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Aunt Agnes said our cottage was a dump. She said since we were on the coast, the property was worth more than the house. She complained that our shack was hardly fit for two full grown men to live in, but Uncle Jim and I were happy. We didn’t care how much room we had inside, because I would rather be outside on the beach, and he, well he was in a wheel chair and couldn’t do a whole lot anyway. We played chess together sometimes, but mostly Uncle Jim would watch sports on TV, or read. That is, when he was home. Now that he was at the Kidney Center every day, we needed even less room. The yard was nothing to keep up. I had a push mower to mow the grass and dandelions, and Uncle Jim liked pruning the roses out front. We worked on the yard together in the summer time. Even though the outside needed painting, I think the house had a nice appearance. About as good as the other homes in the neighborhood. The inside was bad, but we didn’t let our mess make it out the door. Even Uncle Jim admitted we were sloppy, but the only ones who saw our clutter were me and Uncle Jim and Aunt Agnes whenever she came around. We didn’t care to clean up just for her. We knew where everything was, and the dishes were always washed, and food put away.
A white picket fence decorated the front yard, and honeysuckle draped over it. The backyard was sandy with a fire pit. We roasted hot dogs in the summer together. Everything was set up for Uncle Jim to get around easily in his wheelchair.
“You get outside this morning,” Uncle Jim told me as Aunt Agnes pushed him out the door.
“I will. I’ll get us some oysters. Maybe some razor clams today and make another stew– that is if you’ll be hungry.”
Uncle Jim nodded, but Aunt Agnes moved too quickly to carry on any more conversation with him. She rode up the lift with him, strapped in his chair and stepped out, slammed the back door and then got in the driver’s seat. The van left with a puff of black smoke. Uncle Jim mentioned many times how he hated breathing all the carbon monoxide that collected in the back of the old van. He said the valves were shot and someone needed to replace them, but no one besides Uncle Jim knew how to work on cars, and Uncle Jim wasn’t strong enough to lift the head. He suggested I do the lifting and I would have except Uncle Jim never had the money to replace the gaskets, so fixing the van was only something we talked about doing. Maybe someday we can save up some money and buy a new vehicle, or at least get a used van that doesn’t smoke.
When Uncle Jim left that morning with Aunt Agnes, I took a bucket to the beach and started foraging. I found oysters, but razor clams are harder to locate especially on an oyster beach. I’d have to walk a mile or so, or else wait for low tide. I was still learning how to find them. Tim Lan taught me to dig in the sand whenever I saw water squirting up out of a hole. But clams are tricky and sometimes they’re sneaky and can sense you digging for them. I don’t know how seagulls survive unless they have an X-ray vision because they dig up clams all the time. Tim Lan also instructed me to leave the oyster shells on the beach because that was the law. He told me always to obey that law because the law was made to help the shellfish reseed, so we’ll have something to eat next year.
I gathered my quota for the day early because the tide was out leaving lots of beds exposed. As hard as I tried to open the shells the way that Tim Lan’s showed me, my knuckles still bled. I didn’t care.
Ten o’clock was way too early to go home, so I set a few empty shells in front of me and then spun some marbles. Not many. I was distracted by the cold fog which settled low on the water, making the oyster beds, the ocean, and the clouds melt into one gray mass. Even my coat matched the weather. I found my spirits graying as well. I expected to see Tim Lan, but he never showed up.
Being alone that morning left an emptiness inside of me along with a strange feeling eating my insides. I thought not seeing Tim Lam was the reason that I sensed something wasn’t right. I’d seen him every other day this week because Uncle Jim was at doctor appointments which gave me a lot of time alone on the beach. Bored with making marbles, I pocketed them and decided to go home.
I was surprised to see the van parked at our house so early. Seemed like Uncle Jim just left, and he’s usually gone for at least four hours. Maybe they didn’t need him to come in everyday after all. I hoped not. I miss him when he’s gone.
Aunt Agnes jumped out of the driver’s seat as I crossed the street. Instead of going around to the back to let Uncle Jim out of the van, she went running to our front door and started knocking so hard the big picture window rattled.
“Open up, Dylan!” She was bundled up in a black coat, her multicolored scarf wrapped tight around her neck and the fog had taken the curl out of her thinning hair. Aunt Agnes rarely looked unkempt, however today her mascara had formed dark masses under her eyes and she had no lipstick on.
“I’m not in there,” I answered as I jogged up behind her and reached over to unlock the door. Her perfume gagged me as I brushed by. I put my hand over my nose and pretended I was about to sneeze.
“Get inside! I have something important to tell you.”
