Over the Rainbow

Laura Huffman

PO Box 392, Ruthven, IA 51358

712-480-0667

lhuffmanmingus@gmail.com

Word count 2,979

OVER THE RAINBOW

By Laura Huffman

As Vera slept under a pile of blankets her bedroom door slammed shut and a light breeze whooshed across her face and rustled her snow-white hair. Unable to move for sleep paralysis and too scared to get out of bed she wondered if someone had broken into her mansion. Recently her German Shepard Killer had passed over the rainbow so he was no longer around to guard the place.

Her bedroom was dark so she turned on the bedside light and when the grandfather clock struck three times from the parlor she remembered it was the bewitching hour. She normally didn’t believe in the supernatural, but when a loud pounding came from the front door she sat straight up in bed.

“Who the hell could that be?” She snarled under her breath, sliding her legs over the side of the bed. “It’s probably some neighborhood hoodlum pranking me.” Halloween was just around the corner, and it would be just like a thoughtless prankster to play a nasty trick on an old woman retired from her nursing career. Dressed in a warm robe she grabbed her cane and cautiously opened the bedroom door to the open-air parlor with a grand piano and fireplace. Stiff with arthritis she shuffled barefoot across the parlor’s chilly oak-wood floor. In the front entryway a blast of bitterly cold air chilled her to the bone and she broke out in goose bumps. Shivering uncontrollably, she turned on the porch light and opened the locked door to a deadly stench that brought back memories of the Spanish flu when rotting bodies were stacked like Lincoln Logs along the roadside.

No one was on the porch so she slammed the door shut to the disgusting smell and locked it. She thought about returning to bed, but she decided against it. As she entered the unlit kitchen the smell of cigar smoke and the sound of running water caught her attention so she turned on the ceiling light. A faucet above the sink was on so she turned the water off and went to the back porch. To her relief no one was at the door so she grabbed the Des Moines Register from outside and returned to the kitchen. As the coffee was perking sparks shot out from the outlet and the ceiling light flickered. Afraid of a fire she pulled the plug and started a coffee pot on the gas stove. As it perked the phone rang and she answered it.

“Hello!” she snapped, angry that anyone would call this time of the morning when the sun wasn’t even up. “Who is it?”

No answer so she hung it up, recalling the many times her married loan officer Mr. Johnson smoked cigars and harassed her with phone calls. Middle aged and married he had a roving eye and a dirty mind, and for years she fought him off, but once he came down with Alzheimer’s disease he became a resident in her mansion’s nursing home. He paid highly for private care, and with his money she bought up a block of houses in her neighborhood just to spite him.

Chuckling that Karma came around and bit him in the ass, she poured her first cup of steaming hot coffee and sat in the kitchen nook. As she sipped on it she opened the morning newspaper, but it was difficult concentrating on current events without thinking about what happened in the middle of the night. Perhaps the paper boy threw the newspaper at the door, and she mistook it for someone knocking. She’d also check the mansion for any open windows which would explain the door slamming and the mysterious breeze that woke her. As for the cold spot in the entryway; it was always the draftiest place in the mansion. But that horrific whiff of rotting corpses and the disgusting scent of Johnson’s cigar was unexplainable. Perhaps everything that happened this morning was a sign that she was sun-downing from the dreaded Alzheimer’s disease that destroyed Mr. Johnson’s brain cells and erased his short and long-term memories.

Unhappy with old age she violently shook the newspaper and scanned the depressing articles of 1970 with a frown. It was the end of the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam anti-war movement, but it was the beginning of the Gay Liberation Movement. The Cold War was on going. New York State legalized abortion. The Watergate scandal shook the nation. The Beatles broke up. Elvis Presley and Janis Joplin were dead.

By midmorning Vera was dressed and ready to resolve the creepy stuff that happened during the night. As she slowly climbed the steps to the second floor she held tight to the railing with one hand and gripped her cane with the other. She was on high alert, listening for anything out of the ordinary, and when she stopped to catch her breath, from the corner of her eye she thought she saw someone, but when she looked no one was there. Perhaps she was losing her mind. Her elderly residents used to hear and see things, and she blamed it on hallucinations, sun-downing and their overactive imagination, but now even in daylight she feared anyone who died in the mansion could be a spook creeping around corners or lurking in shadows.

By the time Vera got to her office she was exhausted and sat on the single bed that her alcoholic brother slept on when he was on a drinking binge. Wanting to rest and get her strength back she laid down with her head on his pillow. As she stared at her nursing certificate hanging on the wall the frame moved just enough to question her sanity. This made her wonder if she was hallucinating. Many of her nursing home residents did and some even insisted they saw their dead relatives. Others claimed they died and went to heaven, but they were sent back to earth because it wasn’t their time.

