Countenance of Man Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters and events in this book are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Countenance of Man

  Published by Gatekeeper Press

  2167 Stringtown Rd, Suite 109

  Columbus, OH 43123-2989

  www.GatekeeperPress.com

  Copyright © 2018 by Matthew Nuth

  All rights reserved. Neither this book, nor any parts within it may be sold or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  ISBN (hardcover): 9781642373424

  ISBN (paperback): 9781642373158

  eISBN: 9781642373165

  Printed in the United States of America

  I peered over the edge to look down,

  Rocks and branches coated as with fine powder,

  Just beyond the reach of my fingers.

  Water chilling my arms,

  I swirled my extended hand ‘round

  Expecting to disturb the sediment of everything under

  But, finding no impact to linger,

  Leaving the dusty blanket without harm.

  I reached in farther to touch a stone

  Seeking to retrieve this for personal collection,

  To feel the cool, smooth surface,

  Only to find that rock farther than expected.

  Failing to reach is not my problem alone

  For the shallow was only a perception.

  So, my stone remained beyond purchase

  My understanding of depth corrected.

  Chapter 1

  It had been a long time since my memory had been jogged back to my early days in Fort Collins. I can remember my dad banging down the hallway, hollering “time to get up” to start each day. On weekends, I would roll over, bury my head under the pillow, and hope that just this once he would let me sleep in . . . but, just like a snooze alarm, five to ten minutes later, here he’d come again. Persistence really should have been his name. He would not give up until I would swing my feet out of bed onto the cold wood floor and shuffle off to the bathroom.

  Back then I thought his waking me early was his personal way of joking with me, while gently instilling a personal habit even though it wasn’t as if I really had anything important I had to do on Saturday mornings. After all, I was too young to find a job and too old to watch Saturday morning cartoons on the television. All I would do on a normal sunny, summer Saturday would be mow our small lawn and then run down to the park to play baseball with my friends. Dad knew this aggressive schedule really didn’t require me to be up at seven in the morning, but he took great pleasure in getting me going early.

  All in all, I have to admit it was probably a good thing my paternal alarm clock worked so diligently. It was nice to have my limited chores done before the sun had reached its apex in the sky. My friends and I pretty much had the day to ourselves; to exercise our independence, to enjoy our day with the only requirement of being home in time for dinner. It was a simple time; a time when our major daily concern had been whether or not we would have enough kids show up at the park to field two teams for weekly baseball games.

  Looking at Dad now made me long for those days. Gone was the mischievous smile and vibrant eyes. They were now replaced with a mouth that had somehow shrunken and pulled back tightly against the few teeth he had left. There was no hint of movement from his lips when I had walked in; it had remained slightly agape . . . and so dry it hurt me to look at it. His eyes . . . well there had been that brief moment of recognition and brightness when I first saw him, but it had faded as quickly as it had come. They had returned to a place that only he knew, certainly not this room.

  I had not been back to Fort Collins very often to see Dad these past few years. Certainly, not as much as I would have wished; it’s funny how quickly time flies. I can remember my wife suggesting that we needed to make time to visit since it had been so long since we had made the 1,100-mile journey from San Diego to reconnect. Weeks turned into months. Months turned into years. Maybe, I’m not such a great son. This time, however, it had really only been a few weeks since our last visit, but the change had been so sudden that I was shocked.

  The bedroom no longer resembled the place my wife and I had stayed in the few times we had visited. The four-poster, double bed that we had spent years joking about how hard and uncomfortable it was had been temporarily dismantled and leaned against the far wall to make room for an adjustable hospital variety.

  This new bed may not have been torturing its occupant; even so, the occupant appeared more tortured than any soul I have ever seen. The bed stand was cluttered with items foreign to this previously homey room. They were the items necessary for preparing for death, not life. There were the sanitary wipes, the antibiotic cream, the towels, and the pain medication, a small bottle of liquid opiate administered drop by drop. Dad’s pain became evident anytime he was moved; it was the only time his face broke with emotion. Paul Simmons was dying.

  His hands held a beaten, dark blue, leather-bound book, its covers cracked with age and use. The pages had become bent over the years to a point that it no longer closed completely without the assistance of a heavy rubber band binding it closed, just as Dad’s mind had become. Mom said she thought it was a journal of some sort, but really could not be sure since Dad had kept the contents to himself over the years. As far as she knew, no one other than Dad had ever seen the pages.

  Chapter 2

  What a day this would be. Paul had much to do before heading off to school; he had set his clock to ring at 4:00 am. He had promised his father he would set up the shop for the awning production this morning. A batch of new material had arrived yesterday and he should have dropped by after school to unbox and log it into stock. He had had so much schoolwork to get to, he had to put off the family work that should have been done yesterday until now.

