STORMY WEATHER Part 7 - Short Fiction

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This short story is in response to

RAVEN’S SATURDAY

WORDZZLE CHALLENGE

Click on the above link to join in or read other entries.

How it works: Raven supplies two sets of words (or phrases) to use in a piece of writing. One can choose the ten- or five-word challenge ---or combine both into a fifteen word mega-challenge.

Mega challenge:
sow, close, console, lives, minute, polish, bass, pussy, complex, resume, bow, sewer, house, import, intern

(Words from the challenge are in bold face in the story.)

This is a continuation of previous entries:

STORMY WEATHER Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6

STORMY WEATHER Part 7

(the final episode)

The vault was dark inside. While Parker ran to our house for flashlights and other tools, Miss Cowpepper and I looked on the shelf close to the left of the door. We found a crossbow. Next to it, an antique rifle and several swords. I lifted one sword from the shelf and pulled the blade from the scabbard. It was shiny, as if it had been polished recently. I surmised that if the safe were airtight, metal might not tarnish.
“So this is where my father hid the rest of of his military memorabilia,” she said. “I thought there had been more when I was a child.”
I pulled a box that sat on the floor of the safe into the basement. A grate over a sewer drain clanked as I dragged the box away from the safe’s entrance.
When I heard Parker return, I called to him to request he bring a kitchen chair for Miss Cowpepper. Inventoring the vault might take hours, possibly days.
With the flashlights, we saw stacks of frames, dozens of old books, and what looked like a bass fiddle at the very back of the safe.
Parker went upstairs. He returned with a floor lamp from the living room and an extension cord he had brought from home. He returned to the first floor to clean up the lunch dishes and install window locks and dead bolts.
While I pulled more boxes from the safe, Miss Cowpepper sat near the first box, sorting through old photos. She gasped, holding up a picture.
“What?” I asked.
She showed me the photo of a small pale girl holding a white cat. “I thought this photo had been lost. It’s me and my first pussycat named Whiskers.”
“That’s the name of the one that just died, isn’t it?”
“I name all my cats Whiskers. Too bad cats don’t really have nine lives. I do miss him. He was a sweet boy and looked almost exactly like my first Whiskers.” She sighed and set the photo on the lid of one of the other boxes.
I patted Miss Cowpepper’s arm to console her while I looked at the small black and white snapshot. “Would you like me to make you a larger version of this. I can do it on my computer?”
Miss Cowpepper decided that would be wonderful.
We found boxes of imported figurines, mostly stamped “Occupied Japan” wrapped in yellowed newspapers from the 1940s. I knew some of those might be in demand on eBay.
There were stacks of papers, mostly complex legal documents neither of us understood. Miss Cowpepper told me the grandson of her father’s lawyer was her attorney who handled the trust her father had left her. She’d have him look at them.
Parker called down, asking if we’d like to take a break for tea. Miss Cowpepper nodded.
I answered, “Start the water boiling, we’ll be up in a minute.”
After bathroom breaks and tea, I had to tear Miss Cowpepper away from another detailed discussion with Parker about old films to convince her to resume our inventory.
We found lots of military books. One was written by a Union soldier who had been interned at Andersonville during the Civil War. The only books I thought might be of monetary value were two volumes of The Personal Memoirs of General Ulysses S. Grant*. A handwritten note inside one cover, which Miss Cowpepper verified was in her father’s writing, said simply “First Edition, 1885.”
It took us a few more days to go through everything. We contacted Miss Cowpepper’s lawyer to help with the legal papers and stock certificates we found. I called my friend Kathy who was an antique collector to help us decide what, if anything, might be of value.
The next day Miss Cowpepper allowed Kathy, her attorney, and me into her house. Miss Cowpepper didn’t care if anything was valuable. She was simply glad to have the old family photographs. She had decided what she wanted to keep and asked us to give anything that might be valuable to a museum or sell it and give the money to an animal shelter. She requested that her will be updated to do the same with the rest of her belongings after her death.
Then she asked us to go away and leave her alone for a few days. She had seen more people in a week than she had in fifty years and had had enough of other people for a while. My sister Marigold would be arriving the next day to help me sow seeds for my first herb garden, so I needed to take a break from Miss Cowpepper anyway.
A week later, the garden had been planted and Marigold had returned home. One morning, I carried a wrapped package and a picnic basket to Miss Cowpepper’s porch. After several knocks, she answered the door.
“I have something for you,” I said.
The tiny woman invited me to the kitchen for a cup of tea.
I asked her if I could visit her once in a while. She didn’t answer while she concentrated on pouring hot water into china cups.
When she turned back to the stove to return the tea kettle, I set my basket on her table and opened the lid. When she was ready to sit down, she stopped when she saw what was in the basket. Miss Cowpepper’s pale eyes shone as she gently lifted the six-month-old white cat I had found at an animal shelter.
“He has all his shots, is litter trained, and has been neutered. Here are his papers,” I said placing an envelope on the table. “Parker will leave a bag of cat food on the back porch this evening. I saw you still have a a bag of litter and a box. Do you need anything else?”
She shook her head, then placed the small cat on the floor to explore his new home.
I tore the brown paper off the package and showed her the photo of her and her first cat which I had enlarged and enhanced on my computer. I had placed it in one of the empty frames we had found in her vault.
“Oh, Rosemary. Thank you. These are far better than ten vaults full of old papers,” she said stroking the fur of the kitten which was rubbing his face on her ankle. She reached across the table to grab my hand. “You’re welcome to visit Whiskers and me anytime.”

