For the Love of No.27

By: Carisa J. Burrows


Several of them huddled in a small circle just around the side of Mundy’s Corner Market.
“It’s on the third rack on the right side.”
“I don’t think this is gonna work. I’m leavin’.”
Just as Scooter turned to run, Isabel grabbed him by the back of his worn overalls and pulled him to the ground.
“Sit on him!”
The other boys, scared that she was ready to start throwing punches, followed orders like two Privates listening to their Sergeant. They tackled Scooter like a quarterback wielding a pigskin. One sat on his chest, pressing the metal buttons from the bib of his overalls into the bare skin of his chest. The second kid held down Scooter’s legs as he began to squirm. Gravel ripped deep cuts through his pant-legs into his calves. Just then, a Ford Flathead Dump Truck carrying a load of coal squealed into the parking lot. A black cloud and several pieces of black gold flew from the trucks budging tailgate covering the kids in a veil of ash and dirt.
Isabel angered by the intrusion, kneeled down near Scooter’s head, held it straight to hers and started yelling.
“Stop moving, you’re making it worse! Now, you’re goin’ do this. We planned this for a whole week!”
Suddenly, Scooter wiggled his left arm out from under his human pile and landed an uppercut on Isabel’s jaw. The boy holding Scooter’s legs busted out laughing and almost peed his pants. Isabel stunned, fell backwards holding her chin and tears poured from her bright blue eyes leaving a clear trail down her blacken cheek. She did not let out a sound. She stood up and ran back through the field up the hillside toward home.
“I can’t believe you did that!” One of the boys tried to high five Scooter. The other backed away fearing repercussions from his own actions and scurried unknowingly in the opposite direction of his house.
A loud whistle came from across the wheat field and over the hillside where Isabel’s house stood. Scooter recognized the double handed shrill of his father’s heavily callused hands.
“You can’t go now Scooter. Let’s do this thing, too heck with Izzy.”
“You know you peed yourself,” Scooter smirked and pointed at the boy’s shorts before darting toward his dad’s whistle.
That night with the humidity covering the second floor of their farmhouse, Scooter lay awake in his bed next to his two older brothers, younger sister and their dog, ‘Kitty’. Unexpectedly, his sister shifted in her sleep and hit his left hand causing him to wince in pain. Scooter examined his hand in the pale moonlight that was streaming through the small crooked window. His knuckle had swollen and turned a funny color of plum and blueberry. Then he thought of Isabel. She wasn’t always a bully, they were friends once. Several years ago, Isabel’s mom passed away of pneumonia and her father, left with six kids under age eleven, spent most of his time working the fields for his daily jug of homemade whiskey and his nights beating his children for looking at him wrong. Scooter began to feel sorry for hitting her. He knew he shouldn’t have done it. After all, he wanted what they were after just as much as they did.
The steam escaping from their mom’s rusty tea kettle awaked the kids from their sweaty slumber. Scooter grabbed his overalls from the day before, grabbed his father’s straw hat from the peg in the mudroom and ran out the back door. The faint words of his mother yelling, “Paul Allen McCarthy, where are you going?” faded as he crossed the wheat field.
Scooter stopped running as he neared the Mundy’s Corner Store. He waited until two men on their morning dairy delivery entered the store and snuck in behind the second man so the bell hanging from the screen wouldn’t attract attention on him. As the men busied the clerk behind the counter Scooter spotted it. It was on the third rack on the right side just below the calendar that still read April 1939. Detective Comics written in huge white lettering, No.27 and May 1939 the first issue starring ‘The Batman’. Scooter stepped up onto a Sears’ catalog that was holding the stand off the floor, grabbed the book out of its bracket and shoved it into the bib of his overalls. He ran straight for the door, ringing the bell as he left. When he reached the hillside Isabel was sitting in the grass looking over the wheat field crying. He walked up to her slowly.
“Leave me alone, Scooter.” She was trying to hide a gift from her father, a newly blackened eye. Scooter sat the book in the grass next to her.
“I’m sorry about yesterday Izzy. I got this for you.”
Several minutes past, Isabel wiped away her tears and smiled.
“Scooter, if you want, we can read it together.”
Paul’s hand, weathered with age, held the hand of the woman next to him. She was strapped into a wheel chair. She starred blankly out of the picture window onto the freshly manicured lawn.
“And that’s how we met my dear over seventy three years ago.”
Isabel turned to Paul and smiled in a sudden moment of clarity.
“Scooter, you came to see me. Did you bring the book?”
Then she starred blankly again.
“Yes, my dear.” Paul pulled out the old and tatter No.27 comic book and began to read to Izzy again.

