Chapter 9

As Gus Stevenson sat pensively on the rattan chair he put his hand to his cheek and looked at the .44 caliber revolver on the glass coffee table of his living room. His expectant expression seemed to suggest that the pistol was about to say something, but the gun just set there, its chambers silently ready for what?

Gus knew. He had considered it. He had placed the weapon on the coffee table with a melodramatic flair; he had had enough of the “end of the world,” and why should he stay around and help write the epilogue? Two days was enough.

Gus and Myrtle Stevenson had come to Florida from Pennsylvania to retire, not to die—and to be near their son, his wife and their grandchildren who lived on the other side of 10th Street in Sarita Heights. Not next door, but a few blocks away—perfect “grandparent distance,” as Gus liked to say. Forty years in the hot end of a glass plant, but he had sent his son to college at Penn State, and his son had a PhD and was teaching at Indian River Community College. His son, the college professor: That thought always made Gus smile in pride.

Gus also liked the fact that Stuart was a controlled growth community with a large retired population, although many of the senior citizens lived in condominiums. With a pension from the glass company and social security, Gus and Myrtle lived well enough in Florida, with enough left over to indulge their two grandchildren with trips to Disneyworld and Universal Studios. And if it hadn’t been for Hurricane Camilla, their grandkids would have been at their house on “Sleepover Saturday,” a night the grandparents and grandchildren relished, but not as much as the kids’ parents.

Their living room was adorned with several framed photographs of Amy and Billy—three of their son and an obligatory picture of his wife, who often disagreed with Myrtle on a myriad of issues. Gus understood his wife’s need to be a fixture in their only son’s life, but he wished she could learn, after all of these years, when to keep her mouth shut. Nothing upset a wife more than that her husband was a mama’s boy and mama lived four blocks down the street. Hadn’t she been quite a dish back in Royersford, Pennsylvania, the cute little new librarian in town, the strawberry blonde, the graduate of Shippensburg State College, the gal that a dozen men wanted to marry? Gus had always wanted to go to college, but he needed a job after his tour in Vietnam and never took advantage of the G.I. Bill. And how bad was the hot end of a glass plant after summers in Da Nang? It was ’66 when the war was still winnable, he remembered. He had gone through many a firefight in Nam without a scratch and had seen his buddies die and be maimed by booby traps, but the missing pinky finger on his right hand was a result of an accident in the glass plant when his swab got caught up in a fast closing mold and he tried, unsuccessfully, to jimmy it out, landing a small piece of molten glass on his glove finger that quickly burned through to his bone. Most painful thing in his life. Physically, he reminded himself. The most painful emotionally was the night their daughter was killed by a drunken teenage driver as she and her girlfriends drove home from the movies. Samantha was only 17 years old, and to Gus that night was only yesterday and a lifetime ago, for the memory could seem so fresh and so distant within a moment’s time.

Samantha was with them in their home on Manatee Avenue, her bedroom made up as precisely as it had been back in Pennsylvania on the night she was killed over 25 years before. The poster of Michael Jackson in Thriller, the Royersford High pennant, the cheerleader pom-poms, the stuffed animals, the framed prom photo of Samantha and Bob. Bob had spoken at Samantha’s funeral and had stayed in touch until his sophomore year at Gettysburg College, but he, like so many other young people, had moved on without Samantha. Bob graduated from law school at Dickinson and was practicing in Harrisburg, as Gus recalled. Even Samantha’s girlfriends within two or three years had moved on with life and without Samantha. Even the girls who survived the accident; they too had moved on and Gus and Myrtle’s Samantha was stuck in time, forever young in a number of ghostly videotapes that Gus converted to DVDs. Two hours of video—that was all that was left of Samantha’s lifelike images. Myrtle became a regular in “Compassionate Friends” and Gus tried the meetings for bereaved parents a few times, but he preferred his grief in silence. When Myrtle was out of the house, Gus would often go into Samantha’s “room” and sit on her bed and think of her. That wonderful day in Sesame Place, that afternoon at the Franklin Institute, the train rides into Philadelphia together as her little brother stayed at home with Mommy. Just father and daughter, the two of them, the inseparable pair, the little six-year-old pony-tailed inquisitor forever asking, “Is that right, Dad?” and “What’s that, Dad?” And Dad answering her questions like a latter-day Mr. Wizard. Sometimes the tears would come, other times the smiles, for as much as he loved his son, he had adored his daughter from the moment she had first grabbed his finger as an infant and looked at him with those big brown eyes, those beseeching big brown eyes that seemed to say, “Love me, love me,” and from that moment, Samantha began her lifetime of wrapping Dad around her little finger. Had she lived, Samantha would have been valedictorian of her high school glass and a National Merit Scholar at Penn or Princeton. Of course, that drunken boy who killed Samantha was still alive; he had two other DUIs and a stretch in prison, although not for killing Samantha, as he was underage at the time. A car salesman in Langhorne, Pennsylvania—that’s what he was now.