(This is the end of this long story, but

Miss Cowpepper, Rosemary and

Parker will appear in future stories.)

(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

*Historical note: In 1884, Ulysses Grant was broke after being swindled by his investment partner. (Former presidents were not granted pensions until 1958.) He was dying of cancer and distraught about his family’s future. Mark Twain convinced him to write his memoirs and to allow the book to be published by Twain’s own publishing company, promising 75% of the book’s proceeds as royalties. Grant completed his autobiography in June, less than one month before his death on July 23, 1885.
The first volume was published in December 1885. Within three months, the first check sent to Mrs. Grant was the largest royalty paid on a book up to that time, over $200,000. Additional royalties paid over the next few years brought the total earned for Grant’s family to almost $450,000.
Grant’s autobiography has been compared to Caesar’s Commentaries and described as the finest writing produced by a participant in the Civil War.
The final words of Grant’s memoir are, “Let us have peace.”

STORMY WEATHER Part 6 - Short Fiction

(click on image for larger view)

This short story is in response to

RAVEN’S SATURDAY

WORDZZLE CHALLENGE

Click on the above link to join in or read other entries.

How it works: Raven supplies two sets of words (or phrases) to use in a piece of writing. One can choose the ten- or five-word challenge ---or combine both into a fifteen word mega-challenge.

Ten-word challenge:
nausea, everything is on sale, expect great things, frying pan, pledge, birds of a feather, stick, Saturday morning, liver and bacon, caterpillars

(Words from the challenge are in bold face in the story.)


This is a continuation of previous entries:

