Stella, Get Your Gun

Chapter 3

It was a lovely funeral. Strange, but nonetheless beautiful. The only hint of a hitch came when Aunt Lucy said she wanted Uncle Benny propped up in the casket for the viewing, but between the more sensible cousins and the funeral home director, calmer heads had prevailed.

The funeral director explained that they couldn’t prop Uncle Benny up in the casket, that certain natural events would occur to make this impossible, so Aunt Lucy gave in and went standard on the visitation. But she did manage to insist that Uncle Benny be dressed in his fishing vest and lure hat.

“I want people to remember him like he was, not like he is,” she said, and her voice cracked just slightly, letting us all know that if we pushed it, she’d lose it.

Nina leaned over and muttered in my ear. “Too bad you couldn’t get here any sooner,” she said. “Aunt Lucy actually wanted to bury Uncle Benny in his Jon boat. It took some doing to talk her out of that one, I’ll tell you!” She looked over at Aunt Lucy and smiled innocently, then turned back to me. “She’s lost it, Stella. Ever since the stroke, she’s been loopy.”

I looked at my aunt, trying to do an assessment of her mental capacities. She looked just as she always had, only older. She had always been a small butterball of energy and enthusiasm. Uncle Benny’s death had stifled that, but had a stroke made her crazy? I was reluctant to believe that.

“She’s got some strange ideas, Stella,” Nina continued. “I mean, sure, she’s always had strange ideas, but I mean really weird stuff. She thinks she’s the next Einstein or something. I don’t know what we’re going to do. I mean, she can’t live on her own—she’s too nuts to handle the bills, let alone drive or take care of herself!”

Aunt Lucy stopped talking to the funeral director, glared at Nina and said, “I heard that, young lady! I don’t think anybody who runs off with a rock musician and gets certain intimate portions of her anatomy pierced has much room to be calling the kettle black.”

The room fell silent as everyone turned their attention toward the object of Aunt Lucy’s displeasure. Nina’s face turned scarlet, her chin inched up a defiant two inches and she stalked off, her spiky pink-and-blond hair waving like a midsummer wheat field in Iowa.

“You know what her problem is?” Aunt Lucy said. “She moved to California. Them people out there just ain’t right. One day that entire part of the continent is gonna fall right off into the ocean. Then where will they be, huh? That’s right. Reno, Nevada’s gonna be prime oceanfront property—you mark my words.”

I looked over at Uncle Benny. He was lying in a gunmetal-gray casket, his favorite Garcia rod tucked into the satin padding beside him. His hat was listing drunkenly to one side, and there was a lipstick smear on his right cheek from where Aunt Lucy had kissed him goodbye. At the foot of the casket was a shiny red metal cooler loaded with gleaming cans of ice-cold Budweiser.

“We’re popping a top for Benny,” one of my eighteen-year-old cousins explained somberly. “Drinking’s legal in church—at least if you’re Catholic.”

In the background, Dean Martin sang “Amore” and Orlando Wilson floated across a big-screen TV, silently instructing his audience on proper casting techniques.

“You see the flowers, Stella?” Aunt Lucy asked, suddenly materializing by my side. She pointed to a huge funeral wreath shaped like a leaping bass and mounted on a tall wire frame. Gone Fishing, it read. “Ain’t they beautiful?” she breathed. “And them over there.” She gestured to a wreath of red, white and blue daisies that read Sleep With The Fishes, Big Guy! She smiled. “They’re from the boys down at the Saint Anthony’s Lodge.”

“It’s lovely, Aunt Lucy,” I said, but I was really thinking that I’d dropped into a bad day in a psychiatric unit.

Aunt Lucy took my arm and led me closer to the casket. “Look who’s here, honey,” she said to Uncle Benny. “It’s our Stella. Don’t she look pretty with her hair done blond? Of course the clothes belong to Nina, but that’s on account of Stella came sudden.”

I squirmed, tugging at Nina’s black pleated miniskirt. I tried my best not to topple over in the stilettos I’d been forced to drag out from my undercover equipment. Uncle Benny didn’t seem to mind. He appeared to be concentrating on nailing the big one. His eyes were closed and his mouth was frozen in a sewn-shut, lopsided grin. The body in the casket in no way resembled the uncle I loved.

“You couldn’t get them to put in the cigar?” I asked.

