(This story has a curious element. I posted it a while ago, but took a chance on asking Claude and ChatGPT to give me their thoughts. They caught a few typos; ChatGPT got the language Wilkerson would use, while Claude wanted a bigger edit that I think diluted the story. Chat agreed with me. Neither rewrote passages but did ask to clarify some lines and suggested a few changes that I think worked. Frightening to be honest. As good as a real editor? I’m now sure, but here’s Chat’s generous assessment.
This has been one of the more satisfying collaborations I’ve had.
You’ve done something that isn’t easy: you listened to criticism without becoming captive to it. That’s a rare skill. Every suggestion—mine, Claude’s, anyone else’s—you ran through the same filter:
Does this make the story better, or just different?
That’s the right question.
When we talk next, we’ll forget commas, em dashes, and “held” versus “retained.” We’ll put on a different hat entirely: literary agent/editor rather than editorial mechanic. That’s a much more enjoyable conversation.
One last thought before you send Wilkerson off into the world.
For a while you told me you were looking for “resonance.” I think you found it, but perhaps not in the way you expected. The story doesn’t resonate because of a clever ending. It resonates because, by the end, the reader realizes that Wilkerson has spent his whole life maintaining things—his house, his routines, his marriage, and his tree. The final image simply reveals what was there all along.
That’s the kind of story that tends to linger.
Enjoy the feeling for a day or two. Finishing a story well is rarer than starting one well.”
Over My Dead Body
Wilkerson went about his business, such as it was, which is to say not very much.
Wilkerson’s days were like that now. They had been for several years, in fact. His business was puttering about, extending the mundane into the profound.
Today it was changing the bulb on the outside post. That involved finding an incandescent 60-watt bulb—no easy task. He went to his hardware store and bought six—the entire stock. They were made by GE, at least; an American company, or what was an American company. That was important to Wilkerson.
He got home, put on his reading glasses, and saw they were made in China. Crap bulbs. Damn. Still, between finding them, getting the stepstool out, unscrewing the glass around the light, and replacing the bulb, he’d managed to use up more than three hours of his day. Not bad at all. Afterward, he went back to the routine: cheating on the crossword puzzle, griping about the latest snooze, posting long comments complaining about inept politicians, inane political correctness, and demanding to know whatever happened to real news. He’d look at his portfolio. Another couple of hours.
There was the nap in the ratty chair he refused to give up, which had crept up to a full hour. His eyes would close within 30 minutes of sitting down to read some variation of military history. Then he’d wake, make a second and final coffee of the day—20 minutes on his espresso machine—and head out, rain or shine, for a full hour’s walk; his cardiologist insisted on this. Add in six fitful hours of sleep plus two hours for meals.
The rest of the time was his.
Wilkerson was aware that all the time was his. “I still have most of my marbles,” he’d grouse. But it was a routine, a good routine that felt a lot like a comfortable job. The work was pleasant enough; things needed to get done. He had to eat. He even looked forward to the multitude of doctor visits to help plug the holes, sometimes literally, though mostly in his schedule.
It was a particularly wet day that got his brain working. An ice storm had blown in, knocking down trees and making the sidewalks effective skating rinks. He might have tested that theory, but a downed tree blocked the end of the driveway. Ribbons of yellow tape put up by the police warned of sagging power lines.
That put a crimp in the routine. Wilkerson didn’t much like crimps. They gave him too many hours to fill.
Freezing rain hit the windows like some annoying child throwing small stones. It had happened before in October. The house was on a small rise, a block off the Sound; they had a magnificent view from their bedroom’s terrace. “Widow’s walk,” he’d jest. “Widower’s walk,” was Vicky’s retort. Whenever a storm came in, they felt it. That morning, he had to force open the porch doors against the nor’easter’s blast. The wind had slammed the doors shut but Wilkerson was happy none of the glass panels had busted.
In his head, he heard the cliché, “The sea was angry that day.” That made him smile. Today, though, it was rather enraged. The tide was in and big waves, four-, five-foot breakers, were pounding the homes surrounding Beachside Cove.
He didn’t want the house. Who would want a house built before the Revolution? Who wants a house that experiences a 100-year storm every ten years? There was the cedar roof they had to replace as soon as they moved in. And that cracking clapboard, original to the house, and, oh, those ancient wavy-glass windows beckoned the cold wind in and the warm air out. At least that sump pump jury-rigged with “Property of the US Army” stenciled on it worked. It lasted into Nixon’s second term, which wasn’t too bad.
But Vicky loved it from the moment they’d walked in. What was it, fifty years ago? She loved it every time a repairman came in to reveal something else that needed desperate fixing. It was almost a script. “Mrs. Wilkerson, could you come here for a minute?” they’d say. “I can’t believe it lasted this long!”
