighborhood that even on the best of days smelled like the nearby paper mill. The brick row homes and postage-stamp backyards were coated in a thin layer of grimy ash that descended like smog over everything and everybody, until gray became the standard color and a hacking cough our constant companion in the wintertime.

But once you set foot in the house, the black-and-white TV screen of our lives changed into a vibrant Technicolor. The kitchen was yellow, the air warm and fragrant with baking bread and everywhere you turned there was some picture or reminder of all the important events or occasions in Benny’s and Lucy’s full-to-overflowing lives. It was a home with love to spare, a home that had taken me in when my parents died and tried, with some success, to raise me into a healed and whole person.

People were packed into every corner of the downstairs by the time I arrived. They sat on the steps leading up to the second-floor bedrooms and peeked through the banisters at the others sitting in the living room below them. They laughed and shouted, hugged and drank, and some cried, not for long, but with earnest emotion that was no longer concealed by convention or etiquette. It was as much home to me as it was foreign. It was too much to return to, and still, it had not been enough to keep me rooted.

When I heard Jake’s voice in the living room, I knew he’d look for me, and I also knew that whatever he had to say, whatever explanation he chose to offer, it wouldn’t be enough to make up for what I spent so long trying to forget. Jake Carpenter was a bastard’s bastard, and my opinion of him wouldn’t change just because he’d been kind to my aunt and uncle.

I looked around the crowded kitchen and realized I was trapped, saw the basement door behind me, and lit out for the space below like a homing pigeon. Uncle Benny’s workshop was down there, a safe haven to him for years and now for me.

I closed the wooden door behind me, fumbled for the light switch and began my descent down the worn, smooth steps to the basement. It still smelled like the old coal furnace, even with years having passed since Uncle Benny had made the switch to oil.

I stepped down into the bright white space and found it just as I’d left it—concrete floor, workbench and cabinets back behind the steps; old worn, terry-cloth couch against the far wall; shabby, braided rug; ancient TV sitting on top of a rusting metal TV tray. It was exactly the same as the day I left home to strike out for Florida, and Benny’s secret bottle of Wild Turkey was in exactly the same place as it always was, way in the back of the last cabinet on the left.

I reached in, pulled out the bottle and was reaching for a shot glass when I found the envelope. It was a sealed, white, standard legal-size rectangle and it felt thick with papers.

I slowly pulled it toward me, placed it on the workbench and knew I was going to open it. I decided I needed fortification first. I poured a shot, lifted it to my lips and tossed it back, feeling the burn as the liquor found its way down my esophagus and into my empty stomach.

“Damn!” I whispered, half choking on the bourbon. I poured another shot and carried it and the envelope to the couch, where I sat down and prepared to read whatever Uncle Benny had hidden away from Aunt Lucy.

I started to fumble with the seal, realized I still felt unprepared and drank the second shot. Then, with slightly trembling fingers, I undid the flap and pulled out the thick sheaf of papers.

It was meant to be a legal document—that much seemed clear, but it was a generic, computer-generated form, not one from a lawyer’s office. There were no embossed seals, no witnesses’ signatures and no “whereas” and “to wit’s.” It was a simple agreement, a partnership arrangement, in which Uncle Benny had invested $260,000 in Jake Carpenter’s auto body shop.

I poured a third shot, tossed it back and felt the burn all the way to the pit of my stomach. I turned back to the beginning of the document and read, this time making careful note of the terms and conditions. It seemed that Uncle Benny had given Jake the money in return for a share of the business, a guaranteed income for himself and Aunt Lucy. But where had my uncle come up with so much money? He was a retired government chemist, not some hot-shot executive. My aunt had been a chemist, too. When my parents died and I’d come to live with them, she’d retired early to take care of me. She became a homemaker, pinching pennies to make ends meet, making her own soaps and cleaning supplies, clipping coupons. They lived in a row house. Where had Uncle Benny gotten so much money to give Jake?

I folded the papers back up, shoved them into the envelope and carefully returned them to their hiding place. I turned, intent on heading back to the couch, and felt the room spin slightly. Not a good sign, I thought. I tried to remember when I’d last eaten anything and figured it might’ve been yesterday as I’d pulled out of Garden Beach and started toward home.