Perhaps she was going to kick the bucket. Lately she had been sleeping for longer periods and was even sleepy when she was awake. She was cold much of the time because her circulation was poor. Too often her hands, feet, fingers and toes were freezing, and today she was seeing and hearing things she couldn’t explain which could be the result of dementia, maybe even a brain tumor or a blood clot.

A few hours later she awoke to the grandfather clock bonging three times. The west sun was shining through the office window so she got up and sat at her desk topped with a stack of bills and her manuscript lying beside her typewriter. She had been meaning to send her life story to her publisher who offered her a hefty advancement, but Vera was dragging her feet. One editor even claimed her biography could be a best seller, but Vera wasn’t sure. Failure scared her, but success scared her more. Once the book was published she’d have to do book signings. That meant leaving the mansion and traveling which was something Vera would like to do, but wasn’t sure she could at her advanced age.

As she made her way slowly across the hall to the bathroom she pounded her cane hard against the oak wood floor. She cursed old age and her declining health. As she took a leak she thought seriously about her questionable future. When she was young she lived for each day and never thought much about her later years, but now she feared the unknown. What would it be like to be dead? She didn’t look forward to an autopsy or being laid out in a coffin for eternity. She’d rather be wrapped up in a blanket and laid to rest. Wasn’t that what they did in the biblical times? Why was the preservation of bodies important? The only ones who benefited financially from death were morticians. She learned that the hard way when she paid to bury her penniless relatives that she had outlived.

After meticulously washing her hands under hot water she roamed down the Mezzanine Balcony overlooking the parlor and went into Ralph’s former room with a rocking chair that she bought from a traveling salesman during the Great Depression. She should take it downstairs and put it in her own bedroom, but it was much too heavy to carry, and she couldn’t just toss it over the railing or shove it down the stairs. Leaving the room she looked back at the rocker swaying ever so gently and for one brief moment she smelled the cherry wood tobacco Ralph used to smoke in his corncob pipe.

As she walked to the next room she stopped at a closed door and listened. There was no sound coming from inside, but the memory of a baby’s faint cry during the deadly pandemic brought tears to her eyes, and when she opened the door the darkened room reeked of a shitty diaper and the repugnant odor of the infant’s dead parents, so she put up the shades and opened the windows to a soft breeze that helped freshen the putrid air that made her gag.

Back downstairs she poured a hefty amount of Templeton Rye with a tall glass of ice cubes and topped it off with a splash of soda water. Sipping on it she made a Dagwood sandwich with three slices of wheat bread smeared with mayo and mustard. Stacked high with leftover ham and cheeses she added dill pickles, lettuce, a sliced tomato and a bit of onion to bring out the savory flavors. Topped with an olive and stabbed with a toothpick she put the sandwich on a plate. Wearing a jacket she carried her cane with one hand, and with her drink under her other arm, she grabbed her sandwich and went across the yard to her small cemetery where she buried the dead during the Spanish flu epidemic more than forty years ago. Facing the graveyard she sat on a wooden bench built by her former gardener. She hadn’t eaten all day, and she was so hungry she scarfed down the olive and took a big bite of the sandwich that accelerated her taste buds. When she choked on it she took smaller bites for better digestion and made sure she slowly chewed each bite before swallowing.

After eating the whole thing she lit a Camel cigarette and sipped on her mixed drink that slowly began to relax her. She missed her girlfriend buried in the ground, and as she smoked and inhaled the delicious taste of nicotine she reminisced about all the times she and her girlfriend road the 1919 trolley to their jobs. Sitting way in the back because of stupid discrimination laws against the color of her friend's black skin, they smoked cigarettes and bitched about the racial laws and deadly pandemic. Even after all these years Vera still missed their lively conversations and the fun they had laughing about the good old times. Then the day came when her friend passed over the rainbow from the Spanish flu and was laid to rest under Vera’s old apple tree; cut down years ago and replaced with a tombstone.