An Unlikely Swan

Alicia lay awake in her bed staring at her dorm room ceiling. Beaming from cheek to cheek it was the happiest she had ever been. Could life get better then this?
Deaf since birth, Alicia learned to cope with her impairment quite well. Everyday she worked hard to be like anyone else. Forcing herself to learn lip reading and listening to music by feeling the vibrations of her bedroom floor she learned to dance and ballet was her passion. Gliding around her room while playing to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake she would arabesque and plie imagining she was Odette.
Heaving and sweating from her last two hours of practice, Alicia turned off her music and laid on her floor feeling her chest rise and fall with the excitement. It was eleven p.m. and Alicia practiced again until she finally mastered the last piece of choreography for her audition. Judging would be brutal and Alicia knew her chances against a prima ballerina and several other rival students for a lead role were slim.
Katrinka Yankov is the company’s prima ballerina, studying at the prestigious Kirkova Ballet School in St. Petersburg she worked with some of the best instructors in the world. Landing starring roles in twenty eight productions including Romeo and Juliet, Giselle, and Don Quixote she was favored to win the coveted role in the new production of Swan Lake.
Monday morning auditions brought an eerie calm in the halls of the American Ballet School. No one spoke. Only the feel of constant vibrations coming from stage echoed in the halls. Pirouetting ballerinas passed Alicia in the hall nearly knocking her over as if she wasn’t even there. “QUIET PLEASE AUDITIONS IN PROGESS!” was written on the backstage door. Realizing this could be Alicia’s last chance at a career in ballet she shed several tears which she quickly wiped away and began feeling the walls and the floor to find her place within the score of music.
Scene eighteen, the Allergo Guisto.
“Turner your up,” lipped a girl to Alicia and she made way to the stage.
Unbelievably, with a flick of the composer’s wand Alicia started and ended her audition piece with absolute precision.
“Very good, Ms. Turner,” said the director as he showed no emotion whether he liked it or not. Watching from the backstage Katrinka’s anger at Alicia’s great performance threw her into a rage as she wailed her canvas bag at Alicia spilling all its contents onto the stage and into the orchestra pit. Xanax pills flew in every direction.
“You’re a deaf girl and deaf girls can’t be ballerinas!”
“Zip it Katrinka!” shouted the director from the audience, “Ballerina’s shouldn’t be using pills either and congratulations Alicia I think we just found our new Odette.”

Caught

“Jackpot!”
Evelyn Turner had just found a half eaten hamburger hiding under a piece of junk mail in a city trash can. She didn’t care that it had a bit of fuzzy green mold growing on the bun. She picked it off and took a huge bite. “Mmm…still warm,” she whispered to herself as she closed her eyes and pretended it was a giant turkey leg she picked off the platter of a Thankgiving dinner table.

“Garbage Picker!”
“Bum!”
“Yeah, you stink,” mocked several boys standing at a nearby bus stop.

Evelyn knew these boys, most days she avoided them. They were always causing trouble in the town, but no one could ever catch them in the act and they knew it.
“Do it, Lukas,” yelled the oldest boy in the gang to a small boy hunched over on the bus shelter’s bench. “Do it now!”
Lukas, the small boy, just stopped and stared at Evelyn.
“Hey, Dufus Lukas, you better do it or else!”
Hesitantly, Lukas stood up and nervously reached into a plastic grocery bag that was given to him by one of the other boys. He pulled out a rotted and stringy ball of pumpkin pulp from a gutted Halloween jack-o-lantern.
“Chuck it at her!” Peter the oldest boy said
“I don’t want to Peter. I can’t,” pleaded Lukas.
Angrily, Peter grabbed some of the disgusting mess and forcefully hurled it at Evelyn. She ducked, but some seeds and a bit of the fleshy insides caught her left arm as she used it to defend herself.

Then, Peter took the rest of the pumpkin’s entrails from Lukas’ shaky hand and smashed it in his face. “I told you to do what I said or else.” Then he knocked him backwards and Lukas smacked his head on the corner of the metal grate bench. The boys laughed at what happened and ferociously looted Lukas’ back pack.
“What a baby, he has a set of colored pencils and some weird drawings in here. You like coloring pictures baby boy?”