I glanced at the van when I opened the door for her, wondering why Uncle Jim wasn’t coming in. I didn’t have time to ask, as she took me by the hem to my hoody and dragged me into the house. She made me sit on the couch and paced across the rug in front of me. The room darkened when she pulled the curtains closed. Three times she gave me an angry glance and I thought I had done something terrible. I held my hands on my lap and waited for the hammer. That’s what Uncle Jim would say when he knew Aunt Agnes was mad. He called her temper a hammer. She tossed her coat on the armchair, and then rubbed her arms, and then wrung her hands in such a way I thought something was wrong with her. No longer did she look mad. Upset, yes.
“Do you need me to get Uncle Jim inside for you?” I asked.
“No,” she snapped, pacing again.
“But he’s...” I didn’t like him being in the van by himself, and me being in the house alone with Aunt Agnes, especially when she was acting like this. I’d feel safer with him in the house. “He shouldn’t be out there alone.”
“No!” she snapped.
I cowered back onto the couch. “Did I do something wrong?” My heart beat heavy not knowing what was coming. I felt bile coming up from my stomach too, and cold sweat on my forehead.
She breathed deep and looked me square in the face. Those gray eyes of hers made me want to crawl behind the pillows on the sofa, especially with all that make-up smeared around them. For the first time, I noticed the whites of her eyes were red, like she’d been crying. “Dylan, your Uncle passed.”
I know I was supposed to understand her, but I didn’t. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“He passed, Dylan. Oh god, how do I do this?” Rolling her eyes and her head at the same time made me feel slow. I didn’t know what she was talking about. “Maybe you can’t understand what that means.” She looked at me again and moved closer so that I could smell the breath mint in her mouth. “Think about what I just said. Your uncle isn’t coming back.”
She kept on with her explaining and I just stared at her trying to comprehend all the words she was tossing at me so fast. Nothing she said made any sense. Of course, Uncle Jim is coming back. This is his house. He lives here. Where else would he go?
She finally sighed and rolled her eyes as if my ‘slowness’ exasperated her. “He’s dead!” she said. “Can you understand that? Dead!”
At first, I couldn’t move, I mean my arms just hung at my side, and a big lump formed in my throat. My head heated up. My mind went blank. She turned her back on me and walked to the window as though she had an interest in the garden, but the curtains were closed. My lips trembled. I had no idea what to do or what to say. I don’t know if what happened to me is called blacking out, but I felt that my brain wasn’t connected to my body right then. I wasn’t there. I didn’t hear her after that. I got up and walked past her, threw open the door and marched to the van. The back of the old green Dodge was locked, so trying to yank the door open did nothing. I peeked in the window but couldn’t see in because dirt and fingerprints smeared the glass from the inside. I opened the passenger door and crawled in the front. I then looked over the seat at the back of the van where Uncle Jim should have been, but he wasn’t there. His wheelchair was there, and I could smell him and there was a bit of his dandruff on the back of his seat. Not him though.
The lump in my throat grew larger, my heart beat hard and I thought I was going to faint, so I opened the window. I sat in the van for a long time thinking maybe I was having a bad dream and needed to wake up. But how do you make yourself wake up from a nightmare? Especially if you’re already awake?
Sitting in the van didn’t help. Uncle Jim didn’t magically appear. Nothing changed. Nothing except the weather. The fog lifted and there was a touch of blue in the sky. The sunlight gave everything color, the hedge along the driveway, the grass with the dandelions peeking through. Even the clouds broke apart and became big powder puffs in the sky, white and cottony. I could see the ocean in the distance beyond our house, the fog lifting and floating away like steam out of a tea kettle. I wasn’t cold, nor did I feel damp and from the sun beating on me through the window, I could see the day was going to be nice and sunny.
Good weather wasn’t right either because it didn’t fit the day. The weather should be stormy. Big thunderclouds should be letting loose with lightning and thunder and wind. Trees should be toppling over, and sirens should be screeching. How could the sun be out?
Today wasn’t the day for Uncle Jim to go away. We had plans. We were going to talk about school. We might have played a game of checkers. I had plans for dinner, too. I would have cooked him a roast with mashed potatoes, gravy and candied carrots as a side. He loved roast beef. Just this morning he told me to have the coffee hot for him when he got home. I would have. He knows I would have.
Aunt Agnes stayed in the house while I sat in the van thinking all these thoughts and more. Maybe I scared her being out there. Or maybe she was glad, so she didn’t have to try and explain anything else to me. She gets so frustrated with me. Maybe she didn’t know what else to say.
The curtains to the house were open and I could see her through the picture window in the living room. She had the phone to her ear; her mouth was moving. She pushed back the curtains occasionally, to peek out at me. I should have gone back inside the house, I guess, and talked to her, or listened to her, but I didn’t want to leave the van. Not without Uncle Jim.
Chapter 4
