Today is daughter Kim's birthday, born in 1979. You had a choice of days as it was after eleven at night and you and Carol choose the 23rd because it was your old friend, Fritz Milligan's, (best man at your wedding) birthday, Fritz Milligan. You have known Fritz since the eighth grade when he entered Emerson Junior High, the old Vine Street School in Westerville from the nearby Central College School. He is still your friend, and he was your first reader of all your notes and works since 1988, and your lawyer. Kim you have known all your life and first bonded about twenty minutes after she was born. You are very proud, as always, to be her father.
You are parked in the shade at the north end of Pine Hill Lakes Park as usual. Carol is on her walk. Earlier you cleaned up much of the material on your MacAir and you now have 63.41 gigs free out of 120.34 GB on your flash storage.
I probably put some 20 gigs on exterior memory. Strange, this is all part of my prep for this project. Cleaning the room and the desktop I suppose. Mason students began school yesterday and psychologically I'm putting myself in the thick of it.
Nothing like coming out of retirement, boy. It'll do you good, it has already. - Amorella
1125 hours. I just want my mind frame to be significantly well and on track for this project writing.
Let's go to it, my man. - Amorella
After a half a ham and cheese sandwich supper and watching NBC News and an almost always funny half hour British comedy to you (rather unhumorous to Carol sometimes) "Outnumbered", DVRed from PBS. - Amorella
I used a similar word in the modern modification of "The Brothers" earlier today. I rather like the use of "un" here, at adds to the humor.
"Undead" is accepted as a word, I suppose one can say the same for "unhumorous". Let's get this section completed tonight. - Amorella
2148 hours. "The Brothers" segment for chapter one appears satisfactory to me at this time. I'll will have to reread and reedit when the entire chapter is complete.
I agree. There is always room for improvement without a tendency for perfection. - Here it is for posting. - Amorella
Chapter One
The Brothers
Robert gave a swift glance at his retired brother. “Richie, what are you talking about?”
Richard continued, “The brain and the mind are separate entities and so are the heart, soul and mind."
"So, Rob, your heart and soul and brain are writing this trilogy?"
"My mind not brain. My old make-believe friend, Leo, is helping me rewrite the books.”
“I remember your Captain Lamar. He was always telling you stories from the other side of the Ohio.
“Right. In my head Lamar's ferry still travels over to Ripley. I like to think of him coming up the Underground Railway from Ripley, Ohio to right here in Bridgeville."
Rob chuckled, "The Captain's been a part of our lives since we were four or five."
Richard glanced out the window to the rise and stones across the street, "a long time ago we used to play in the one across the street."
"Same year Uncle Ross died," deadpanned Rob as he glanced out the window and across the street, "The cemetery has never been that far away. Now it's even closer."
Both laughed. Rich commented, "We can save the girls some money by digging up our plots next to Mom and Dad, when we feel quite ill, we can go over and lay down at the naked earthy bottom, die in peace; and they can cover us up. Very few expenses." They continued laughing at the old joke which one of them, neither knows who, conjured up in upper level grade school. Rich interjected, "I think Captain Leo visited me for the first time after Uncle Ross's funeral."
"That's what you always said, "Within a month of sticking Uncle Ross in the ground."
Rich paused, "What I remember most about the funeral besides all the people I had never seen before was old Mr. Meyers. Tanner Meyers had been born a slave. I'd never seen a slave before." Charlie had old overworked hands, he thought. Such a kind faced lanky old man. He put his hand out to shake my own. No one had ever shaken my hand before, not like that. It was like I was important to him and here I was only a kid. He shook Rob's hand too, but Robby was a year older. That was two years after the war and year after dad returned home from European theatre. Rich's mind flashed to those secret black and white photos his dad had hidden in the back of his sock drawer after the war, two photos from when he and others of the U.S. Seventh Army helped liberate Dachau.
When Rob and I used to slave weeding father's garden, mowing and trimming father's yard, raking father's leaves in the fall and shoveling father's snow in the winter, Dad used to mutter the guttural, "Arbeit macht frei!" and say, "On the damned gate at Konzentrationslager Dachau!" in what I would consider perfect German. I think these words of Father are where Rob and I cultivated our dark corrupted sense of humor, surviving our elementary and adolescent slavery here at home in the good old U.S.A. in the quaint little college town of Bridgeville. We were raised bound, not unlike Tanner Meyers, but we were never liberated. Here I am still living in our parents' old house on the east side of Knox Street with the Phillips Williams College Cemetery's War Memorial sitting directly to the west like a white stone of representation of a grotesquely setting sun.
Rob who remembered the event but not with his brother's intensity he saw on his brother's face. He added, "That was the first time we went to a funeral,"
Unlistening, Richard grumbled a, "What?"
A whispered aside from the unseen elephant in the room. Grade school is where the boys had some trouble falling in love with two sisters each a -year younger than themselves. Eventually, this first budding of romance worked out for the better while the four were in their mid-twenties. The two couples went for a double wedding on Rob's initial idea that it would save the girls' parents some money and make for a happier day for everyone involved.
“Captain Lamar is from the underground in my head.”
Robert quipped, “So is your imagination.”
Staying focused, Richard added, “This rework is train of thought stories from the spine, the brain and the mind. It is also from Captain Lamar's heart and soul."
Robert laughed, “Why don’t you call your Captain, Lionel, rather than Leo?”
Richard spoke under breath, “Captain Lionel train-of-thought, I think it’s been done, Robbie."
“Why don’t you just go back to writing poetry? Dickie."
Richard smirked, “Because you are the better poet.”
Rob grinned, “True. I am.”
“Your poetry is clear, concise and with no nonsense.” I taught literature long enough to know it is much better writing than my own."
Robert chuckled, knowing his brother hated being reminded. He countered, “That’s because my brain and my mind are in the same place. I don’t have a cigar chewing, ratty old ghost loving half pirate named Captain Leo piloting a ferry across the river bringing me characters and plots rather than decent European-styled poems when the early morning fog is right.”
“You know I’m not as good at it as you are -- I’ll keep trying at the fiction, thank you very much.”
Robert paused, “Do you remember when we first went to Ripley to see the Rankin House?”
“Sure, Longfellow Elementary days. Grandma and Grandpa took and showed us where John Rankin lived on Liberty Hill, the setting in Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” What a wonderfully expressed work on freedom, he thought and chuckled, “I thought there was going to be a real railroad that climbed up that hill.”
"That's because I told you all week we were going to see and ride on a real railroad up a big hill from the Ohio River, that there were going to be switchbacks and everything," smiled Robert.
"Will you read my near final draft of each chapter, Rob?"
In a more somber tone, he said, "Brothers are suppose to be critical. I'll do it only on the condition that you write and share a beat poem along the way. You always were a beat. I was always more modern, more subtle, more explicit."
"You've won the international awards though, not me."
He tapped his brother's foot as they were sitting across from one another. "And I am the biology major, not English."
Richard almost fell into a glare, which is what his older brother wanted. He looked his brother in the eye, "I love my subject still; Robby you never loved biology like I love literature."
Rob sobered, “One chapter at a time. I'll read it."
“Do you still have the past and future segments?”
"Besides this, our own segment," Richard added, "The Dead" first; out of respect." He left Robert to read the short piece while he went downstairs to see wife and sister-in-law. Of all things, he thought, here we are two fun-loving brothers and each married to two of the most beautifully compatible sisters. We are in our seventies. It will have been a good life no matter when we leave it.
***
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