Tales around the Coal-Burning Stove

By Michael Jerry Tupa

Who's to say whether fiction or non-fiction contain the greatest truths? Like the blind men each groping a different part of the elephant to try to describe the whole, so it might be that Frederick Langridge's great observation — "Two men look out through the same bars; One sees the mud, and one the stars" — is the axle around which turns individual perspective and hence individual variances in the ethereal realm lablled reality. It might be that short stories — of which this work is a compilation — told in the province of so-called make-believe, or, in some cases, blossoming out of the story of experiences, might more truly reflect better human foibles, weaknesses, strengths, shortcomings, comprehensions, flaws, love, judgement, epiphanies, inspirations, endurance, adaptability, hopelessness and hope than self-serving or limited histories, biographies, auto-biographies and commentaries. I pray that I have written something that might enrich, entertain or inspire readers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Jerry Tupa
• Release date: Jul 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005842147

Michael Jerry Tupa

A native Californian, I've resided in seven different states -- spread out from California to South Carolina -- as well as in Italy and stint in Japan (U.S. Marines).For more than 30 years I've worked as a newspaper journalist -- mostl of that time as a sports writer, although I also garnered significant experience as a police/courts beat reporter.More than three dozen of my poems have appeared in several different literary journals; I've also self-published four volumes of poetry/short stories. Some of my most cherished honors/accomplishments/opportunities is being the sports editor of a sports section twice named by the Oklahoma Press Association as the sports section of the year in our circulation division, receiving an honorable discharge from the Marines following four years of active duty, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree from Weber State, living nearly two years in Italy (church service) among the Italians and learning the language, interviewing a Native American U.S. Olympic champion, receiving the Joseph Orengo Annual Award for sportsmanship and sports contributions in Oroville, Calif.I've also won my age division (25-29) at a 5K run road race in Memphis, Tenn.; shook Ronald Reagan's hand in 1990; interviewed numerous pro and high-level college athletes, including at least two former Heisman Trophy winners (Archie Griffin and Jason White); written a full-length history of American Legion Baseball in Bartlesville, Okla.; and enjoyed numerous other once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to interview some of sports' most significant personalities from the past half-century.

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Tales Around the coal- Burning Stove

By Michael Jerry Tupa

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2020 Michael Jerry Tupa

Smashwords Edition, License notes:

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Note:

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, buisness, events and incidents are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual Persons, Living or Dead, or actual Events is purely coincidental, other than passing references to historic films and well-known entertainment stars.

Table of Contents

Late Blooming

The Candle and the Smile

The Loan

Blossom of the Wilted Rose

A Long Night

Wide Asleep

The Longest Tear

Thanks Again

Bird of a Different Feather

Through My Brother's Eyes

About The Author

Late Blooming

— By Michael Jerry Tupa

Love came early to Gladys that winter.

While turmoil flooded the rest of the world, threatening to bury mankind in a slimy deluge on which no ark would float, love came to Gladys.

You wouldn’t have known Gladys if you saw her shuffling along the downtown sidewalk, seeking solace in the shadows of the buildings which crowded her way.

You couldn’t have known the color of her pale blue eyes or seen the dimple in her right cheek if you’d walked by her a hundred times.

All you would have seen is the top of her graying-brown hair and a shy ear coyly trying to capture the passing traffic sounds without being found out. Ah, but Gladys had a big heart.

It spanned the length and breath of human warmth and matched the soaring height of quiet human kindness - a towering summit exceeding the view of those selfish creatures who never once in their lives climbed the hill of compassion or carried another’s burden.

Gladys was an artist. But, you wouldn’t have known it.

Her fellow cleaning ladies knew it?

Yes, they did. They knew of the beauty that flowed from those small fingers onto a lonely canvas or a timid plain piece of paper while she sketched the faces of the loved ones of her co-workers, usually from a photo.

Even the dazzling loveliness of Freya, in all her fetching vanity, would have bowed its head in blushing shame to the unspoiled splendor of Gladys’ drawings. They found honored spots on the walls of the humble cottages of her fellow cleaning ladies, each one made more resplendent by the love she poured into her works.

