By Ed Ward 

The assignment for October 2017 was much the same as the assignment for this month.

      “Describe a family rift or feud.” given to the Writer’s Bloc Group by Marvin Moss.

        Meetings are held once a month in the Monroe Library.

       I wrote a story entitled “The Seagull.” In the story I unleashed 20 years of the frustration fostered on my brother- in- law Jack, my father- in -law Will and me by our other brother- in- law Jim.

        I go on to describe Jim’s exaggerated fear of driving a car caused by a minor fender bender he had when he was learning to drive. He never got behind a wheel again.

       What his fear of driving brought on was 20 years of being the chauffeurs of Jim and his wife Mae to all sort of family events.

      At two am in the morning when Jim’s wife was going into labor did they call a taxi or an ambulance? No way.

      It was bad enough when we all lived in Fairfield. They moved to a town in New York. That’s when it really got aggravating. Christmas, birthdays, picnics any and all family gatherings one of us was on the road. coming then going when the party was over.

       Marv sent my story to the Monroe Courier. They printed it.

       Being a proud published author. I bought a couple of copies of the Courier cut out the article and sent one  to Will’s fourth daughter Dee.  I sent one to Jack’s wife Kate..

       A week or two later I got a call form Kate saying Dee and her husband Larry had invited us to their house to spend the afternoon and dinner. I said “sure I’ll go.”.

       Kate and Dee were the youngest of Will’s four daughters. They were at each other’s throat almost from the  time they were born. They were like gas and dynamite. Anything could set either one of them off. 

      No sooner had we got 10 feet inside the door when the tirade started. Dee lit into Kate because I think she knew about Jack and my feelings of what was going on with Jim and the driving situation.

      Dee’s suspicions were now confirmed via the article of Jack and my sentiments spelled out in black and white for  all the world to see. She went after Kate with a vengeance.  She appointed herself Jim and Mae’s champion.

      I told Dee “if you have a bone to pick it’s with me I wrote the article.”

      What surprised me most was when Larry put in his vehement two cents. I guess he felt obliged to defend Dee’s position.

       Needless to say we didn’t stay for dinner. That caused another furor because they ordered take out and we left without eating a morsel.

       After Note:

       All names have been changed to protect the writer. In a single flash of stupidity in 2017 I lost a lot of flesh from my glutinous maximus and cannot afford anyone else chewing on it.

More Than Expected

By Mary McPadden

            Mom had always said that Dad was the one who had ruined everything and now here she was at his house, feeling as though she was betraying her mother by cohorting with him.  It wasn’t really cohorting. He wasn’t even at the house. She was just there cleaning up his mess.

 The fact that she would even help him at all probably infuriated mom or it would have infuriated her. Her mom had been dead for only a week now but it felt more like a year and after this whole ordeal was over and done with, going back to the empty apartment that her and her mother had shared together, would be devastating. 

She had left the apartment so quickly after the funeral that she had even yelled “Bye mom,” when she shut the door.  She actually had to stop and compose herself. Her mother had died so suddenly that the reality had not quite hit her. It had hit her bank account though. She had to pay the funeral bill which left her bank account almost completely drained and the limo, restaurant and the rest of the expenses she put on her charge account. She drove herself to the airport instead of taking a car like her boyfriend had suggested. It would save her some money. He didn’t know that she was broke. In fact he thought she was rich. And he had even said they should get married. The sooner the better. She knew he could take care of her but most of all she didn’t like being alone.

She had felt in a stupor this past week.  She took her bereavement time and she would use up a week of her vacation time to get this house in order. That would leave her with only one week for a honeymoon. How was she going to handle everything. The grief had not hit her until now.

And she wasn’t on her Dad’s side. It was just that there was nobody else for him. Once this place was cleaned up and sold, it would be over and done with. She would never have to see him again. 

The first room to tackle would be the dining room. Looking at the stacked up newspapers and books, Meghan knew this was going to be a bigger task that she had expected.

