Testament

This is a short story that I based off a reader's comment in another Lit story. Thanks for the seed germ of an idea unknown commenter.

Jack:

In a small town like ours, it wasn't easy to find a place to rent. There were few dedicated apartment buildings, and they were usually full. Ever since I was a kid, the way that young couples often got their start in life, if they couldn't live with their parents for whatever reason, was to live above someone's garage.

For widows and occasionally widowers it served a valuable purpose; they could supplement their savings and stay on in their homes by renting a small space or suite to a couple. Normally rents weren't high and it was expected that the young man would help out around the house - clearing the yard, or if there was a storm getting rid of fallen wood. Young women were seldom on their own in those days; but if a widow needed the help she might allow a single woman to live with her in exchange for some rent money and help with the household chores.

This story is set in those times. I'm committing it to paper now, before I forget the important information. I wonder how my heirs will feel about me when they read this, but by then I'll be long gone, so I guess they can feel however they damn well want, and it won't matter a whit.

I never intended to be a landlord, but the way things shook out I didn't have much choice.

After what I had done to others, and what I'd seen taking back the islands in the South Pacific, I found I had become unsuited to sitting in an office and dealing with customers. Their seemingly petty concerns didn't play well against the backdrop of my memories and nightmares from that place. After a couple of failed attempts at returning to 'normality' or what passed for it back then, I lucked into a windfall that sets the groundwork for this story.

I had been staying with my Uncle Micah from my Mother's side of the family, in a similar situation to the one I described above. He understood that I spent large periods of time out in the mountains, and was OK that my room was barely occupied. When it was, the walls rang with the sound of my screams and nightmares. Micah was probably glad I was gone most of the time.

He was a large man for the time; a lawyer which had been a surprise to everyone in the family apparently, and had done well for himself, which had been a surprise to no one.

But living the good life hard burned itself on him, in the way my own formative years had on me. Where I struggled to have any use for man or his works, and was happiest on my kitroll in the woods, he struggled to avoid any kind of pleasure.

His rolls of fat wouldn't look so out of place these days, but back then he must have been the fattest man in town. When I was back in town he kept me busy with all the chores he couldn't do himself. I remember thinking that he was just too cheap to pay someone to do them, but it wasn't that really.

I limbed the trees in his yard, cut the grass, cleared the gutters, painted fences and walls and half a hundred other chores he probably could have done himself. The work made me feel worthwhile and a human being though; it had been touch and go for both of those feelings for a while.

For a while, everything in my life was referenced in my mind to the date of my return from 'overseas' as some polite folks called it. It wasn't much after January of that second year back that I found life getting more complicated than it had been.

Among the usual winter chores and storm clean up that I knew would be teed up for me by the old man, I also had the unhappy chore of dealing with his moldering corpse.

He had debauched himself to expiration, and I found him sitting in front of a half eaten turkey, a drumstick fallen in his lap. An entire goddamn turkey dinner set out for one man. I remember that I shook my head and poured myself a glass of the wine he had opened to drink with his meal, but the bottle had soured. What a pain in the ass. It was at that point I figured that he had been gone a while.

Deciding that I had a reasonable amount of work ahead of me, I cleaned myself back up before heading into town to deal with the Sheriff.

There was no sense in me showing up there stinking and looking like a hobo, rattling off about dead bodies. I was liable to get locked up if I wasn't recognised, and I had done my best to avoid being known in this town. I needed no parade of widows looking to replace their dead husband with me; though plenty of my comrades seemed to have done exactly that - trading up when they got home and found dissatisfaction with the wife they had versus the widow across town. Or vice versa! I got the occasional letter from guys I served with, mostly filled with fluff like that. I wrote a few back.

Washed and combed and feeling a little hungry, I walked the mile or so into town to the Police Station and reported what I had found.