  Slipping out from underneath his woolen blanket, Paul could feel the cold grip of the Colorado morning take his breath away. He sat on the edge of his bed, shivering, trying to motivate himself to stand up and start the day. He could hear the bustling noises of a fully awakened household two flights of stairs below him; Mother was already up making him breakfast and a sandwich for his school lunch. Paul could not remember a time that he had not awoken to that noise; sometimes he wondered if she ever slept. Paul rocked out of bed shaking the sleep from his eyes and began to shuffle to the steps and down to the bathroom. His thin arms wrapped around his body’s bare torso to keep warm and to try in vain to control his shivering.

  He had loved the idea of moving up from the second floor to the finished attic last summer. It provided him a room all to himself; something that neither he nor his younger brother, William, had ever experienced. The room was absolutely great that first summer; the windows looked out both the front and the back the house and, when opened, provided for a fresh breeze keeping the space cool and comfortable. The space was huge, representing an entire floor of the house. The high-pitched ceiling had only added to the uniqueness of the room. Of course, there were some downsides to the move; first his brother wanted to continuously encroach on his privacy, secondly, he ended up sharing the space with Mom’s seasonal decoration storage, and lastly, it got really cold on winter mornings. This morning was one of those cold winter mornings; the bare wood floor chilled his feet as he made his way to a hot shower that seemed to promise the o
nly hope of defeating his shivering.

  In the bathroom, he completed his morning ritual. He rubbed his face to feel the imaginary beard stubble growing. This year Paul had begun shaving once a week even though his facial hair was more akin to the fine fuzz you expected to see on a grandmother’s face than the face of an adult male . . . but in Paul’s mind these were whiskers; as rough and vibrant as any man’s. Perhaps the whiskers would turn dark . . . next year. He rubbed his face once again and decided it wasn’t necessary to shave today; he could pass on using the shaving cup and soap Dad had given him two years ago for his 15th birthday. He turned on the shower, yanking his arm out as quickly as possible hoping to avoid getting splashed by the frigid water. He would let the water heat up while he brushed his teeth, as he did every morning. After the shower, he slipped on a pair of straight-legged, narrow jeans, a long-sleeved flannel shirt and then pulled on his well-worn, brown, lace-up work shoes and bounded down the last flight of stairs to the main floor of the house to eat breakfast.

  Paul loved everything about this house, but the main floor was special to him. Although it wasn’t particularly large, it was a place to for family and friends to get together. The steps ended at a small foyer off which there was a seldom used sitting room to the left, a living room/dining room to the right. Across the foyer from the steps was a simply carved, oak front door with colorful leaded glass leading to a covered porch, facing the street.

  As with every morning, Paul exited the foyer on the right to walk through the living room and dining area to the rear of the house, to the ever-bustling kitchen.

  Dad was already up by now, sitting at the table in his faded bath robe reading the paper. Early morning was Dad’s time. He seemed to be oblivious to Paul, completely focused on the news from around the world and from down the street. It was if his day couldn’t really start without this news fix; it was his addiction . . . and the addiction had become more severe with the wars waging on in Europe and the Pacific. With each passing day, Dad had become more concerned and convinced that this war would touch him and his family, personally. Ever since the United States had been compelled to enter the fray, he had been filled with a sense of foreboding.

  Without a single movement, Paul heard his father’s voice emit from behind the paper, “Paul, it’s about time you got up and running.”

  Paul made no comment but glanced over to his mother for support with a “you have to be kidding” look. For Christ’s sake, William would not would not be moseying down the steps for another two hours. Unfortunately, Mom appeared too preoccupied with cooking eggs and bacon on the stove to come to his defense. Paul could only guess that if she had heard Dad’s comment, she had no desire to get caught up in the discussion this morning.

  Dad continued, “Yesterday, you promised to get the material ready for sewing on your way home from school.”

  “That’s why I set my alarm so early. I’ll take care of it before I go to school.”

  Dad, looked up from the paper, eye’s raised to look over his reading glasses. “No need to, I took care of it last night. I didn’t want to take a chance on not having the material laid out and ready for sewing when Lyle and Virginia show up.” Lyle and Virginia Jones had worked for Dad as long as Paul could recall. They would show up at 8:00 in the morning, Monday through Friday, and sew awnings until the day’s production plan was completed. It wasn’t unusual to walk by the shop at 8:00 at night and still see them finishing up the day’s work. Dad paid them through a share of the profits rather than paying them an hourly wage; it seemed to fit them just fine.

  Paul plopped down at the table without muttering another word, and buried his eyes in the plate of hot, just-out-of-the-frying pan eggs, disappointed both in his Dad and himself. He couldn’t help but think that he had let down Dad. It never failed, Dad had to have things done his way. If he wanted something done at a particular time, it had to done at that time. He was a stickler for schedules and process. He was methodical in everything he did. Who could argue; it had served the family well. Their awning shop had grown and seemed to be a healthy business, they lived in a nice home close to downtown, on the corner of the very middle-class Mathews Street and Mulberry Avenue, drove a reasonably new Plymouth, and they always had food on the table. Growing up in the Depression had certainly been a lot easier for Paul than it was for most of his friends. At least that’s what Dad always said.