Wanda was one of Gladys’ biggest friends and her chief admirer.

She and Al picked Gladys up at her little brown house nearly every day to take her to work.

You should see some of Gladys’ drawings, the bespectacled Wanda told Karlene, shortly after the latter came to work at the bank.

In a few days, Gladys asked Karlene to bring photos of her son and daughter.

Oh, these are lovely children, said Gladys, a touch of redness coloring her cheek as she gingerly took them from Karlene’s hands. I’ll take care of your pictures.

She brought them back three days later, along with the sketches.

These are lovely, said Karlene. I’ll treasure these the rest of my life.

And, she did. I know.

Many of Gladys’ other co-workers also promised they would cherish her works of love the rest of their lives.

Rumor is that even after 40 years some of her art still decorated the living rooms of her former companions, treasured more than if Rembrandt, himself, had fulfilled the commission.

And, her laugh.

Perhaps you’ve known someone with a laugh like Gladys.

It was more like an enthusiastic snort, the kind someone gets when they get soda pop in their nose, followed by a rippling and soothing chuckle, not unlike the song of river water brushing past moss-covered stones on a calm spring day.

How could Gladys help but being lonely, even as December frost painted traffic posts white every late afternoon as she scurried to the bank at closing time to start cleaning.

True, true, she lived with her elderly mother. And, then there were the long weekly bus trips to visit a loved one permanently entrusted to institutional care — a duty of love of which she barely ever mentioned and never with any detail.

But, loneliness is seldom found in the absence of companions or company alone.

Some of the happiest people in the world unlock the door to a dark apartment every night, eat their meals in solitude and never hear another human voice inside their four walls.

Some of the loneliest can be found in the bosom of the crowd, rubbing shoulders with everyone, but never touching another’s heart while their own longing hopes remains unharvested.

I don’t remember exactly when Guy came to work at the bank.

If there ever was a rougher, gruffer character who wore a security guard’s uniform, please tell me so I will rob another bank, if I ever choose to foster the fine art of felonious pursuits.

No English bulldog ever had half as reason to puff up its chest to full manliness with such a pugnacious mug.

Guy presided at his tall desk near the elevator like a scowling magistrate.

In short, the cleaning ladies had no other option in reaching their appointed floor than by first passing by His High Lord Expropriator of the Elevator, unless of course they scaled the outer walls of the edifice or sprouted wings.

And, since the equipment on Gladys’ cleaning cart included neither rappelling equipment nor feathers, she had no option but to take the elevator. The course of her timid life’s journey was destined to intersect with Guy’s plodding path.

Who are you, Guy barked the first time Gladys tried to sneak by his desk, her head down as if her eyes were counting the waves in each dingy yellow square of tile.

The head lifted up, followed by two blinking but calm circles of blue, as soothing as a rippled lake at sunset.

Or, so Guy thought as he studied her freckles and the obstinate curl which rebelled from it fellow curls and curved across her forehead.

I’m Gladys, she said softly as a bird’s snore.

My name’s Guy, he grunted back, not unkindly.

It’s for such encounters Cupid gets up in the morning and polishes his arrows and tightens his bow.

It’s child’s play for Cupid to make the young fall in love. They are already inclined in that direction, being propelled by the dual tempests of nature and adventure and made willing by the deceiving calm of youthful foolish optimism.

Heaven bless it, may it ever be so!

But, to get back to my point, Cupid’s trade is love. And, like the true tradesmen, he derives the greatest pleasure from the greatest challenge.

At the end of that first introduction, explain to me if you will why Guy the Impenetrable climbed off his high seat, walked to the elevator, pushed the button, waited for it to arrive, waited for Gladys to arrive, motioned her in, pushed her cart inside and mumbled Bye.

Had any of Gladys’ garbage can emptying, desk-dusting, vacuum-cleaning companions witnessed these acts of kindness, they might have suggested someone call a doctor to examine him.