Aside from a little skepticism about how the old man died and a bit of 'We'll be the judge of that', I managed to avoid getting too irate and as a result was able to catch a ride back with the Cop that was dispatched with the Coroner. The flatfoot gave me the usual questions in case I was the killer; as if it was anything other than the old man himself who did the killing, over a period of years.

When things all shook out, it was to my surprise; but no one else's apparently, that I was the owner of a fine house and yard; and a small sum of money. Most of the old man's money went to the local law society which was fair enough by me. He'd given me a roof over my head and asked for nothing in return. Which had been good, because I had little spare of anything to give him. That largesse left me in a pickle though.

I had no job, and wanted none. I had a house, which I could sell, but there were times that it was convenient to have somewhere to come home to. I guess I could have sold it and hit the road full time, but that seemed like disrespect to the old guy. Keeping it meant money, for taxes, and upkeep and fresh paint and all the things that come with having a giant money pit, that most people supply via a working job.

In the end it was the lawyer who suggested I rented it out, or part of it at least. With my frugal lifestyle it would just work, enough money coming in from rent that it would cover the household needs and a little left over to put away against a rainy day.

I was just wrapping my head around how to try and reintegrate back into society when I desperately didn't want to, when the second bombshell struck. It was more out of the blue than the death of the old man, but involved death all the same.

Back in the war...gather round listen to Grandpa tell his stories kiddos...gather round; I had been in the 4th Marine Division, and some of the most hellish times, in those generally hellish times, had been on an island called Saipan. By that point, we knew we were winning, not like the first couple of years where it was mayhem and defeat happened as likely as victory. By then we knew we had Tojo on the ropes. Despite that, the individual Imperial troops on the ground did not care at all, or perhaps because of that cared even more about every bloody inch.

We had them trapped on Saipan and we shelled the living daylights out of everywhere on the island the ships' big guns could reach. Still when it came time, it was Marine boots and blood on the ground and there was plenty of the latter. On the slopes of Mt Tapochau -we called it Mt Hot Chow - most of my platoon was wiped out by a crazy Japanese counter attack. They called it 'Hell's Pocket' when we were done; dead and wounded were everywhere.

Anyway, me and Frank Misciglioni were half of the remaining strength of the platoon when we crawled out of Hells Pocket, and I was carrying him. He was missing a leg at the knee and his left arm was gone from the middle of his forearm. A Banzai charge had overwhelmed us. It was the last man standing who had sliced right through Frank's arm as he knelt, already wounded in the leg, trying to reload his Garand. That the sword only took his arm was down to me plugging the wielder with a pistol I'd collected from the Lt's body when my Garand had jammed. Saipan was the island of Banzai attacks and we counted the cost high indeed.

Frank had been one of the few I had stayed in touch with; and he credited me with saving his life. Which was true, I had. You're going to have a hard time with an en bloc clip and a Garand with just one hand, never mind dealing with a sword wielding fanatic who is intent on making sure you never reload anything ever again.

We corresponded every few months or so through the rest of the war as he convalesced and made his way back home to upstate New York and into the tender care of the VA and his family. We stayed in touch after things wrapped up - his family was large and well placed to look after him and he slotted right back into an office job at his family factory. Perhaps if I'd had a big family I wouldn't be out in the woods for 6 days out of 7.

Anyway, sorry for the rambling war story there kiddos, Frank's next letter came about 2 months after I had become a homeowner by default. It was his older sister writing me and I knew right away that the news was bad.

After 3 years of bloody hell on earth and surviving Saipan, he had tripped over his goddamn crutches and gotten run over in the street by a careless driver. The driver wasn't really at fault probably, but the end result was the same.

Sometimes life really feels like it's a joke, and you're the unwitting patsy. Cream pie to the face when you're least expecting it. It was a surprise to find out that not only had he put me in his Will; like we all said we'd do for each other if we could, but most of us probably didn't. It meant a large sum of money was coming my way. Well large for me, living in reduced means in the large house. His sister didn't seem to begrudge it, so there was that. If she had been sore about it, I'd have probably passed on it.

