Chapter 1

Trailing a thin wisp of blue smoke from the exhaust pipe, the white Saturn pulled into the driveway of the two bedroom wood frame house. With tires creating a crackling sound as they passed over small chunks of concrete that had splintered off the paved drive, the car slowly approached a detached garage. The driver parked the car in front of the garage, not bothering to shelter the old car out of the weather. The fifteen year old car had sat outside the garage for most of its life.

Burl climbed out of the car, pausing a moment to lean heavily on the door. He looked as tired as his car. Or was it vice versa? Even the shield announcing his profession as a mall security guard looked dull. It had been a long day walking around the mall protecting stores from the occasional shoplifter and customers from the frequent skateboarders.

Everything around him look tired. The houses, dating back to the 1940s, were in varying degrees of dilapidation. They had been built to house families working in factories that produced equipment for the war. They had been built quickly and cheaply. As a result they hadn’t weathered the years all that well. The factories were gone, but the houses remained. All were occupied although there were a few that would require a bit of work to get them into salable shape.

He walked up the driveway taking note of the three foot wide strip of grass that separated his drive from the one next door. The grass was starting to turn brown. Fall was coming to an end and the weather would be getting a lot colder. There were enough green tufts sticking up that he’d have to mow it one more time before putting the mower up for the winter.

He was about to climb the three steps up to the side door of the house when his neighbor stepped out of her door. She called over, “Uh, Burl?”

“What’s up, Kat?” Burl asked while turning to look at the attractive young woman.

She was wearing a little black dress that looked out of place in this neighborhood. It was low cut enough to show the gentle swell of her breasts. The hem was high enough to show off enough thigh to make a man dream for just a little more. Her long hair had been released from her usual pony tail. She wore just the right amount of makeup to look natural.

“My mom is sick. She can’t watch Herbie tonight and I’ve got a date. I can’t aff ... I mean, I’d hate to miss it,” Kat answered looking panicked at what she had nearly said.

“I’ll be glad to watch him for you, Kat,” Burl answered wondering what she had mean to say.

“Thanks. You’re a lifesaver,” Kat said.

“Do you need me to feed him?”

“Nah, we ate earlier,” Kat answered. Flustered, she added, “I mean, I all ready fed him.”

“Okay,” Burl replied.

“I better get Herbie ready,” Kat said.

“Just bring him over when you’re ready to go,” Burl said.

Kat said, “I’ll be over in ten minutes. I don’t want to be late.”

He watched her go into the house thinking it was sad that a woman her age was a widow. He felt the country should provide better benefits when a woman lost her husband in defense of the country, but it didn’t. It was a shame, but he was just one man and no one wanted to hear his opinion on the matter. Sighing, he went into the house to prepare a dinner.

Ten minutes later, there was a knock on his door. He opened it to find Kat standing there holding Herbie’s hand. He nodded at her before looking down at Herbie. The six year old was carrying a coloring book and box of crayons.

Smiling, Burl asked, “How’s it going, Herbie?”

“Same old, same old,” Herbie answered.

Burl laughed at the greeting. He asked, “Have you been hanging around your granddad?”

“Yep,” Herbie answered with a broad grin.

“I got cartoons on the television. You know where it is,” Burl said while gesturing into the house.

Herbie rushed into the house excited at the prospect of spending an evening watching cartoons. It was a rare treat.

“I really want to thank you for watching him,” Kat said.

“No problem. It’ll give me some company for a change,” Burl said.

Burl lived a rather isolated life outside of work. His evenings were spent watching history programs and reading books. His Sundays were spent doing house work, laundry, and yard work. There were times when he found something he could do to help someone, but those opportunities were less common than one might believe.

His lonely lifestyle wasn’t by choice. His Saturdays were spent at work and that limited his ability to socialize Friday nights and Saturdays. Even if he was able to break free, it wouldn’t do him much good. He hadn’t met a woman who was interested in dating him. He wasn’t the kind of man women found attractive.

Kat frowned at hearing that. She said, “I really appreciate you doing this for me. I won’t be out too late.”

“Don’t worry about it, just have fun on your date,” Burl said.

“Ya, right,” Kat said with a frown.

He watched walk over to her seven year old Hugo. It seemed to him that she wasn’t all that excited about having a date that evening. He’d be jumping up and down. Of course, he didn’t go out on dates. Dates were something that younger, better looking people did. He closed the door thinking, ‘She’s attractive and I’m not.’