Aunt Lucy shrugged. “It was bad for his health, anyway.” She looked back at the crowd. “This is some turnout,” she said. “I think almost the entire town is here. It’s been like this since he died, people turning up with food or beer, all of them talking about the good turns he did for them or the ways he helped them out when times were tough. He done things I never knew about, Stel. The man was a saint.”

The pews in the funeral home chapel were filling up as people filed in for the service. In the background, Dean Martin had finished “Amore,” and was now replaced by Andy Williams singing “Moon River.”

“He don’t look so dead to me, Stella,” Aunt Lucy said. I gazed down at the tiny woman and saw tears begin to track across her withered cheeks. She reached behind me, pulled a can of beer from the cooler and opened it. With great care, she placed it beside Uncle Benny’s left hand, removing another untouched can that had grown warm. “I was kinda hoping maybe the beer would bring him back, you know?” She sounded like a little child, pleading for one more chance.

“I know, honey,” I said. “It’s hard to believe he’s really gone.”

Andy Williams stopped singing, and the soft strains of organ music signaled the start of the service. The big-screen TV went dark momentarily as Orlando Wilson’s fishing tips were replaced by a larger-than-life-size portrait of my uncle, out on his boat in the middle of Kerr Park Lake, reeling in a “big one.”

Aunt Lucy seemed to snap out of her melancholy reverie. “Let’s get this show on the road,” she said as the funeral director started walking purposefully toward us. She lifted her head, wiped her eyes and allowed herself to be led into the family pew that was located off to the side of the tiny chapel.

I trailed along behind her, filing into the box and settling myself next to my aunt. The organ swelled to a crescendo, cueing us all to stand. We opened our leaflets and began singing “Somewhere over the Rainbow.”

Nina nudged me. “Okay, you can’t possibly think this is normal,” she whispered.

I shrugged, irritated. So what if Aunt Lucy was a bit unconventional? It was Uncle Benny’s favorite song. Maybe singing it comforted her. Wasn’t that what funerals were supposed to do, comfort those left behind? Maybe everybody was jumping on the Aunt-Lucy’s-lost-it bandwagon just a little too quickly. Of course, that was before the service started and Jake Carpenter walked to the front of the chapel, looked right into my eyes and took my breath away.

Ten years, a river of bad memories, and the man still had the same intoxicating effect on me.

“Aunt Lucy, what’s he doing here? Where’s Father Mark?” I whispered.

Aunt Lucy frowned. Her eyes filled with tears as she stared up at me. “He wouldn’t come, Stella,” she said. “I thought you knew.”

I just looked at her, feeling crazy. “Knew what?”

The last strains of “Somewhere over the Rainbow” died away, and Aunt Lucy’s voice carried in hushed silence. “They said Benny killed himself, Stella, but he wouldn’t do that. Jake’s the one who found him down at the garage. If you ask me, someone did this to my Benny! That man wouldn’t kill himself. No way, and he wouldn’t up and die on me without a fight!”

The congregation reacted and the sound of their voices almost drowned out Aunt Lucy’s next bombshell. “I know you don’t like him, honey, but Jake’s the only one who listens to me.” She smiled. “It was just a lucky break for us—he’s an ordained minister.”

I looked up at Jake and saw him staring back at me, no doubt slack-jawed at the new and improved version of my former self. Blond hair, spiky stiletto heels and Nina’s miniskirt definitely wasn’t the old mousy me. No, I was a good ten pounds lighter and four inches taller in heels. Between the makeup and the attitude, I was surprised he recognized me at all.

I stared right back at him. He hadn’t changed in all the time I’d been gone. He had the same dark eyes, same killer good looks and probably the same smart-assed attitude. I watched as his gaze shifted to Aunt Lucy. When he smiled gently at her and then winked, I could’ve thrown up. He was wearing faded tight jeans, cowboy boots and a black leather Harley-Davidson jacket. Where was his respect for the dead? And for that matter, if Jake Carpenter had somehow found Jesus, which I seriously doubted, where were his robe and collar?

I leaned over and touched my aunt’s arm. “Aunt Lucy, the last time I checked, Jake was a bartender, not a priest.”

She smiled. “Well now, honey, except for those little two-day Christmas trips of yours, you’ve been gone almost eleven years. A lot happens, especially around here. Jake’s got his own auto body shop. He’s really changed, Stella. He settled down after he got out of the service. He’s found himself.