As I was preparing to advertise for my tenants to fill my new house - I had finally got the paperwork and set up what I needed with the town to be a landlord - my lawyer suggested I buy another vacant house and rent that out too. As I would be supporting myself with the income, it would provide me with an asset that could be sold if needed, and also monthly income. The hassle of collecting rent twice was not much greater than the hassle of collecting rent once, and I was able to find a vacant property within a couple of blocks that became my second rental property.

Within two months I had gone from living the life of a woodsman, visiting town occasionally and avoiding contact with as many people as possible, to owning two homes and needing to fill them with tenants.

I had successfully managed to deal with the death of my Uncle and all the attendant paperwork and lawyer meetings and court stuff without blowing a gasket and coming unhinged. Which had been a real fear at the back of my mind. I could kill men in their sleep, and had, and that hadn't been close to the most vile thing I had done in the 4 years I fought.

Some days after I returned it had felt like the slightest provocation would have me hoisting the black flag and slitting throats with my Ka-Bar. When I thought back on it years later, I think it was down to the lawyer, he was an old fart to me then; but in him I felt a kindred spirit. He had fought in the 'war to end all wars', what a joke! God knows that had been bloody enough for anyone.

So when he had made suggestions, I didn't bristle at them as much as I might have done if they had come from others. Well, that is looking back on things in hindsight, and in 1948 hindsight was still foresight, and I didn't have much of a clue there.

So there you go. A bit of a war story, a bit of explanation why the strange old man was a strange old man. A bit of family history, and how he came to be in possession of not one but two fine houses.

You should probably stop reading here. I would advise it. You can maintain the image in your head of this old geezer that you have firmly lodged in there and trouble yourself no more. You might have been surprised by the throat slitting bit, or not, if you've been taught any history. What do they teach kids these days? But probably for the best to wrap this up with the rest of my junk and store it in the attic or chuck it out.

Well, don't say I didn't warn you, and remember - it's too late for me to give a damn what you think of me, because I'm finally rotting in the ground. And that won't change once you've read this. Assuming you didn't cremate me. For your mother's sake I hope you didn't.

1948 seems like a pretty tumultuous year when you look back on it in the history books, but the thing I remember most was the beginning of NASCAR. I mean the Soviets taking Czechoslovakia was a big deal, but now the Soviets are gone, and I heard that the same is true for Czechoslovakia as of a few days ago.

So some things from back then seem like they were ephemeral, some had seeming permanence; but didn't really. NASCAR, though, it might be forever. Hilarious when you get down to it. The greatest land army ever assembled kicked the shit out of the Krauts and became the world's second super power. First man in space. Still outlasted by a bunch of moonshine running hicks turning left.

I was listening to the first ever official race of that new series on the radio when I got my first phone call about the rooms in 'my' house; the one on Blundell, that I actually lived in. It had stopped being Uncle Micah's house in my mind the first time I had to tell myself to do the damn gutters.

Before the end of the evening, I'd had half a dozen enquiries about both the rooms at the Blundell house, and the whole house for rent over on Pine Street. I don't remember who won that race, but I do recall one of the racers flipped his car nearly a dozen times before walking away shaken but unhurt. Crazy moonshiners.

The house on Pine ended up rented out that first year to a Preacher and his family. The parish was rebuilding his church-provided house and for the year that it was being torn down and rebuilt, he and his wife and son lived over on Pine. They were walking distance from the church which seemed a comfort to them. After the year was up, I found other tenants, but it was never as easy as that first year with a man of the cloth and his family.

I don't know if it was cussedness, stupidity, cupidity or blind lust that made me rent out the rooms in my house to the couple I did that first year. It sure came back to bite me in the ass, but taught me a valuable lesson, and...well, you'll see.