He called out, “Hey, Herbie! I’m making Macaroni and Cheese. You want some?”

“Nah. I had that for dinner,” Herbie shouted back.

“There’s plenty for both of us,” Burl called out.

He went over to the stove and looked at the noodles that were boiling. He had been a little quick in his attempt to cook something Herbie would enjoy eating. Packaged macaroni was cheap, filling, and quick to prepare. It made sense that she had served him something like that before heading out on her date. He should have thought about that.

He opened the grocery store package of sliced ham and dropped the meat into a frying pan. He sighed and turned up the heat under the ham. It was going to be another gourmet meal – macaroni and cheese, fried ham, and a chilled single serving container of canned pears.

“Uncle Burl?”

Herbie came into the kitchen while a commercial was airing on the television.

“What Herbie?”

“Are you making the kid’s kind of macaroni and cheese?” Herbie asked looking around for the box.

“You bet. I got the box with the cartoon dog on it,” Burl answered.

He held up the box for Herbie to see. He always kept a box of macaroni and cheese that was printed with a kid theme on it for those times when he babysat Herbie. He didn’t really care what was on the box, it all tasted the same to him. It didn’t matter if the pasta was weirdly shaped.

Herbie grinned at seeing the box. It always surprised him that Uncle Burl kept stuff around specifically for him. It made him feel special.

“I’ll take some. Momma made the adult kind. It was the white box with black writing on it. She said that it was on sale,” Herbie said.

“Well, you can have some of the kid’s stuff,” Burl said.

Feeling a little guilty for serving Herbie macaroni and cheese, he wondered how many boxes of the stuff the poor kid ate that week. It seemed to him that Herbie ate cold cereal every morning, bologna sandwiches every lunch, and either hotdogs, spaghetti, tuna fish casserole, or eggs with corned beef hash for dinner. That reminded him that he might want to invite them over for hamburgers, corn on the cob, and potato salad either Saturday or Sunday night.

“Great,” Herbie said.

Burl heard the commercial end and the cartoon start. The boy ran back into the living room to watch some more cartoons. Herbie wasn’t going to miss a single minute of cartoons. One of the local broadcast stations showed cartoons in the late afternoon and all of the local stations had them on Saturday mornings. Herbie wasn’t going to miss one minute of 24 hour cable cartoon channel.

Burl knew that Kat was overwhelmed with bills. Her late husband had a reasonably good job until he joined the service. That had hurt his income, but there had been other benefits that offset the loss. They had managed to get by while he was in active service.

His death had devastated the family’s budget. It had taken her far longer to collect benefits than she had thought it would. When the insurance money finally arrived, she spent it to cover the costs for the funeral and to payoff a significant fraction of the mortgage on the house. She had refinanced the house to make the payments easier to afford. A few repairs to the house, such as a new roof and a paint job, had eaten what little money had been leftover from the insurance money.

Her financial strategy had worked initially, but prices had gone up, tips had gone down, and her car required frequent repairs. Now she was left with a small widow pension and a waitressing job at the local diner that just didn’t cover the bills.

She was doing okay until recently. The kindergarten program had increased the price of their after school program. The heating oil company came out to service her heater and had declared it was a hopeless cause. The burner was over thirty years old and had to be replaced. Not satisfied with VA healthcare, she tried to carry a health insurance policy to cover her and her son.

When Burl had found Kat crying about her financial woes, he had told her that she could get free tv by getting a special antenna and converter for her television. When he brought over a ‘used’ antenna and converter, she had immediately canceled cable television. Since then, Herbie couldn’t wait to watch cartoons on Burl’s television.

Dinner didn’t take too long to cook. He prepared two plates. For Herbie, he put a little ham, cut up into small pieces, on a small plate along with a small serving of macaroni and cheese. He added two slices of canned pears on the plate thinking a growing boy could always use extra fruits in his diet. He loaded his plate with everything leftover. He carried the plates out to the living room.

Herbie was seated on the floor next to the coffee table. His coloring book was open to a picture of a sail boat. He was coloring the sail while watching the cartoon. His ability to stay within the lines was inversely proportional to the attention he was giving the cartoon. So far the cartoon was winning.

Burl put Herbie’s plate down on the table along with a spoon. He knew Herbie had a problem using a fork when it came to small items like peas, macaroni, and corn. There would come a time when Herbie would be insulted by the presence of the spoon, but that was a while in the future. Until then, it was just easier to cut up the food into bite sized chunks and give him a spoon.