Edith & Harold - a take-a-turn story with Jon - I'm in blue

The air was crisp, typical of an autumn evening. The old man had just finished moving his harvest into the barn. He groaned as he sank into the wooden rocking chair on his front porch. His wife appeared in the doorway and handed him a glass of iced peach tea.

“Thankee mum,” he mumbled through a long draught, “Ill be in shortly.” She bent over, kissed his brow and disappeared back into the farmhouse. As he leaned back, movement caught his eye. “Hmmm.” A dust cloud betrayed an approaching car, making its way up the quarter-mile twisted dirt driveway.

The old man squinted hard, knuckles set like stone, gripping the frosted glass. When the red-blue police lights finally shot through the fog of dry dirt, he placed his tea on the table beside him and reached for his 12-guage. It was worn from years of use and had never let him down. When it was in his two hands he stood up. click-clack! He descended the porch steps, raising the shotgun, taking a slow, steady aim at the oncoming copper. “I’ll have you now, you son of a bitch,” he said, barely breathing. “This time I’ll teach you to sneak up on me!”

It was right at this moment that his wife reappeared in the doorway.

“Harold, put that down this instant. We’ve talked about this.” She worriedly pushed a strand of grey hair out of her face. “He must be hiding his meds again,” she mumbled to herself, wresting the gun away from her tired old husband. She made a mental note to hide his gun when he wasn’t looking.

“Whassat?” Harold turned sharply. “Edith, those goddamned commie bastards have been after me since seventy three.”

Edith put her arm around her husband and led him back to the chicken coop behind the barn. “Honey, you stay here and watch the birds. I’ll go deal with the commie bastards.”

Harold put his nose up to the wire mesh and peered in, a distracted smile coming over his face.

Edith had been a first-grade teacher for forty-two years and had mastered the art of distraction. She picked up the hem of her blue dress and marched back to where the police car had stopped. A lanky cop leaned against the trunk, looking smug.

“Ronnie! What have I told you about coming around when Harold’s here? He’s going to get wise!”

“Aww, what’s the matter Edith?” His slow casual drawl grates her nerves. “’Fraid that the old man’ll recognize his son?” Edith’s face wrinkled in consternation. “’Sides, he’s half off his rocker anyways these days, or so I hear.”

“Get your ears checked, Ronald.” Her voice now more stern, Edith took a menacing step forward. “I may not be your maw, and I’m certainly your senior by a few seasons, but I swear to God, Ill whoop your ass if you don’t high-tail it.” Ronnie looked bemused.

Just then, Harold rounded the corner of the house. Ronnie’s face blanched and Edith’s heart stopped. “Harold, what—

“Haiya! I’m free!” Harold, naked as the day he was born, bolted across the front lawn and into the seventeen-acre cornfield between the house and the country road. Behind him, a horde of hens, set loose from the coop, ambled around, pecking at the gravel drive.

They watched in wonder, eyes and mouths agape, at Harold’s solo journey through the knee-high stalks. Ronald turned to Edith with his thumb pointed back at Harold, but he couldn’t find anything to say. He turned back.

That’s when Harold collapsed.

Edith broke into a run. “HAROLD!”

Ronnie ran too.

Ronnie beat Edith to the fallen figure of his estranged father. He knelt beside the old man, who lay face down in the dirt. Harold turned his head slightly and stared at the figure beside him.

“Hey, you alright there?” He was shocked at the level of concern in his own voice.

“You’re no son of mine,” the words came out slurred and slow. Ronnie was taken aback.

“You knew.” It was a statement. “I always figured you knew.” Wordlessly, Harold rolled over and grinned. The mine he had been laying on clicked and exploded in a fiery ball.

At least, that’s what Harold expected to happen. Instead, he and Ronnie were treated to a shortened, tinny rendition of Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas. It sputtered out of a water-logged speaker inside the dummy Claymore. Ronnie picked up the shattered thing and some red and green confetti came out. “You kept this? After all this time?”

Harold groaned. A few fat drops of warm, summer rain began to fall. Edith, huffing, put her hands on her hips. “Harold, pick yourself up out of the mud.”

“No. I’m jus’ gonna lay here and die. My good-for-nothing son can……Harold’s voice cut off, and his eyes rolled into the back of his head.

“Harold? Harold!”

A new set of red and blue lights, engulfed in a cloud of dust, trailed down the driveway, this time going the opposite direction. Edith watched as the ambulance turned at the end of the driveway and disappeared into the gloom of night. Ronnie lit a cigarette, looking for the right words. Eventually he gave up, lost in thought, as he stared at the red butt that illuminated his face. Edith broke the silence:

“He’s been sick for a while, but you,” she pointed a bony finger at Ronnie, “you’re one of his last tethers to reality. It’s why he kept that toy. He’s got the photos too.”

~

It was Christmas Eve and the snow was falling gently on the quiet street. Harold’s feet crunched in the snow, as he quietly made his way down the sidewalk. More than once he glanced over his shoulder, ensuring he was alone. Finally he arrived at a shabby dimly lit town home. He guiltily placed a parcel on the front step, knocked, and hid in the bushes. A small boy opened the door, glancing both ways before noticing the parcel. He picked it up gleefully, and ran squealing inside. Harold smiled as he made his way back towards his truck.

Just as he reached it, a strong hand clasped his shoulder and whipped him around, slamming him up against the truck. It was Jerry, the boy’s mother’s husband. The one he’d cuckolded by bringing little Ronnie into the world. Jerry took Harold by the lapels of his Carhartt coat and put his face in Harold’s, steaming up Harold’s glasses with the hot breath of a bull. “You’re asking for a lotta trouble comin’ around here, you motherfucker,” he growled.

Harold, who’d only ever wanted to have a son, had nothing to say. He simply silently cursed the heavens for the only way in which he’d been able to do it.