By John-Paul Marciano

    I was eight years old when my mother had taken my sister and I on an eight-week vacation to Germany without my father. It was an odd circumstance as it was the first time I’d been on vacation with just one of my parents. While not the end of the world, from time to time I found myself curious enough to ask why.

    Over the years, my mother always maintained we couldn’t afford it. But my father always told me it would be bad for business to close the store for eight weeks. While one could say the two stories were similar, I knew my parents well enough to figure out there was more to the story than they were telling me.

    My parents met in a German village in the American occupation zone after World War II. My father was fluent in German and had been tasked with teaching basic German to occupying American troops stationed in Western Bavaria near the city of Ulm. He was told he could get text books from a first grade teacher. That first grade teacher was my mother. They married five years later.

    I flew to Germany 20 years after the eight-week vacation for my grandmother’s funeral. My mother had died three months prior and, because he was still grieving, I talked my father into staying home. The days after the funeral were mostly spent catching up with relatives I hadn’t seen in years and learning about relatives I never knew I had.

    One of my newfound relatives was my mother’s Aunt Trudchen. While Aunt Trudchen was pleasant in a German sort of way, I found her difficult to understand. For one thing, my German was rusty. It had been five years since I had need to converse in that language. Secondly, Aunt Trudchen was a very large woman with lots of extra facial skin causing her to sound like she stuffed her mouth full of cotton.

    It was for these reasons I could only understand the odd phrase or occasional word. I tried to be polite but the entire conversation caused my eyes to glaze over. Luckily my Aunt Crystal, my mother’s youngest sister, was there to carry the conversation. One part of the conversation that stood out was when my Aunt Crystal told Aunt Trudchen that I was a little boy and probably didn’t remember. Because I didn’t know what Aunt Trudchen had said, I had absolutely no clue what it was I wasn’t supposed to remember.

    Over dinner that night, I asked my Aunt Crystal what Aunt Trudchen had said that I wouldn’t remember. She said it had to do with that vacation to Germany on which my mother took my sister and I without my father. I told her I remembered that vacation very well. We spent some time reminiscing about that vacation and I had the feeling my aunt was testing me. What changed the tenor of the conversation was when I jogged her memory regarding some details she had forgotten.

    It was at this point that I told my aunt that I always wondered why my father didn’t join us. I told her I had asked my parents but their stories didn’t make sense to me and I explained why I felt that way.

    My aunt hemmed and hawed for a while before she decided it was time to tell me the unvarnished truth. She told me a story about how my mother had been unhappy with my father for a few years prior and wanted to spend some time with her mother and sisters. They agreed he shouldn’t close his store for eight weeks and it would be better if my sister and I went with my mother. What my father didn’t know was that my mother had no intention of coming back.

    This revelation made sense to me. For months prior to the vacation my mother tried to teach German to my sister and I. She became increasingly frustrated as the two of us struggled to learn a difficult language at a faster than normal pace. Her frustration, which never made sense to me, became clear to me. If she was going to keep us in Germany we needed to speak German fluently if we were to attend school and succeed.

    I then asked my aunt why my mother decided to return to America if her plan was to stay in Germany. My aunt replied that two weeks before we returned my mother sent my sister and I to a museum with my aunts so she could talk to her mother. During that conversation my mother told her she wanted to stay in Germany. But my grandmother told her there was no longer any place for her in Germany. Her place was in America and it was her obligation to return so her children could be raised by both their mother and father.

By J.M. Whitmohr

The body in the bushes had been there a long time, out Fannie Mc Dougal’s back door and to the side of her stairs, beyond the garbage can. But, it was a foul odor that finally led her to it. 

One morning she opened the door into her walk-though pantry leading to her screened-in porch and the smell of death hit her in the face. She knew that smell.