As the sun went down and the temperatures dropped Vera heard someone call her name, but it was too dark to see further than her own back yard. Back inside the mansion she switched on the lights, turned up the thermostat and lit a pile of logs in the parlor fireplace. Above the mantel was one of Bonnie and Clyde’s rifles that she hung there during the Great Depression. It was shortly after their shootout with the law at Dexfield Park in 1933 when the Burrow gang unexpectedly showed up at her back door. They were shot up and bleeding upon arrival, and to Vera’s dismay they ate like pigs and held her hostage for two days. Not only that but Vera got drunk with their friend WD and woke up the next morning hungover and lying beside him in her bed. At that time nothing was funny about it, but now she chuckled at the memories. She couldn’t remember the last time she slept with a man, but she would never forget sleeping with Doctor Bob during the 1919 pandemic when she was a student nurse. They fell in love when they were both working with sick and dying veterans at Camp David. Most had come down with the Spanish flu during WWI, and many of them died drowning in their own fluids.

Sadly, their love affair didn’t last. It ended when they disagreed about having children. He wanted a house full and Vera wanted none. She only cared about her nursing career, and after she turned the mansion into a nursing home he proposed to someone else. Vera’s heart was broken, but it was better than giving up her nursing career and becoming a housewife who spent her days cleaning, doing laundry and taking care of snot nosed kids.

Later that night Vera was lying in her bed and watching TV when someone called her name. When she looked Doctor Bob was standing in her bedroom doorway. He was no longer an old man with grey hair, but a handsome young man with dark wavy locks that tumbled over his forehead. She smiled at him, embarrassed by her wrinkles and saggy breasts, but as he came to her smelling like Old Spice he helped her out of bed and led her to the parlor. Her deceased cook was pounding out a soulful song on the grand piano, and every dead friend, family member and nursing home patient was singing Amazing Grace in the most heavenly voices she ever heard. Near the fireplace Ralph was sitting in his rocker puffing on a pipe, and beside him stood Mr. Johnson chewing on his cigar. Upstairs on the second floor balcony, Bonnie and Clyde were sitting on a railing overlooking the parlor. Beside them stood WD, Vera’s sexy one night stand wearing nothing but his underwear and a cross dangling against his muscular chest covered with tattoos.

Outside dogs were barking and when Mr. Johnson opened the front door her German Shepard Killer, and her two beloved Dalmatian puppies given to her by Bonnie and Clyde came running to her.

Come the following morning Vera was awakened by the grandfather clock bonging seven times. The room was cold and smelled of Old Spice, and when she checked the bedroom windows she found one open. As she dressed she felt different. She thought something had happened during the night but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it, and when she opened the bedroom door to the parlor red hot cinders were burning in the fireplace. The rocker from upstairs was facing the embers and the rifle that had been above the mantel was missing. This concerned her, so she went to the kitchen to call the police. When she walked in it was a disastrous mess, and she forgot all about notifying law enforcement. The loaf of bread and leftover ham had been eaten and there were crumbs scattered all over the floor. In the kitchen-nook a cigar was smashed in the ashtray and a pipe had been left on the table with a deck of cards and an empty bottle of Templeton Rye. In the corner was the missing rifle propped next to her mother’s antique hutch loaded with china brought over on the Mayflower.

Everything was such a mystery. Perhaps her friend Alice came by with two men and let herself in with Vera’s key hidden on the back porch. This would be of no surprise. Since Alice became a widow she had been drowning her sorrow in booze and dating dirty old men with money.

Upstairs Vera went into her office to grab her manuscript so she could send it off to her publisher, but her safe had been opened and for a brief moment she remembered years ago when Bonnie and Clyde cracked it open and took all her cash. This time there was no money to steal, and when she looked nothing was missing. Again, she was convinced she had Alzheimer’s and got into the safe sometime during the night.

Before going downstairs she stopped in Ralph’s room. The rocker was no longer there, but the single bed was unmade and on the dresser was a bag of tobacco. This puzzled her, but she blew it off, thinking it must have been an old fart hanging out with Alice. Now more curious than ever she went to the next room where the baby had been. The covers on the double bed were also tossed to the side and she knew then that it was none other than philandering Alice sleeping with another old goat.

Back downstairs Vera put coffee on the stove and grabbed the daily World Herald from outside. As it perked Vera was reading it in the kitchen-nook when someone opened the back door. "Whoever it is, I’m in here,” Vera called out, thinking it was Alice clomping around the kitchen in high heels.

When Alice came in with two cups of steaming coffee she looked at the mess on the table. “Vera, what the hell have you been doing?” Alice asked, looking at the empty bottle of booze. “Are you hung over from getting drunk with friends last night? The smoky kitchen’s a mess and the kitchen-nook smells like a garbage can!”

Vera shook her head. "No, I wasn't drunk, but all the dead people I knew came to visit me last night!”

“Have you lost your mind?” Alice exclaimed, spitting out a mouthful of coffee. "Can’t you tell the difference between your dreams and reality?”