  Since he was already up so early, Paul decided to walk to the awning shop to see if there was some chore or task he could complete to potentially make amends for his lack of reliability the day before. The shop was only a few blocks west of home, just off the main north-south road through town, College Avenue. He unlocked the front door and stepped into the darkened shop. He always felt somewhat at ease when opening the shop. Even though he didn’t really like the work, it was somehow rewarding to look around his Dad’s shop and considered it his too. He was at home here, it was a place and feeling that none of his friends knew. His Dad didn’t work for someone else; his family owned a business. It was a strange feeling of pride and power; controller of one’s destiny, so to speak.

  The shop consisted of two rooms; a front sales area where miniature awning samples hung from the walls and back work area that had two long stainless steel-wrapped work tables with industrial sewing machines bolted to the ends plus a work bench designed for building awning frames.

  Paul entered the store from the front. He hated entering the shop from the back; the work area was so dark until all the lights were on, it gave him the willies. In the front, he liked the way the morning sunlight would blaze through the two big show windows. The whole area seemed to explode with light as the sun came up. In fact, he would have to shield his eyes from the glare. No hidden ghosts or demons in the front room.

  Even though the shop was “neat as a pin,” as Dad would say, Paul grabbed a broom from behind the door and mindlessly started to sweep the faded green and white 12 by 12-inch square, checkered linoleum. He had completed this task so many times he had made a game out of it. The challenge was to see how much dust he could pile up in the process. It was a way of demonstrating some small achievement in that he was completing a task better than Dad. After finishing in the sales area, making sure the dust had been gathered into a small pile on the green floor square directly in front of the doorway leading to the workroom, he could now begin with the back. In the backroom, life looked different; all the lighting back here was a harsh fluorescent. It numbed the body and was as dead as the sunlight in the front room was alive and vibrant. It was no wonder that his Father elected to spend as little time as possible in this back area. Although he had originally kept the business’s books and completed the majority of the office work from the work room, he had moved these tasks to home years ago. For the awning shop, however, this back area was remained the heart of the business; the center of production and installation. Paul was especially meticulous with his sweeping. The floor back here was a shiny lacquered hard wood. It had seen years of wear, and yet,it still shined like crazy if you kept it clean. You could see any dust from a standing vantage point even in the unnatural lighting.

  On the south-side wall, steps led up to a semi-open attic area. This was where all supplies: framing materials, sewing materials, tools and replacement parts for the sewing machines were kept. The Canvas was stored in roll form, hung on the back wall of the main work area. Everything that was crucial for the awning manufacturing was kept in the store, except for installation materials and tools. For that, Dad had purchased new, a dull green 1937 GMC panel truck that he kept parked in the alley behind the store. The business had done well and Dad had been looking for options to extend beyond awnings. The panel truck was center to his plans to expand into home remodeling.

  Awnings! Even though the business paid for everything Paul’s family needed, it offered nothing of particular interest to him. It was a pedestrian vocation and offered little of the excitement cheri
shed by a 17-year old. That said, Lyle and Virginia’s pedestrian demeanor appeared perfectly well fitted for a role sewing, assembling and installing awnings. Although always nice to him, they had personalities that made the drab forest greens, browns and the occasional striped awnings look incredibly colorful and vibrant. Paul could not discern if they had been boring to start with so chose a boring vocation or if a boring vocation had rubbed off on them and muted their spirit.

  Little did Paul understand that awnings held nothing of particular interest to Lyle, Virginia, or for his Father and his Mother, for that matter, other than it had provided them a means to pull themselves out of the poverty from the previous decade. Paul and his brother had been too young to understand the financial challenges his family faced when the stock market crashed tanking millions of jobs with it. The modest family wealth evaporated quickly, and by 1931, Paul’s father had been forced to drop out of the mechanical engineering program at the Colorado Agricultural College to earn what little he could in Fort Collins to care for his young family. He had needed to potentially sacrifice a better future to keep the current together. Paul’s father had always planned and desired to go back to school to become an engineer. The awning business was nothing more than a means to an end. Even at his middle age, quietly he had made plans to finally begin attending school at Colorado A&M next fall. In his case, it would always be next fall.

  Likewise, the business held little excitement for Lyle and Virginia. The Depression had thrown them into a similar predicament as Paul’s family. Lyle, Virginia, and Paul’s father had been childhood friends. The Depression had made them part of an extended family. Paul’s father had applied what little capital he had to opening the business, and Lyle and Virginia agreed to work there for a modest salary and split of the profits. The relation had carried them through some rough times, but everyone, except Paul, understood the business was due for change, to grow into something new or die.