“Dead mouse,” she said with conviction to nobody and spun around, retreating to fetch the Lysol air freshener from under the kitchen sink. Living in an old Victorian house in rural Cloverton, Fannie knew mice

After spraying the air she began the task of removing every can, box and package from the pantry, shelf by shelf. By the end of the day she hadn’t found a single mouse carcass or dropping.

The next morning the foul odor was as thick as ever and after opening all the windows she began moving every box, bag and tool stashed on the porch from one side to the other. It was when she went to transport her large potted fig tree that she almost gagged.

There it was, cousin to Dead Man’s Fingers fungi. A foul, four-inch fleshy Stinkhorn with its crimson tip thrust up out of the potting-mix at the base of her favorite tree. It was emitting the fragrance of death. She backed away.

It took her only a few squeamish minutes with a trowel, plastic bags and gloves to pull it out   and seal it in a garbage bag, along with a big shovelful of its surrounding soil. Grimacing she rushed the bag outside to the garbage can, which because it was empty and she was in a hurry, fell over. And that’s when she discovered the body—as she went into the bushes to right the can.

“What is that?” she said aloud peering through the leaves at a dirty red jacket. But she knew what it was. He was decades older than she was and missing an arm.

Why and how he got there, Fannie had no idea. But Fannie knew she needed a cup of tea and a cookie to crystalize the situation and went inside. There are some things 37 years of teaching English and Shakespeare to middle-schoolers doesn’t teach you. Getting rid of a body is one of them.  Here was another Saturday chore. She wanted him out of her garden, and she was certain the garbage service wouldn’t take him.

Fannie didn’t have the muscle to drag him out of the rhododendrons.  But she didn’t want to ask for help from the boys at the firehouse or the police. Former students all, they were always rushing in to rescue her.  It was embarrassing.

 By the time she finished her tea, Fannie had a plan.

“To do a great right, do a little wrong,” she quoted aloud from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.  She’d simply tow him out with her car and bury him over by the woods. All she needed was a good, strong rope from Hanson’s Hardware and she knew exactly who to see—her former student, the owner.

“Bobbie Hanson,” she called out waving at a man about to disappear into his office. “I need some help.

“Good morning, Raymond, Junior,” said Maggie quickly maneuvering around a boy counting out nails in the middle of the aisle, a Snickers bar in his mouth. “Is that breakfast?”  He shifted, pushing himself up. And before the door was closed behind her, he heard Ms. McDougal say quite clearly, “I found a body in the bushes and I need a rope . . .”

No 11-year-old boy is going to leave it at that. Ray J tiptoed over to the door leaving the nails forgotten. It was ajar. A sliver of light betrayed any privacy and Ray J leaned in to listen.

“I’ll get you that rope and if you need any help burying the body,” chuckled Mr. Hanson, “you give me a call.” 

Ray J backed up mouth agape just as the door began to open and he turned away quickly, pretending to examine the boxes of screws on the wall.

“You finding what you’re looking for, son?” asked Mr. Hanson walking by with Ms. McDougal in tow.

“Yes, Sir,” said Ray J and he thought, “Wait ‘til I tell Dad!” 

Back home Fannie discovered the new rope was nearly worthless. The body was too stiff and heavy to roll over. She couldn’t get a rope under it. Exhausted from trying she sat down on her back steps, glaring at it and thinking, “Toil and trouble.”

Leaving the hardware store Ray J jumped on his bike and pedaled home. His dad was still on the garage roof repairing shingles.       

“Dad. Dad,” he called puffing up the ladder. “You’ll never guess what?”

“You forgot the nails?” his dad teased.

“Oh. The nails! I forgot. But Dad, listen. Ms. McDougal found a body in her bushes and she’s going to tie it up and bury it.” He stopped to take a deep breath.

“What? Where did you hear that nonsense, Ray? Didn’t we have a talk about rumors?”

“Dad no. It’s not a rumor. I heard her tell Mr. Hanson at the Hardware store. She said body and bury. That’s what she wanted the rope for.” He looked at his dad expectantly.