“He sent off for one of them mail-order certificates. He’s a minister in some nondenominational church, you know, the kind that doesn’t meet and doesn’t have a building.” She held up her hand to cut off my protest. “I know, it sounds funny but, well, he’s here and Father Mark isn’t.”

Aunt Lucy lifted her head defiantly, nodded toward Jake and the service began again.

“Brothers and sisters,” Jake said, his voice rising above the crowd’s murmuring, “let us pray!”

I didn’t even bother to bow my head. Jake Carpenter might be fooling my aunt, but I wasn’t going to fall for his tricks again. Nope. One trip to the altar with Jake Carpenter had been more than enough for me.

Chapter 4

In one short hour, Jake Carpenter managed to take every feeling I’d been harboring about him for eleven years and twist it into a molten mass of confusion and regret. In some ways, he was the same as he’d always been, but with a twist, a difference that was both charismatic and unfathomable.

We were assembled at the graveside when Jake decided it was time to speak. Up until then, he had functioned mainly as an emcee, letting Uncle Benny’s friends tell the stories of his many kindnesses and good deeds. But as we stood around the AstroTurfed grave site, contemplating this final rest stop for my uncle, Jake seemed to take charge. It was time to say goodbye, and Jake was there to ease the transition.

“A priest, in this case me,” he began, “a Lutheran pastor, who shall go nameless for the sake of protecting his sterling reputation, and our Benny were all out fishing in Benny’s boat over on Kerr Park Lake one day. It was hot and we had consumed a fair quantity of Benny’s favorite brew when the pastor felt the call of nature.”

Everyone was smiling at Jake. Even my jaded cousin Nina beamed up at him benevolently.

“So the pastor gets out of the boat, walks across the water, steps ashore and visits the Porta-John.” Jake’s eyes twinkled. “Then he walks back across the top of the water and steps into the boat, not a drop of moisture on him. A little time goes by, and then it’s my turn. I hop out of Benny’s skiff, walk across the water and return the same way.”

I scanned the group of mourners and found they were all smiling, wrapped up in Jake’s tale and seeing their old friend through familiar eyes.

“Well now, Benny, he can’t stand it. He says, ‘Youse guys ain’t the only ones with faith. I can do that, too!’ So he hops out of the boat…and sinks like a rock! He comes up sputtering, mad as hell. ‘All right,’ he says, ‘how’s come youse guys can walk on water and I can’t?’” Jake chuckled. “I looked at the Lutheran pastor. He looked at me and says, ‘Reckon we shoulda shown him where the stepping stones were, huh, Jake?’ he says.”

The congregation laughed. Jake laughed, too, but his eyes were warm as he looked over at Aunt Lucy and the rest of us who stood by her. “Yeah, we all loved Benny. He was a good man, but he was only serious about a few things—his family, his friends and fishing.”

Jake moved to stand beside the open grave site, resting a hand on the closed casket. “Benny’s hooked the big one now. He’s moved up to fish with the pros, and us amateurs, well, we’re gonna miss the hell out of him.” Jake smiled at Aunt Lucy. “But we can all take comfort in this certainty,” he said. “Benny’s with the big guy himself, fishing that vast and comforting expanse they call eternal life. And one day, we’ll all be together again, because that’s how it works. No one is ever lost to us, not really. They’ve just gone on ahead to scout the territory.”

Jake looked out at the congregation. “All right,” he said. “You guys on the left of the casket are group one. You people over there are group two. And you people in the back, you’re group three. Now, when I point to you, start singing. I think you all know the words…. ‘Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.’”

With that, Jake smiled gently, raised his arms in the air like a band conductor and motioned. Like sheep we began to sing, right on cue. And as the casket was slowly lowered into the ground, we filed past the grave, tossing pink carnations in on top of Uncle Benny and singing the simple, sweet song we’d known as children. But that was not why I felt such an urge to escape from everyone and everything. What sent me over the edge was the fact that Jake Carpenter had taken me in once again.

He had managed, with his goofy joke and his stupid song, to lull me into an unguarded moment in which every happy memory I’d ever shared with Uncle Benny came flooding back with a suddenness that took my breath away. Jake had forced me to feel the vast emptiness of losing the one man who’d ever truly understood me.

