Page 66 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. V #7

The Legacy (continued from preceding page)
He fell back against the pillows, his eyes closed. I saw no signs of breathing. Not knowing if he was asleep or dead, I backed slowly away and fled out the door, mindlessly clutching the box.
The box lay undisturbed for years.
~
At seventeen I fell violently, agonizingly, wonder- fully in love with Sandra Shannon. Her legs were long and smooth and perfect, and blonde hair swirled about her head like golden silk. I con- trived to sit behind her in study hall, and when she wore her hair up, the light shining through the golden strands at the nape of her neck sent spasms of sweet torment across the ganglions of my architecture.
We packed the suitcase with what remained of our worldly possessions: spare clothing, a few trinkets of Mother’s, photographs, several of our precious books, and, of course, the box. The rest we had sold to finance our journey. That night, we boarded the crowded Greyhound bus to chase the elusive dream of good paying factory jobs to the north. But the steel mills of Pittsburgh had little use for women and children. A hungry flood of new immigrants battled for the few jobs avail- able—Greeks and Syrians from the Middle East, Welsh and Italians from Europe and negroes from the south.
But I was neither handsome nor athletic, the traits which tempt girls of such an age. Each day I lay in wait to greet her with “Hi, Shannon.” And each time she would look up in blank surprise and respond: “Oh, hi,” followed by a smile which never reached her eyes.
We resumed our pilgrimage northward, winding among the mountains of Pennsylvania through the barren communities of Moon, Beaver Falls, and Ellwood. By the time we reached New Castle, our energy and funds were both exhausted, and we debarked to face our new reality.
After school she would vanish into a cluster of fawning older boys, zooming off in cars to the soda shop or ball field or wherever older boys took their trophies.
We arrived in a vacuum created by the closing of the local steel mill, and nearly half the community depended on public relief in some form. However, work programs like the WPA and CCC had relocat- ed many of the town’s able-bodied men to con- struction sites away from town, so when the new Fazzoni Brothers Fireworks Company opened its doors, Mother and other women from town found a few hours of employment each week.
It seemed my life could not go on without her, and I dreamt of leaping off the railroad bridge near the fireworks factory into the Beaver River. Instead, I unearthed the box and went so far as to insert the key in the lock. But Mother insisted life would go on and true love would not pass me by.
The depression still raged. Mother waited tables at Dominic’s Diner, mended clothes, and cleaned offices. When winter arrived, we ate from cans in our thickest coats in our basement room as the night sent frigid fingers down the chimney to pick from our pockets any last shred of warmth. Eventually, Mother found full employment at the factory. I made new friends at school, and life fell a little lighter on our shoulders.
~
57 ~
Grandmother and Grandfather were gone—there
And when Linda Longyear moved in down the street in the spring, I admitted Mother probably was right. I had passed the first test, and realized how foolish it would have been to waste such a gift on a passing fancy.
Two years later, Mother was dead. A stroke, they said, as she worked on the line at the fireworks factory. Never knew what hit her, they said. Better this way than dragging on, they said. They said.
I raged at the world for taking her and at God for abandoning me. But the wrong could not be righted.