Raymond Preston Senior, put down the hammer and scratched his left ear. “Ray, if Ms. McDougal found a body, don’t you think she would have called the police? And don’t you think the police would have called me, as the mayor of Cloverton?”

“Yeah, I guess so, but she said body.”

“So maybe it was the body of a skunk . . . and she didn’t want to get close to it and needed a rope to lasso it.”

“Can she do that,” Ray J asked.

“I don’t know, Ray. Ms. Mc Dougal can do a lot of things. I need you to go back to the store and get me those nails, now. I need them. Go.” 

Thinking on his Dad’s words, but not quite wanting to believe them, Ray J climbed back down the ladder.

Fannie spent the afternoon digging under the body and inch-by-inch wiggling a huge garbage bag over it. Lengths of rope encircled it and were tied off. Finally she ran a rope the length of it tying it to every other rope it crossed. Finished, she stood back. She almost laughed. She had created a nice tight package that looked something like a mummy coffin that should slide easily across the yard behind her car to a burial site.

Needing a break and a sandwich before digging the hole, she went into the house smiling. This was becoming an adventure.

By the time Ray J went back to Hanson’s for the nails, delivered them to his dad, ate lunch, finished his chores and escaped to track down his best friend, Lenny, it was pushing dinnertime.  He told Lenny what he heard Ms. McDougal tell Mr. Hanson, adding some embellishment, and was thoroughly satisfied with his friend’s stunned reaction. They agreed to meet after dinner for reconnaissance.  

Darkness was moving in as they parked their bikes a block behind Fannie’s house and began sneaking through the woods toward her backyard. Hiding behind a big Oak, about 60 feet from Fannie’s back door, Ray J raised the binoculars hanging around his neck and scanned the property.

“Oh, God . . . I see it. I see it, by the steps. It’s a body.”

“Let me see,” said Lennie jerking the binoculars from him. “You were right.” Lennie gasped lowering the glasses, his eyes wide. “What now?”

“We wait,” said Ray J seriously.  “We’ll let her almost bury the evidence and then call the police. She’ll be caught with the goods . . . just like on TV.”

Fannie had fallen asleep on the sofa after lunch and woke to a grey world.

“Darn,” she chided herself. ”I wanted to get this done.” Putting on a jacket she took the car keys from the kitchen and went outside. The sun had set.

The kids watched her circle the house and then return driving her car across the lawn. She backed in toward the body and it was only minutes before she was towing it toward the woods and the oak tree where the kids were hiding. She passed within 20 feet as they drew back. She thought she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye, but when she looked, there was nothing.

“This should do it,” she said aloud pulling up next to a small ravine where she knew the soil was softer and had fewer rocks.  She was only going to bury him a foot deep. Her plan was to dig the hole in front of the car, then straddling it drive straight ahead pulling her package forward until it dropped into the hole.  

“A fitting resting place for an unknown soul,” she thought grabbing the shovel. She still wondered how he came to her. Had he simply resurfaced during winter’s thaw, like the rocks in New England’s historic fields, or had someone dropped him off for some reason?  But that seemed crazy. Fannie kept digging and the boys moved in to watch.

When she finally pulled forward in the car two things happened. The body dropped nicely into the hole and the car’s front wheels sank into soft dirt on the edge of the swale.

“Oh, dandelions! Not now,” Fannie moaned getting out of her car. One look and she knew that she was truly, deeply stuck. Back in her car, she reluctantly called the boys at the firehouse on her cellphone.

“Evening, Ms. McDougal, what can we do for you?”

“I’m sorry to bother you, Brian. I hope the family is fine. My car is stuck in the dirt at the edge of the woods bordering my backyard. I don’t know what to do.”

“Not a problem. We could use a little practice. Keep your headlights on so we can see you.  And stay with your vehicle.”  He hung up and the town alarm went off calling all volunteers.

