Gage (Men of Honor 1)

I was eighteen and looking down the long barrel of despair when my life changed. Grandma had finally drank herself to death the old bitch and low and behold a long lost great aunt had rolled into town in her fancy chauffeur driven car for the funeral. Until that day I never even knew I had a great aunt Marsha on account of she’d shaken the dust of the town off her feet years before, leaving her only sister and the small town life behind.

Apparently aunt Marsha had used education as her way out and never looked back. As the story goes she’d gained a full scholarship to some fancy Ivy league school where she’d used her smarts and beauty to land herself a real wealthy man from a good family and with the story of having been orphaned at a very young age had cut off all ties to everyone and everything she’d left behind in Crothersville.

The fact that she had a mother a sister and a newborn niece didn’t seem to matter, she wrote them off for dead and never looked back. At least that’s the story momma said grandma told. But until that day when I stood over the dirt mound that marked the spot where grandma had been laid I never even heard so much as a peep about her.

I’d been fascinated, along with the handful of people in attendance, mostly drunks and the obscure unwashed denizens of the town that seemed to be the only ones willing to keep company with grandma until she passed.

“Who’s that momma?” I whispered the words in awe to my mother who stood next to me gawking at the woman as she made her approach. Her squeal of ‘Aunt Marsha’ had made my heart jump in my chest. I couldn’t believe that the beautiful well put together woman was my kin.

She looked like something from one of the magazines I’ve been mooning over since I was twelve. Compared to my mousy brown hair and acne scarred face her blonde beauty was outstanding. It would be hard pressed to believe that we could’ve come from the same bloodline.

I’d inherited daddy’s looks and none of his money which as far as I’m concerned was the first injustice I’d faced in my nondescript life. Even momma wasn’t a bad looking woman as was evident by the line of men who still came sniffing around our trailer for her favors.

But she’d not passed on any of her charms to her only daughter. I’d always been the gawky, awkward ugly duckling that the kids at school had found such pleasure in calling me, but this woman before me in her designer pumps and the little black suit with the cream silk blouse beneath was of my blood. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen outside of a magazine.

She’d smelt like a million bucks and I imagined she smelt the way all wealthy people do. She’d given momma a forlorn look and barely acknowledged her as she made her way to the grave. I’d tried my best to disappear into the tree behind me when she turned her attention my way not willing to be the brunt of yet another human being’s dismay and condescension.

She hadn’t said anything to anyone, just stood there looking down before tossing the lone rose in her hand on top of the pine box that served as grandma’s final home. Then she’d turned to momma, “You’re Sherry I suppose!” Momma had been star struck and had only nodded her head with her mouth hanging open, no doubt already well into the first fifth of gin for the day.

Then her eyes had fallen on me before turning away again. “I’ll see you back at the trailer.” And that was the day my life changed. I could never have imagined that grandma’s demise after a drunken fall down the stairs at the home she’d been cleaning for a living would bring me such luck.

That night the three of us sat around the old broken down table in the trailer, my new great aunt, momma and myself and it was obvious the other woman wanted out of there. She kept looking at me while speaking to momma who was eating her up with her eyes like a long lost child who was starved for attention.

Once aunt Marsha learned that I was doing well in school she seemed to take a real interest in me, and though I wasn’t doing as well as momma let on, I knew to keep my mouth shut. It was a good thing too because it turned out that that was my ticket out of our one horse town.

I’d left with aunt Marsha the very next morning headed for her home in the Hollywood hills where she lived with her husband of more than thirty years in a house full of cats and dogs but no children.