The Grim Reaper Comes Calling

by Darrell Maloney

  “Yes, Momma. I’ll remember.”

  She remembered Momma’s smile, and how she kissed her on the cheek. She could still feel the softness of Momma’s lips upon her face.

  She didn’t know it yet, but it would be among the most cherished memories of her lifetime.

  She knew instinctively that the chill in the night air meant she and Robert would soon be on their own, but tried to push the thought out of her mind.

  She was forced to be a woman in some ways, yet still a little girl in most others. She still had a little girl’s heart and still fervently believed she could somehow wish her mother’s illness away.

  Or banishing it into oblivion merely by refusing to think of it.

  Robert scooted over in the bed and the two snuggled, just as they always had when one or the other was sick or afraid.

  That too would come to an end some day, though neither was looking forward to it because it comforted them so.

  Despite his frazzled nerves, Robert fell asleep again in no time.

  Amy wasn’t far behind him.

  When she awakened a couple of hours later the morning sun was rapidly heating the house.

  The black construction paper covering the window panes was a medium gray in color.

  Amy left her brother sleeping and tip-toed down the stairs to check on her mom.

  “Momma? Are you awake?” Momma?”

  Her mother was still covered neck to toe in a gray comforter. Not unusual for her, since she tended to be cooler than her children.

  Amy approached her, making note how peaceful she always looked when she was sleeping.

  “Momma?”

  She reached her mother and went down to her knees in front of her.

  She stroked the face of the woman she loved more than anyone else in the world.

  And she began to cry, for her mother’s face was very very cold.

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  Thank you for reading

  ALONE, Part 13:

  The Grim Reaper Comes Calling

  Please enjoy this preview of

  ALONE, Part 14:

  The Most Miserable Winter

  Dave got an unmistakable feeling of uneasiness as soon as they entered their old neighborhood in south San Antonio.

  Everything looked familiar, yet something was decidedly different.

  He just couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

  For the previous hour there’d been almost nonstop chatter.

  Dave pointed out the city park where they once picnicked.

  They rode their bikes there, when the girls were younger. Lindsey rode her own. A purple Barney the Dinosaur bike with training wheels.

  Beth was little then, and laughed out loud from the baby carrier behind Dave’s bike seat.

  She loved feeling the wind in her hair and leaned out as far as possible to catch as much as she could.

  Dave had forgotten that part. But now it came back to him. He smiled as he remembered how hard it was to keep from tipping over when Beth grew to almost three years old.

  She still leaned far out, but was a chubby little girl then and weighed twice as much as she did the year before.

  He remembered having to lean just a bit to the other side himself to stay balanced.

  Over there was the convenience store they used to walk to on hot summer days for ice cream.

  Now every window was shattered, probably by looters in the early days of the blackout.

  The owners had hammered plywood over the windows, but it did little good.

  Nearly every piece of plywood had been pried back off again. Those which weren’t were covered in graffiti or kicked to pieces.

  Still, that store fared better than the pizza restaurant next door. At some point it was burned to the ground.

  The only proof the restaurant was ever there was the thirty foot tall Italian chef on the sign out front.

  His name was Antonio and he still held a huge pepperoni pizza.

  Antonio still stood sentinel over the site, and reminded passersby of better times.

  “Well, the pizza there sucked anyway,” Beth said.

  Beth was one who was never afraid of sharing her critiques or personal views, whether one asked her or not.

  Lindsey, for once, agreed with her.

  “Orlando’s was much better.”

  Dave’s mouth watered.

  Not for pizza, for he wasn’t a pizza fan.

  But the tortellini Alfredo that the chef slapped onto a plate at Orlando’s was to die for.

  He knew a lot of the staff at the restaurant socially, for the manager was a former Marine.

  Every time the family went there for dinner Tony Morelli came to their table and joined them. He and Dave swapped stories from their days in the Corps. Tony bought him a beer or three.

  Sarah usually had to drive the family back home, because she and Dave had had an agreement for years. He was allowed to drive after two beers and a full meal.

  But no more than that.

  It was no problem. Everyone had a good time, and Lindsey was right.

  The food at Orlando’s was awesome.

  They passed Beth’s elementary school.

  Lindsey asked her if she wanted to go inside.

  “I’ll go with you, little squirt. Just in case there’s any monsters hiding in the shadows waiting to grab you and eat you.”

  Lind caught her father’s eye and winked, then added, “That way I can help them by holding you down.”

  “Very funny, twerp,” Beth countered. “I stopped believing in monsters the day I discovered big sisters are ten times worse.

  “Besides, I don’t think I’d like going in there. I think seeing the empty rooms would make me very sad.”

  They passed the school by and ten minutes later turned the corner at the end of their street.

  Dave got a bad feeling. Everything looked more or less the same, but something was decidedly different.

  As they neared their house, Dave studied everything closely. He was looking for a hint… a clue… that would tell him what it was which had changed.