They snapped each of the pencils in half and threw them down a nearby sewer grid. They pocketed his mp3 player, his cell phone and ripped all the pages out of his sketchbook. Evelyn watched as the awful scene unfolded.
“What are you looking at tramp?” A boy grinded his fist in his other hand threatening Evelyn with the same fate.

Dark alleys and unlit street corners were their usual stomping grounds, but this gang’s violence had now escalated to broad daylight. Peter the older boy had been to juvie hall four times. He was nineteen and still attending high school. Because of this, he always blamed those long absences on having bouts of rheumatic fever, which he knew nothing about except what he looked up on the excuses-ipedia website.

Just then, the bus approached the shelter and the boys loaded it swiftly. One of them flipped off Evelyn though the back window as she stared in disbelief.
After the bus was out of sight Evelyn reluctantly walked over to the booth. The boy was crawling out from under bench holding his head. Evelyn pulled an old rag from her coat pocket and gave it to him.
“They’re gone. Are you ok?”
“Yeah, I think so,” mumbled Lukas.
“Well, we finally caught ‘em,” Evelyn said excitedly.
Lukas pressed the rag to his cut and gave a wince in pain. “What are you talking about?”
“Its daylight….those boys didn’t know, but this bus stop has a security camera.”

The Wishing Stone

A flicker of firelight emanated from the cabin window onto the lake. It was getting darker outside.

“Hey short-shit, mom says dinners ready,” her brother Charlie yelled from the partially opened screen door. Then he slammed it shut against the house with a sharp crack from its wooden frame.

Crouched down, Terry looked skyward and talked softly to herself.
“I wish….,” she closed her eyes tight. “You were here.” A small ripple expanded out onto the glass surface of the lake where Terry kissed the stone and placed it in the water. This stone was the last her father had touched and she kept it with her for three years.

Every Saturday evening she sat here with her father while he fished. He’d pick up a stone from the shore; Terry kissed it, made a wish for good fishing and gently placed it in the lake. The wishing stone was a special tradition between them.

Terry whispered aloud again, “Mom’s good. Charlie still picks on me. I made it through the sixth grade.”
With a sound from the woods, Terry turned and her foot slid into the soft mud that lined the edge of the lake.
“Need some help?”
It was the first time she noticed the man standing there.
“No, thank you. I…,” she stuttered. “I need to get home.”
She reached into the thick mud and retrieved her shoe.
“You know, I come here every Saturday evening. It’s the best time for fishing. The cool air makes the fish swim to the top. They’ll bite on almost anything,” said the stranger.
“Yeah, my dad used to tell me that… I have to go.” Terry slipped on her muck covered shoe and ran swiftly back to the cabin.
The next evening Terry sat in her bedroom thinking about the mysterious man she met the evening before. She needed to see him again. After dinner, she jumped from her bedroom window and snuck down to the lakeside.
“Are you there, Mister?” She whispered into the woods.
After several minutes, Terry felt a breeze brush against her arm.
“Hi there little Tee-Tee,” the stranger appeared leaning against the same tree.
“Only my dad called me that and he’s gone.”
“What happened to him?” The man hit his cigarette.
“He died three years ago.” Terry was reluctant but after a few seconds, she spoke again.

“We saw him from shore. He stood up in the boat, probably to reach his smokes that he kept in the tackle box. The boat turned far to the right side. We knew he was in trouble because he started bailing water with his metal minnow bucket,” Terry stared at the bucket at the man’s feet. “Within three minutes the boat and dad were gone. Charlie, my brother, jumped in and swam to the place where we last saw him. He dove down several times but the water was too cloudy. When the police divers came they found him still in the boat. His foot wedged underneath the front bench and caught on some rope. They pulled him from the water. Right about where… you’re… standing...,” Terry paused and looked closer at the man. He was fully dressed and she could see he was sopping wet from head to toe. She stepped forward and his now translucent figure started to fade in the twilight.

Terry gasped.
“Tee-Tee, I told you wishing stones are real. You wished I was here. Now, take care of Mom and Charlie for me. I have to go. I love you always.” He faded completely now.
“Love you too, daddy,” she whispered into the blackness of the woods.

The Tribune Democrat Chapter 2 Submission

“Excuse me Miss…is he in?”
“Do you have an appointment, sir?” The secretary asked with solemn uniformity in her voice.
“Um…no,” he muttered apprehensively.
“He does not see anyone without an appointment,” she answered then began typing briskly on her laptop.
“He will want to see me. It is of the utmost importance that we speak. My name is Mr. Nicodemus…Jeremiah Nicodemus.”
“Well, have a seat please. I can check if he is possibly available,” she retorted annoyingly.

