Page 6 of Ethan

“You know that Shawnie here grew up in this house. Not all the way, but surely most of her childhood. She was sharp as a tack, too, I tell you. Adding up numbers in her head like they weren’t nothing to her. Shawnie helped out with the roadside foods we used to sell off. Christmas money, we’d use it for.” He thought of the last time, too, that there had been a celebration in the house. “Families would come from all over to have a meal with us. Not all at once, but enough that the table would fuss up a bit about the people around it. Kiddies too. They’d have their meals right there on the floor. EmmieLou, she’d find her bits and scraps of material, and she’d make as many little coats as she could for the little ones.”

“What happened?” Finny looked at Ethan and asked him what had happened after he’d passed on. “Did the family go on living here? I’m assuming, since Shawn said she was the last of her family with her son, that something happened to the others.”

“They got the sickness.” He looked at Shawnie when she told him what had happened. “Well, the small pox, I guess. All of them…my EmmieLou, took care of each and every one of them people that lived here and worked around here. When they took sick, she’d have them brought right here in his barn to keep doctoring them. Couldn’t take them in the house. There were our own little ones in there. But she did try.” Whipping at his face again, he was glad that Shawnie took over.

“I was around at that time. But when the start of the break out happened, I was sent to school in Europe. I was older than Donna Sue by a few years but I did get some education while there. My cousin and I were the only two that survived that time. She was only seven when we were sent away, and I was nearly twenty by then.” He thought about how now he could remember the little red head that was living under his roof as his daughter’s child. “My mother, unmarried at the time she had me, wasn’t worth much to the men in town. Not until they needed some doctoring, as Finny calls it. But she, along with the rest of the family, died off, leaving Donna Sue and myself around.”

“What happened to her? I don’t rightly remember.” Shawnie told him what had happened to his last baby. “I often thought that you were just one more of my kids. You remember that? When you’d be acting up, I’d give you a punishment like I had—you didn’t act up that much, now that I think on that. You were a good girl. I’m sorry about the passing of Donna Sue. She wasn’t so good at being a good girl. I’m betting that’s why your momma sent you with your cousin. To keep her out of trouble.”

“A fat lot of good I did for her. I think that’s when I started to not come home as much. I didn’t age much after I turnedseventeen but I was able to see a part of the world that very few were ever allowed to.”

Knowing that his Donna Sue had gotten caught up with a married man bothered him. Then, her dying while giving birth to his bastard was terrible. But to know that since she was a soiled dove, what they called a woman like his daughter, she couldn’t get any help in birthing him, and he died, too. Poor little mite.

Finny didn’t think that if he’d been around, his daughter wouldn’t have done any different. But the sickness came around, and there was no hope for a lot of families. Even if you had the funds to send your family away, it seemed to catch up with them no matter what.

He realized that he’d faded out while he’d been thinking. Going to the barn where they were still working, it tickled him something pink to know that the two of them would be together for all time. That boy, Ethan, he had a good head on his shoulders, and Finny had to laugh every time Shawnie would fuss at him about this or that.

“Look at this.” Ethan pulled the first of many things that had been hidden in the big barn. When times were good, you’d find a hidey hole and put some of the good things back. The tin can that Ethan found wouldn’t be much of a treasure to most, he didn’t think. But the boy, he was having a right good time going through the box. That was when he noticed that they had a lot of his little hidey holes found and it took him back to his place of burial to gather up himself when he remembered putting things to keep in the barn. Whipping at his imaginary tears, he sat down on his headstone and waited for himself to have enough magic built up so that he could see them opening some of the boxes.

~*~

“Yes, yes, I understand that you needed this by last month, but as I’ve told you before, my best is out on vacation.” The man, hedidn’t know his name until he looked at the contract he’d been going over, looking for loop holes that would only help him. “Mr. Levy, you have to let the poor girl have a little down time.”

“You told me that you were doing the advertising campaign for me. Which is it, Henderson? Is it someone else that I have to go looking for, or do I have to set a fire under your ass with a lawsuit? You stop lying to me and tell me the truth.” He sat down in his chair when his wife of forty-three years came in with her arms crossed over her ample breasts and her coat and handbag. “Well? What do you have to say for yourself?”

Putting out her hand, Carlos handed her the phone. She had been working here when he swooped in and took over the place from her daddy, and now he was about to run it into the ground. He realized that he might well have missed something when she sat down, and his phone handle was now in its cradle.

“Well, what do you have to say for yourself? Where is your staff, Carlos? I was hoping to see that you at least have one person still working for you. I told you not to take credit for her designs. Didn’t I say that to you?” He nodded, wondering if he could feel any worse than he did right now. “Use your words, Carlos. You know how much I hate it when I have to try and figure out what you’re doing in that half-empty mind of yours.”

“I know that you told me not to do that, but it’s a moot point now, don’t you think? She’s out there having the time of her life doing god only knows what she’s doing, and I’m losing the only business that I’ve ever had.” She reminded him that it hadn’t been his in the first place. “Because yes, this is the perfect time for you to bring up how I took it from your father. I needed that about now. Do you have any more tidbits that you’d like to throw to a drowning man right now, Shelly? Perhaps you’d like to bring up too that when your father died, he was cursing me? Or the fact that in all the years we were married, your mother never once spoke to me? This would be a good time.”