  As the girls grew more and more excited about finally being home, he finally saw it.

  The picture window in their front room was different.

  The phony eviction notice Dave had so carefully placed in the corner of the window… it was gone.

  “Keep walking,” he said, even as he winced because he knew he was ruining everyone’s homecoming.

  “Something’s not right. Keep walking and don’t look at the house.”

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  ALONE, Part 14:

  The Most Miserable Winter

  will be available worldwide on Amazon.com and at Barnes and Noble Booksellers in November, 2019

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  Please enjoy one of my short stories,

  And thanks for reading my books.

  -Darrell-

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  The Journey of the Hands

  By Darrell Maloney

  copyright 2004

  I was born in a big marble building in the middle of Philadelphia in 1925.

  Back then I was sturdy and strong, with a sharp chiseled face. I even sparkled in the sunlight, although I didn't see sunlight for the first time until I was six months old.

  I took my first boat trip on the Erie Canal, in a canvas bag with 999 others just like me. It was cramped but not uncomfortable. I had no idea where I was going, but was happy for the company of the others.

  From time to time the bag we were in would be tossed from hand to hand as workers moved us from the boat to an armored car, then into a bank in Detroit.

  The first time I was touched by humans I was picked up by a grizzled old merchant named Hanz, at his family's apotheke in Taylor, Michigan. He handed me to a lovely woman named Clara, in a beautiful gingham dress and a bright yellow Easter bonnet.

  Clara immediately
passed me to a young girl named Betsy, who held me up in wonder in the dusty sunlight breaking through the store's east window, and marveled at how I shone.

  I remember the brilliance of the light, and the warmth of her little girl hands, sticky from the gumball she had been passing back and forth between her mouth and her fingers.

  Thus began my journey of the hands.

  I took my first train trip in a rickety old Pullman car, nestled into the pocket of a man named Gustafson Baker. He preferred Gus, although his wife used his full name when she was peeved at him, which she frequently was.

  The train moved west over the Rockies, into Salt Lake City. I was rooted from my nest in Gustafson’s pocket and dropped into the hand of a young porter named Joe, who helped carry the Bakers' bags from the train into the station. Joe traded me for a piece of penny licorice a couple of days later.

  I look back at my days in Salt Lake City with fond memories. I got to meet a lot of people and felt the warmth of hundreds of hands as I was passed around, sometimes several times a day.

  Sometimes the hands were soft, and smelled of sweet lilac or perfume. Sometimes the hands were grimy and gnarled, covered with dirt or coal dust, or heaven knows what else.

  Sometimes I would ride around in a genteel lady's pocketbook for days or weeks at a time. The women tended to hang onto me longer than the men did. I suppose that's because in the bottom of a pocketbook I could be easily forgotten.

  Once I got to go to a magnificent schoolhouse in the small pocket of a girl of nine named Millicent. She traded me and an old buffalo nickel for a bowl of soup and a biscuit. Then she sat down and ate her lunch amidst a chorus of chatter and giggles, while I sat in a cold cash drawer, waiting to be passed to someone else.

  By the time I was five years old I had given up on my goal of counting the number of hands I had touched. The quest was borne out of boredom, and I had no idea it would be so many.

  After the first hundred hands or so I gave up on trying to remember all the names, or the details. After a thousand or so I gave up altogether. Suffice it to say it was a lot of hands in those early years.

  When I was ten, I was on the move again.

  This time was not so glorious a journey. I slipped through a hole in the pocket of a farmhand who was loading steers into a cattle car heading south.

  For days I lay on the hard wooden floor of the car as it lurched along its tracks, occasionally being stepped on by a four-legged beast which had no more idea where we were heading than I did.

  We wound up in southern California, where the cattle were turned into steaks and I was passed many times from one hand to another. I learned my worth was two tomatoes or one apple. I was in the land of itinerant farmers, most of whom were displaced by the dust bowl and the depression, and moved west in search of a better life.

  I would go back and forth, from a set of scratched and cracked hands belonging to a picker, to the soft and lotioned hands of a grocer, in exchange for two tomatoes, or an apple, or a pat of wrapped bread. Then given in change back to another set of cracked dry hands.

  Back and forth, day in and day out. It was monotonous. Sometimes I was passed back and forth in poker games, where I was apparently enough to ante my owner's hand of cards into the game.

  In 1943 I belonged to a man named John.

  John had picked me up on a sidewalk in Waco, Texas, where I had been carelessly dropped by a small child whose hands were too tiny to carry a handful of change.

  John looked at my date and proclaimed me his lucky penny, since we had been born the same year. I knew it was 1943 because the other pennies being jostled about in John's trouser pockets were marked with that date, and were shiny and new.

  They never stayed around long, though. John carefully picked through his change whenever he paid for something. The shiny pennies would leave, never to be seen again.

  I would stay with him to bring him luck, he'd say.

