Josh’s Story
A Short Story
Jon Rutherford
Copyright 2012 Jon Rutherford
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This is a work of fiction.
Josh’s Story
A Short Story
Josh and Helen woke to brilliant glare. It had snowed deeply overnight, much more snow than expected, and the sun’s reflection was blinding. The light from the snow poured its pitiless incandescence through every window of the house, upstairs and down, flooding ceiling, floor, walls with shadowless, all-consuming light.
Helen got out of bed and then Josh did. They shivered naked in the bedroom, their bodies as shadowless as everything else. They’d slept naked together almost every night since their marriage in ‘63. The unencumbered night-long contact still felt wonderful at 70. Sex was more leisurely and all around better than ever. They embraced with exaggerated “Brr!”’s and laughed. Then they stood there a while, Josh’s chin on Helen’s shoulder.
When they finally moved apart, Helen saw tears in her husband’s eyes. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” She took him back into her arms and they stood there again. Josh was sobbing now.
“It’s okay, Josh. Whatever it is, it’ll be okay.”
“I think I had a bad dream, only I can’t remember it.” He was all choked up and sounded faintly exasperated.
“Well, sweetheart, you were talking in your sleep. Several times. You were saying, ‘Frank, I love you. I love you so,’ and on like that. If that’s any help.” She was used by now to hearing all sorts of odd things her husband said in his sleep.
It came back to Josh now what he had dreamed about. He took a deep breath, found he could not speak; took another. Finally he said, “Yes, I remember now. Let’s put some clothes on. Then if you’ll make some tea I’ll tell you about it. Christ almighty, but it’s cold in here!”
They dressed quickly. It was very cold and it felt like the furnace had gone out again. Sure enough, it had. Josh went down and tended to it. With luck it would stay lit this time. At least long enough to do some good.
When he came back up to the kitchen, the water was boiling. Steam had completely blanked out the window panes and the glass panes in the door to the outside. But the fierce sunlight didn’t care. It just seemed to take on that much more radiance. You could always tell a heavy snowfall even from bed, without looking out, by the greatly intensified light. He wondered if he’d have to call somebody to plow the driveway. Probably so. But it could wait.
Helen made tea, heated a few rolls in the oven, and scrambled some eggs. She put jam on the table and then brought the food and the tea. As they ate and drank the tea, Josh told her this story.
The wall between Josh’s bedroom and Uncle Frank’s was thin, basically two sheets of white-painted wood with a little insulation in between, and of course the wiring for the light switch near the door of each room, and for a solitary outlet in each. Josh’s headboard was right up against the wall. Now and then he could hear through the wall: his uncle’s radio playing, little mostly indecipherable snatches of conversation between Frank and his friend Jim, a drawer closing. It was the normal texture of nights in his world.
Tonight, though, some words were coming through the wall with unusual clarity. In his six years Josh had absorbed, without noticing, many tones of voice and their meanings. He associated what he couldn’t help hearing tonight with what he would later know to call anguish. He didn’t know its name yet, but he knew exactly what it meant.
“Jim, don’t do this to me. Please.” Uncle Frank spoke in a tone of anguish. This puzzled Josh. He felt he might be doing something wrong, but he put his ear against the wall anyway.
“It isn’t working anymore and you know it.” That was Jim’s voice, Frank’s friend.
When Uncle Frank had come to stay with Josh and Susan, Josh’s mom, in ‘44, Jim had come along and stayed too. They were both just out of the Coast Guard service. Josh thought nothing of it. They were really good friends and joked and went places and came back and slept in Frank’s big double bed and Jim had become like a second uncle to Josh. He wasn’t as easy-going as his real uncle, but he was okay anyway, and he and Josh and his mom and uncle Frank would go on weekends to the zoo or a band concert in the park downtown, or would sometimes have a picnic down by the canal if the weather was really nice. Josh liked seeing how happy both his uncle Frank and his friend seemed when they were together. It made him feel good inside. Often when they were both at home, they even held hands or had their arms around each other’s shoulders, though Josh eventually noticed that this never happened when the three of them, or all of them including his mom, were out together.
Josh had never heard voices raised like this, nor these tones of voice: anguish and simmering resentment and anger.
“For God’s sake, Jim,” said Uncle Frank. “We’ve been together eight years. Are you going to throw all that away? What about me? Don’t I mean a fucking thing to you anymore?”
There was one word Josh was unfamiliar with but he caught the gist of the conversation. It didn’t sound happy at all.
There was no answer from Jim but Josh heard a drawer of the big chest of drawers slam loudly now and then. When there were footsteps they weren’t soft, as they usually were. He thought he could hear somebody crying. He was mystified. It must have been quiet the rest of the night, for he slept right through.
In the morning it was just Josh, his mom, and Uncle Frank at the breakfast table. Susan and her brother looked unhappy. Josh had momentarily forgotten about what he’d heard before going to sleep, but the expressions on his mom’s face and her younger brother’s brought back a vivid memory and he thought he could hear every word again. He even remembered the new one that he didn’t understand. He made a mental note to ask his mom what it meant.