“It’s a magical home,” she’d say. “It’s been here forever. We’ll be here forever.” Only it wasn’t we who were there now: just Wilkerson and his memories.
That stormy day, in the knotty-pine den, he looked for something to do. He tried to log onto his computer, but the storm must have smashed the lines. There were books, hundreds of them. He scanned the dusty shelves and focused on the faded gilt on the spine of one, Twice-Told Tales by Hawthorne. He shook his head. All the books had been twice told at least. He wasn’t in the mood for a third telling.
Wilkerson wondered what Vicky would do. Cook, likely. She loved cooking. He aspired to being an adequate cook, but nowhere near Vicky’s level. For a while he tried the discipline of three new recipes a week—adding several hours to the routine—from one of her folders filled with pages cut from magazines and newspapers. The three slipped to two, two to one, and one morphed into the convenience of the hot food and salad bar at a local market.
Vicky would have picked up a book. She loved her ghost stories. In those last years, she couldn’t remember what she’d read. It gave the book a second life in her only one. Sometimes she’d say, “I think I read this.” She’d put the book down, and Wilkerson would imagine a glimpse of light. Later, though, it would be back on her lap, and she’d say something like, “Have you ever heard of Sherlock Holmes? You would love this.”
“When you’re done,” he’d respond. “When you’re done.”
And too soon, she was done.
Wilkerson didn’t want to read. Cooking for one wasn’t any fun, and as much as it filled time, he hated doing dishes. A walk was out of the question. It was a day like this, the sidewalks slick with the scum of another ice storm. Vicky had been dusting the same spots she’d already dusted; she may have forgotten, probably had forgotten. When he told her she had already dusted those spots, she looked confused, then frightened, and asked who he was. He told her with infinite patience that he was her husband, that they’d been together fifty years, and pointed to the photos on the mantle she’d been dusting. Her eyes smiled at the photos of the kids. “Oh, of course I know that. Just teasing, silly.”
Then she looked outside and commented that the kids would be home from school soon; classes would close early given the weather.
Their 40-something kids lived in Sodom and Gomorrah. Sodom was New York; Wilkerson had worn the same Red Sox cap since Yastrzemski played. Enough said. But the daughter married a guy who wouldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Or visiting. Christmas cards always ended with “We’d love to see you soon soon soon!”
Gomorrah was San Francisco, where his son lived with Julian. Wilkerson never could quite manage calling Julian his son-in-law. He figured he might come around. Eventually.
Who would he introduce them to, anyway? Wilkerson didn’t know many people in the town nowadays. The neighbors were all city folk from—who knows where. They’d show up some weekends and for a bit in the summer, too. But friends slinked away when Vicky got sick. That happens when the social one goes first. Bah, Humbug.
He should have salted the walk that day. Then maybe he’d have seen Vicky walk out. He could have stopped her before she got to the sidewalk, before she fell, before she broke her hip. He told the EMTs she couldn’t have been out there, on the ground, very long. But her busted watch, the fancy one he’d bought when she turned 50, had stopped at 1:23, right around the time he fell asleep rereading Philbrick’s Mayflower. The knock on the door woke him.
They didn’t need to tell him that hip fractures in the elderly weren’t good. Vicky wasn’t that old; 80 being the new 70 and all. But what with the fracture, time on the cold ground — the EMTs arrived at 3:11 — and, who knows, she’d probably been developing something all along, the pneumonia did her in. She didn’t seem to be aware of much between the dementia and morphine until that final morning. Her eyes lit up as she reached for Wilkerson’s hand. “We did okay, didn’t we, Will?” she said. He smiled. “We did just fine, just fine.”
“I wanted to hear you say it,” she said. And that was that.
The light flickered off. He had expected that. Ice caked everything. He could see the lines strain under the weight, thicker than a fire hose with the frozen bulk. When it ended, when the sun came out, the ice would sparkle from the branches, dropping chips of ice like falling diamonds. It would be beautiful, but that would have to wait.
As soon as his lights went, he heard the rumble and looked outside for the repair trucks. The rumble wasn’t from any trucks. The rumble was the sound of generators starting from some of the surrounding homes. They were empty this time of year. The neighborhood was deathly quiet in the off-season and unbearably loud in the on-season. He tried to remember who was still around. He came up with one name: his own.
Vicky had wanted a generator. He didn’t want to spend the money. He claimed a generator didn’t suit their ancient home and would be too loud anyhow. “People survived the Revolution in this house without power. If they can, we can,” he’d said. They got a woodstove. It was a soapstone thin. Held the heat. Suited the place. In the end, it cost nearly as much as a generator, as Vicky frequently reminded him. But it kept the old Cape warm, and in a pinch, you could cook on the top.
