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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