His mom and uncle greeted him as they always did, with a hug from each. But it didn’t feel the same. Something had to be wrong. But what?
“Mama,” said Josh, but just let it trail off without asking what he wanted to ask. He ate his breakfast. They all three ate pretty much in silence. His mom or his uncle would try to say something ordinary now and then, as if for his benefit, but their un-ordinary expressions didn’t fit, and eventually they abandoned the attempt and just finished eating without a word.
Frank got up and carefully scooted his chair back under the table as usual, and left the room. Josh heard his uncle’s bedroom door close softly. After a while he heard loud sobbing. What on earth could be wrong.
He began to feel a little scared. His mom hugged him close for a few moments. He could smell the faint perfume, always the same, that was as much her to his senses as her very body. She held him tight, then released him and asked if he would like to play outdoors today. It was the summer vacation. There were a few kids in their neighborhood that he played with routinely. He could hear shouts from one or two of them, faintly, from outdoors now, through the open kitchen door.
He nodded “Yes” wordlessly and went to fetch his cap pistol and a couple of rolls of caps and other indispensable items from his room. The sobbing had stopped but there was no doubt that his uncle was crying in his room, whose door remained shut and was still shut when he came in from play a couple of hours later for a glass of Kool-Aid.
He’d put the unusual activity out of his mind while he was playing with his friends, but it came rushing back now and made him genuinely afraid. He wished he could understand what was going on. In a way, he already sensed what it was. But he wasn’t sure, and he hoped his feeling was wrong.
Susan was preparing a meat loaf at the kitchen counter. The smell of spice in the air was wonderful. Her back was to him and she hadn’t even turned around when Josh had come in, the screen door slamming behind him.
“Mama...” said Josh. She turned and she wiped tears from her own eyes as she did so. Josh was dumbfounded. After a little, he said, “Nothing,” and went back out to see if his friends were still there. They were.
This time he didn’t forget during play. It was on his mind every second: the sobs, the harsh words, the slamming of drawers, his mom in tears, something he had only seen once before, when the news of the President’s death had come over the radio and she explained to him what it meant.
At one point he happened to be hiding from his friends near his uncle’s bedroom window. He was hidden pretty good. But he could see through the window, and even hear, for he was that close to it.
He saw his mom standing in the room, holding her brother close to her and patting his back. Uncle Frank was clutching at his mom’s shoulders as in desperation. “Sue,” he heard his uncle say, “I don’t know what to do. What the hell am I going to do?”
His mom continued to hold her brother tight against her and he heard her voice be wavy when she spoke, as though it was hard to talk because of crying. “Baby brother, I know it’s tough. I wish this had never happened. But it did, and you’ll find a way. It won’t be hard forever. You’ll see.”
Then after a while she said, “You know I’ll help you any way I can. I’m sorry, Frank, I’m so sorry. But you’ll get over this. Wait and see.”
One of his friends finally spied him and he had to flee to avoid getting shot. What he’d just seen left his mind momentarily. But only to come back vividly next time he found himself alone.
It couldn’t be something good if your mom and your uncle were in tears over it. That much he knew with certainty.
Then he thought of Jim’s absence from breakfast, and afterward too, and suddenly he thought maybe he understood that part.
Uncle Frank didn’t come to the dinner table that night. Josh’s mom seemed to be trying to make up for their glum breakfast by being extra bright and attentive tonight.
The meat loaf was great. Everything his mom cooked was great. She had also made his favorite dessert, chocolate pudding with vanilla wafers. He dug into that with the same fervor he’d shown the meat loaf.
He almost forgot about Frank’s absence, between the good food and his mom’s funny stories. She liked to tell him stories, and now that he was probably too big for bedtime ones, she told them other times, which was just as good, or even better because he wasn’t sleepy and could pay more attention.
After dinner they listened to the radio a while and his mom ironed some clothes and looked up a recipe she’d promised a neighbor. She copied it down and put it in an envelope to carry down the block to the woman who’d asked for it, some day soon.
It was now about eight p.m.—normally Josh’s bedtime, but it was summer and it was still light out, and it seemed silly to go to bed when it was still daylight, even his mom agreed. So she was letting him stay up till at least when they started seeing lightning bugs glowing out over the lawn and in the trees. That seemed fair enough, and though he wouldn’t have known how to express it, it even seemed kind of poetic.
There was a knock at the door just as Inner Sanctum was starting on the radio. The announcer sounded corny and scary at the same time, and the sound effects were exciting. Josh felt somewhat grown up being allowed to hear scary programs now.
His mom got up from the easy chair by the radio and went to the door, which was standing open with only the screen door shut. A police officer was standing there. Two of them, in fact. He saw surprise on his mom’s face, but without being asked she invited the two policemen inside.
They came in and verified who she was, and then the older of the two officers, who had chevrons on his sleeve, said, “Ma’am, won’t you sit down, please?”
He saw color drain from his mom’s face. He had never seen that before, not even when the President had died and she had wept at hearing it on the radio.
She sat down. They had found a body down by the canal and were reasonably sure it was her brother, Frank’s. But they needed to ask her to come with them to identify it. “Is there someone who can stay with the boy?” asked the other officer.