Jeremiah sat in a chair that lined the wall of the stark and barren waiting room. Even the secretary’s desk had an achromatic finish. It bore only a laptop computer and small white box which held a cord that stretched from its side to her headset. The floor and walls were bathed in alabaster tile. Jeremiah felt more like a vagabond then an accomplished attorney compared to his aseptic surroundings.
The secretary tapped the white box and spoke austerely into her headset.
“Excuse me sir. Sorry to bother you, there is a Mr. Nicodemus here to see you.” She paused and spoke again, “Ok, sir…right away sir.” She tapped the small box again.
“He will see you now.”

Jeremiah swiftly walked toward the ominous office door. He entered the room which was a complete contrast to the waiting area where he had just been. It was if he entered another world, one of great opulence. The walls enveloped the room with mahogany paneling that flowed from floor to ceiling. The faint smell of cedar, earth and cocoa lingered in the atmosphere of the space. Jeremiah hesitantly strode forward to the enormous desk at the end of room. A small man clad in an expensive pinned-striped suit waited expressionless as Jeremiah ogled at his surroundings. The man ignited his butane lighter and warmed a large snifter laden with brandy.

“Well, did she sign?”
Jeremiah didn’t response. He had fix aided on a gilded cage in the corner of the room that housed several different species of birds.
“Did….she…..sign, Mr. Nicodemus?” The man asked again, this time with much less patience.
“Yes, but it took some convincing.”
The small man at the desk grinned and leaned back in his throne-like chair.
“Good,” he whispered to himself then took a puff of his cigar and a sip from his brandy glass.

“So anyway,” Jeremiah plopped down in the closest chair, “what’s so special about Rose Hill and this Sherri Travers-McMinn lady? From what I saw it’s just an old farm with some junk and ten acres of dead weeds. And what if they check into The Great Aunt Penelope?” Jeremiah made a set of quotes with his fingers when he said Penelope’s name.

“MR. NICODEMUS,” yelled the man brutishly which made Jeremiah sit up at attention. “It is not your place to ask these questions. The Rose Hill Estate must remain in the Travers’ family it is the only way our secrets can be protected. If you do not recall we have a binding and sacred agreement regarding this matter.”
The man opened the top drawer of the desk and retrieved a large scroll of parchment.

“You must remember the signing of this contract.” He unfurled the page of aged vellum and the words, Frater in Fortius Quo Fidelius, appeared at the top in fiery crimson and brilliant gold.
“Is this not your signature at the bottom of our scared laws, Brother Jeremiah?” He pointed to the small shaky handwriting at the bottom of the document.
Jeremiah began to shift nervously in his chair as he answered, “Yes, sir.”
“We welcomed you into our circle. You must not make us regret that decision. We will be watching you. Well then… there is just one more item that we must address. It officially seals our deal and the ancient secrets of our brotherhood.”
The man reached into the drawer again and emerged wielding an ornately decorated dagger.

“Give me your hand.”
Jeremiah froze in horror then warily lifted his right hand and placed it over the parchment. In one swift motion the man sliced through Jeremiah’s right palm and let the warm liquid flow onto the paper sealing their secrets of Rose Hill with his blood.

The Meeting

“Is it hot in here for October?”

The man fanned himself with several papers that jetted out from all sides of the podium. Seconds later, a loud screech came from a push-latch on a nearby fire door. A gust of warm wind entered the opening and sent his papers blowing off the stand onto the smooth floor of the church hall.

“Oh crap..,” he said nervously.
He gathered the papers and grabbed a nearby Thesaurus from the Sunday CCD class bookshelf to hold them down.
He took a deep breath.
“Hi everyone, my name is Charlie…..I’m an alcoholic.”
“Hi Charlie,” said the group sitting in a closed circle on brown metal folding chairs.
“Eye…arly,” mumbled Evelyn, the local homeless woman who just finished shoving several bites of a powdered donut in her mouth which spewed onto the floor like a miniature snowfall.
“Sorry ‘bout that,” she said as she wiped her mouth on her sleeve. Several members glared at her with disgust as she squirreled away another donut down the front of her bra.
“What?!” She glared back. “I’m saving it for later.”
Charlie let out a small laugh and continued.