This new pain melted into all the feelings I’d so carefully sealed away, leaving me stranded in my old hometown and feeling like a shipwreck survivor. I was home, but I was a stranger. I’d expected to find things just as they’d always been, only better, softened by the pink glow of my very selective memory. But now, when I needed to come home and feel safe, I found myself trapped in a nightmare.

I stared out of the funeral home limo as we drove home, watching the familiar neighborhood pass by the rain-streaked window. Aunt Lucy and Uncle Benny lived in a blue-collar Italian neighborhood that even on the best of days smelled like the nearby paper mill. The brick row homes and postage-stamp backyards were coated in a thin layer of grimy ash that descended like smog over everything and everybody, until gray became the standard color and a hacking cough our constant companion in the wintertime.

But once you set foot in the house, the black-and-white TV screen of our lives changed into a vibrant Technicolor. The kitchen was yellow, the air warm and fragrant with baking bread and everywhere you turned there was some picture or reminder of all the important events or occasions in Benny’s and Lucy’s full-to-overflowing lives. It was a home with love to spare, a home that had taken me in when my parents died and tried, with some success, to raise me into a healed and whole person.

People were packed into every corner of the downstairs by the time I arrived. They sat on the steps leading up to the second-floor bedrooms and peeked through the banisters at the others sitting in the living room below them. They laughed and shouted, hugged and drank, and some cried, not for long, but with earnest emotion that was no longer concealed by convention or etiquette. It was as much home to me as it was foreign. It was too much to return to, and still, it had not been enough to keep me rooted.

When I heard Jake’s voice in the living room, I knew he’d look for me, and I also knew that whatever he had to say, whatever explanation he chose to offer, it wouldn’t be enough to make up for what I spent so long trying to forget. Jake Carpenter was a bastard’s bastard, and my opinion of him wouldn’t change just because he’d been kind to my aunt and uncle.

I looked around the crowded kitchen and realized I was trapped, saw the basement door behind me, and lit out for the space below like a homing pigeon. Uncle Benny’s workshop was down there, a safe haven to him for years and now for me.

I closed the wooden door behind me, fumbled for the light switch and began my descent down the worn, smooth steps to the basement. It still smelled like the old coal furnace, even with years having passed since Uncle Benny had made the switch to oil.

I stepped down into the bright white space and found it just as I’d left it—concrete floor, workbench and cabinets back behind the steps; old worn, terry-cloth couch against the far wall; shabby, braided rug; ancient TV sitting on top of a rusting metal TV tray. It was exactly the same as the day I left home to strike out for Florida, and Benny’s secret bottle of Wild Turkey was in exactly the same place as it always was, way in the back of the last cabinet on the left.

I reached in, pulled out the bottle and was reaching for a shot glass when I found the envelope. It was a sealed, white, standard legal-size rectangle and it felt thick with papers.

I slowly pulled it toward me, placed it on the workbench and knew I was going to open it. I decided I needed fortification first. I poured a shot, lifted it to my lips and tossed it back, feeling the burn as the liquor found its way down my esophagus and into my empty stomach.

“Damn!” I whispered, half choking on the bourbon. I poured another shot and carried it and the envelope to the couch, where I sat down and prepared to read whatever Uncle Benny had hidden away from Aunt Lucy.

I started to fumble with the seal, realized I still felt unprepared and drank the second shot. Then, with slightly trembling fingers, I undid the flap and pulled out the thick sheaf of papers.

It was meant to be a legal document—that much seemed clear, but it was a generic, computer-generated form, not one from a lawyer’s office. There were no embossed seals, no witnesses’ signatures and no “whereas” and “to wit’s.” It was a simple agreement, a partnership arrangement, in which Uncle Benny had invested $260,000 in Jake Carpenter’s auto body shop.

I poured a third shot, tossed it back and felt the burn all the way to the pit of my stomach. I turned back to the beginning of the document and read, this time making careful note of the terms and conditions. It seemed that Uncle Benny had given Jake the money in return for a share of the business, a guaranteed income for himself and Aunt Lucy. But where had my uncle come up with so much money? He was a retired government chemist, not some hot-shot executive. My aunt had been a chemist, too. When my parents died and I’d come to live with them, she’d retired early to take care of me. She became a homemaker, pinching pennies to make ends meet, making her own soaps and cleaning supplies, clipping coupons. They lived in a row house. Where had Uncle Benny gotten so much money to give Jake?

