Harold Matejowsky had no memories of a feminine influence, other than vague recollections of a soft pinkness enveloping his beginnings. His mother had died shortly after his birth and the pastel widow Gresham had immediately established herself in the Matejowsky household as a more-than-willing substitute.

Mrs. Gresham had set her cap for Harold’s daddy right after his wife’s funeral and had taken over the nursemaiding of young Harold ostensibly out of a thwarted love for children. (She had none.) In actuality, Mrs. Gresham’s maternal fervor was designed to ensnare Harold’s daddy in matrimony. Mr. Matejowsky, however, was impervious to her subtle innuendoes and, at the same time, knew he was dependent upon her as long as Harold was an infant, so Mrs. Gresham vacillated between discouragement and adrenaline flushings of hope. And there was enough hope rampant in Mrs. Gresham’s fantasies to keep her around for nearly six years.

Harold remembered the day Mrs. Gresham left, more clearly than he remembered any of the previous years. Her tears were profuse, possessive, and in vain. She disappeared behind a slamming car door and after the noise of the bronchial exhaust no longer echoed, Harold’s daddy looked down at Harold with an appraising eye. He was relieved at the thought of no longer having to pay an interfering female to help care for his small son.

Harold’s first regular duty in the feed store was to sweep the wooden floor and the outside stoop every morning at six o’clock. At first, the long broom handle was too awkward for him but under the stern tutoring of his daddy, he learned to keep his tiny fists closer together and to take shorter strokes. Harold was obedient, quiet, and he learned quickly. He copied his daddy’s every motion, even perching on a high stool behind the cash register and counting out imaginary change. His posturings and mimicry were a source of uncomfortable amusement for the customers, but Harold’s daddy never seemed to notice. Nor did he ever compliment Harold on any chore, no matter how meticulously Harold had executed it. Nothing was every quite good enough for Harold’s daddy.

By the time Harold entered high school, there had been a few occasions when he had dared to disagree with his daddy about one thing or another. Each time, his daddy flared with resentment and fury, taking at least a week to get over Harold’s insubordination. Harold hated the silence of his daddy’s sulks so much he tried not to antagonize him very often. As the years went by, Harold disagreed less and less with his daddy and, by the time he graduated, he had become his daddy’s twin, his mute shadow. The shoppers were awed by the uncanny resemblance between father and son.

One February morning, Harold awoke at the customary hour of five o’clock and immediately sensed something awry. He sat up on the edge of the sway-backed mattress and stared, logy with sleep, at his white feet. The cold wooden floor burned like dry ice against his soles, but he remained motionless, his overgrown hands curved limply over the edge of the rumpled bed. He had never owned any slippers always pulling on his heavy socks instead. This particular morning however, something alien seemed to pulse in the darkness. He waited patiently for his mind to pinpoint the reason for the strangeness.

One of his legs shivered convulsively, enlarging an old rip in his twisted nightshirt, and he felt the awful cold creep up his legs and arms, like an invisible sheath of freezing fire. Fire. That was the strangeness. His daddy had not yet stoked the furnace in the basement. There were no popping, creaking sounds of an old house warming up. There were no sounds at all.

Harold began to dress himself with no more haste than any other day. He wondered what particular chore he had forgotten the night before that would cause his daddy to change his morning routine. Harold’s daddy never failed to rise at four, start the furnace, light the stove, steep the tea and boil the porridge. Sometimes Harold’s daddy fried a few pieces of fatback, but not often. He said it was too costly.

As he hurried downstairs, Harold’s stomach growled and he hoped his daddy wouldn’t hear it. He was not allowed to show greed.

Harold pushed open the swinging door at the foot of the stairs, flicked on the light, and stared in disbelief at the empty kitchen. Everything was just as they had left it the night before. Even the smell of the hash they had eaten still hung over the bareness of the white wooden table.

Letting the door swing itself to a standstill, Harold pulled two wooden matches from the holder above the stove and lit the oven, then the two back burners. The odor of the gas flames made the kitchen seem warmer immediately and Harold moved briskly about, filling the teakettle and the pot for the porridge with water from the faucet over the sink. He kept looking over his shoulder at the door to the stairs as he placed both containers on the stove to heat.

Adjusting the height of the flames exactly as he had seen his father do, Harold stood back, wiping his fingers on his flannel shirt. There was nothing else to do until the water boiled.

Up until this point, Harold’s actions had been totally automatic, like the ins and outs of breathing, but now, with this pause, his whole body stiffened with a fearsome realization. Wheeling around, he bolted through the swinging door and ran back up the stairs, bursting into his daddy’s room.

Staring at his daddy’s dead blue-gray face, he remembered later thinking he shouldn’t move until the kitchen door stopped swinging. He also remembered wishing it would never stop.

