A Simplified Map of the Real World by Stevan Allred

Author:Stevan Allred [Allred, Stevan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Forest Avenue Press
Published: 2014-11-08T00:00:00+00:00

A Simplified Map of the Real World

UNCLE LENNY ALWAYS sat in his car listening to the ball game after Sunday dinner, but we were not allowed to go anywhere near him because Grandma always told us not to, unless we wanted to be sent to bed early with no dessert. This would have been July because it was always July when we stayed at Grandma and Grandpa’s, and this particular Sunday afternoon would have been in 1960, the year the Pirates won the World Series, so it was the summer I turned nine. I’d been baptized and confirmed the summer before because I had reached the age of eight, the age when Mormons are considered old enough to be held accountable for the difference between right and wrong.

There were six ways I knew Uncle Lenny was different. One, the tattoo on his forearm. Two, his red hair. Three, Uncle Lenny wasn’t married, so there was no Aunt Somebody to go with his Uncle Lenny when we said hello. Four, his car, a ’39 Buick the color of Concord grapes that he kept shiny as a new coin. Five, he was the only one of my aunts and uncles who was allowed to sit in the driveway after Sunday dinner. Six, Uncle Lenny never went to Church.

Sunday dinner was always roast beef or roast pork from beeves or hogs that Grandpa raised right there on the farm. Grandpa said the blessing, we passed the dishes to the left like clock hands turning the hours, and when dinner was over you took your dish into the kitchen. My mother and the aunts helped Grandma clean up, the men sat in their starched white shirts and their ties in the parlor, and the children were allowed to play outside, but not anywhere near Uncle Lenny in his car. The game we played most was hide and seek, but if enough cousins were there, and if we could convince enough of the girl cousins to play, we played kickball. It was kickball that sent me running to Uncle Lenny’s Buick, chasing a ball that my cousin Ted kicked clear over my head for a home run.

Uncle Lenny’s arm rested on the open window of his car, and it was the arm with the tattoo on it, a heart with a dagger pierced through it and strange words written on the blade. There were drops of blood dripping off the tip of the dagger, and this was the arm I called the scary arm, but only to myself. Uncle Lenny did not wear starched white shirts on Sunday. He wore cowboy shirts in dark plaids with pearl buttons that weren’t buttons at all, they were snaps. So there were seven ways I knew that Uncle Lenny was different, but even though I was almost nine that day, and old enough to be held accountable for the difference between right and wrong, I didn’t always know what I knew, and because the ways Uncle Lenny was

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