Gus stared at the gun on the coffee table. It was a simple way to end all of this, he thought, but he didn’t want to leave Myrtle alone. He couldn’t do that. And he certainly couldn’t shoot Myrtle. He smiled and remembered how he had tried so hard to get the glass plant dirt out from beneath his nails that fateful day when he walked into the public library, ostensibly to check out a book. Of course, he didn’t even have a library card and hadn’t read a book since the guys passed around a dog-eared copy of Tropic of Cancer back in high school, but there he was, spruced up with a clip-on bow tie, like some pencil pushing nerd, trying vainly to hide his working man’s hands, as he pretended to scour the stacks for a book to check out, but instead watched Myrtle as she worked behind the checkout desk answering questions from the patrons. She seemed to sense she was being watched, for she turned and spotted him, hiding near Hemingway in the fiction stacks, and he turned away for a few seconds, and in that time she had maneuvered to Maughn on the other side of the book case. “May I help you, sir?” Myrtle had said, and Gus had looked into those big brown eyes and his tongue did a Windsor knot. He mumbled something and she said (with tongue firmly in cheek, he would later realize), “Might I suggest Ian Fleming? You are into spying, aren’t you?” And he had not responded except to blush and to bolt from the library in embarrassment. Mortified, he learned that word later from Myrtle, but that was how he had been that day, and he had given up his cause for lost when, bowing to his mother’s wishes, he had accompanied her to church on Mother’s Day, and there sitting in the pew ahead was the pert, 5′2″ librarian who had stunned the 6′2″ machinist. Before the service started, she turned around in the pew and said, “I’m Myrtle Gilmore. I don’t believe I caught your name the other day.” “I didn’t throw it,” was all Gus could say with a frown, but Myrtle laughed until the processional broke her reverie. Still, like a bad girl in school, during a prayer she passed Gus a note that suggested he meet her after church for lunch at the Varsity Diner, and to bring his mom.

So on his first date with his wife he took his mother, who took an immediate shine to Myrtle. Considering the men available in Royersford at that time, Gus was not a bad “catch”; he might soon be a shift foreman at Ruby Glass Company, and certainly—as their was a thirst in the country—Ruby Glass would continue to make gin and vodka bottles. And Ruby Glass did, until the founder retired. His son took over and, after his father died, sold the company to a consortium of Germans. But the founder had insured the pension plans of his workers and even his son’s greed hadn’t ruined the retirement of hundreds of Ruby Glass workers. Thirty-eight years for the founder and two years for the son and the Germans, and Gus retired. He was proud that Myrtle never had to work after the kids came. A year after that embarrassing day in the library, Myrtle was his wife and they spent a week in the Poconos and had sex for the first time. Boy, those days are gone, Gus mused. That house on the hill in Spring City, that little three-bedroom place. From the front porch a person could see the smokestacks of Ruby Glass, billowing dust 24 hours a day. Every night until the kids came, Myrtle would read to him from one of her favorite books and he would listen to her mesmerizing voice as she drew him into the story. And then, after Samantha died, Myrtle resumed the practice. Dozens of books, classic fiction, his favorite being To Kill a Mockingbird, although he never heard The Tropic of Cancer read from her lips. But since they had moved to Florida, they had spent most of their time on the Martin County Golf Course and with their grandchildren, although they did spend a day now and then at the Blake Library. And Gus watched cable television. Gus became addicted to Fox News and switched his political affiliation from Democrat to Republican. They still took their morning walks together, before sunrise in the summer, before the heat of the day wilted a walker, and Myrtle still had the slim figure that she’d had when Gus married her, but Gus had gone to seed a bit, going from a 34″ waist to a 42″ in the years since he’d retired. He still ate as if he worked in the glass factory, but he didn’t burn off the calories as he had when he labored in the hot end.

“What are you doing with that gun, Gus?” Myrtle said as she put an arm on the rattan couch. She wore yellow shorts and a light blue blouse. Her tan face contrasted with her silver hair, but she had a remarkable muscle tone for a woman her age, Gus thought.

“I said, what are you doing with that gun, Gus?”

“I think it is time to go, Myrtle.”

“Go where?”

“Leave.”

“Leave? Where are we going?”

“Heaven.”

“Not like that you’re not,” she said, motioning to the gun on the table. “That’s the way to perdition.”

“Everyone is gone, Myrtle. Everyone is gone.”

“We’re not,” she replied, a bit of anger in her voice. “Suicide is a selfish act, Gus Stevenson. God in His wisdom has sent us here. I don’t know why, but I do not question His will.”

“There’s nothing left,” Gus complained.

“You didn’t give up after Samantha died, Gus. We stuck together. Yes, it was rough. Life is rough, Gus. Give me the gun.”

Gus began to tear up, but he gave Myrtle the pistol. She emptied the bullets from the chambers and set it down on the coffee table again.

“Let’s go for a walk, Gus. See what is going on in the neighborhood. Maybe we can be of some service to someone. Get out of our self-pity. Move a muscle, change a thought.” She smiled and looked at him with those big brown eyes. “And tonight I’ll read to you again…To Kill a Mockingbird?”

Gus smiled. “That would be fine, Myrtle, just fine.”