**

The First Lutheran Church was crowded the day of the funeral. Harold kept his eyes down, so no one could see he hadn’t cried. He couldn’t. He was too miserable. He and his daddy had never attended church (there was no profit in it) and the well-meaning townspeople frightened Harold.

“Bless your heart! You’re the bravest young man I’ve ever seen! Isn’t he, Pastor?”

The service was over and Harold was standing in the foyer next to the minister. People were milling about pulling on coats and hats, their hushed voices sounding unnatural and threatening to Harold. He stared at the straining seams on the bodice of the large woman who had just tried to crush him. She still gripped his arm with her hot, plump fingers.

“Yes, yes, he is, Alma. Brave, very brave indeed.” Pastor Schwettmann looked impatiently at his pocket watch. He considered the Matejowsky funeral a nuisance, a charitable function with no compensation, and dreaded having to conduct a graveside ceremony in such nasty weather. His indigestion had become severe and he stifled a belch.

“I’ve just never heard the like. All by yourself and all! Poor, poor thing!” The matron moved to press herself against him again and Harold sucked in his breath, wondering how heavy-set women could walk upright with such massive things up there in front. The voice above the freckled cleavage was shrill in Harold’s ear. “Harold Matejowsky, You’ve just got to meet some young people your own age! Now that your daddy’s gone, that store of his is going to get mighty lonely! Isn’t that so, Karla?” Alma Bernhardt backed away from Harold, pushing a thin afterthought of a girl under his nose.

“Yes, Momma.”

For a brief second, Ha Harold’s eyes encountered a pair of watery blue ones, unblinking in a narrow, pale face. The girl looked at Harold’s wrists, first at one, then the other. Harold wished they didn’t hang so far out of the sleeves of his jacket.

“I was sorry to hear about your daddy, Harold.”

“Yeah. Me, too. I mean, well, thanks, Karla.” He remembered her then, vaguely. From classes in school.

“Go on, Karla dear. Ask him.”

Harold was stunned to see a blush on the expressionless face. He had no idea anyone other than himself ever felt shy. “Ask me what?”

“Oh. Well, you see, well, we thought, since. . .I mean. . .maybe you’d like to. . .” Karla looked helplessly at her mother, who nodded vigorously, her fat hands barely able to clutch each other under her bosom. “Ah. . .come to our house for supper after the services because we have plenty and you’d be more than welcome?”

The invitation whined out of the girl like a rapidly ascending balloon.

“Yes. I think I would. Yes, that would be fine.”

Buttoning up a coat many sizes too large for her, Karla stared wide-eyed at Harold. It had never occurred to her he might actually accept her mother’s invitation. Shrugging her shoulders under the ill-fitting coat, she scurried out the church door ahead of Harold and her mother, disturbed at the prospect of having company for dinner.

As the following days wove themselves into a fortnight, Mrs. Bernhardt took charge of things and insisted Harold let Karla help him at the store “for a while.” The situation soon led to Karla’s “volunteering” to clean the Matejowsky house once a week and shortly after that, Alma Bernhardt began to speak in hushed tones about their “goings-on” and what the neighbors might be thinking. She winked and elbowed Harold every time she mentioned his and Karla’s “friendship”, so he didn’t think she minded the way it really was, because, of course, there were no “goings-on.”

Harold didn’t mind having Karla around the store at all. She was quiet, like he was, and industrious. She learned rapidly and although Harold didn’t really need any help, her presence was so unobtrusive it was somehow comforting.

Cleaning his house though, was a different story. It embarrassed him at first for Karla to clean his private living quarters and to wash his clothes. She was so noncommittal and impersonal about it however, he soon thought nothing of it.

As far as Karla was concerned, she looked forward more each day to getting away from her mother but marrying Harold had never entered her mind. She truly enjoyed the hard physical work, which, to her, was a reprieve from her mother’s unending admonishments.

Mrs. Bernhardt finally had to resort to more aggressive tactics to bring about the wedding. After supper at the Bernhardt table one evening, Mrs. Bernhardt insisted Karla and her father clear away the dishes and then, in an imperious tone of voice, she announced she had a matter of the greatest importance to discuss privately with Harold.

“I never would have thought you were the sort, Harold.” Mrs. Bernhardt was a majestic barricade against the closed parlor doors. Harold was mystified.

“What sort, Mrs. Bernhardt? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Mrs. Bernhardt let her head loll to one side, an expression of such grievous sadness on her face, Harold became alarmed. Her chest began to heave with sobs. “My only child! My precious baby! Scandalized!”

