One Foot in the Grave J. Steven York Published by Tsunami Ridge Publishing at Smashwords Copyright 2010 J. Steven York 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 person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. One Foot in the Grave J. Steven York My foot troubles me these cold winter nights. The bunions throb, and the long, ragged nails click on the hardwood floor of this great empty house. It wasn’t always so. I remember my foot as it used to be, before I had it cut off. It was a good foot, well muscled, sleek of form, straight of toe, sculpted in asymmetrical beauty. It carried me through life in strong, purposeful strides. Then the day came, that dark and terrible day, when my foot, so perfect and wonderful, made a single misstep, and took my beautiful Betty from me. It was a cool morning at the end of summer, and the fog hung low over Puget Sound. We were camping at the state park, Betty and I, in the woods overlooking the beach. It was a beautiful place, the air sweet with evergreen, complimented by the tang of salt coming off the Sound. At the time, it was hard to believe that beautiful place had once been a military base, a place of war and killing, where great guns stood poised to rain on attackers with flaming death. But that had been nearly fifty years before, and those days were all but forgotten, marked only by a few overgrown bunkers, silent gun emplacements, and concrete mounds that covered underground chambers where shells and powder were once stored. We had seen the signs, of course, marking the old gunnery range. They warned that unexploded shells still might wait there, ready to explode with the slightest touch. But the threat had seemed distant, almost absurd, and the beach that way was so beautiful. Who knew how long the shell had waited there? Perhaps it had washed down from the eroded cliffs above, buried under a film of sand. Waiting. For my foot. I do not remember the explosion, or the terrible sound of it. I only remember flying, seeing the first patch of clear blue sky as the morning fog burned off. I remember the landing, something felt with the detachment of a bag of flour dropped to the kitchen floor. I remember looking at the dead and ruined face of my beloved Betty. Later, in the hospital, the doctors worked around the clock to save my foot, but there was only so much they could do. Cruel fate had taken my Betty from me. Let it take my foot too, foul betrayer that it was. “Cut it off,“ I told them. “Be done with it.” But it was not done, as I went back to our house alone, that huge and empty house, a cavern where only echoes lived. Winter came, and late at night, I heard the clicking of those toes, moving across my floor. At first, I thought my Betty had come back to me, and I rushed, as fast as my false foot and cane could take me, to the living room. There, I had put up the plastic Christmas tree her parents had given us, holly, candles, and stockings, in a mockery of my former life. Christmas time had been our favorite time of the year, our special time of togetherness and celebration. There was no joy in that room, no spirit of Christmas. But there, on the floor, by the piles of gifts from friends long ignored, was the living spirit of my departed foot. I screamed with horror, and stumbled back towards my room. I quickly fell, months of physical therapy forgotten, I crawled on my hands and knees like an animal. I scuttled to my room, slamming the door, throwing it shut, feeling the thick walnut against my back. I sat there on the floor, sobbing, trying to catch my breath. I thought I was safe. But then, outside the door, in the hallway, I could hear that sound. The sound of a single footstep. Each night it came, until Christmas eve. Then, and only then, it followed me to the door of my room, paused for a time, and then, walked away. Each year it came, as sure as Christmas carols and bell ringers at the mall. It was the one certainty in my life as other things crumbled away like plaster from a neglected building: my job, my friends, my family. There were no new presents under the dusty plastic tree, to join the ones unopened from years before. So it is each Christmas. So it is now. I see myself in the mirror in the hall, gaunt, unshaven, unrecognizable. Is this what I've come to? I make my way to the living room filled with grim determination. I can't go on. This is where it must end. I throw a log in the fireplace, light the kindling, and fan the reluctant flames, warming the bricks of the hearth for the first time in years. I stand before the fireplace, the flickering light of the fire the only light in the room, casting ghostly shadows on the faded wallpaper. But the real ghost has not yet arrived. Then I hear it, padding softly through the dining room. I feel my blood thundering in my ears, heart pounding my ribs like a forgotten prisoner, but I do not run. I stand and wait. Then I see it, coming out from behind the couch, twisted and scarred, a horrible parody of its former perfection. I want to turn my eyes away, but I do not. I look on my severed foot, feel my chest tighten, and the tears run down my cheeks like salty waves. "What do you want from me?" I cry. "What more can you want from me? You took her from me. You took my Betty from me. What else can you possibly want?" But I know there will be no answer. Feet cannot speak. I know now, that the answers must come from me. While the spirit of my severed foot seems to have a will of its own, it was not always so. A foot is slave to the leg, and the leg is slave to the body, and the body is slave to the mind, and, ultimately, the mind is slave to the heart. I see my foot in a different way, betrayed and alone. What can it want from me? Forgiveness? I know now that there is nothing to forgive. What can it want? Then my hand falls on the stocking, hanging empty from the mantel. I caress the soft felt and fur of it with my fingertips, and I understand. I take it down from its perch and lower it gently to the floor. I open the top, and the foot comes closer, like a lost puppy, eager, but also afraid. In hesitates but for a moment, and then it squirms inside. A peace comes over me. I sit before the hearth, my feet warming before the crackling fire. I do not remember the last time I was content. In the shadows of the corner, I think I can see poor, lost, Betty watching us, and she is smiling. About the author: Email Steve at J-Steven-York@sff.net, or follow him on Facebook (J Steven York) or Twitter (@JStevenYork) Look for more great books at WWW.TsunamiRidge.com Look for more books and stories from Steve, coming soon!