Cemetery Street, John Zunski [read any book TXT] 📗

Cemetery Street
by
John Zunski

SMASHWORDS EDITION

PUBLISHED BY:
John Zunski on Smashwords

Cemetery Street
Copyright © 2011 by John Zunski

Smashwords Edition License Notes
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Table of Contents

Chapter 1 On the Cusp
Chapter 2 Cemetery Street
Chapter 3 Secrets
Chapter 4 Paybacks
Chapter 5 Revelations
Chapter 6 An Eagle
Chapter 7 A Beetle and A Cop
Chapter 8 Ms. Dead America
Chapter 9 Bumperstickers
Chapter 10 A Decades End; Another’s Beginning
Chapter 11 Letters
Chapter 12 Count’s Log
Chapter 13 A Banshee’s Cry
Chapter 14 What Happened
Chapter 15 Sisters of Fate
Chapter 16 Moving On
Chapter 17 Coming Home
Chapter 18 Promises
Chapter 19 Scandals
Chapter 20 Shannie’s Burble
Chapter 21 Good Byes
Chapter 22 Things Bittersweet
Chapter23Epilogue
About the Author
Bonus Material


Chapter 1 On the Cusp

“Get up!” she cried. “Run!” she smiled over her shoulder. The earth shook beneath our feet. “Faster! Faster!” Her voice swirled in the wind. “Feel it?” she shrieked, her hair dancing behind her. “Feels great. Just great!” Her laugh pierced the freight’s roar. Swimming through the train’s blast, she reminded me of a salmon - always heading upstream.
Moments earlier, she danced across a warped balance beam forty feet above the river. “If I lose my balance, even for a second - a second - I could die!” Ignoring our pleas, her forehead etched with concentration, she continued. “For what? Like there has to be a what! Would you say I died in vain, died for the thrill?” Her arms flailed. “Yes,” she answered. “Died of stupidity! Died for nothing, what a way to die! I like that. There isn’t pressure in nothing.”
Me, I’ve always felt pressure - even in nothing, even today. So I watch, I’ve always watched! Even today - I watch a snowflake slide down the front of her headstone and crash to the ground. I watch countless others stick atop her headstone. When I grow tired of watching, I run my hand over the smooth granite wiping away heaven’s frozen tears.
A breeze rustled the trees, their bare limbs swaying to the sound of her voice. I turned praying she would be sitting on the sandstone bench like she was thirteen years ago - Indian style, her wild mane speckled with snow flakes. I imagine her gaze staring across the dozing river, past the distant rushing traffic, into eternity. My gaze was met by a dusting of snow atop the bench. Disappointment consumed me. “People who do nothing but watch, feel nothing but disappointment,” she once scolded.
Today would have been her twenty-seventh birthday. Ten days ago was the first anniversary of her death. Two days from now the world will be standing on the cusp of a new millennium - without her; it will be so empty, it will be dawn without the sun.
“Happy Birthday Bug,” I whispered. “I have a surprise. It’s your favorite.” Careful not to spill a drop, I poured the steaming coffee on the ground in front of her stone. “How did you guess?” I watched the snow evaporate. “Yes, you’re right. Of course, I remembered. How could I forget? ” I tell her.
“If eyes are the gateway to the soul,” she wrote prior to her accident. “Our memories are its gatekeepers.” Like a dutiful gatekeeper, I guard our memories. “Out of memory comes ritual,” she said, hiding in the breeze. “Out of ritual - meaning, out of meaning - warmth, out of warmth - love, out of love...”
“Us,” I whispered to the wind. “Beyond anyone, I remember you!”
“I didn’t forget,” I stroked the polished granite’s face. “It’s your recipe,” I confided as I placed the pie pan atop the coffee soaked soil. I retreated to the bench and cast my gaze over the sleepy river and past the rushing traffic, listening for echoes of her laughter on the wind.