“Who? Karla? Mrs, Bernhardt, you’ve got to get ahold of yourself. There’s been some mistake. . . “

When Mrs. Bernhardt sobbed out her “encounters” with “all” the townspeople and their “scorn” for Harold’s and Karla’s “affair”, and sniffled that “many” had mentioned they “might” have to buy their supplies from the next town, Harold’s mouth gaped open in astonishment. He decided immediately to marry Karla. Keeping Karla’s reputation intact had nothing to do with it. Mrs. Bernhardt had instinctively hit upon the only thing that mattered to Harold. Money.

Eight months after his daddy’s funeral, Harold and Karla were married in the parlor of the Bernhardt home. Mr. Bernhardt, the source of Karla’s small stature as well as the blue eyes that always seemed to be looking in another direction, gave his daughter away gratefully, sighing with relief as his wife nodded her approval.

The newlyweds did not take a wedding trip because there was too much to do at the store. Harold had decided to include hardware in his stock, even though his daddy had always argued against anything new and untried. The hardware supply man was waiting at the store during the wedding and Harold barely heard Pastor Schwettmann reading the vows. He did notice Karla looked better than usual, even though her mother’s wedding dress still looked like her mother’s. Karla was nearly as flat chested as Harold and everything she wore puckered and hung loose.

Harold excused himself from the reception, racing to the store. By the time Karla had changed and arrived to help, Harold had his shirtsleeves rolled up and was busily sorting through boxes and boxes of bolts, nuts, screws and nails. They worked side by side until after ten, pleased, at last, with the new arrangement.

“It looks nice, Harold.”

“Well, looks don’t mean money. We’ll see how it sells. Thanks for helping me, Karla.”

“Harold?”

“Hmmm?” The cowbell on the door clucked softly as Harold adjusted the lock.

“Harold. . .we’re married.”

“Oh, my gosh. I’m just not used to the idea yet, I guess. I must be pretty tired.”

“That’s all right, Harold. I’m tired, too.”

Having agreed they were both tired, they were released from any connubial obligations that first night, to their mutual satisfaction. They locked up the store and walked the three blocks to Harold’s house in comfortable silence. It was September and the leaves crunched under their feet as Karla took two strides to every one of Harold’s.

Once inside the house, Harold felt a momentary awkwardness, but Karla picked up the valise she had brought over earlier and went right upstairs and into Harold’s room as if she belonged there. In a way, she did, having put clean linens on the narrow bed just that morning. Harold’s daddy’s room was much larger, with two windows instead of one but neither of them would have considered moving into that room. They had never discussed it but they both knew how it had to be.

By the time Harold put on his nightshirt (he changed in the bathroom, feeling rather silly) and re-entered the bedroom, Karla was covered up to her sharp little chin, fast asleep on the far side of the bed. Harold turned out the lamp and eased under the covers, careful not to awaken her. Just before he drifted off, he mused to himself how strange it was the bed should feel no different. Karla was such a slight, wiry little thing, it was as if her body weight made no indentation on the mattress at all.

Both Harold and Karla were “too tired” for many nights that first month of marriage, but, finally, with the greatest of sacrifices on both sides, nature took its inevitable course. The results were far from pleasurable for both of them. Harold was not one to relinquish inhibitions for any reason and in the dreadful midst of his own uncontrollable writhing, his daddy’s face kept floating in his mind’s eye, as if he were watching Harold misbehave.

Karla was equally ill at ease with the entire procedure, but knew enough to know it was merely a temporary inconvenience. Thereafter, their sexual encounters were no more than once or twice every two months, occurring sometimes after both had gone to sleep, as if in slumber they became possessed by a demanding force of something forbidden when they were awake. Karla never experienced any sort of fulfillment from their infrequent lovemaking, merely relief when Harold rolled away and she could tug her cotton gown back down to her ankles. Sometimes she thought she would smother just from the sheer weight of his body on hers but that’s all she felt. They never spoke nor kissed during these rare couplings, although afterward Harold sometimes asked her if she was “all right.” She always replied she was “fine.”

One day, while eating a cheese sandwich, Harold noticed Karla up in the front of the store with a customer. She wobbled dizzily and clutched the edge of a counter. Harold watched her curiously as he finished his sandwich; it was his turn to eat first.

The customer made his purchase and left, the cow bell on the door jingling merrily as he went out. Karla walked unsteadily toward Harold, who was eating an apple.

“Harold. I don’t feel well.”

“You reckon you’re hungry?”

She looked at his apple and covered her mouth, shaking her head.

“Maybe you’d better sit down. Here. I’m through.” Harold slid off the only stool and Karla slumped gratefully in his place, her face hidden in her hands. “Water. That’s it. Water. I’ll get you a cup of water.” Harold tossed the apple core into the wastebasket and filled a paper cup from the metal water can, glancing anxiously at the front door while his thumb pressed the button on the spigot. “Here. Drink this. It’ll make you feel better.”

