Chapter 10

     The Western Auto Store was new and exciting.  Our new house was nice, and we could ride our bikes all over the neighborhood.  There were lots of other kids in the neighborhood and our first year there was good.  

     Marshall and Shirley started having their occasional blow ups which were terrifying at times.  But the school was nice and all in all I enjoyed Fort Scott, until…

     One evening we were putting together a circular puzzle of the United States’ Presidents when Marshall got a call.  By the look on his face, I could tell it was bad.  The Western Auto Store had caught fire.  He left in a hurry, but the store was destroyed before he got there.  That was the end of the store for us.

     This was a very stressful time, and Marshall was at his worst.  Things went downhill fast.  I really didn’t know if they would make it through staying together.

     One time they were physically fighting when Jan and I were leaving for school, and we ran to the neighbors to ask for help.  They told us it would be ok, and we should just go on to school, while we could hear the yelling and screaming coming from the house.  We found out later that Shirley had to go the hospital to get stitches.

     Not too long after, Marshall found a job as an electrician at a coal mine and within a year or so took a position at another mine in Kentucky.

     One night, a couple of weeks before we moved, I had a dream.  In the dream a man was standing in front of a fireplace using a handmade crutch from a tree branch to hold himself up.  His back was to me at first but as I drew closer, he turned to me and it was like he knew me, and he seemed very familiar to me.  He smiled at me, and it looked like he was glad to see me.  He had on bloody bandages, and I could see he was in a lot of pain. 

     The fireplace was huge and blazing.  I just stood there for a few minutes trying to figure the man out and wondering what this dream was all about, not saying anything until the dream ended.  I knew by the dream that this all took place in the second story of a Civil War era hospital at the old fort.

     Right before we moved, we were driving by the Old Fort which was being rebuilt.  I asked which building was the hospital and it was pointed out to me, but it was only one story.  It made me wonder about the dream and if that was the hospital of my dream or not.  I felt like it was but it being only one story confused me. 

     We moved to Greenville, Kentucky and the first house we lived in was small and had a huge yard of a little over an acre, which took hours to mow.  We stayed there only a couple of months, but it was in the heat of a very hot summer.  Marshall and Shirley had bought a house and were just waiting for it to close so we could move in.

     The new house was great.  It was in a typical blue collar middle-class neighborhood.  We painted the whole inside of the house and I got to pick the color of my room, an awesome gold color which I really liked.  There were lots of kids and a vacant lot across the street that we used as our ball field.  A couple of blocks down was a huge field with a large hill we all used as a bicycle trail with lots of jumps. 

     I’ll never forget the house up the hill from us.  It was a very poor house.  It had a dirt floor.  The kids were poor but seemed happy.  It made me think of the house Marshall grew up in.

     We took trips almost every summer.  We went to Disneyworld in Florida, circumnavigating the state all the way to Key West, and we were there during Hurricane Agnes. 

     At one point, we were driving by Miami but didn’t stop.  An overwhelming feeling came over me like Miami Beach was really important to me and I asked if we could stop to see it, but we didn’t.

     We took a trip up through Pennsylvania to see Marshall’s sister and her husband at State College where he was a professor.  Then on to Washington D.C., where we saw a lot of the sites including the new Air and Space Museum, which Marshall loved, as did we all.

     At one point, when in Washington D.C., Shirley decided to take my picture and asked me to stand for it.  I did so but noticed a post a little over waist high next to me and decided to put my arm on it to frame the picture that way.

     Shirley got upset with me and told me to put my arm down.  I did so but almost immediately I felt someone from behind me take my arm and put it back on the post.  

     Then a voice said to me, “You can leave it there, it will be ok”.  

     Shirley yelled at me to put it down again, but I just stayed with my arm on the post.  She took the shot anyway but wasn’t very happy about it.

     I turned to look behind me to see who put my arm back on the post and there he was, in the spirit, the angel that had given me the sword and whom I referred to as the “Mr. Clean Angel”.  I knew right then he was my guardian angel and had been with me all along.

     I asked him, what was the deal with me leaving my arm on the post during the picture thing?  He told me that in twenty years I would understand.

     The windshield wipers were going just as fast as they could go.  The wind was howling, and flashes of lightning streaked across the sky.  My sister Jan and I were in the back seat of the family Cadillac while my cousin Greg drove, and Shirley worked the map from the passenger’s side.  We were just not that familiar with Kentucky and it was clear to me that we were lost.

     Caught in a tremendous downpour in unfamiliar territory had the tensions high, and I was starting to feel a strong sense of foreboding.  I ventured a request asking if we could just pull over.  “No” came from Shirley as Greg chuckled at my distress.

     This was more than a fright.  Everything in me knew we needed to stop the car.  I considered asking again but I doubted that it would help.  The foreboding built up within me and it was unshakeable.  I knew I would soon not be able to resist calling out.  Something was terribly wrong!

     “Stop the car!” exploded out of me about as loud as I could yell it! Greg slammed on the brakes cursing, and Shirley turned my way to express her displeasure, and I knew it was going to be harsh, so I braced for the slap that was sure to come.

     Suddenly, Greg started tapping urgently on Shirley’s shoulder and pointing out the front windshield.  She looked and just froze.  

     I cautiously scooted forward in my seat so that I could see.  Looking out over the hood of the car and following the headlights through the rain where the swollen river raged, I could see where the bridge was completely washed away leaving only the jagged edge of the road where the bridge had been.  

     We all sat and stared at the river rushing by, knowing that we would never have survived had we not stopped the car.  This was a clear brush with death.  

     Greg slowly backed up and turned the car around.  He just wanted to get out of there as quickly as he could.  I objected, stating that we needed to stay there in case another car came this way and ended up in the river as we had almost done.

     Just then, a pair of headlights appeared coming our way; and soon an officer’s car pulled up beside us.  He had been sent to check on the bridge. He pulled up beside us, seeing the bridge was out.

     Greg briefed him on our experience and asked for directions out of there.  The officer provided us with the directions, and we left.