“Mrs. Tindall, next door, I guess” said his mom, “but can’t he come along and wait somewhere?”
The two officers conferred briefly. The older one looked tired and sad. The younger was very handsome. Finally the younger policeman said yes, one of them would stay with the boy while his mom did what they had to ask her to do.
They got silently into the police car out front. Normally Josh would have been excited to be riding in a police car. Many of his games with his friends involved pretending to be police, or alternatively, bad guys. He liked being police better. But fair was fair and they took turns.
Tonight he was not excited. He was terribly fearful. He knew what they were doing and it was all he could do to keep from crying. He wanted to grab hold of his mother and have her hold him close like he’d seen her holding her brother just a few hours earlier. He moved over closer to her in the back seat, where the younger officer sat by the far window and his mom in the center. She put an arm around him and patted his arm. “I know, honey,” she said as softly as he’d ever heard, and she often spoke real softly. “I know.”
At the hospital, which contained the city morgue, the younger officer stayed with Josh in a waiting room and tried to be pleasant but didn’t really know how. He had no children of his own and he felt awkward. He felt very sorry for Josh. He wondered how he would have felt at that age, losing somebody in that way. Not good, definitely.
He went over to where Josh was sitting on a kind of sofa, and sat beside him and hugged him. That was about all he could think of to do. Josh held onto the officer’s arm in its starchy uniform shirtsleeve, held on for dear life. It was the best he could think of to do, too. He started to weep silently. The officer held him tight just like his mother would have. Josh felt a little better but not much.
“Hey, buddy,” said the officer almost in a whisper. “I’m sorry as can be. I’m sorry.”
His mom came back after not very long. Her face looked red and drawn. She was not crying. She seemed a little angry. Josh didn’t care. He just wanted to be with her. The young officer helped Josh off the sofa though he really didn’t need any help. Josh said, “Thank you.”
He walked over to his mom and without a word they left the place. The young officer drove them back home. The sergeant was already writing up a report of the suicide.
Josh never found out how his Uncle Frank had taken his own life, but he already knew why, just by thinking it over all night, unable to sleep. He’d never felt so sad in his life, or so unsettled. He had not known that things like this could happen. Like any six-year-old, he’d assumed friendship was an entirely good thing. Now he had to rethink that but it was too hard a task for one night or maybe even one lifetime.
Years and years later, in 1963, Josh had to sort through his mother’s things after her death. She had died of cancer just a week before Josh and Helen were to be married. They went on with the ceremony but its happiness was marred by Susan’s absence. Helen had developed a close rapport with Josh’s mom. Josh had remained fairly close though distance had limited his contact with her for several years.
As he looked through things and discarded those that were of no use or value any more, he came across a photo of his Uncle Frank that he had not known existed. In the photo he looked radiantly happy and he had his arm around his friend Jim. Jim had his arm around Frank. Jim looked happy though not as glowing as Uncle Frank.
He guessed the photo must have been taken a few years before Frank came to live with them after his dad’s death on Omaha Beach in June ‘44. Both he and Jim looked very young. They had met when Frank was 18 and Jim only fourteen. When Jim came of age four years later, they lived together one way or another until the day Jim left. They even managed to remain stationed close to each other in their Coast Guard service.
And then, that night in ’46, Jim left and that was that. Frank died at age twenty-four.
The photo was in a heavy paper frame embossed with an old-fashioned design and the name of the studio where it had been taken, in Atlantic City of all places.
Tucked behind the photo was a sheet of paper that Josh only noticed because one corner was barely sticking out at the top.
He carefully removed the paper, not wanting to damage the photo. He opened it; it was written in large characters in faded pencil and he recognized his uncle’s handwriting though it looked either hurried or somehow careless. The paper was browned and brittle.
Dearest Sue
I just cant live with it. Im sorry so sorry. Believe me I wish it wasnt like this. Tell Josh I love him and you know I love you too.
F
Josh didn’t know when or how his mom had found the note. Maybe the police had given it to her; in fact, that was probable, as they didn’t question that Frank’s death was by his own hand.
In any case, it didn’t matter now.
***
The merciless sunlight was still bearing down on every surface in the room, in the house. The cranky old furnace had finally started warming the place up. The kitchen windows had lost some of their coating from the steaming kettle.
Helen stood up from the kitchen table and went to fill the kettle again. While it heated, she came and stood behind Josh with her hands on his shoulders, kneading them. It felt really good to him.
He was no longer upset.
She said, “That was a long and terrible dream, honey. No wonder you were upset.”
He didn’t say anything for a while. Then he said, and it was barely audible, “That wasn’t the dream.”
Helen missed a stroke in her kneading but resumed, glad that Josh couldn’t see her face. “Oh... Well, then...”
Josh didn’t move. He spoke slowly and distinctly. “I dreamed that for all these years I loved Frank as much as I love you, and in just the same way. Do you understand? In the dream I was with him. I knew about you but we were somehow not together.”
Helen kept on massaging Josh’s shoulders.
“It doesn’t matter, sweetheart,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. Love’s always good. Isn’t it?”
Josh kept still. He wished he knew.
– THE END –