Karla took the cup gratefully and swallowed noisily. “Harold, I think I’m going to have a. . .to have a baby.”

“Have a. . .a WHAT?” Harold fought the cheese sandwich and the apple back down into his stomach. He looked wildly around the store, at the neat shelves, the orderly bins, the hand-lettered signs, the peeling oilcloth countertop, the well-swept floor, the cash register. He could not comprehend a baby, a child, fitting into his organized, merchandising world.

The cowbell clattered and Harold turned from Karla’s shattering announcement to wait on Mr. Klausman, one of his best customers. He hoped Mr. Klausman had a large order. He didn’t want to think about Karla’s problem and how it would affect him. Not until he had to.

After a few weeks of being slightly queasy in the mornings, Karla blossomed with her pregnancy. Her cheeks turned pink, her eyes were bright and alert, and much to Harold’s surprise, her energy level seemed to triple. The bulge under her apron was hardly noticeable until the last three weeks and even then, a stranger wouldn’t have known she was expecting. Everyone else in town knew, because Mrs. Bernhardt talked of nothing else.

Late one Saturday afternoon, just as the shoppers thinned out to go home for supper, Karla grabbed her stomach and looked at Harold with a startled expression on her face. “Harold, I think. . .I think it’s coming.”

“What’s coming?” Harold slammed the drawer of the register with a satisfied firmness. “All the orders are in for the week, and it’s Saturday. What are you talking about?” He looked at Karla quizzically.

“The. . .the baby.” She doubled forward suddenly, her head almost touching the counter. “Ouch! Yes, it’s coming. Now.”

“Oh. Well, I guess we’ll have to close up a little early . . .uh. . .do you think you can walk home, or should I. . .”

“Probably so. But I think you’d better call Momma and have her send the midwife over. And maybe you should tell her to hurry.”

Karla’s face had a faraway look to it that unsettled Harold. He scurried around closing up, made a fast telephone call to Mrs. Bernhardt, who shrieked so loudly into the receiver he had to hold his ear after he hung up, and then he helped Karla out the door. She stood on the sidewalk holding both hands under her belly as if she was keeping herself together while Harold closed the door and locked it. The cowbell sounded softly muted from inside the empty store.

They had to stop three times before they got home while Karla stared at the ground and her mind seemed to go someplace Harold couldn’t. She was beginning to breathe heavily when they finally got there but managed to get herself up the stairs and into bed before Mr. And Mrs. Bernhardt arrived, bringing Pastor Schwettman’s niece, the mid-wife, with them. Mr. Bernhardt sat at the kitchen table with Harold while the women puttered around upstairs. After a few tries, the man gave up attempting to have a conversation, and both stared at the three pots of full of water coming to a boil on the stove.

Karla’s labor lasted nine hours and several times Harold thought he heard her cry out, but he wasn’t sure. His mind was so fill of anxiety about the store he couldn’t think of anything else. He had no idea what he was going to do on Monday, without Karla there to help. He had not realized how indispensable she had become. He squirmed on the hard kitchen chair, drumming his fingers on the tabletop. Mr. Bernhardt sipped a cup of coffee and the slurping sound made Harold wince.

Pastor Schwettmann’s niece hurried through the swinging door again, this time with a huge smile on her face.

“It won’t be long now, Mr. Matejowsky! We’re getting somewhere with this stubborn little babe.” She hefted the last pot of water off the stove and backed through the door, making her way back upstairs as fast as she could.

Mr. Bernhardt cleared his throat as if he was going to speak, but he didn’t say anything. Harold was thankful. He didn’t feel like talking.

Suddenly, the old house seemed to shake itself. The sound of the women’s feet upstairs was no longer deferential and cautious. They seemed to be running around and if Harold hadn’t known better, he would’ve sworn there were more than six women in the room overhead. A small, weak cry pealed down the stairwell and Harold and Mr. Bernhardt stared at each other.

“IT’S A BOY, HAROLD! It’s a FINE boy! Come up here and have a look!” Mrs. Bernhardt’s booming voice shook the windowpanes.

When Harold walked into the bedroom, his first reaction was relief at seeing Karla appear completely normal. She was awake and looked a little bit tired but other than that, nothing appeared out of the ordinary to Harold. He looked all around the room.

“Well, where is it?” His voice sounded funny to his ears.

“Right here, Harold. I’ve got him covered up.” Karla lifted the covers next to her and Harold stared down at the tiniest face he had ever seen.”

To say Harold was shocked would be an understatement. He was completely unprepared for his emotional reaction. His knees almost gave way under him and would have, but Mrs. Bernhardt shoved a chair up behind him and he flopped down in it.