Fannie went back and cut the tow rope and pulled it into the car. She picked up the shovel and began filling in the hole. Ray J picked up his cell phone and called 911.                                

“What is your emergency?”

“This is Raymond Preston Junior. Someone is burying a body at the edge of the woods by Ms. McDougal’s.”

“Ray J? What are you saying?  Who put you up to this? Making a false report is dangerous and against the law.”

“This is not a false report, Miss Sarah.  Lennie Pritchard and I are in the woods watching it. Send the police. Hurry!”

“Don’t you move. Stay on the line and out of sight. We’re coming.” Ray J gave Lennie a high-five and they hunkered down. Within minutes sirens were heard speeding through the neighborhood. Suddenly lights converged into Ms. McDougal’s backyard from every direction as an army of fire trucks and police vehicles moved in across her back lawn, racing toward the woods followed by an ambulance and George Shehee’s tow truck.  

By the time it was all sorted out, the body was unearthed and unwrapped revealing a cement man in a red painted jacket with one arm broken off. He weighed approximated 200 pounds. The grave Fannie dug was on her property as she owned the entire woods. No laws were broken.  George towed out Fannie’s car. The volunteer firemen got practice and the police had a good laugh. Lennie and Ray J were delivered to their fathers by squad car to face the appropriate consequences of over-active imaginations. Both were grounded and Ray J was denied Snickers bars for a month. But how the body ended up in Fannie McDougal’s rhododendrons remains a mystery.

By John-Paul Marciano

    In the early morning hours of June 28, 1983 the adage “God watches over children, drunks and fools” certainly applied to me. A college classmate of mine was moving to California and we wanted to get together for one last night out. Since he lived in Hartsdale, NY and I lived in Stamford, CT, we decided to meet at a bar in Port Chester.

    It was a beautiful summer night so I cruised down I-95 with the sun roof open and the stereo blaring. The bar we were to meet at was located across the street from the train station. It was a weekday watering hole for commuters looking to take the edge off a stressful day. But by the time we walked in at 8:30 that Monday night, we pretty much had the place to ourselves.

    Because the place was sparsely populated, it was the perfect setting. We had our choice of booths and we didn’t have to shout to hear each other. Another perk was the short wait time between rounds.

    For the next four-and-a-half hours, we talked about the past and our hopes for the future. Also, during this time we drank pretty much non-stop. Needless to say, by the time we were ready to leave we were half in the bag. We staggered out of the bar and across the street to our cars and spent the next ten minutes saying goodbye and exchanging well wishes.

    I paused before leaving the parking lot. I had a decision to make. What route was I going to take home? I had two options. The first was to get back on I-95 and go home the way I came. The concern I had with this option was whether it was a good idea to be driving at a high rate of speed in my present condition. My second option was to work my way over to the Boston Post Road (Route 1) which parallels I-95, but with the stop lights takes longer. My concern with this option was again regarding my present condition. Do I risk a possible DUI by driving through Greenwich?

    After weighing my options, I put the car in gear and headed for the Boston Post Road. Not wanting to draw unwanted attention from the police, I was careful to stay below the speed limit without driving too slowly. Thankfully, I got myself home in one piece and without harm to anyone else. It was about 2:00 AM.

   Half-awake and nursing a cup of coffee in my office a few hours later, I almost fell out of my chair when I was startled by a colleague knocking loudly on the door jamb.

    Having a good laugh at my expense he said, “I’m surprised to see you here this morning.”

    Puzzled, I replied, “Last I checked it’s Tuesday. Why wouldn’t I be here?”

    “Don’t you take I-95 to get to work?”

    “No, I take the Merritt.” It was clear there was a problem on the northbound side of I-95 so I asked the obvious question. “What happened on I-95?”

    “You don’t know?” I just shook my head in reply. “A section of the Mianus River Bridge fell into the river early this morning.”

