Dirty Old Man

By R. A. Carter-Squire

Roy Corwin, a simple man, a widower, retired. A life lived with purpose, but don't ever call him a Dirty Old Man. Roy loved Halloween. He treated it as the most special night of the year, next to Christmas Eve. Decorations, spooky stories, kids dressed as ghosts and goblins running from house to house collecting enough candy to satisfy any sweet tooth for a year. That's what he thought until this year. Roy, a decorated Vietnam veteran, lives alone in his childhood home in a neighborhood where the only other occupied house belongs to a drug lord. Two foes united by differing memories of Halloween, a visit from a lost friend. Years of savagery in the jungles of a foreign country, struggling with the loss of his wife, and living with the stigma of a slanderous dark story from his past, have pushed him to the brink on this All Hallow's Eve. Roy is taking back his self-respect.

• Language: English
• Publisher: R. A. Carter-Squire
• Release date: Jan 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463013724

R. A. Carter-Squire

Married with children. My wife and I live in Manitoba, Canada. Writing has become my passion because the words can make pictures that others have never seen.

Book preview

Dirty Old Man

R.A. Carter-Squire

Copyright @ 2016 R.A. Carter-Squire

All Rights Reserved

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

About the author

Chapter 1

The day before Halloween was warm as he shuffled along the broken sidewalk. This being the time of year he enjoyed the most. The smell of burning leaves floating on the crisp air. Children laughing as they raced back to school. He smiled remembering the long-forgotten years of his youth. Running along these same sidewalks with his friends, dressing up in scary costumes for school, but most of all the gathering candy at every house—oh, those days were wonderful.

Not now, though. The smile had faded from his face. The days of running were gone. He could barely make it all the way to the grocery store anymore without stopping to rest. His left hand shifted the bag of food to his right. The neighborhood had changed, too.

When he and his parents moved into the area in 1949, the houses were new. Fresh plaster, lush green grass, every home had a white picket fence. His sad eyes looked at the boards on the fence he was walking past. Paint peeled on most of them; many of the pickets went missing long ago. The house wasn’t much better.

The porch sagged at an awkward angle, a few of the windows were covered in plywood, and the brown grass stood waist high. Disgusted, his sad eyes stared ahead to his own yard. The fence was in good shape, but he’d needed to do something with the paint on the siding—it was looking a little miserable. He stopped to lean on the peeling fence. The thing that made him the saddest about this neighborhood was the lack of children.

Drugs had destroyed it as surely as weather did paint. Drug dealers or gangs used half the houses on this street as hangouts, including the one he stood in front of now. Families didn’t stay long around places that could harm their children. The school on the next block closed four years ago; the streetlights only worked when it was raining.

Hey, you, dirty old man, get off my fence.

A guy stood in the open door of the slumping porch. Dressed in a dirty, torn t-shirt and drooping boxer shorts, his stomach bulged over spindly legs. He was holding an open can of beer in one hand and a small pistol in the other. A stub of a cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth.

The old man smiled and began to shuffle away, not wanting any trouble. His days were numbered anyway. He’d been to the doctor last week and got the news today. Cancer, but not just a simple tumor, no, he had to go all the way. Bone cancer, which had already spread to his brain. The doctor said he had about two weeks to get his affairs in order. Sixty-seven years was not enough time to have a life.

My name is Roy Corwin, asshole. I’ve lived in this area longer than you’ve been alive. Get my affairs in order, ha. I have a house, my parents’ house, but when I married Matilda, we took it as our own. What would she think of me now?

Roy and Matilda didn’t have any children, but many of the kids on the street became like their own. The Thomson twins at the corner would spend Saturdays with him in the garage building stuff. He’d shown them how to construct ships in a bottle, go carts, airplane models, and fixed their bikes. There was Becky Grant across the back lane. She’d lost her father when she was six, adopting him as her male parent.

Maybe that was the start of his new name. Rumors started by that busybody, Nancy Stanfield, across the street. She was a spinster but figured she knew what was best for everyone. Matilda didn’t like her and would go out of her way to provoke the woman. One day, she went to the mailbox in a skimpy nightgown to retrieve the paper, waiting until she saw Nancy’s face peeking out the curtains on her front window. Three days later, a woman from the PTA called to suggest that for the good of the children, it might be appropriate for Matilda to wear a housecoat.

Bitch... He glanced at her house while opening the gate to his front yard. The place was vacant now. Boarded up just waiting for some vagrant to get inside and light the place on fire. Graffiti scrawled across the front of the house indicated which gang was in charge on this block. He closed the gate and moved slowly up to his front entrance. The key clattered against the lock until he finally hit the hole and opened the door. Turning, Roy gave Nancy’s house one last look before shutting off the view. She didn’t decorate at Halloween either. Hated kids, Matilda thought. They never saw any lights on at that house on All Hallow’s Eve, ever.

The air inside his living room smelled of fried cooking and old socks. Once he would have cared, but not now. He moved through to the kitchen and emptied the bag of groceries into the fridge. Three apples, a loaf of bread, and a carton of milk sat together on the top shelf. Twenty-three dollars and all he purchased were five items. He hadn’t had any meat in a month or more.

He sighed and closed the door. Walking back to the living room, he restarted his memories of the holiday. His parents enjoyed dressing up with him and his sister. They went out as the Addams family one year when he was ten. Dad was over six feet tall and his mother had long black hair she’d spent hours braiding. They died when he was eighteen, and his sister went to live with his aunt.

Roy switched on the television and sat in his easy chair as a commercial came on about adult diapers. The noisy truck from