“Shit, Uncle Benny!” I said to the empty room. “This is so not like you!” Even with a fur brain, I knew there was more to this than the agreement said, but what? Obviously that jerk Jake had conned my poor retired uncle out of his retirement money and every dime of his savings. Jake probably promised my uncle pie in the sky and a pot of gold at the end of the auto body rainbow. Now Uncle Benny was dead and Aunt Lucy was crying foul play. Did she know about Uncle Benny’s agreement? I figured not.

The more I thought about Jake taking advantage of my aunt and uncle, the angrier I got. Jake had been trying to rip off my uncle. He had to be in financial trouble; I’d just bet on it. I looked at the steps leading to the kitchen and listened to the dull rumble of people drinking and laughing overhead. I leaned back against the sofa cushions, kicked off my high heels and pulled my feet up where I could massage my throbbing ankle.

“I should’ve worn my flip-flops,” I muttered. I tugged with no effect at the hem of the miniskirt, trying to cover my thighs and get comfortable at the same time. It was pointless. I was not a sexy showgirl, merely a poor imitation who would’ve given anything for her own jeans and a T-shirt.

I needed to eat, but I was so tired and Uncle Benny’s old couch was so comfortable. I pulled one of Aunt Lucy’s afghans down from the sofa back and snuggled into it. It smelled like Uncle Benny’s Old Spice aftershave. I felt sadness threaten to overwhelm me and closed my eyes, hoping to wish it away. I leaned back against the soft, overstuffed cushions and tried to remember all the good times, hoping the grief would somehow vanish or at least become manageable.

“I’m gonna close my eyes, just for a minute,” I murmured. “Then I’ll eat, and then I’ll kick some Jake Carpenter ass!” The prospect seemed somehow satisfying. I could finally exact my revenge on Jake Carpenter and be doing it for a worthy cause. What could be better? I envisioned Jake, pleading with me, his dark, sexy eyes widening with fear as he realized what he’d lost and what he was about to lose. I fell asleep imagining him on his knees, begging for mercy.

I woke up with the sudden awareness that I was no longer alone.

“You know, you drool when you sleep,” Jake said, his voice right up against my ear, the musky scent of him suddenly overwhelming my dream world. “And you still make that little piglike sound, too, you know, the one you make when you snore so loud you half wake yourself up? I hadn’t thought of that in years!”

I opened my eyes. Jake Carpenter was sitting beside me on the edge of the sofa, leaning over to balance himself above me and smiling as if he were in complete control of the universe. For a moment I felt disoriented, and wondered if I was still dreaming. I stared at Jake, willing my eyes to focus. He bent closer, his face inches from my own, inspecting me intently.

“Breath mint?” he asked.

“No,” I whispered. “Gun.”

Jake’s brows furrowed. “Gun?”

“Yeah, in case my breath don’t kill you, my gun will.”

Jake straightened, one eyebrow pushing up into a question mark. “You’re still mad?” He shook his head. “That was years ago. We were just kids. I’d think after all this time you’d be relieved, not mad.”

I pushed back, struggling to get away from him and sit up at the same time.

“Relieved? That’s what you’d call it, relieved?”

Jake nodded solemnly. “We were just kids. What did we know about making a lifetime commitment? You should be grateful I stopped us.”

I stuck out my hand, pushing the center of his chest with two fingers, knocking him back a few inches.

“Grateful?” I swung my legs off the couch and sat up. “Let’s get something straight—you weren’t the one who backed out. If you’d listened to what I was trying to tell you, you’d have known—”

The cellar door swung open and a shadow crossed the top steps.

“Stella,” Nina hissed. “Are you down there?”

We froze, willing her away so the battle could continue, but Nina had some sort of sixth sense.

“Stella, damn it! The cops are here. You’d better get upstairs, quick!”

Jake was already moving, rising from the couch and turning to extend his hand to help me up. I ignored the hand and started to push past him.

“You might want to tame that bird’s nest,” he said. “It makes you look like you just crawled out of bed.” His eyes met mine and I saw the flash of hot intimacy lingering there, remembering every moment I now wanted to forget.