In the Stacks Ch. 05

"Theresa said he was seeing someone."

"The only thing Henry was seeing that I knew of was the bottom of a bottle."

The younger man chuckled, he had walked behind Cliff. His name badge read, "Austin", and she recognized the name from the online Morgue. He was one of Henry's sons. "That would be my dad all right. Never knew when to stop."

"I'll be honest," she said, "I lost everything. I'm not hoping to get back from him, but I want to understand why."

"What I want to understand," Cliff said, "is how?"

"How?" Marilyn echoed, curiously.

He lifted the damaged hand up to show her a severe burn scar. The pinky and left finger were fused together, and the rest of his fingers were seared.

"I got this in a fire," he said. "A fire that Henry and I were caught in as kids. A burning beam from a barn hit him, and I was able to get it off, but not before it scarred the hell out of his back."

She watched him carefully.

"Henry is afraid of fire, Marilyn. Terrified of it."

"Dad had the fireplace in our house bricked up. He always sent mom down to check on the furnace when the pilot light needed relighting. We didn't have barbeques as a family. For the Forth of July he had us kids and mom go over to Uncle Cliff's house, while he got drunk."

Marilyn nodded.

"Have you had a chance to talk to him?" Marilyn asked them both.

"No," Cliff said. "He's supposed to get a bail hearing today, but we got a phone call telling us not to pay for it. He said that he's just a drunk and doesn't want to get out. He said he'd just get drunk again and something else would end up in flames."

"So he admitted to doing it?" She asked.

"Not in so many words. Marilyn, I think he was so drunk, he didn't know what he was doing," Cliff said.

"Dad would go over to The Tap, that little tavern across the street once he closed the pizzeria. He'd get drunk over there and then go back over to the pizzeria and crash in one of the booths until the staff came to open the place in the morning. He didn't have anywhere to go. Mom threw him out months ago," Austin explained.

"I thought he only recently got served with divorce papers?" Marilyn said.

"They've been on the rocks ever since she thought he was having an affair," Austin replied. "With you, she always thought."

Marilyn shook her head, "No."

Cliff looked at her and then said flatly, "he couldn't have done it. He went to the full-service stations so he wouldn't have to pump his own gas. Anything flammable would give him the jitters. He made Theresa quit smoking when they first started dating."

"Mom was always the strong one, anyway. She always though of my father as a weak man," Austin said, wistfully. "She said the only thing he was good for was making money and drinking booze."

Marilyn nodded.

"She stood by him though, Austin, you have to admit that." Cliff interjected.

"That's true. She just badmouthed him every step of the way. She tried to do it to us kids too, that's why my brother ran away to join the Marines. He writes me an email now and then, but never comes back. My mom always blamed dad, but really, she drove him away."

"Bit of a matriarch, is she?" Marilyn asked.

Cliff nodded, "oh she had him whipped from day one. He'd do anything for her, really. That just sort of grew out of hand, she became demeaning, and destructive."

"She'd throw vases and stuff at him. Once she threw a frying pan of hot grease at him, and then got angry with him and made him clean it up when he ducked. Mom's temper was legendary. The minute I could get to college, I did." Austin agreed.

"He'd stay in the loft, above the store, just because he didn't want to go home during the summer breaks." Cliff said. "I don't have any kids, so Austin's kind of taking over for me."

Austin smiled, a little embarrassed.

She looked at the two of them, and felt their sincerity. Their opinion of Henry was much like hers that he could not have done this thing, but then if he didn't, who did? She bought one of those little green pine tree shaped air fresheners for her car and headed home.

For a change, she pulled the car into the tidy, organized garage, and closed it behind her. Her first task was unloading, and all of the hardware she laid out in order, and gently eased the huge chunks of wood. These she stood up against the wall.

She put on a canvas apron, one that she had relegated for gardening and outdoor work, and took a t-square off a nail in the wall. Carefully she drew horizontal guidelines across each piece of wood, making them identical. After that, she took a once-inch brush and carefully painted lettering using deliberate strokes, taking care that each side was identical.

From there, she separated the pins out of the hinges, and using the horizontal guidelines, affixed the hinge halves to each piece, making a sign that would stand alone when placed upon the ground. She put a box fan in front of the sign, to help the paint dry and then fetched a small stepladder.

The rafters to the garage were exposed and largely unused and she teetered on the stepladder with a power drill, carefully grinding through a two-by-four of a truss. She put through one of the eyebolts, and used a washer and two nuts to hold it tight. On the eyebolt, she affixed the block and tackle.

After much examination, she ended up drilling a hole at the mid point, and each end of the long dowels, and ran short pieces of rope through. In the middle, she attached another hook bolt and affixed this to the block and tackle. She lowered it enough, and grabbed at each end, leaning on it, putting her full weight on it. It held tightly, and she tried deliberately to break it, bouncing up and down as much as she could. Her artisanship held, and she made another dowel similar to this one, and set up the second block and tackle about seven feet away from the first one, on another rafter.

She set sturdy metal brackets into the sides of the wall, facing opposite and carefully hoisted up both long dowels. The slack rope she wound over the brackets. It made a very tidy, inexpensive suspension system.

Examining the signs, she found them not quite dry, so she went inside, out of the heat. The air-conditioning fired at her like a torrent of ice cubes and actually forced her to sit down because of the temperature shock. Softly she relaxed and lay back lengthwise on the couch. All that hard work could take a lot out a person, and she dozed for about fifteen or twenty minutes in lieu of lunch.

Waking up refreshed, knowing she was going to be out wandering in the sun, she exchanged her skirt and top for a lighter weight cotton dress, omitting the stockings and finding a large hat. She slathered her arms with sunscreen and found her biggest pair of sunglasses.

Between the fan and the garage's hundred plus degree heat, her signs had dried nicely. She loaded them on top of the caddy, tying them down yet again. Slowly she backed out, and headed for the wreckage of her bookstore.

Instead of pulling in the back as she usually did, she pulled toward the front, as close as she could and surveyed the area. It was a complete loss and she was able to see it fully now, in daylight. Between the fire, and the water damage, nothing survived. Softly she lifted up the police line, and walked into the ashes.

Marilyn did not see the darkly dressed figure sitting at the window of the Tap Tavern across the street. She was lost in her own little world. When the figure left the Tap, put on its motorcycle helmet and kicked over the 1992 Kawasaki Ninja it made little noise. The motorcycle, tuned by hand, its noise suppression system so advanced that it made little more noise than a bicycle. The figure parked the bike in the shade of a tree in the parking lot and stealthily crept upon the scene. It was dressed completely in black, and stood out in the daylight like a sore thumb.