This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Also by Don P. Bick
Novels
In The Next Life
The Dragon is Awake
Latitude 37
Lotus Isle: Book I - Key the First: The Vulcan’s Price
Lotus Isle: Book II - Key the Second: The Giver of Life
Memoir
The Boy Died In Vietnam
Short Stories
Ashes
I Await
Time Capsule
New Life - A Collection of Love
Essays
Life after Death?
Other
In Our Dream
Author’s Note:
Table of Contents
1. Out of the Ashes
2. Stitches
3. Poverty
4. Meringue
5. Pumpkins
6. About the author
Out of the Ashes
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The house had been in the family since the mid 1800’s. It had been home to more generations of Talbots than I ever knew or heard tell of in my long life. The vast lands on the estate flourished with several crops during the last century alone. Cotton was a big one for a long time, and yes there were slaves here in the early decades. Then the plantation grew tobacco and after that it was corn. Now the fields are barren. And the estate is much smaller now, parts of it having been sold off over the years. It pains me to sell it but that is what I am about this morning, planting a ‘for sale’ sign in a visible place along the highway.
I am an old man now, the last of the Talbots. I don’t have anyone to leave the old place to. My only son died during the Vietnam War and a dozen years ago my wife didn’t wake up one morning. The doctor said her heart had stopped during the night. What am I going to do with the place at my age? I live in New York now and haven’t even been down here for going on 20 years. I keep the taxes paid up and that is about it. There isn’t any other maintenance on the property. The fields have long overgrown and to my amazement there are some fairly large trees growing all over what is left of the estate. I guess 20 years is a long enough time for that to happen.
After I get the sign in the ground where I want it, I decide to take a walk through the gate and up the driveway to where the house once stood. It was a nice day so there isn’t any need to bother driving the car that short ways. I don’t move too fast anymore, the fresh air and exercise would do me good. This was probably the last time I would get the chance to look at the old estate. So I set off at a leisurely pace toward the old home site.
I didn’t feel like working through a realtor. Anyone that called on my sign can look at the estate for themselves without anyone having to show it to them. The boundaries were well marked with old stone walls and fencing on the outskirts of the overgrown fields. The plantation, which once totaled over 5 thousand acres, consisted of little more than 100 now. There was a subdivision to the south and a large corporate vegetable farm to the north. The west side was bordered by the highway and a muddy river closed the property in on the east side.
As I made my way up the drive, now overgrown with weeds since it has never been paved, I can’t help but remember how the old place looked when I was a boy. I was born in the house here. In fact, I spent my first 12 years on the old plantation. My father was off to war when the fire happened. I awoke in the middle of the night, my room filled with smoke and my mother screaming in the upper master bedroom. She didn’t make it out in time. My room was on the ground floor and I was able to quickly scurry out the window, which was already open. I tried to get back into the house through the front door to help my mother and the two servants that were still trapped inside, but it was no use. The fire had overtaken the entire house and flames were everywhere. I burned myself pretty badly on my right side, but I wasn’t able to get in to help anyone. All I could do was listen to their screams for help, until all went quiet.
I cried for my mother and I cried for the two servants, which I had grown quite fond of over the years. They were like members of the family. But most of all I cried for myself. There weren’t any living relatives that I had ever heard of and I didn’t know what was going to happen to me. There wasn’t any way of knowing if my father would make it back from the war and if he did, when?
That was a long time ago, and yet I still felt a tear roll down my cheek as I thought about the events of that terrible night and the screams I could do nothing about.
My father did return from the war a short time later and learned of the horrible tragedy. He didn’t live much longer after that, only 2 years. He loved my mother so much I think his heart just couldn’t stand living without her. He no longer had any interest in living. She and the estate had been his entire life and now it was all gone. I turned 16 the week of my father’s funeral.
During the time my father was fighting in the Pacific I was placed in a state home until he returned. Nobody knew what else to do with me. It wasn’t so bad, actually. I made some pretty good friends there, many remained close for a long time afterward. When my father came to get me he looked like he had aged 20 years since I had last seen him. He rented a small place not too far from the estate and we lived there until his death. After he died, I was again returned to the same state home where I had spent time earlier. Like I said it wasn’t so bad, all things considered. I already had lots of friends there and was accustomed to daily life in the old building. But I do have to admit I was lonely and missed my family, especially living on the plantation.
While I lived on the old estate I had lots of chores to do, even though we had servants. I was to learn later that the family didn’t really have much money and depended on the crops to get through each winter. As a result we were always short of help and it was my duty to work around the place, no different than if I was one of the hired workers. But when I wasn’t working the large property was a paradise for a young boy like me. I could go swimming in the river on hot days. I also had a fort in one of the large trees in the southeast corner of the estate. I had built the private hideaway all by myself and I would spend hours up in that small place, sometimes reading and sometimes just daydreaming.
Even back then most of the original estate had already been sold off. When my life got to be too much and I began to miss my previous life I would hitch a ride out to the old plantation and spend time in my fort or rummage through the ashes of the burned out house. I found an old silver dime one time and that find kept me digging through the charred wood hoping to find another. I had no idea if there was ever really anything in the house that was all that valuable. Some of the old paintings and the like probably were but there wasn’t anything left of those things anymore. In fact, the house burned so completely I don’t think there was a thing that could be salvaged from the damage. The old wood burned hotter than a firecracker on the fourth of July and in no time there wasn’t anything left but cinders and a few large pieces of charred timber.
One day while I was rooting around in what used to be the basement cellar I heard a metal ping from the pipe I was using to move around ashes. I had struck the ground beneath the remains of a charred wooden beam. The basement had been dirt but a portion of the floor had been covered with boards
that were crudely fashioned from the pine trees that grew in the area. I hit the same spot again and the sound of clanging metal filled the air. There hadn’t been anything in the basement that I recalled made of metal. It was mainly used for vegetables, potatoes and such, so I assumed something from one of the floors above fell down as the house was being destroyed. But being the curious boy that I was I had to investigate.
Quickly, I cleared the rubble away from the site and to my amazement I discovered a metal door about two feet square. And to my further astonishment I saw that it was pad locked with a heavy duty lock. It was still locked, which told me that no one had disturbed the door since the fire. The door had been under the portion of the floor where the pine flooring had been. I certainly didn’t know there was any door like this in the basement and I had been down here a million times.
Well, try as I might I couldn’t break the lock open with the pipe. I pounded on it