Visiting an Old Niece

by Jerry Vilhotti

"I was on my own for two years after I left my husband of forty-three years who I used to call behind his back - in and out as quick as a wink Bubba and came down here where my daughter was living. I have four daughters don't you know? My eye must have been open for those twenty or so seconds! And then I met your wonderful nephew Danny. He just plumb swept me off my feet. Did you both get that joke about the eye?" their sixty-five year old niece said.

Johnny and Linda Ann continued to stare at her mouth that was moving about seventy miles a minute. They had just finished their journey of fifteen hundred miles; coming from New England before President Eisenhower's idea of a national highway system was finished so having to endure hours and hours of small towns to go through with all its hanging trees and not enough money to get a motel and freshen up. Ike also warned the nation of a military-industrial complex joining hands to make it the land of not the free but scam.

"Could we shower-"

"That's real nice of you Uncle Johnny and you Aunt Linda saying you'll take me out to dinner but you don't have to feel because I asked you to sleep here that you have-"

"Thank you but we would like to get out of these clo..."

"We went out for six months and I helped your nephew Danny with his being crazy carrying that large stone and wearing a black mask asking people to smash his head to little pieces to kill to death that laugh inside his head and his being out of work and all but I knew he was serious about me when he took me to his sister and two brothers saying I would replace their mother a bit what with her being up in Connecticut with her brain still damaged from that car accident making her sound like a two year old talking and all and he did promise me he would take me to see Mom. Where did he get such a name as Apache?"

After Johnny told her it was his mother's laugh, Johnny's oldest sister, she had used when having men guests in their apartment charging them five dollars for her eye to open as her four children tried to go to sleep in the next room and about the name it was an official at Ellis Island who spelled Pace using the Grandfather's accent and all and then asked: "If we could just-" ....