I folded the papers back up, shoved them into the envelope and carefully returned them to their hiding place. I turned, intent on heading back to the couch, and felt the room spin slightly. Not a good sign, I thought. I tried to remember when I’d last eaten anything and figured it might’ve been yesterday as I’d pulled out of Garden Beach and started toward home.

“Shit, Uncle Benny!” I said to the empty room. “This is so not like you!” Even with a fur brain, I knew there was more to this than the agreement said, but what? Obviously that jerk Jake had conned my poor retired uncle out of his retirement money and every dime of his savings. Jake probably promised my uncle pie in the sky and a pot of gold at the end of the auto body rainbow. Now Uncle Benny was dead and Aunt Lucy was crying foul play. Did she know about Uncle Benny’s agreement? I figured not.

The more I thought about Jake taking advantage of my aunt and uncle, the angrier I got. Jake had been trying to rip off my uncle. He had to be in financial trouble; I’d just bet on it. I looked at the steps leading to the kitchen and listened to the dull rumble of people drinking and laughing overhead. I leaned back against the sofa cushions, kicked off my high heels and pulled my feet up where I could massage my throbbing ankle.

“I should’ve worn my flip-flops,” I muttered. I tugged with no effect at the hem of the miniskirt, trying to cover my thighs and get comfortable at the same time. It was pointless. I was not a sexy showgirl, merely a poor imitation who would’ve given anything for her own jeans and a T-shirt.

I needed to eat, but I was so tired and Uncle Benny’s old couch was so comfortable. I pulled one of Aunt Lucy’s afghans down from the sofa back and snuggled into it. It smelled like Uncle Benny’s Old Spice aftershave. I felt sadness threaten to overwhelm me and closed my eyes, hoping to wish it away. I leaned back against the soft, overstuffed cushions and tried to remember all the good times, hoping the grief would somehow vanish or at least become manageable.

“I’m gonna close my eyes, just for a minute,” I murmured. “Then I’ll eat, and then I’ll kick some Jake Carpenter ass!” The prospect seemed somehow satisfying. I could finally exact my revenge on Jake Carpenter and be doing it for a worthy cause. What could be better? I envisioned Jake, pleading with me, his dark, sexy eyes widening with fear as he realized what he’d lost and what he was about to lose. I fell asleep imagining him on his knees, begging for mercy.

I woke up with the sudden awareness that I was no longer alone.

“You know, you drool when you sleep,” Jake said, his voice right up against my ear, the musky scent of him suddenly overwhelming my dream world. “And you still make that little piglike sound, too, you know, the one you make when you snore so loud you half wake yourself up? I hadn’t thought of that in years!”

I opened my eyes. Jake Carpenter was sitting beside me on the edge of the sofa, leaning over to balance himself above me and smiling as if he were in complete control of the universe. For a moment I felt disoriented, and wondered if I was still dreaming. I stared at Jake, willing my eyes to focus. He bent closer, his face inches from my own, inspecting me intently.

“Breath mint?” he asked.

“No,” I whispered. “Gun.”

Jake’s brows furrowed. “Gun?”

“Yeah, in case my breath don’t kill you, my gun will.”

Jake straightened, one eyebrow pushing up into a question mark. “You’re still mad?” He shook his head. “That was years ago. We were just kids. I’d think after all this time you’d be relieved, not mad.”

I pushed back, struggling to get away from him and sit up at the same time.

“Relieved? That’s what you’d call it, relieved?”

Jake nodded solemnly. “We were just kids. What did we know about making a lifetime commitment? You should be grateful I stopped us.”

I stuck out my hand, pushing the center of his chest with two fingers, knocking him back a few inches.

“Grateful?” I swung my legs off the couch and sat up. “Let’s get something straight—you weren’t the one who backed out. If you’d listened to what I was trying to tell you, you’d have known—”

The cellar door swung open and a shadow crossed the top steps.

“Stella,” Nina hissed. “Are you down there?”

We froze, willing her away so the battle could continue, but Nina had some sort of sixth sense.

“Stella, damn it! The cops are here. You’d better get upstairs, quick!”

Jake was already moving, rising from the couch and turning to extend his hand to help me up. I ignored the hand and started to push past him.

“You might want to tame that bird’s nest,” he said. “It makes you look like you just crawled out of bed.” His eyes met mine and I saw the flash of hot intimacy lingering there, remembering every moment I now wanted to forget.