  John worked in an armament factory outside of Waco, making gun barrels, until the day he changed careers and put on an ugly brown uniform. He stopped being John and began being Private Moseley, and he kept that name for the rest of the time I knew him.

  Private Moseley always rubbed my face before going into battle. For luck, he said. In those chaotic days, scared men in faraway lands did whatever they could to calm their nerves and convince themselves that they would live to see another sunset.

  The last time I saw Private Moseley we were on a landing craft in rough seas, heading toward something called Omaha Beach. He rubbed my face, said a short prayer, and placed me in his left breast pocket. Then he patted me through the pocket. I heard him tell a buddy that his lucky penny would keep him alive.

  For two long weeks I sat in a box alongside a handful of other change, some love letters from Mary, three worn and tattered photographs of Private Moseley's mom, Mary and his young nephews with their ear-to-ear grins.

  I was jostled about in this box, not knowing where I was, or where I was going, but knowing from the constant rocking that I was in the cargo hold of a ship.

  Later I could feel the vibration of a truck that seemed to labor forever across the dusty and bumpy roads of west Texas. Finally I heard voices, then saw light, as the box was finally opened.

  I saw Mary's face, red and puffy, polluted by too many tears rolling from her pretty blue eyes. I saw her clutch the love letters she had written to Private Moseley, to John, so many months before. I felt the warmth of her fingers as she picked me up, his lucky penny, and gazed hard at me.

  Then in a rage she threw me from the porch swing where she was sitting, and into the soft green grass of her front yard.

  For many years I sat in the dirt of that front yard, watching seasons come and go. In the spring and summer months, the grass would grow tall, and would block out the sun. Then someone would cut it and I'd see light for a few days or weeks, until it went away again.

  My life became a series of cycles. I became very good at guessing the seasons. The grass growing and cutting cycles meant spring. When the growing slowed marked summer. When it stopped altogether it was fall. The cold marked winter, and I lost track of how many winters I laid there.

  One year in the cycle I knew as spring, I could hear voices. A lawnmower had passed over me not too many days before, and sunlight was penetrating through the shortened grass and warming my face.

  Suddenly I was up, away from the earth, feeling fresh air for the first time in way too many years. A smallish hand scraped the dirt from my sides, and I went into a dark pocket, where I joined two other pennies. One of them was rough cut, with freshly minted features. I could not see it well in the darkness, but I could tell from the feel of it and the smell of new copper that it was recently minted. It said 1963 on its face.

  Suddenly I was alive again. I was being used again in the manner in which I enjoyed, being passed from hand to hand to hand. Children buying candy. Ladies buying produce. Men buying flowers for angry wives they had slighted in various ways.

  I sat in a coin tray at a 7-Eleven convenience store, unwanted by one customer, then picked up and used by another.

  One day I was dropped at a bakery and rolled under a display case. For several months I lay, smelling the glorious smells of fresh donuts each morning, and hearing the joyous laughter of children begging their mothers for cookies.

  One day the smells drifted away, never to return, and the laughter went away as well. For a long time I was once again alone, day and night. At least I wasn't getting rained on as I had been in Mary's front yard.

  Eventually the old bakery was reopened, only it wasn't a bakery any more. It was now an insurance office, and of course the old ovens and display cases had to be removed to make room for desks and chairs and typewriters and such. As the display case was lifted off of me, a worker picked me up, dusted me off, and thrust me into a khaki pants pocket. The pompous, overbearing quarter beside me said 1981.

  These days I don't go anywhere. I am confined to an airless, cl
ear plastic pouch, which I assume is for display purposes.

  On the white cardboard label attached to the pouch are the words "Lincoln Cent, 1925 P". I don't know what that means, but I do know that I am lonely. I miss being passed from hand to hand and traveling across the country and around the world. I miss being admired by children and hearing the joy in their voices as they traded me for the latest sweet thing.

  It’s funny, but I also miss the grumbling of some adults who cast me into parking lots or sidewalks, as though carrying me was not worth their effort. I knew that invariably, someone would pick me back up, recognize my worth, and pass me along.

  I even miss feeling the ants run across my face in Mary's yard, and shuddering each time the lawnmower passed over, ten to twelve times a year, in the season I knew as spring. I would love to break out of my plastic prison and feel the warmth of the hands. I really miss them...

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  If you enjoyed

  ALONE, Part 13:

  The Grim Reaper Comes Calling

  you might also enjoy

  Countdown to Armageddon

  Available now at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble Booksellers.

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  Scott Harter wasn’t special by anybody’s standards. He wasn’t a handsome guy at all. He wasn’t dumb, but he’d never win a Nobel Prize either. He had no hidden talents, although he fancied himself a fairly good karaoke singer.

  His friends didn’t necessarily share that opinion, but what did they know?

  No, if those friends were tasked to choose one word to describe Scott Harter that word might well be “average.”

  If Scott excelled at one thing, it was that he was a very good businessman. And he was also a lot luckier than most.