Harold could not speak for a long time and finally, his face drained of all color, he reached out a finger toward the face of his son. The baby’s blue eyes stared solemnly at his father. One of the tiny, wavering hands encountered the large finger and grabbed it with prehensile instinct, but Harold didn’t know that. He was convinced his son knew who he was, just by touching him.

From that moment on, much to Harold’s surprise, he thought of little else other than his baby son. The child was small, like his mother and grandfather, and had inherited their fair coloring. Harold named him Chester.

As soon as Karla was up and around, she was back at the store, sweeping it out every morning at six. Mrs. Bernhardt, tired of mothering her wisp of a husband became a doting grandparent, wheezing her asthmatic way up and down the stairs of the Matejowsky house. Harold and Karla had converted his daddy’s bedroom into a nursery and Harold could hardly bear leaving the child, even to go to the store. Karla decided poor Harold had never known anything but how to work in the store and the arrival of his son had opened up a whole new world to him. More often than not, Karla left for work before Harold, who preferred staring at the miraculous waif until its grandmother arrived.

Harold was not quite twenty-two when the birth of his son changed his life. Mrs. Bernhardt’s presumptuousness had ceased to bother Harold because he knew she loved the infant almost as much as he did. He took to sleeping with Chester in his daddy’s room to be near the child if he cried in the night, which he did, frequently. Karla, asleep in the next room, never heard the midnight wails. The maternal instinct was apparently nonexistent in her detached personality; even her breasts lost their prenatal swelling overnight, sinking rebelliously back down into her chest, relieving her of one more inconvenience. Pastor Schwettmann’s niece was a prolific breeder and shared her ample supply of breast milk with Chester for several months. Mrs. Bernhardt picked up the daily supply of full bottles every morning and returned the empties at night, on her way back to her own house.

One October morning, three-month-old Chester looked up at Harold and smiled, his watery blue eyes focused precisely on Harold’s. Though the faint grin lasted a mere split-second, Harold described it for days to anyone who would listen. Karla began to take on more and more of the clerical duties at the store while Harold continued to do the bookkeeping, musing about the day Chester would be his partner in the store, occasionally laughing aloud with sheer joy at the idea.

As soon as Chester could toddle, Harold began bringing him to the store for the entire day. Mrs. Bernhardt was furious and informed Harold a store, particularly a “general store”, which it had become by this time, was no place for a child. Harold just smiled at Chester, gave him another peppermint stick, and Karla waited on customers.

Eventually, Mrs. Bernhardt accepted the situation, conceding maybe it was all right after all. Besides, her arthritis and her asthma were both getting so bad the stairs in Harold’s house had become almost impossible for her to manage. She visited the store less and less frequently, then finally was not able to leave her own house at all.

Every now and again, Mr. Bernhardt ventured down to the store to buy a few necessities, at a tiny discount, and he deliberately timed his visits when he knew Harold had taken Chester out for his walk. Mr. Bernhardt was amazed his daughter could operate the big store all by herself. He liked to wander up and down the crowded aisles, watching her out of the corner of his eye. She became more efficient every day, darting to and fro, and somehow, impossibly, she seemed to be growing smaller. Mr. Bernhardt always stood out of the way, smiling broadly at the customers as they left, winking at Karla as if the two of them were conspirators. It wasn’t that Mr. Bernhardt didn’t enjoy seeing little Chester, pink-cheeked after his walk, but Harold always insisted on putting the boy down for his nap on a pallet in the back, immediately after his lunch. And Harold said Chester HAD to eat, undistracted, as soon as they came in. That left no time for Mr. Bernhardt to be anything but a bother when Harold and Chester were around. He got enough of that feeling at home.

One afternoon, when Chester was nearly four, Mr. Bernhardt deliberately waited for Harold to bring him back from their walk. He was fingering the soft gingham enjoying the pungent smell of the new fabric, when Harold and Chester rushed through the door, slamming it to shut out a dusty whirlwind in the street. The cowbell nearly clanged itself off its leather strap and Harold laughed, swooping Chester up high in his arms so he could watch the spinning debris outside. The child, now grown quite plump, almost flabby, looked out the plate glass window with no animation whatsoever in his face. “What do you think about that, Chester? Isn’t that something? Look at this boy of mine, Karla! He’s not afraid of anything!” Lowering his son to the floor, Harold caught sight of his father-in-law and a slight frown tweaked his brow. “Well, hello there, Mr. Bernhardt! Can I help you find something?”

“No. . .no, Harold. I don’t want to be any trouble.”

“No trouble at all. Say “hello” to your grampa, son.”

Chester’s mouth barely moved as he mumbled a response.

“Hello, yourself, Chester! Looks like you’re turning into a heavyweight! Maybe you’ll be a football player!”

“He’s not too fat, Mr. Bernhardt. . .just hasn’t gotten his height yet, that’s all. And we don’t have time for football, do we, son?”