He wanted to get a fire going but hadn’t brought in any wood. What was in the pile out back was epoxied under the ice. For the moment, his own coat would have to keep him warm. He held his hand on the stove, half expecting some warmth. It had been a long while since he felt that. In the olden days, when the kids were small, when the electricity went out, they’d lay out sleeping bags in front of the stove. It was an indoor camping trip replete with hot chocolate, Jiffy Pop, and s’mores. They were good days, the very best.
It was the sound of breaking glass outside that roused him from such thoughts. The wind was bending the branches of the maple in front, shattering their casings of ice onto the ground. One branch had fallen, a huge one, and he worried about the tree itself. It wasn’t in good shape; an arborist had told him as much. He’d said it really needed to be taken down. The tree man said it would cost plenty, but, if Wilkerson didn’t mind, he’d keep the wood for his bowl-turning hobby and haul the rest for firewood. The tree, he figured, was maybe 250 years old—older than the house itself. It was there during the Revolution. It held swings for generations of kids. It shaded everyone who ever called the place home. And come the fall, its leaves burst into a bonfire which must have made everyone who lived beneath it cheer. It certainly did Vicky and Wilkerson. Didn’t it just? Then it would drop piles of leaves for kids to jump in. For him to burn until the town squashed that beloved practice. Environmentalists be damned.
And that tree man wanted to take it down! Over my dead body.
He eyed the falling ice. Funny that. It wasn’t melting off, hardly; it was getting colder. It was the wind now. Snow was blowing in, accumulating quickly. If his TV worked, he might have heard a blizzard was coming. But he knew one was on its way. A song came to mind, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
Wilkerson had to think twice. Had he said it aloud or just thought it? He didn’t say or think “thought it.” In his mind it was “thunk it.” He had a teacher who got him going on that. Fifth grade it was. Over seventy years before. He hadn’t “thunk” about her in eons. “There’s a fungus among us!” she’d say, a phrase he repeated in non sequitur fashion to moans and groans of those who’d heard him say it a million times before.
“I could use that wood,” he thunk. Yes, he could use it. There were enough snapped branches on the ground to get a decent fire going and that big one had split down the middle. Given the way they splintered, they were clearly dead. And if dead, they were dry. And if dry, they’d burn. They’d burn like damnation.
He started with armfuls of small branches. Kindling. Those were easy bundles he dropped in front of the woodstove. Bark broke off some; he’d have to vacuum, a task he despised as evidenced by the collection of dust around the house. Ah, he thought, I’m in luck! Without electricity, the vacuum would have to wait. He opened the stove door to see a generous mound of ancient ash. He would scoop it out with the aid of a metal shovel Vicky had insisted they buy with the stove. “In case we have to carry out live embers,” she explained. He complained about the added cost. He often complained about added costs. Now, he regretted giving her such grief. What cliché fit? Water under the bridge? Spilled milk? He settled on “don’t sweat the small stuff.” He had sweated small stuff too much.
Were the branches he lugged small stuff? No, he decided. He was sweating from the effort. If he stopped, he knew he’d get chilled. He’d need heat soon. The snow was growing deeper by the minute. If it wasn’t for his efforts, he’d have been cold already. And there was still that big branch to go.
He jammed the shovel into a convenient crack in the branch. The wood didn’t cooperate. The shovel stuck. With one boot on the branch, two hands on the shovel, and an octogenarian’s back, Wilkerson pushed and pulled. The shovel came free, the log split down the middle—why did he ever call it a branch?—and Wilkerson fell back, hard, onto the frozen ground.
Two thin arms helped him up. “That hurt,” he said, brushing off bits of bark and splinters clinging to his old hunting coat.
“Good God, man,” came the retort. “Aren’t you a bit old for this nonsense? And now, look at you, sweating…”
Wilkerson filled in the blank. “Like the proverbial pig!” he said.
“I was going to say, like a sinner in church,” she said. “But whatever suits you. Now go inside and warm up. I’ll make some cocoa. And, yes, you can have your whipped cream, no matter what that doctor says. A dash of rum never hurts either.”
“Wait,” he shouted. There was something he wanted to say. Something about the kitchen stove—the oven not working right—but he couldn’t get the words out.
“Well?” she said.
“I, uh, it slipped my mind. It was on the tippity-tip of my tongue, too.” He was embarrassed by this forgetfulness but proud of the tippity-tip-tongue-too phrase.
“If it’s important enough, it’ll come back,” she said. “Maybe a bit of sweeping will jog your memory.”
“What about the vacuum?” he said.
“We’re out of bags. We’ll go later to the hardware man in Cook’s Harbor. He’s open Saturday. And we need bulbs, while we’re at it. Roads will be salted by then,” she said. “Now get in that house before you catch your death.”
The line repairman just happened to look down from his cherry picker. Odd, he thought. That storm had dropped over two feet of snow, but that old maple tree’s branches had worked like an umbrella, keeping it to a few inches.
He could just make out a red and black plaid under the snow.