STORMY WEATHER Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5

STORMY WEATHER Part 6 

        On Saturday morning, Parker and I headed for Miss Cowpepper’s house. The night before I had told him about the safe the workers and I had found in the basement. We worried that with a few people now knowing that the elderly woman had a huge, bank-vault-sized safe, she might be a target for thieves.
        Parker’s father had been a locksmith and Parker had helped him during school vacations, so he knew a bit about locks for doors and windows. We decided he would check Miss Cowpepper’s house to see how secure it was.
        Meanwhile, I still had to inform Miss Cowpepper of the safe that had been hidden in her basement. She had been napping the day before when I left. I was both worried about her and excited for her, causing me a bit of nervous nausea that morning.
        Miss Cowpepper opened the door a crack, but scurried away when I told her Parker was with me. She was an albino recluse who didn’t like visitors.
        I helped Miss Cowpepper up the stairs, then I continued my work from the day before, organizing things in the dining room after the recent flood had filled the basement and left an inch of water on the first floor. Parker had been helping the Jennings down the street, but their grown children were visiting from out of town for the weekend to help their parents, so he wasn’t needed.
        After checking the doors and windows and measuring the opening where the safe sat, Parker made a list for Lowe’s™. He would buy locks, hardware, and materials to create a new door to cover the opening where the safe sat in the basement.
        Before he left, I went upstairs to ask Miss Cowpepper if she needed anything else. She sat in a rocking chair in her bedroom watching TV.
        “Why thank you, for asking,” she said. “I just saw an ad for Shopper’s Market. It seems that nearly everything is on sale. You know, I have had a craving for liver and bacon for the longest time. And onions, too. Those Meals on Wheels dinners are good, but they never have liver. Can you cook the liver for me?”
        I wasn't much of a cook, but I assured her I could.
        At the front door, when I handed Parker the shopping list, he said to me, “Now Rosie, don’t expect great things from that safe. It may be empty.”
        “I know. I know,” I said. The night before I had been fantasizing about what might be in Miss Cowpepper’s vault. He knew how I could build things up in my head and then be disappointed.
        “Promise?” he asked.
        Held up my right hand. “I pledge not to get my hopes up or let Miss Cowpepper get hers up until we check the contents of the safe.”
        He kissed me on the cheek and left.
        In the kitchen, I found a frying pan and other things we would need to make lunch, then set the table for three. Upstairs, in Miss Cowpepper’s bedroom, I sat on the floor, leaning against the bed and watching a program on the Discovery Channel while the eighty-year-old snoozed in her chair. I dozed off in the middle of watching caterpillars inch their way along a stick.
        I awoke when Parker called from the base of the stairs. I helped him to cook liver, mashed potatoes and green beans as Miss Cowpepper had requested.
        When I went upstairs to wake her for lunch, Miss Cowpepper was watching a program about humming birds. She told me that besides old movies, her favorite shows were about nature, especially animals.
        “You and my husband are birds of a feather,” I told her. “That’s exactly what he likes to watch. I think you’d like him. Would you be willing to meet him?”
        She looked dubious.
        “Actually, I’m not nearly as good in the kitchen as he is. When he returned from the store, he started to cook all your favorites for lunch.”
        “Well, I do smell the bacon and the onions.” She sighed. “I guess if he went to the bother of cooking for me, I can meet him. He won’t laugh at me, will he?”
        I assured her he would not.
        Over lunch, Miss Cowpepper and Parker discussed old films. It was as if she had been wanting to discuss all the films she had ever seen, but there had been no one for her to talk to. Miss Cowpepper left nothing on her plate. We finished our meal with chocolate ice cream and chocolate sauce.
        While Parker cleared the table, I told Miss Cowpepper I had some exciting news for her. She just nodded, so I went on. “I think I discovered what the key thing is for.” Her eyes lit up. “Can you come with me to the basement?” I asked.
        I stopped in the dining room to remove the key from the wall. Miss Cowpepper hobbled with her cane to the basement. Parker and I followed behind.
        I steered the woman to the opening in the wall to show her the safe which had been hidden behind rotten wood that the workers had removed when cleaning up after the flood.
        “Oh my,” she said. I never knew anything was behind that old piece of wood.”
        I inserted the key into the hole in the vault door. It slipped in easily. I tried to turn it clockwise, but nothing happened. When I turned it in the opposite direction, it clicked. Parker came over to help me pull on the heavy vault door, but I didn’t need his help. It was so perfectly balanced that, with a light touch it swung wide open.

(to be continued in Part 7, the final

episode of STORMY WEATHER, next week)

(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

STORMY WEATHER Part 3 - Short Fiction

This short story is in response to

RAVEN’S SATURDAY

WORDZZLE CHALLENGE

How it works: Raven supplies two sets of words (or phrases) to use in a piece of writing. One can choose the ten- or five-word challenge ---or combine both into a fifteen word challenge. Click on the link to join the fun or to read others' entries.

Mega challenge - all fifteen words:
albino, trench, marble, assistant, Indian, What's that supposed to mean?, sound first principles, the key thing, moat, curtain, under the surface, doomed, grand design, temple, aspirin (Challenge words appear in bold face in the text.)