    Concerned, I said, “That’s in Greenwich. I live in Stamford so that bridge wouldn’t be part of my commute. But I was in Port Chester last night. Do you know what time the bridge collapsed?”

    “About 1:30 this morning.”

  By Ed Baranosky

               My wife’s parents were Scottish. They immigrated to the United States in the early 1920s. My father-in-law would make a point with pride saying his heritage could be traced back a thousand years.

               My retort to him was “your tight little island was invaded first by the Vikings and I’m sure all the sailors from the Spanish Armada didn’t drown. Surely some of them made it to shore.” I could never resist a chance to get him started.

              My European heritage on my mother’s side came from the southern part of Poland. Their blood was infused by tartar blood of the hun who raided from the East. I saw it in the high cheek bones of my grandfather. There had to be a bit of the Orient in our genes.

               I can hear my father say when he was asked if he was Polish . “My wife is Polish, I’m Lithuanian.” The Viking influence must be present in me also.

               The part of Europe where my grandparents came from was fought over in various wars. If there were any records kept they have long since have been destroyed.

                I can only trace my heritage back to when my grandparents got off the boat from Europe and spent 21 days on Ellis Island.

                In fact one of our relatives purchased bricks with our surnames to be installed there when they restored the place. Recently I heard people were stealing the bricks. I wonder if ours are still there.

              My grandmother on my father’s side was an educated woman. My father’s sisters played the piano. Two of them went to college.

      My father left school after the seventh grade. School was not for him and he never went back. He could speak five languages

      He made an effort to learn on his own terms. Maybe that’s where I got my rebel gene.

              What I am trying to do with this diatribe is to find a reason in my past that would explain why when you say “black” for some unknown reason I automatically say “white.”

             I like classical music and oil paint. Somewhere in my background there must be some culture. When I’m in that self- examining mode I find I keep searching for that one thing that is missing . . . to become great.

             Get the picture?

                                                           # 

By JR Jurzynski

    Vox populi, vox Dei, “The voice of the people is the voice of God.”

    “Dominus vobiscum.” A front-row seat every Sunday morning, 11 o’clock mass. Proud people. Saturday matinee was sacrilege. The transition from Latin to English, the “New Mass,” proved a struggle for the aging Father S—ski, transmuted between the former and latter, separated by repetition, “er, er, er.”

    The Sunday morning ritual was within walking distance; the directive from the dominant matriarchal pant-wearer went without opposition due to the alternative, wrath. The enforcer, subservient, cowardly against her will, followed. Out of fear, the unfed succulents adhered.

    No swimming for a half-hour after eating, no eating for an hour before the mass; the mandatory breakfast was finished by 10. Bacon rendered crisp, the liquefied residue was drawn off with a baster and set aside for over-easy; “our daily bread,” popping fresh with a smatter of oleo.  The reward? Tantamount chronic congestion of arterial lace.

    A family is characteristic of a structure; the foundation is laid by various experiences and supports the first floor. Although the first floor appears to be sound, the supporting foundation may have misplaced or damaged stones. On the first floor, the impressionable are impressed. One or any number of levels rise above the first floor. In the rising levels above, any misplaced or damaged stones of the foundation perpetuate effects. On the surface, hairline cracks become fissures; plaster shards fall away, the underlying unmasked, revealing the result, not its cause. The habituation is attended to by applying daub and whitewash, and the divested restored to its makeshift condition. Atop the structure bequeathed to the attic, ancient artifacts lie.

    In preparation for mass, the bully would barb, the bullied pent. Sophie Z hosted. The static pop, hiss, and crackle of Polka hour played on. The audience sat aware; Sophie’s “two/four?” Or?

    “Ite, Missa est.”

    “Er, er, er.”

    “Benedícat vos omnípotens Deus, Pater, er, er, er the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

    “Same time next week, Mr. J—ski?”

    “We will continue our work on the foundation.”                                                                          #