Chapter 2 Cemetery Street

(June 1985) I think I’m in love. The moving truck had barely pulled away when there was a knock on the front door. Scrambling over scattered boxes and furniture I rushed to greet our first visitor.
“Hi, my name is Shannie (Shane-ie),” she said from under a mass of billowing blonde hair. Her flaxen strands tumbled like clouds on a blustery day.
“Hi,” I said looking into her perky face. Deep set eyes contrasted slightly with a thin, sharp nose and high, wide cheeks.
“I heard that there was a new kid moving in today and I wanted to introduce myself.” She smiled, “What’s your name?”
“Ugh, James,” I said.
“Nice to meet you Ugh James.” Her green eyes sparkled.
“No, it’s just James.”
“Okay, that’s different. Hi Just James, you want to come out? I can give you a tour of the neighborhood.”
“Let me ask,” I said. Still staring at her, I yelled, “Dad can I go outside?” Shannie held my gaze.
“Have you finished your room?” he asked.
“Ah, yeah I guess,” I said.
“What do you mean you guess?”
“It looks like you’re busy. Anywho, I’m your neighbor.” She motioned to the only house between the graveyard and ours. “I’ll try back later.”
“Get upstairs and finish your room. NOW!” father yelled.
“Nice meeting you Just James, talk to you later.” she smiled, turned a around and skipped towards her house.
“It’s James,” I called after her: “just James.”
“You’re ridiculous Just James,” she laughed. As she ran a comb fell out of her back pocket. I ran up the stairs and looked out the side room window in time to watch her float through the single row of trees that separated her backyard from the cemetery.
“Mom!” I yelled. “I changed my mind, I want the side room.”
My parents were too tired to care. My sudden change of heart was surprising because the view from the side room was dominated by a graveyard. It was the genesis of my protests. I was worried sick about having more dead neighbors than living.
Our new house was a hundred-year-old brick elephant with high ceilings and a gabled roof. My father called it a Dutch Colonial. Its floors were old and cranky, whining whenever someone walked across them. There were four rooms on each of the two floors. The first floor held an eat-in kitchen, dining room, and two sitting rooms. The four oversized rooms divided the floor into quadrants, each room opening into the next room. On rainy days the first floor made a great indoor track - I won many imaginary gold medals circling that oval. Upstairs was a master and two small bedrooms plus a bathroom.
Two dormers jutted out from the steep sloped roof of my bedroom, over the years, I would make a habit of sitting in them watching neighborhood comings and goings. It also had a great little cubby hole that in later years was great for stashing pirated Playboys.
After unpacking, Dad and I picked up a pizza. “Why the change of heart?” he asked. “I don’t know,” I mumbled.
“I bet I do,” he teased.
“Well I was thinking that maybe I was acting too much like a little kid about the cemetery thing.”
“Oh really? It wouldn’t have anything to do with your visitor?”
“No way,” I said. “It’s just that I was thinking about the boneyard and everything - I think I watched too many horror movies. Like Granddad said, it’s the live ones you have to worry about.”
“Exactly,” Dad said.
When we got home my parents had another surprise for me, as if moving across country wasn’t enough excitement. “You’re going to have a baby brother or sister,” my mother said.
I almost choked on the strand of cheese I was sucking off my pizza. “Really, that’s great,” I lied.
“It’ll be here just in time for Christmas,” she chirped.
“There goes my Nintendo,” I said.
“JAMES, I don’t believe you,” she screeched.
“I know you don’t, nobody does, why would you now?” I licked the grease from my fingers.
“Don’t get wise with me young man. And stop licking your fingers. Any normal kid would be delighted to have a little brother or sister.”
“May I be excused?” I interrupted.
“Don’t interrupt your mother!” my father barked.
“All you ever think about is James, James, James! It’s all about James! Nobody else matters!”
“I didn’t ask for another baby.”
“Joe, you’ve created a monster!” Her face turned red as blood.
“I’ve created a monster? What about you? Don’t go pointing your finger at me?”
“You son of a bitch,” my mother started. Without a word I took another slice of pizza and slipped into the relative quiet of my bedroom.
A present rested on my bed. I ripped off the wrapping. Inside was a wooden cross. “In case we’re wrong about the cemetery.” The writing was my grandfather’s. Holding the cross against my chest I flopped onto the bed. I already missed him. I closed my eyes and wished he moved with us.
As my parent’s yelling waned I looked into the night. Light from Shannie’s house beckoned like a lighthouse.
The next morning, Sunday, my mother drug my father and I out of bed, dressed us in our finest, and led us to Mass. My heart sunk as she grabbed my arm and gave my face a once over with a spittle-laden finger. Readied for our grand entrance, mom straightened her slouched shoulders and led us into the church.
In the vestibule, she grabbed my arm and swung me in front of them: “As close to the front as we can get,” she commanded.
Head hung low, I led my parents to an empty pew; the echo of my mother’s heels introduced us to the congregation. Mass couldn’t end fast enough. When the Priest concluded “Mass is ended, go in peace,” I mumbled “Thank God,” earning a dirty glance from the old lady sitting next to me.
If High Mass wasn’t bad enough, I endured my mother’s smooze session with the priest. Her redeeming qualities shined as we became official members of what my father called the parish of the perpetually miserable.
Dad was an introverted man who would rather use a slide rule than attend a cocktail party. Considering his job he had the opportunity for both. He was a nuclear engineer for Bechtel Corporation. Bechtel was contracted to build the Limerick Nuclear Generating Station, the purpose for us relocating from California to suburban Philadelphia.
My mother was an extrovert who would rather go to a cocktail party than read a book. She probably didn’t know what a slide rule was. Except for the fact that my father was invited to many cocktail parties I never understood why they got married.
“Isn’t this sweet,” my mother crooned when we got home. A freshly baked pie sat on the front porch. “Bless their hearts. If all neighbors were like this, the world would be a better place. Joe,” she said, her voice full of syrup. “I told you I had a good feeling about this neighborhood.”
I had no time for such business, Shannie was on my mind. I ran up the stairs, taking two at a time. My heart raced as I changed my