Chester stared at the jars of candy lined up on the counter. Harold unscrewed one of the red metal lids and handed Chester a long strand of licorice. “Was Karla too busy to help her own daddy?” Harold patted Chester”s round head.

“No, Harold, not at all. I. . .I waited to see you on purpose. You see, well, Alma’s getting poorly and she’s been asking after the boy. I thought you might have time to bring him by. . .one day soon?” Mr. Bernhardt shifted his hat brim round and round in his fingers.

“Well, surely we should be able to stop by and see Granny G., now won’t we, Chester?”

The boy smacked his lips over the sticky confection, his tongue a smeary black.

“How “bout if we stop by tomorrow, Mr. Bernhardt? Will that be soon enough?”

“Oh, yes, Harold, yes! That”ll be just fine! I’ll get on home and tell her now, so’s she can be lookin’ forward to it. Thank you, Harold!”

The cowbell jiggled nervously as he hurried out of the store, not even bothering to wave goodbye to Karla. He acted as if he were afraid Harold would change his mind and he knew he would be the one to suffer from Alma’s martyrdom, if she didn’t see her grandson soon.

As it turned out, Alma Bernhardt never railed at her husband again. She died that very night in her sleep, a one-sided smile on her mouth as if her own lips were pleased their life-long mutterings of discontent were over.

Karla was twenty-five when her mother died, but she looked more like forty. She wore her oily, blondish hair pulled straight back because that way she didn’t have to waste time fooling with it. Her fingernails were broken from shifting the rough wooden kegs of nails around, but nobody noticed her nails anyway. The only time they bothered Karla was when she sold fabric. Sometimes they would catch and pull a thread. The women wouldn’t buy snagged material.

Shortly after her mother’s funeral, Karla began dropping by her father’s house after work, to fix him an early supper and take him things he needed. He seemed completely content living alone in the quiet house and Karla secretly envied him. Harold’s incessant conversations with Chester about their future together got on her nerves.

Harold didn’t seem to notice when Karla wasn’t at home. He had gotten used to his daddy’s old bed, he said, and since he loved to talk to Chester before they went to sleep, it seemed easier for Harold and Chester to share the larger room. Besides, Harold was afraid Chester might have a nightmare and would wake up frightened if he were alone.

Once or twice Karla stayed overnight at her father’s, strangely pleased with the familiar smallness of her childhood room. Gradually, she began to live in her father’s home again, reverting to her old custom of caring for the store, cleaning Harold’s (and now, Chester’s) house once a week, then returning each night to the serenity of her old bedroom in her father’s house.

She and Harold had discussed this plan, off-handedly, outwardly expressing concern for the aging, “grieving” Mr. Bernhardt, but both of them were scarcely able to hide their relief from the obligation of being together all the time. The townspeople expressed only admiration for such a sacrificial young couple and Harold’s business increased even more.

* * * *

Harold hated putting Chester in public school. The boy was overweight from the constant indulgence in sweets and Harold had heard other boys jeering at his fatness. He could have killed them all, each and every one, but Chester never seemed to notice the other boys.

Chester did surprisingly well in his studies, probably because it took less effort to sit at his desk during recess and do extra work than it did to run after a ball on the school ground. Harold waited in the schoolyard every weekday at three-thirty, but none of the children teased Chester when they caught sight of Harold. They didn’t enjoy teasing Chester much anymore anyway. He just stared blankly with his milky blue eyes and didn’t seem to care, no matter what they told him.

By the time Chester was eleven and in the fourth grade, Harold began to suggest, very casually, that Chester help out with a few chores in the store. Chester responded willingly enough, but everything Harold thought of for him to do, Karla did in half the time. The floor never had enough sweeping, but that particular chore stirred up dust and lint and made Chester cough. Harold was terrified Chester might become asthmatic like his grandmother and insisted on finishing the sweeping himself while Chester rested a bit on the stool, cooling his throat with an Eskimo Pie.

Chester was not stupid and was, in fact, a lot more perceptive than his facial expression led one to believe. He read constantly and became particularly interested in the new field of psychology. He convinced his father he had to study in the public library at least three afternoons a week. There, in a remote corner of the stacks, he read about neuroses and psychoses and schizophrenia and paranoia and he began to feel superior to everyone around him, including his father.

Chester’s weak eyesight required corrective lenses before he entered high school and he adopted a habit of wiping them frequently with a handkerchief carried in his left hip pocket. Somehow the handkerchief was never clean, adhering to itself in varicose wrinkles from earlier wipings of his sticky mouth and phlegmy nose. As a result, the round glasses were never clear but opaque, giving him a visage similar to that of a long dead fish. His mouth, the same tiny mouth as his mother’s, was always ruminating on a sweet of one kind or another, dug out of any one of his pockets. Harold was obsessed with providing the boy with an unending supply of candies, waiting beside him hopefully as he sampled each new variation, vainly seeking an enthusiastic response.