This is a continuation of previous entries:  STORMY WEATHER Part 1 and Part 2

STORMY WEATHER Part 3

        The day after Maple Creek overflowed, the water had receded but it was still a foot deep at our end of the street, deeper toward the creek, as if we were surrounded by a moat.
        Our house sat on a small rise, but our lower neighbors had gotten the worst of the flood. I hoped their homes would not be doomed to a wrecking ball. From our windows they looked fine, but who knew what damage was hidden under the surface.
        In my basement office, Parker helped me set up the computer equipment I had moved from harm’s way. After the electricity came on midmorning, I completed my grand design for Clarence Bubbler, the bubble gum king. He was an annoying man who had turned The Big Bubbler into a small fortune. After making back up copies and preparing a priority mail folder for him, I popped two aspirin tablets.
        That evening, pulling back the curtain, I saw that the street was finally free of water. Parker and I walked to the car two blocks away, dropped Bubbler’s package in the mail, and drove to a megamarket where we purchased a ton of cleaning products, cases of bottled water and cartons of protein bars. We spent half of Bubbler’s expected fee, but we were happy our home had been spared and felt empathy for neighbors with damaged homes.
        The next morning we drove to the corner of Aurora and Washington to donate supplies and offer our services.
        The police chief gave us an overview of our duties. “We have several sound first principles for such a situation,” he said. “Protect yourself, clean everything thoroughly, and clean yourself when you are done for the day. Wear masks and rubber gloves. Use bleach where you can. Go home and take a hot shower.”
        Parker headed toward the Jennings, a delightful retired couple to whom he had been assigned.
        The police chief called me aside. “I hope Miss Cowpepper will let you in. I talked to her through the door this morning. She said she might talk to a woman.”
        “What’s wrong with her, I asked?” It was a question the neighbors speculated upon constantly.
        “I hope you’re going to find out.”
        With a face mask hanging around my neck and a dozen pair of rubber gloves in my pockets, I climbed ten steps onto Miss Cowpepper’s porch. It was damp and muddy, so the water had probably reached her first floor. I knocked lightly and called, “Miss Cowpepper? Are you there?”
        Of course she was. The chief told me she hadn’t left home, nor had anyone laid eyes on her, in fifty years.
        “Who’re you?” asked a shaky voice from the other side of the closed door.
        “I’m Rosemary, from the last house at the dead end. I’ve been assigned to be your cleanup assistant.”
        “What's that supposed to mean?” she asked.
       “I will see what kind of damage you have and help you clean.”
        “It’ll dry,” she said.
        “The sewers overflowed, so the water was full of microbes. We have to clean everything so you don’t get ill. You might have to go to the hospital if you get infected by the water.”
        She didn’t respond to that.
        “Please, can I just come in to see what needs to be done?”
        The door creaked on its hinges and I saw an eye, barely at the level of my waist, peeking through the tiny slit.
        “You won’t look at me, will you?”
        “Not if you don’t want me to,” I said.
        Hiding behind the door, she opened it. I stepped into what looked like the dusty storage room of a museum. I think it always looked that way, but Miss Cowpepper had obviously moved everything she could from the floor to the tops of furniture and the marble mantle in her living room. Almost every square inch of wall space was covered with sepia photos. In the corner stood a cigar store Indian. Floor lamps with stained glass shades sat on a table. End tables were stacked on a worn couch. The rugs were soaked and smelled like sewer water but it looked like the water had been only an inch deep.
        “What about the basement? What’s down there?”
        “Nothing.”
        “Nothing?” I asked.
        “Just water, I guess. Once when it flooded, my nephew closed in the back porch and put a new furnace and water heater there and a washing machine in the kitchen. I haven’t been in the basement for years.”
        I nodded. We’d still have to inspect it and pressure wash it with a disinfectant. “Can your nephew or anyone else help?”
       “My nephew’s been dead for years. There’s no one else.”
        “Oh. I’m sorry.” It felt odd, not looking at her when I spoke. “We’re going to have to bring a crew in here to pump out your basement and move your furniture so we can remove your rugs,” I said.
        “No one can see me.”
        With my back toward her, I suggested, “How about, when they come in, you go upstairs and they can work down here?”
        “They’ll take my things.”
        “I’ll make sure they don’t take anything,” I assured her. “Miss Cowpepper, I dislike talking to you when you are behind me. Can I turn around?”
        “If you promise not to laugh,” she said.
        I promised. I didn’t know what to expect. I steeled myself to show no expression of horror. I turned slowly. Miss Cowpepper slowly moved from behind the door.
        When I saw her, I smiled. Miss Cowpepper had the palest skin I had even seen. Her hair was white, her eyes light blue with pink rims. I realized she was an albino and not more than four feet tall. She must have been in her eighties, yet she was an oddly cute little person, like a chubby china doll. She wore a gray sweater over a brown dress and leaned on a cane.

        I removed my trench coat and hung it on an empty clothes tree.
        I stepped into the dining room, which too was filled with junk. On a low buffet, Miss Cowpepper had set up what looked like a temple shrine with candles which gave the room a golden glow. A brass object, circular at the top with a cylinder at least two feet long with short rods sticking out of the bottom, hung on the wall above the flames. Miss Cowpepper saw me staring at it.
        “Don’t let them take the key thing,” she said. “It’s the most valuable object I own.”

(To be continued.)

(Text ©2009, C.J. Peiffer)