Notes - Brothers 8

         Nearly noon local time. You are sitting at the Barnes and Noble at Polaris while Kim and Carol are shopping at Macy’s and beyond. Paul may be home in time for sharing lunch. After lunch the plan is to visit the Three Pillars model house at Lewis Center to become more familiar with what they have actually bought to build. You and Carol remember the fun, busy and challenging time of picking out the basic outside and inside design as well as toilets, baths, cabinets, kitchens and granite, fireplace, floors, trims, ceilings, etc. (which they have been doing).

         1205 hours. I picked up a Writer’s Digest Yearbook and browsed – not much; shows another example of the business has changed drastically in the last few years. I might as well continue work on Chapter Eight.

         Go to it, kid. – Amorella        

         You completed Brother Eight. Let’s drop it in. – Amorella

         1251 hours. I’m going to post it. Carol might call and I’ll be interrupted.

         You are getting antsy. What do you think so far? Does punctuality fit as a theme? – Amorella

         I suppose, but it is not the same kind of punctuality. This is going to suggest that Merlyn is somehow personally connected to the lives of the Bleacher’s and the Greystone’s. That is pretty fanciful.

        Kim just called, let's get this posted. - Amorella

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Brothers 8 ©2013, rho - for GMG.One

            Richard sat in his study viewing an updated Google Earth photo of Riverton’s John Knox Cemetery. I wonder how the recent Dead view leaving the place crossed Richard’s mind in a similar fashion to the cemetery roads crossing north to south and east to west. Surprisingly, Richard discovered he could drag the gold icon to street level and view his old house from the cemetery's perspective. Google drove through the cemetery from South Grove Avenue back to the mausoleum and around the cemetery roads. I was looking down from three thousand feet and with a click and short wrist movement I was at ground level. Who would have thought?

            "What's up, bro?"

            "Robby, I didn't hear you come in. Look at this, Google drove one of their camera trucks through the cemetery."

            He paused, took a look then sat down in the chair next to the window. "Here's a Twilight Zone story for you, someone goes on Google Earth to check out Knox Street and with the slip of a hand finds himself in the cemetery next door glancing at his own dated headstone."

            "I was thinking about someone dying and his last glance at Earth would be from three thousand feet, then from space and the Moon and Earth and all would just fade away."

            "You mean for the book?"

            "Not necessarily. Just a thought." Richard chuckled, "Then when I saw the street level shot it dawned on me that the Dead might not ever leave."

            "We've both thought, for a long time, that in real life you wake up alive and when you die, you're dead."

            "I know, but how would it be? Remember the old townie’s in the bridge card game group buried across the street? Each had someone drop a deck of cards in their casket or next to their urn in case anyone wanted to play cards. Everyone knew it was a joke but as each one of the group died the cards, our parents and wives’ parents too, were buried with them."

            "You and Cyndi dropped in the cards,” smiled Robert. “Sentimentality is good, even a little healthy for the living, I think; but the dead, if they exist, are surely beyond such things," replied Robert. "I came over to see if you wanted to go to the Village Bookstore."

            "The old church. Anytime. Let me shut this down."

            Fifteen minutes later Connie and Cyndi were sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee and sharing a green and white can of mixed nuts. "Nice to have the house to ourselves. Nice to relax."

            Cyndi countered, "I am worried about Robert. He always has to be doing something or going somewhere. I wish he would just sit and relax more – like Richie."

            "Richie doesn't do enough, Connie. He would rather sit in his history and literature books than do much of anything else. They both have been spending time in the cemetery and mausoleum. What is that all about?"

            "Genealogy. Aunt Floy got them started, she spent most of her life working on the family tree; when we married in, and she began working on ours. She thought we Bleacher's and Greystone's might have been connected since the times of Shakespeare."

            "I didn't know she had gone back that far. That was so long ago."

            "Aunt Floy had some evidence that the Bleacher's and Greystone's had adjoining properties between Oxford and Stratford in Oxfordshire or bordering Warwickshire counties," said Cyndi.

            "Why doesn't Robert ever talk about that? He likes history."

            "I don't know. Richie doesn't talk about it to me either, but he has Aunt Floy’s genealogical records out on his desk from time to time. When I ask him about it, he says that he's really interested in the old royal lines and which of his ancestors lived under Henry VIII. He was always interested in that old seventies book, The Passover Plot. Then it was Bloodline of the Holy Grail, and The Di Vinci Code.

            Connie spoke up, "We have read most of the Brown books, but Jesus theories – let the dead be dead, that’s what I think. May they rest in peace, Jesus and all the rest of them."

            “Amen,” replied Cyndi, then took another sip of coffee. “Why doesn’t Robert ever talk about the genealogy? I wonder though what evidence Aunt Floy found that shows our families had adjoining properties in that part of England. We Bleacher's go back six or seven generations. That would be really funny if our families were acquaintances that far back. I wonder what the odds are for families to be connected one way or another for hundreds of years?”

            “We are all connected, Cyndi. Everybody is someone else’s cousin.”

            “Not literally though. Surely.”           

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