Chester knew about sex and procreation, of course, because he had read everything he could find on the subject, but he had no stirrings or yearnings in that direction. Like his mother, he considered the sex act a biological necessity for the survival of the species, but he had concluded Homo sapiens would debase itself enough without his having to participate. Harold, remembering with delicate understanding the rare nighttime emissions of his own puberty, moved back into his old room when Chester turned sixteen. Chester was very pleased although he did not say so. He had grown very heavy, but was not much taller than when he was twelve. After years of sharing a bed with his father’s snores and twitches, sinking into the middle of the big bed all alone was a luxury.

Karla continued caring for the two houses and the store with more energy than ever. Deep down inside she thought of herself as very fortunate to have regained her private world and in fear of losing it, she doubled her efforts to keep all three places running smoothly. She rose at four every morning in order to bake the necessary cakes, pies and cookies for Chester, and to prepare the regular meals for Harold, Chester and her father.

Karla and Harold did not think their arrangement at all unnatural because it suited them both. Harold never spoke or thought of anything save his plans for Chester and Karla appeared to listen. She sometimes cocked her head and nodded, but if the truth were known, she was concentrating on staying three days ahead in her menu plans. All the while Harold talked, she mentally considered certain dishes she thought might please Chester. She had found out years earlier she had to put sugar on everything she cooked or Chester wouldn’t eat it. His resultant pouts and hollow-sounding burps made her perspire with a feeling of overwhelming negligence. She tried very hard to remember the sugar, but she still forgot it occasionally, in a meat loaf or on a pork roast. She even included a nice-sized packet of sugar, just plain sugar, in Chester’s lunch. He liked to dip his sandwich and his fruit in it, between each bite.

Chester, grossly obese at eighteen, graduated valedictorian of his class. Both of his parents were awed by his scholastic achievement and were oblivious to the twitters of laughter that rippled in cautious spurts above the commencement audience. There was very little applause as Chester lumbered up to the stage, the folds of his black graduation gown hitching up on his huge buttocks with each step. The valedictorian’s gold tassel hung stubbornly, spread over his entire forehead, and the spotlight glinted off the hazy eyeglasses peering out from between the yellow strands. Harold wept with pride and Karla worried about whether she had baked enough cookies for the weekend.

About a year after his graduation, Chester stopped going out of the house altogether. He had everything he wanted right at his fingertips, literally, having ordered a subscription to a book club specializing in psychology. Additional books were picked up for him by Harold, who still spoke proudly of his son’s intelligence, and of how much the store would improve when Chester took over.

Some days Chester never even left the bed, especially if he was engrossed in a particularly well-written collection of case histories. The specific details of the most extreme mental disorders interested him the most. Delving into the sickest corners of the human mind seemed to soothe him. By comparison, he was superior in every way.

Medical journals and manuals had never interested Chester, so he thought nothing about it when he accidentally got a little of his urine on his fingers and, absent-mindedly, licked them clean. The taste was astonishingly sweet and, though he would never have told anyone, Chester liked the flavor. He was not alarmed about the sweetness, nor about having to urinate more and more frequently, which he never would have mentioned either. He was just mildly curious. To him it was the same as when he noticed the odor of his urine after he had eaten asparagus. He simply refused to eat asparagus ever again, forgot about the sweetness of his urine, adapted to the extra trips to the bathroom and concentrated on his reading.

Karla was silently pleased when Chester stopped coming down to the store. They had bought a love seat at the second-hand place for him to sit on and his immense, spread-addled form, surrounded by crumbs and books, had been in her way. Now she placed the small couch in front of the window and used it very effectively to display fabrics.

Harold, on the other hand, was becoming something of a nuisance. At forty-three, he looked exactly like his daddy’s pictures: unruly black beard, eyebrows grown together over defiant, dark eyes, wiry black hair graying at the temples. He still talked to Chester about their future together, even when Chester wasn’t around. Fortunately, the customers didn’t seem to notice Harold muttering over the books and business continued as usual. Karla had been forced to hire Pastor Schwettmann’s nephew, Joseph, who was the same age as Chester but was lean, well coordinated and industrious. Harold had objected at first, saying Chester would be coming to work any day now and then they wouldn’t have to be paying a salary to anyone. Karla pacified him, assuring him young Joe understood the job was only temporary and would most certainly leave the day Chester decided to take over.

Harold began to spend more time fussing over his grown son than when Chester was an infant. He seemed to be either rushing to and from the library or jumping up from the bookkeeping to run home with new tidbits for Chester to taste. Gradually, Joe took over more and more of Harold’s duties at the store.

