"The Consummate Gentleman" (StoryADay Challenge/Day 12)

THE PROMPT (Windy Lynn Harris is a prolific writer, a trusted mentor, and a frequent speaker at literary events. Her long list of short stories and personal essays have been published in literary, trade, and women’s magazines across the U.S. and Canada in places like The Literary Review, The Sunlight Press, and Literary Mama, among many other journals.) 

Today, your task is to make a list. A literary list, that is.

Grocery lists, to-do lists, or goals lists written with the effect of showing a person’s life, their struggles, their failures, etc, are terrific pieces of flash.

They test the reader’s inferential powers.

Your challenge: provide a list of items from a luxurious bedroom, an overstuffed garage, or a refrigerator. Use specific concrete details. Reveal a sketch of a person’s life through these items. Imply something.

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“The Consummate Gentleman”

 The date was marked on my calendar two months ago. 

"Put it on your calendar now," Uncle Axle said. "I don't want to hear that you forgot. Be at my place at 7am sharp." Uncle Ax, as I’ve always called him, wanted me to clean up the garage of his third home. He didn’t live there. He rented the three-story building out, a family on each floor. He always scrutinized the tenant process. Making sure their credit score was exceptional and doing background checks. 

“I don’t want no domestic violence on my properties,” he used to tell me. “And I don’t want no damn squatters.” 

Uncle Ax was the cool uncle that told you things your parents wouldn’t necessarily approve of if they knew. He was my father’s brother, and in many ways like a second father to me. He always told the wildest stories that no one believed, but swore it was the truth. He had a way with words and a way with women. Mother always told her single girlfriends to stay away from him. After Uncle Ax divorced Aunt Patrice, he said he would never marry again. “It cost too damn much,” he said. “And I’m not even talking financially.”

Uncle Ax is currently away on travels. He’s a touring bass player and songwriter. Finances has never seemed to even remotely be a topic of concern for him. I always liked that. He was never boastful with his good fortune. The consummate gentleman. He left detailed instructions for me in an envelope along with the key to the garage. Beneath the instructions:

 Nephew! Thanks a bunch kiddo for helping out your

Uncle. When I get back, I’ll grease your palm. And I’ll 

let you hold on to the keys of the Ford Torino, let you take 

that young lady out on a decent date.

Love ya!

- AX. 

Yes!

I’ve been asking him for months to let me borrow it. It’s a 1967 Ford Torino. He rarely drives the thing. He got it as a gift from a tour manager after the band went on a 83-date sold out world tour. He was on the road for almost two years straight. 

“It’s a little too loud for my taste,” he said. 

It’s not too loud for my taste. I can take Sawyer out with it. She’d dig it. 

The garage was filled with dusty boxes. There was a bin with old running shoes marked “donations.” One the wall was a mounted bike missing the back wheel and the pedal chain. In a corner there were crates of vinyl records. The collection was vast. Records from Ray Charles to Marvin Gaye. From Aretha Franklin to Patti LaBelle. From James Brown to Stevie Wonder. From Whitney Houston to Diana Ross. From Chaka Khan to Gladys Knight. From Otis Redding to Prince. From Wu-Tang to A Tribe Called Quest.

There was a box marked 1976 tax returns. Inside the box there were handwritten notes. Many of them seemed to be on hotel memo pads. Most of the notes were short. A name, a phone number and a short message like “I had fun.” A couple of the memo’s had lipstick kisses on them. 

Inside of another box labeled trash, underneath some childhood school photos, I saw a stack of photographs rubber-banded together. I removed the band and wiped some of the dust away. It was pictures of Uncle Ax and Aunt Patrice. The top photo was on a snowy mountain, both of them in fur coats bear-hugging each other. Their smiles are bright and wide. I shuffled further through the stack. There was a photo of Patrice floating on her back in crystal-clear blue water waving at the camera. There was another photo, from the same trip, of Patrice asleep with Uncle Ax on the same beach chair. At the bottom of the pile were photos of them on their wedding day. 

There was a picture of me, standing on a chair, to tighten Uncle’s tie. My father is in the picture laughing with a hand on Ax’s shoulder. I remember that day. It was that day, before Uncle Ax walked down the aisle, he stopped to help me tie my small white wingtip shoes. After knotting my laces, he passed me a small disposable camera. “Take pictures often,” he said. “They can preserve moments of joy.” He winked at me, stood up and walked through the church doors towards his wife.

In the same box under three different color kangol hats, there was a sealed envelope. In cursive on the front of the envelope read “For: Patty (Don’t Send!)”  I opened it. Inside there was a handwritten letter folded in three. 

The letter began:

Dear Patty: 

You were right about everything….

The End.

**This is a work of fiction. Names. characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.