Although I had 3 or 4 possibles for the suite, in the end I gave it to a young couple, Harald and Margaret. I laughed when I wrote that out just now. They seemed so young then, but in truth they were neither of them more than 5 or so years younger than me. Those 5 years for me had been gunfire and shelling, foxholes, bloody death, and friends dismembered. I run on sometimes. We already did the war stories up top. Anyway, they seemed so young, and fresh; innocent at 20, in a way I could never be again.

They both worked for a local branch of the Socialist Workers Party; I guess someone had the idea that this could be fertile ground for their Trotskyite ideas. How that jibed with renting from a private landlord, I couldn't tell you; but they were both well educated and clean looking and promised steady income. Back then, before the 50's it was OK to say you were a Commie, and I held no personal grudges against the Reds. They had done their bit in Europe against the Axis, which was mostly how I felt about it back then.

He looked like he had escaped from a camp somewhere, rail thin and always fiddling with his glasses like he was never sure that they actually were still there. His cheap suit hung on him like he'd been demobbed in it, but he'd never served a minute. It was his woman that got them the rooms; she was a big city girl from somewhere up North.

As I showed them around the place she caught me admiring her backside, which was indeed worth a look, and from then on she made sure to show me a little skin.

When I was talking to them at the kitchen table to try and sound them out and figure out if they were going to be good tenants or not, she had the top two buttons on her blouse undone and kept leaning forward to give me half of a view down her blouse. Never more than half of a look, no more than a tease. Just enough to let me know that she knew what dogs all men were; and that she could wrap me around her little finger like the simple animal I was. Well, it worked, so I can't say she was wrong.

The bespectacled husband was some kind of book-learned intellectual, a rising star of 'the struggle' in America, but I told them I was too simple a man to have any truck with that. I told them that as long as they kept themselves to themselves and didn't cause or plot any revolutions in the rooms I was fine with them.

He laughed nervously, and she just smiled that certain grin. And so ended the teases and the half undone blouse. At least she smiled as she did those buttons back up; I still don't know to this day whether Harald knew that she had displayed herself and accepted it, or was blind to anything beyond the revolution.

For six months, everything was copacetic. I made my rounds on the first Friday of the month and would collect rent in check form from the Preacher man, and cash from my two resident and earnest Socialists.

Margaret helped me around the house a little - mostly sweeping the hallway and a little gardening of her own in the flower beds out front as we came out spring and into summer. She worked part time at a local school, Lord only knows what she was teaching those kids back then! They were probably learning about how revolution is inevitable and people like me should be first up against the wall. Thank God she was only there 3 days a week!

It was when Margaret began helping me more around the house that I began to wonder if everything was still all right in the land of revolution. She was suddenly everywhere. I'd bump into her cleaning the kitchen, or hanging out my laundry if I'd left it in the machine. I didn't question it at the time, the sight of her bending over the tub of the washer was enough to satisfy my curiosity.

I put it down to the heat mostly. We were coming up on the end of the third week of August and it was hot as hell. I had a fan running in the kitchen and one in the living room, when I was in there. I know it must have been hot upstairs too; that space over the garage trapped some good heat in the summer, I remembered from my sojourn up there.

I was loading my laundry into a new larger machine that I had bought in the spring when it dawned on me that multiple people couldn't do their laundry in the same wash tub, when she walked in the front door and offered to help. It was no big chore, but I was happy to leave it off to her and sat back and cracked open the fridge to help myself to a cold beer. Modern conveniences.

When she finished loading the tub and set it running, I offered her a beer and we sat chatting about the weather and trying to avoid talking about the struggle.

She and Harald had been told outright not to bother and it seemed they had little else to converse with me about as it seemingly occupied almost every inch of their lives. In the end we chatted about her work at the school and by the time I was done with my beer we were having a good time.

She was lively and quick witted and good with a fast comeback. I reminisced about my school days and how things had changed. When I came back from a quick trip to lighten the load in the bathroom, I found that not only had she helped herself and me to another cold beer, but that the top two buttons of her sundress had magically undone themselves.