On the morning of Chester’s twentieth birthday, Karla had finished icing a magnificent three-layer cake by five-thirty. She had found the recipe in one of her mother’s cookbooks and the cake surpassed her wildest dreams. The top and bottom layers were white and interspersed with crunchy bites of peppermint candy, baked right in the batter. The middle layer was rich chocolate, made that way by the addition of two large Hershey bars. The crème filling, between the layers, was light coconut custard, tinted pale yellow. The filling had been difficult for Karla; her first two attempts had curdled and had to be thrown out. The third batch was perfect.

She covered the entire creation with Chester’s favorite powdered sugar icing, doubling the recipe and saving the leftover for Chester to eat separately. Over the cloud-like peaks, she sprinkled pink granulated sugar and then, ever so carefully, pushed twenty bright green candles in circles around the top. It was the most beautiful cake she had ever seen. She sighed aloud looking at it, hoping she could sleep a little bit later the next morning.

A summer rain was stroking the rooftops as Karla carried the cake to the Matejowsky house. She managed to hold the cake and an umbrella at the same time, bracing the handle of the umbrella with her right thumb. By the time she got to the house, her thumb had no feeling in it and it took her longer than usual to fish out the Matejowsky key from her apron pocket. Unlocking the back door, she noticed the teakettle and the porridge water boiling rapidly on the stove. She placed the cake in the center of the white wooden table, clucking aloud over the eight candles leaning askew. Straightening them with a fingertip, she heard Harold’s voice rumbling all the way from upstairs, barely audible through the gently swinging door. Pushing it open, she leaned her head inquisitively through the doorway and Harold’s words tumbled in a rushing avalanche down the dark stairwell.

“Hey, Chester! Lissen! Are you hearing me? It’s your birthday, boy! Look what I brought you! Ordered it from Philadelphia, special! A ten-pound box of Whitman’s! The drug store doesn’t even carry that size in this town, but nothing’s too good for MY boy, Chester! Here, look! I’ve opened it for you! Take your pick, right now, before breakfast, if you want. There’s one o’ them chocolate creams you like, with the prickles all over the outside. Here, taste it. I’ll put it in your mouth. THAT ought to wake you up, huh, Chester? And when you take over the store, you’ll get rich enough to have a box like this shipped in, every single week if you want! How do you like THAT, Chester? Tell me if that tastes rich enough for you, Chester, oh Chester, ChesterChesterChester ChesterChesterC H E S T E R!!”

Karla ran up the stairs and into the bedroom just as Harold fell in a dead faint across the grotesque mound of soft fat that had been his son. The kitchen door creaked slower and slower as it swung itself to a standstill. Karla remembered thinking how disappointed she was Chester never saw his birthday cake.

* * * * *

The funeral home director retired after Chester’s services, but not because of his profit from the custom-made coffin, like some people thought. The whole thing had caused him to have a complete nervous breakdown.

Harold’s General Store had earned him a small fortune through the years and he had enough money to buy any kind of resting place he wanted for Chester, so he had Chester buried not far from the store in a glass-topped casket, in a grassy meadow near Pastor Schwettmann’s farm. And he had demanded the grave be left open.

The funeral director spoke hesitantly of cave-ins and natural erosion, but nothing could change Harold’s mind. He had the sides of the grave shored up and braced with timbers, finally conceding to a thick sheet of plate glass over the grave’s opening. Then he had the gravesite surrounded by a six-foot brick wall with an iron gate, to which he had the only key. Later, he had a cover built over the grave, inside the fence, to help protect Chester from blowing trash and wildly pitched rocks, and told Karla he had to stay near Chester to keep the heathen vandals at bay. Karla understood, of course, and didn’t mind at all. Young Joe Schwettmann was doing a splendid job of keeping the books and there were days when they completely forgot about Harold, sitting out there by Chester’s grave. Nearly a year after Chester’s funeral, Harold died of a massive heart attack, right in the middle of a sentence. Young Joe bought the store two years later and Karla stayed on as manager, content with her uncluttered life at last.

Chester, finally losing weight at the bottom of his glass and earthen hole, was rumored to have grown fingernails curving out over a foot long and hair down to his waist. Several years later, an exceptionally heavy spring rain flooded the countryside and buckled the rotting timbers shoring up the walls of the open grave. The cave-in buried Chester’s remains under tons of silt and mud and soon no one remembered where he was buried. Some old-timers, however, swore they could still hear Harold once in a while, down there in the swampy meadow, talking to Chester’s grinning face about their future lives together. And when the moon was full, they swore they could hear two men, laughing softly.

7671 words

Jerine P. Watson

51 Burnett Ave So, Apt 312

Renton, WA 98055

425-793-5434

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