One Life

 Short Story #11 for the year is due today. The prompt was "jerk", and I started there, but the final story doesn't have much connection with the prompt. The required word-count was 1250. Here's the story I submitted this morning.

One Life

Fred felt a sense of completion as he put the car in park and began the walk up to the porch of his and Teresa’s beautiful home. The mellow October sun warmed the air, a welcome change from the harsh summer ball of fire that had baked the ground all summer! He lifted his eyes to watch the play of the breeze in the trees on the hill.  Branches bent and swayed in hypnotic waves, shaking loose a flurry of brightly colored snowfall. The tranquility of the scene soothed the turmoil that had filled his world in the last few months.

Fred sank into one of the matching pair of rockers on the big new front porch. Closing his eyes, he remembered himself and Teresa just a year ago. They had been traveling home from the city and passed a sign “Estate Sale.” Impulsively they had driven up to the farmhouse and immediately noticed the two lovely old rocking chairs on the wraparound porch.

“These would be perfect on our porch, don’t you think?” Teresa motioned for Fred to sit in the rocker beside the one she had already claimed. That’s all it took. They bought the chairs.

Now Fred sat, alone, in one of the chairs, inviting the tranquil surroundings to calm and sooth the depression and anger that had begun with the insanity of 9/11/01. This iconic display of man’s brutality, the inconceivable horror of man’s inhumanity to man, coincided with his own personal 9/11. That was the day that a metaphorical airplane crashed into his happy heart, causing the twin towers of love and trust to crumble into dust.

Fred’s shoulders slumped; the beautiful scenery could only do so much. He was still a man alone, a man defeated. Fred stomped his feet, hoping that the solid thunk of the well-bult floor would give him the sense of security he needed, but he knew that he would never again have the peace that he had enjoyed before the towers fell.

He rose and walked to the top of the steps and leaned on the strong support columns. He felt Teresa standing beside him. How often had they talked about replacing the porch of their old house? Teresa had made the interior of the house a place of comfort, but the small and shabby front porch had been a project repeatedly postponed. As Fred’s eyes tracked the railing all the way to the side of the house, he smiled at the flower boxes Teresa had so lovingly tended on the old porch for years. They looked so much better on the welcoming new front entrance to their home. Everywhere he looked, he saw her. He could feel her, even smell her.

He remembered Teresa’s giddy excitement when he brought her home from the hospital last year to find her dream porch, which had materialized while she had been recovering from the accident. So grateful that his wife’s life had been spared in the accident, Fred had asked his friend and contractor, Ralph Adams, if it was possible to do the job while Teresa recovered. They already had plans drawn up, and Ralph seemed happy to help Fred construct the surprise.

Teresa had taken so much pleasure from the gift. Sitting there on the spacious porch with her friends, talking and laughing under the gentle ceiling fans, had been her greatest joy. As Fred stood there now, he remembered how he could feel her presence there in the long evenings of his grief. Sitting there, rocking and remembering those happy times had been his source of strength during the hardest nights of his grieving.

What an irony! Her longed-for renovation was barely finished when suddenly and unbelievably she was gone. Friends and relatives tried to help, but they didn’t really understand how perfect their lives had been. How can a man explain what it feels like to have love ripped from his heart? How can he describe the emptiness he senses just knowing that the other person is not, and never again will be, there. How can he make anyone understand that in the midst of life and love and blessings, unexpected twists of fate sometimes wait to totally destroy a man.

It was six months after her sudden and unexpected departure that Fred finally got the answers he needed. It took him that long to devise a plan to deal with this massive life change to be able to step into his future. Now he had finally completed all he needed to do to enable him to get on with what was left of his life.

Fred looked up when he heard a car crunching up the long driveway.

He was not surprised to see Otis Clark exiting the vehicle.

“Evenin’, Fred. How’re you doing?”

“Lot better than I have for the last six months. And you?”

“Well, I'll tell you, Fred, I've seen lots of better days. I guess you know why I'm here? It's about that Physical Therapist Teresa worked with after her accident.”

“Yeah. I’ve been expecting you. You saw the note I left at his place?”

Otis rested his hand on his sidearm casually. “Yeah. I saw it.”

When Fred didn’t respond, Otis continued, “Fred, I can understand your being upset; Hell, who wouldn’t be?! But there’s better ways, Man. Did you really think killing him would solve anything? And writing that note was a bad decision, Buddy. Signing your name and writing ‘PAID IN FULL’ -  was that really necessary?”

He paused, got no response from Fred, then continued, “You know the note implies premeditation.”

Wearily, Fred raised his eyes to meet his old friend’s. “Necessary? No, but I can't tell you how good it made me feel!”

The two old friends stood, looking at each other solemnly. Finally, Otis took a step closer, “You know what I got to do, Fred. No trouble, okay?”

Holding his gaze, Fred paused then spoke, “Otis, you're the sheriff, so do what you gotta do. You'll get no trouble from me. Thanks for coming yourself and not just sending your deputies.”

Stepping up beside his old friend, Otis said, “Let's go then. I'm not going to handcuff you. Do you need to get anything?”

“Nope. I’m ready. I put that packed bag by the door last night.”

Fred reached inside and picked up his bag, not bothering to shut the door as he walked back out. He did, however, take time to flip the overhead light switch. He began walking toward Otis, knowing that the timing device connected to the light switch would ignite the drum of gasoline in the crawl space in about an hour. Last step of the plan.

Otis and Fred walked to the car like they had many times in their long history together.

As Otis held the rear door of the police car for Fred, he paused. “I just gotta know, Fred, while it’s just us two old friends here, “Did you really have to shoot Teresa too? Was killing her for running off with the jerk worth it?”

“Well, Otis, I thought hard about it. It was really the only way.  And they can't execute me any more for two than they could for one.”