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From: "oldmudrat" <oldmudrat@hotmail.com>
NNTP-Posting-Date: 10 Mar 2005 01:15:16 CST (-0600)
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Subject: {ASSM} New STory: With A Whimper Ch. 2 by Oldmudrat
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Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 05:10:01 -0500
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With A Whimper
by
Oldmudrat

Chapter 2: February, 2016


My great-grandfather, on my mother's side of the family,  was a strange man.
Daniel William Pitt was a strange man.  Well, not really strange.  Maybe
peculiar would be a more apt description.  He was 104 years old when he died
and had lived on the same plot of land for sixty of those years.  He did not
believe in modern conveniences with the exception of radio and television.
The only reason he had electricity in his house was for those two 'damn fool
boxes', as he used to call them.  Only later did he add a phone and
computer, at my urging.  Going to college I missed our talks and with the
phone and email we could keep in touch.



Shortly after his wife died in childbirth, he bought up almost 600 acres of
land on the east side of the Tennessee River where the river briefly visits
Mississippi.  He built his house on a steep limestone cliff that dropped
one-hundred-ten feet to the river.  For ten miles either side of his house
there was no place that a boat could make landfall.  The only road in from
the state highway was ten miles of dusty, rutted red clay or ten miles of
gumbo mud depending on the season.  A car would never make the trip.  A
four-wheel drive vehicle was the only chance, no matter the season.  It
helped keep visitors to a minimum, which suited great-grandpa just fine.


On those 600 acres were stands of timber untouched by chainsaw for over
fifty years.  Steep hills with swift flowing streams in the valleys. Swamps
that were the home to alligators and more snakes that you could shake a
stick at.  And a shallow vein of coal that no one knew about except him.


On that tall riverside bluff he built himself a log cabin.  Not one of those
simple cabins, but a large rambling structure.  Which was pretty strange in
itself, because great-grandpa Daniel lived alone.  Most of the time.  His
only trips off his land was twice yearly trips into the nearest town, Iuka,
Mississippi, to restock supplies that he could not obtain any other way.
Those trips were short... get the supplies and get out of town.   Fast.


Do not get the impression that great-grandpa Daniel had not see the world.
He was a veteran of WW2.  As a Marine he hit the beaches at Tarawa, Iwo
Jima, and Okinawa.  He was still in the Marines, having been promoted to
Master Sergeant, when he fought his way from the Chosin Reservoir in the
Korean War.  After that little 'police action', he got out of the Marines
and started looking for a place out of the line of fire.


Great-grandpa Daniel was firmly convinced that the world was going to hell
in a handbasket and it would all be over very soon.  He held that conviction
for fifty years.  It turned out he was right.


Maybe great-grandpa Daniel was not so strange after all.


I never understood why he took up with me.  I was nine-years-old when I
first saw the Old Man.  My father was his grandson.  The two of them never
really got along.  But once a year dad would load up the family   mom, me,
my older brother Daniel, and my older sister Willimenia   and visit the Old
Man for a week.  Great-grandpa Daniel never refused those visits.  He
usually found things to do on other parts of his property whenever we were
there.


I mean my dad and mom were not very subtle about the main reason for their
visits.  As the Old Man's only living relatives they stood to inherit his
'fortune'.  The land itself was worth several million dollars by that time.
Brother Daniel and sister Willimenia were also obvious in their attempt to
suck up to the Old Man.


Me?  Maybe I was too young to bother.  I spent the weekly visits exploring
the surround woodlands.  That's how I happened to come upon great-grandpa
fishing at a creek one afternoon.  There was a fishing pole stuck butt-first
in the muddy bank and a line floated lazily on the water.  But great-grandpa
was sound asleep, a open can of beer at his side.  I sat there until he woke
up and asked me if I knew how to fish.  I guess that how our friendship
started.  That and I did not give a shit about his money.  For a
nine-year-old, who thought he was probably adopted   I mean how could I have
the same genes as the rest of my family, they were all assholes
discovering a grandfather was the bestest thing in the world.


The best days of my life were spend on the river and in the wood with him.
Once I got my driving license my visits were pretty much when the whim took
me.  He was always glad to see me and had something new to show or tell me.


It was great-grandpa Daniel who payed for my college education.  My asshole
of a father figured two years at a technical school would be enough
education to get me a job.  But I wanted more and the Old Man knew that.  So
he financed an education at the University of Tennessee and later medical
school at the University of Mississippi.  I had a job, sometimes two, all
through my training, but the Old Man always sent along a little something
extra every couple of weeks.  He came off his property and traveled two
hundred miles, the most he had traveled in many years, to see me receive my
Doctor of Medicine degree.


After residency training I started practicing medicine at a large hospital
only an hours drive from him and made frequent visits.  I brought Jules to
meet him.  As we left that time, he whispered to me, "You've got a good,
James.  Treat her right.  You hear me!?"  I could only say, "I know and I
will."


And then the Super Flu struck.  His isolation proved no protection.  He
stopped answering the phone and did not reply to the frantic emails I sent
him.  I assume he was dead, but I was too occupied trying to save lives
and failing   to go find out.  Now there were no more lives to save.  Now I
was going home.


=+=


All these memories came back to me as I stood on the side of the highway
looking back at the city where I had lived for the past four years.  An
empty city, except for the dead.  A thick pall of smoke hung over the
western suburbs.  Fire would spread unchecked now.  There were no firemen to
combat it.  The stench is hard to describe.  How can you tell someone how
the decomposing bodies of almost sixty-thousand people smell? You cannot.
It has to be experienced.


With a last look back, I climbed into the Ford F-250 four-wheel drive pickup
that I had 'liberated' off the dealer's lot and started the drive home.




End Chapter 2

More to Come

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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