Surely, he must have been running a temperature.

Why else did he hum an old love song as he climbed back on his seat or have his mouth frozen in a half-grin as the store managers stepped inside the double-doors to toss their money sacks into the night depository.

No one really can explain how Gladys came to fall in love with Guy.

Or, how Guy came to fall in love with Gladys.

Or, how they came to fall in love with each other.

But, they did.

They did as certainly as birds play catch-me-if-you-can while riding the gusts of an April dusk or as a baby’s eyes light up when they see his mother’s smile.

How Guy asked Gladys to marry him, I’ll never know.

I wasn’t there.

I wish I had been.

How she spoke loud enough for him to say yes, I have to strain my imagination.

But ask and say yes they did.

Some marvel at the miracles of turning water into wine or the parting of great seas, walking on water or the flight of a bumblebee as the crowning achievements on the assembly line of marvelous prodigy.

I would think the welding of two unique and complex personalities into a singular purpose, which previously had long stumbled along their own separate and rocky trails, as among the most-difficult blueprints to be acted on by the dispenser of the truly wonderful.

In short, they were married two days before Christmas.

Happy?

If one can judge the most-difficult attempt of a half-smile by Guy when he saw Gladys and the darting in-and-out twinkle in his eyes — although you’d have to look quickly to observe it — and the shy glow which lightened Gladys cheek when Guy was around, yes they were happy.

Karlene and Wanda and the rest of the colleagues chuckled, good-naturedly, to see how Guy held the heavy front door open for her.

In many ways, she was the same Gladys.

But those who knew her saw the light of springtime which softened her face with the morn of new hope.

She continued to draw.

She continued to clean.

Mostly — and more importantly— she continued to love.

With hands and hearts joined as one, Gladys and Guy celebrated that Christmas and that New Year’s and the next Thanksgiving — especially Thanksgiving — together.

No newlywed couple of the fairer-hair set enjoyed each sunset morn.

Guy the Bulldog became Guy the Less Bulldog.

All seemed well.

And as it should have been.

And, God Bless It, it would have been, if not for The Cough.

Guy’s cough got worse. But, with their second Christmas together approaching, he developed a taste for throat medicines and an addiction to cough drops.

Guy, you’ve got to go to the doctor about that, Gladys said one morning following a latest round of hacking. I’m worried about you.

Oh, it’s okay, he mumbled back. I’ll be fine. What’s for breakfast?

But, two weeks later, the proud newlywed relented and made an appointment with Dr. Green.

It seemed an endless round of tests, blood pressure readings, probing, visits and throat examinations for Guy.

He never went alone.

Gladys held his hand to the office. She held it on the way home.

She was holding it when the news came.

Guy was sick. He was going to die.

I could describe those last weeks of pain and courage by each partner, Guy trying to easy Gladys’ concern and she comforting his troubled heart and bringing him meals and water and writing letters and calling old friends and washing his clothes and fixing his favorite food and kissing him good-bye every time Wanda and Al’s car pulled up front to take her to work.

Oh, how those nights dragged by, as she, now and then, stared out from the 10th floor toward home and worried and wondered.

And wept.

She would hurry into the door every night and find Guy up and waiting.

How was your night, honey, he asked, forcing himself to get out the full sentence without coughing.

Oh, it was fine, dear, she said, grabbing his hand and stroking it while he suppressed another gasp and smiled.

They say he died smiling.

No one ever asked Gladys.

The funeral went quickly.

Just Wanda and Al and Karlene and two other security guards and a couple of cleaning ladies and a smattering of friends were there.

Wanda buttoned up her coat at the graveside.

The air had turned chilly again in the shadow of another approaching Christmas.

Another time of joy and carols and loved ones being together and little children wandering through Christmas tree lots pretending they were lost in a great forest.

While happiness and anticipation clouded the atmosphere like a fog of love and hope, Gladys walked the streets alone.

Again.

Head bowed and eyes down, same as before.

Shuffling walk.

Same as before.

But, in her heart, she carried a smile.

For she had known love.

Though