“I wasn’t going to. However, if I were to do that, you know that it’s all true.” Sometimes, like today, he positively hated his wife. “I got you a week’s extension. Do you have a way to talk to Shawn? Or have you burnt that bridge again, Carlos?”

“I went to her house, or the one that she had at the post office—don’t even ask me how I got that, and she called the police on me. That’s playing dirty if you ask me. Just plain dirty. It wouldn’t take her any time at all to just make the changes to the draft that I had for her. No time at all.” Shelly asked him about her home. “I don’t know if I had the correct address for it or not but since she was there when I showed up, I’m thinking that it was. Big mother fucker. I kid you not, Shelly. We could have put our home in that sucker forty times and not made a bit of difference to the people living there, either. You remember the Farley Mansion, don’t you? What I wouldn’t give to have a look around that old place. I bet it’s just full of antiques, too.” He shuddered at the thought of all wood floors and furniture.

“I wanted to live there when I was just a child. I kept thinking about how the house, sitting up there on that hill, would give me the perfect view of the people beneath me. My parents used to tell me of the parties that she’d go to as a child up there. Then the old man died. I don’t remember what happened to him, and the place just died with him.” His uncles used to tell him the same thing. “If they’ve kept it the way it was when I was just a child, I’d not want to live there. Can you imagine those floors? Well, you can’t, so I’ll tell you. Hardwood floors all over the place. They had designs in them too, like anyone would care what they were slopping mud in the house would care about. Oh, and I remember the big barn out back. I lost my virginity in that barn. I think I told you that before.”

“Yes, you did. Another story of yours to give me a nice slap in the face.” He leaned back in his chair. He had a thought. “Why don’t you go and see her. Maybe you can give her some advice onthe house while you’re out there. From the little bit that I got to see before being carted off, she could use your touch.”

“You know, I might well just do that.” When she stood up and asked him for the paperwork for the work that he needed done, Carlos thought that he should have suggested going up there sooner. Shelly could be an immoveable force when she saw something that she wanted. “You come with me, and I’ll—don’t tell me no before I even get to the question, Carlos.”

“I can’t be within fifty feet of her place. Remember? She had me arrested, and then she pressed charges that the court gave her. I’m under a restraining order.” Shelly said that he’d have to think of something else if he was going to be in jail again. “Maybe you could rent you a driver. I know how much you hate to drive.”

“I detest it.” He knew that, too. She told him every single time that they got into a car or even a limo together. Christ, she was like having a broken record on repeat all the time. “There is a limo, a couple of them around town now. You find out where they’re renting it from and call them up. We might have to spend a bit more to be able to get the girl to see reason.”

Carlos doubted very much that if he were to send fifty people up to the house, that Shawn would see reason. He also had a feeling that she really didn’t need to work. If what he’d heard around town about her having money to burn like she was. But he dutifully called around, and the only thing that he could figure out was that the Tucker family owned the three limos and didn’t rent them out to anyone.

“We’ll just see about that, now, won’t we. Do you have their number, this Tucker people?” He handed her the business card that he’d found one day while in a business trying to drum up some work. While she was on the phone, Carlos decided that it was well past time for him to have a fortifying cup of tea. Making one for his wife, he sat it in front of her while she was talking down again to the people on the phone with her. “What do youmean they don’t allow others to use their cars? Did you tell them who I was? That I’m Shelly Henderson of the Henderson family?”

He was taking his cup of tea back to his office when he heard the phone being slammed down in the cradle. Carlos would never admit this to anyone, but he enjoyed it when his wife didn’t get her way. He was never one to deny her anything for the repercussions from her, but he did so love it when she didn’t get anything from others. Just because she was a bully.

“You’re not going to believe this, Carlos, but they flat-out turned me down. Like I’m not…I don’t think that the person who answered the phone told them who I was. That’s the only way that I can figure out why they’d deny me what I want. It’s just a limo. Not like I’m asking them to allow me to sleep in their beds.” He did point out that he’d told her that. “Yes, but you’re not as strong-willed as I am. I’ll just have to go there myself. Figure out why their staff, I did tell you they had a staff, didn’t I? Well, I’m not going to take no for an answer. That’s for sure.”

Sipping his tea in the quiet after the storm of Shelly, he reached down into his lower desk drawer and pulled out his stash. Smiling to himself, he didn’t know that other people would call his stash a treat, but he loved having crackers and cheese with his tea. And it couldn’t be just any tea, either. It had to be the good stuff, too. Carlos wondered if he was going to be able to indulge in such pleasures anymore if he didn’t have any clients to speak of.

At a quarter after six, he made his way home. He didn’t mind the short walk. Carlos was very proud of his fit body. All his family members, including his parents, had been overweight and sloppy with it. It was why he didn’t eat sweets or drink wine or beer. Outliving his wife was all that he was hoping for in this life.

The house was dark when he got into the house. They hadlong since gotten rid of the staff that they had in favor of simply having someone come in twice a week to dust and run the vacuum. The cook that they’d had retired some years ago so he and Shelly would go out to eat for their meals instead of keeping around a person that seemed to be forever forgetting that they worked for them and not the other way around.