Locked Secrets
I’d just received my school’s math prize and my Uncle Jimmy, after handing me a twenty dollar bill, had, in his usual self-effacing manner, proclaimed that I must have gotten my smarts from him. “How is it that you are both the pretty one and the smart one in your family?” He teased. My sister Eleanor was out of the room at the time. If she’d been there and I hadn’t, he would have been proclaiming her the prettiest. We all knew this about our uncle. He adored us, and was not above flattery in revealing the fact.
This time, however, he had overlooked both the precociousness and competitiveness of my two-and-a-half-year-old youngest sister, Stephanie.
“Elebben, eight, twenny, fiteen,” she recited proudly!
“Well, forgive me, Missy. Aren’t you a smart young lady, knowing how to count?” He reached into his lumpy pocket and tossed her a nickel. Amazingly, she caught it. Perhaps she was going to be the first athletic one in the family.
“Fohty-two!” she exclaimed proudly. “free, sebben-elebben, one, one, one.” This time he extracted his wallet, took out a one-dollar bill and handed it to her. Putting his wallet back in his back pocket, he turned one side pocket inside out. “But that’s it, Teffie. No more money. If you want to go on counting, it will have to be for free.”
His other pocket still bulged with its contents: coins, a rubber ball to throw for our dog Pudge, oatmeal cookie bits in a small plastic bag–also for Pudge. My Uncle Jimmy always proclaimed that doggie treats were a real gyp and that no self-respecting dog would perform for such a dry, tasteless mouthful. So, he preferred to bake his own dog treats.
My sisters and I agreed, and sometimes we would perform, hoping to be rewarded with one of Pudge’s treats. We were all constantly performing for our uncle, whom we adored. He was the one person who paid more attention to us than to our parents when he visited. He was our favorite babysitter, and our parents’ favorite as well, as he always waved away payment.
He would take us to Fern’s Cafe for strawberry malts, greasy hamburgers and mashed potatoes and gravy, since Fern didn’t have a French fryer. He took us for wild rides over cow pastures in his beat up old red Ford pickup. Once he took us to a matinee cartoon show in Pierre, sixty miles away, and got us home and in bed again before my folks got home. We were sworn to secrecy and so far as I know, none of us ever told. I know for sure I didn’t. My Uncle Jimmy had my undying loyalty. I would have borne torture before giving away any of his secrets.
Sadly, Uncle Jimmy died during one of those wild rides across the South Dakota prairie. This time he was flying solo over a dam grade and veered too far to the right, rolling the pickup. He drowned trying to get out of the passenger door, the pickup mired driver-side down in the mud at the bottom of the dam. We had always felt like such ladies as Uncle Jimmy graciously got out of his pickup to personally open the door from the outside for us. We didn’t know then, as we know now, that it was a peculiarity of that door that it would only open from the outside.
“Thank God the girls weren’t with him,” my mother sobbed to my father, as they sat side-by-side at the kitchen table, my dad’s arms around her. It was past midnight, and they were sitting in that room furthest away from our bedrooms, thinking we wouldn’t hear her sobs. But, unable to sleep, we had stolen out to the living room to listen––all consumed by that missing of Uncle Jimmy that would last our whole lives.
“Oh, he never would have driven that wildly if the girls were with him,” my dad said. But Eleanor and I and even Steffie just exchanged that look that we were to exchange so many times in our future lives together––that look that children exchange that would tell their parents that they know something their parents don’t know––if only their parents took the time to notice. Even Steffie understood. And Uncle Jimmy was right when he proclaimed her wise beyond her years. Even Steffie never told.
(This is a work of fiction.)
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Your Days are Numbered.” What’s the date today? Write it down, remove all dashes and slashes, and write a post that mentions that number.
Gosh! You had me reeled in. What a lovely story. Elebeen, one, one, fohty-two, what a smart pants. Truly a good evening’s read.
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Thanks, Jacqueline.
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Well done.
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Thanks, Roger.
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Oh! Well, you could have fooled me. Excellent!
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Me too, a lovely piece of writing!
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Bravo! We are clevah writers Judy. Thank you for sharing. The story does capture the reader’s interest and the spirit of children Easy as tree…fir…fly….sicks.
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Ha. Took me a minute to figure your last four words out…But I got it!!! I did wonder if a 2 1/2 year old would have learned numbers that high (even if not sequential) but decided this was a very smart 2 1/2 year old!
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Great story Judy. Totally believable so you really captured the essence of childhood and relationships with the favourite relative and then the sadness.
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Thanks, Irene. Don’t writers piss you off? They are willing to sacrifice a happy ending for an effective one!
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It was a great one.
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This is a great read!
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Thanks, Joni. I had fun writing it and the ending was a surprise for me, too.
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It seems you had us all fooled! You have a real talent for sounding authentic. I love this story, and Uncle Jimmy. He would have been too good to be true if it hadn’t been for his recklessness.
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He was a blend between my real Uncle Jimmy who was in his 90’s and whom I only met 2 or 3 times n my life and my cousin Jim who was at least 13 years older than me and who was already married when I was in grade school. It was my high school boyfriend, who died in the manner I attributed to Uncle Jimmy. (When I was in my 30’s and we were both married to other people.) The rest was all fiction. I do have two sisters, but I was the youngest and although we always wanted uncles and cousins, the ones we did have were living so far away that either we never met them or saw them only once or twice in our lives.
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I think most Uncle Jimmy types have some fatal flaw, don’t they?
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I guess if they weren’t a bit faulty the kids wouldn’t love them so much, because they wouldn’t be so much fun.
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Absolutely right, Jane!!!
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You had me! I thought you were really talking about a family member! (I finally figured out the only way to get your blogs was to tell the WP gods to send them immediately! I’ve got a couple others I’ve gotta go fix now. And someone is having the same problem with mine.)
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There can be these glitches in WordPress. At different times, all of my comments I’ve made have gone into bloggers’ trash. Now seems to be okay…Happy to be read by you, Clen!!!
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