“Well everybody, today is my three hundred and sixty fifth day of sobriety.”
The group gave a round of applause which died down shortly in anticipation of hearing his story.
“Aww..shit!” It was Evelyn again shouting from the back of the church hall. She had left the spigot of the coffee pot open and it poured down the church’s white linen table cloth embellished with a dove holding an olive branch in its beak.
“Father’s not gonna like that,” she said unusually loud, again dawning the attention of the entire group. Annoyed, Charlie gave Evelyn a fixed stare and tried to start again.

“Anyway, my first AA meeting was actually three years ago. I was drunk, of course, and a friend dragged me here; literally. My wife Laura left and took my little girl just a week before. I didn’t even remember what happened in those seven days in between. She tried everything to get me to quit. Once she partly emptied my fifth of whiskey and filled it with cider vinegar. Not knowing, I drank it down so fast I never even tasted it. I threw up for two days straight and still couldn’t stop the madness. It was at that first meeting an old timer came up to me and asked if I knew what it meant to ‘Give it to God.’ I said rather sarcastically, ‘hell yea, I give it to God every chance I get!’ ‘God darn it, where’s that effen bottle? I know I had it stashed here somewhere!’ ‘So help me God, if I don’t get a drink soon I’m gonna go effen crazy!’ Then I laughed in his face. I didn’t know then, but that man and my Higher Power would save my life.”

Charlie looked his sponsor.
“Thank you, this one year chip is because of you….and him.” He pointed skyward and paused a moment.
Evelyn, who finally settled down was playing with a stinkbug that was crawling up her ring finger. At that pause, she stood up and started clapping loudly sending the bug flying to a nearby light which made an awful tink sound as its tiny coat of armor hit the fluorescent bulb.

“Oh sorry, thought you were done.” She plopped back down in her seat.
“It’s alright Evelyn, I just want to end by saying to everyone,” he held up his one year chip, “I’m living proof that if you ‘Give your problems to God’, he does give back in blessings. Thank you for listening. ”

The Craftsmen of Crafton

It was one of the most poignant days of my husband’s life when he packed the last of his grandfather’s ten foot long tool bench. Over three thousand pieces, each with its own place on twenty-six specially cut wooden shelves and a handcrafted tool board that stretch the length of the cinder block wall. His grandfather, Harold Burrows or Hally as he liked to be called, was the last in a line of home builders that made Crafton, PA the quaint friendly town it is today. The Burrows family spent much of their lives giving to their much loved community. They were home builders, firemen, veterans and devoted church members at The Crafton Untied Presbyterian Church.

My husband’s great grandfather, David Burrows Sr., emigrated from County Down in Ireland where he worked in the booming shipyards of Belfast. He honed his craft as a master carpenter on the elegant ships that sailed the Atlantic during the turn of the century. David Sr. came to America in 1906 sponsored by his future contracting partner William John Stouppe who emigrated four years earlier. Together they formed Stouppe and Burrows- Building Contractors in 1910 on Noble Avenue in Crafton. They remained business partners until 1935 when Mr. Stouppe left the business to work at H.J. Heinz Company. It was in that year that David Sr. started the family business.

David Burrows Sr. and Sons Builders consisted of my husband’s great uncle David Jr. and his grandfather Hally. Two years later David Jr. left the business. The name was changed again to David Sr. and Harold Burrows Building Contractors until 1942 when David Sr. decided to retire. Soon after Hally was called to serve in the United States Army Air Corps as an airplane mechanic in WWII. As a family they built some of the most well constructed homes that line the streets of the town today.

In 1947, upon returning from the war, Hally and his brother Jack, an independent electrician, built several more homes in the area. But, it was Hally’s house on Bell Avenue that was his pride and joy. The Bell Avenue house is a beautifully constructed Cape Cod with an arched oak front door. It was a gift to his new wife and baby son in 1949. Hally also worked as a finishing carpenter for the University of Pittsburgh in Oakland, and several other schools and businesses throughout the area. Hally remained in his home until his death at age 99 in June of last year.

Now, as the house changes ownership and we watch the auctioneers hastily remove its last contents, we take comfort in the thought that they can never take away the home that he built.

These Crafton homes are my husband’s family legacy. So if you ever have a chance to drive on the avenues of Bell, McMunn, Noble, Willard, Craftmont, Barr, Lyons Street or Baldwick Road, to name just a few, chances are you will see one of the homes built by our family, the Craftsmen of Crafton.