An August Harvest Read online

  An August Harvest

  Ben Marney

  AN AUGUST HARVEST

  By

  Ben Marney

  Copyright © 2019 by Ben Marney

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Special Offer

  Author’s Note

  Definition

  1. Valentine’s Day

  2. Grand Theft

  3. Sharks

  4. The Road Less Traveled

  5. The Beach House

  6. Melissa and Donna

  7. Doctors Orders

  8. Second Opinion

  9. The Stained Glass

  10. False Positive

  11. Blunt Force Trauma

  12. Love Is Blind

  13. Beverly Beach

  14. Face To Face

  15. Isoniazid

  16. An August Harvest

  17. It Doesn’t Matter

  18. The Mark Of The Devil

  19. Gone With The Wind

  20. The Truth About Annabelle

  21. Premonitions

  22. Where Are They

  23. Everyone You have Ever Loved

  24. Trail Of Death

  25. A Toothbrush

  26. Sit In Daddy’s Lap

  27. Like A Ripe Melon

  28. The Marine

  29. Anastasia

  30. Living Donor

  31. A Promise To Melissa

  32. Sir Charles III

  33. The Vision

  34. It’s Time

  Epilogue

  A Note From Ben

  Special Offer

  Writing is a lonely job, so meeting and getting to know my readers is a thrill and one of the best perks of being an author. I would like to invite you to join my Private Readers’ Group and in return I'll give you a FREE copy of Lyrics Of My Life. This is a collection of autobiographical short stories about my crazy life. Please join my readers group here:

  Dedication

  For Rex…my only dog

  And

  For my wife Dana

  Special Thanks

  A special thanks to my sister-in-laws and brilliant editors,

  Susan Jordan and Druscilla Hutton

  Apparently, you two actually listened in English class.

  Thanks for correcting all my dumb mistakes

  and making me look a lot smarter than I am.

  Author’s Note

  This is my fourth novel, but it’s very different from my other three. This time, I didn’t want to write about a psychopathic serial killer. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing those kinds of books, but on this book, I wanted to try something else, something less violent. I did my best, but at times this book gets violent as well. I just can’t help myself.

  If you’re a dog lover like me, I think you’re going to love Charley. He’s based on the only dog I ever owned. He was also an Irish Setter named, Rex. Well, actually his full name was, Sir Rex Maxwell Vanguard the 3rd. He was a very special dog and I still miss him to this day…

  Definition

  AU-GUST

  Something marked by majestic dignity or grandeur.

  Something monumental, exalted or very special.

  1

  Valentine’s Day

  It was February 14th…Valentine’s Day…exactly one year later. Before I did it, I wanted to see that old building again. So one last time, Charley and I slowly drove around it.

  When I was in high school, at least once a week, I would park across the street from that old pile of bricks, sit on the hood of my beat up car and sketch it for hours. It didn’t look much better back then, but I loved the architecture and...well…that building had been a big part of my life. It was built in 1849 and was the oldest prison in Texas. Its official name, when referred to as part of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, was “The Huntsville Unit”, but everyone around here called it “The Walls”.

  No, I wasn’t an inmate; my father was the connection. He worked there for thirty-five years…he was the warden.

  I’m not sure how he did it, but somehow my father didn’t bring his work home with him. The man I knew was a soft-spoken, gentle person, who was hard to anger. He’d never laid a hand on me my entire childhood. He let my mother enforce any discipline I may have needed. Dad was a kind, tenderhearted, very supportive father. As a result, I was one of the lucky kids and had a wonderful childhood.

  Dad died a few years ago. He made it to eighty-five. Mom only lasted another year. I think she died from loneliness and a broken heart.

  After one last cruise through town and a slow idle around Huntsville’s old historic town square, I headed to the interstate, driving south on I-45.

  I knew my fate, but I wasn’t sure what was going to happen to my dog, Charley. At least I thought he was a dog. He looked like a dog and barked like a dog, but trust me, he was not your typical K9. You’ll probably think this is crazy and maybe it is, but I was pretty sure Charley was psychic and...I swear on my mother’s grave...he understood English.

  I tried to leave him at home that morning, but he knew something was up and wouldn’t let me leave without him. The only thing I could think to do was to take him with me and tie him up to the boat’s steering wheel later. I prayed that the Coast Guard would find him before he starved to death.

  I knew what I was about to do was a sin, but I couldn’t take the guilt and pain another day. No, I didn’t have a family I was leaving behind. I used to…but I killed them.

  All my friends kept telling me that it wasn’t my fault, it was just an accident, but I knew better. I froze like a stone. I just sat there and didn’t do a goddamn thing to prevent it!

  My wife’s name was Rita Marie Walters. We met in the third grade. She had bright red hair, freckles and the bluest eyes I had ever seen. She didn’t like me much back then, but I eventually won her over. She finally let me put my arm around her at the Saturday afternoon matinee movie when I was 10, and let me kiss her for the first time when I was 12. I know it’s a cliché, but we soon became the definition of “high school sweethearts.” She was my only girl, my one and only, my true love.

  After high school, she stayed in Huntsville and went to Sam Houston State University. I went to Texas A&M, located in Bryan, about an hour and a half drive away. For those four years, I drove that 130 mile round trip about a million times. And every time I drove away, back to A&M, my heart ached until I saw her again.

  After I received my degree in architecture and she received her degree in English, we got married. Two years later, we had a little girl. We named her Audrey after Rita’s grandmother.

  Everybody told me that I needed to move to Houston, because it was exploding, growing like crazy and there was a lot of work for architects. Rita and I talked about it and I even interviewed with a few of the big Houston firms, but I just couldn’t imagine living in that big city and raising our daughter there. I guess I was just a small town guy.

  In Huntsville, we knew everyone and everyone knew us. In those days, you could drive from one side of town to the other in a few minutes and you’d probably see ten people you knew on the way. Rita and I had gone to the same church there our entire lives; I’d had my hair cut there at the same barber shop since I was two years old; we had great friends there; there was a good elementary school; a good high school and there was Sam Houston State University. Huntsville, Texas was a very special place.

  We loved everyone there and they loved us. So, against everyone’s advice, I decided to open my architecture office in an
old historic building in Huntsville’s town square.

  I can still remember my father beaming with pride and my mother and Rita crying the day I hung the “GRANT NASH ARCHITECTURE” sign on the door.

  I had only been open a few months when my life long best friend, Marshall Taylor and his father walked into my office.

  “We’re looking for a new architect,” he said, grinning. “You know where we could find one in this hick town?”

  Marshall’s father, a very successful attorney and the richest man in town, had decided to use some of his land to develop a new upscaled subdivision and Marshall had talked him into using me as the architect and to oversee the construction. That one project launched my career.

  Marshall and I had met in kindergarten and had been best friends ever since. Growing up we did everything together. We went to Vacation Bible School together, played Little League together. In high school, we played together on the offensive line of the football team, rode the bench together playing on the baseball team and usually came in last running side by side on the track team. Neither one of us were great athletes, but we loved sports and doing anything else you could imagine two best friends would do.

  To my parents, Marshall was like their other son, and I’m pretty sure his parents felt the same way about me.

  He stood next to me as my best man when Rita and I said our wedding vows, and paced with me in the waiting room when Audrey was born. And he had his arm around my shoulder and cried with me at both of my parents’ funerals. When his parents died, I had mine around him. We were much more than just friends.

  He was without question the smarter one between us. In fact, he was the valedictorian of our graduating high school class.

  I began drawing and sketching pictures when I was about four years old. I always knew that somehow my artistic ability would be part of what I did when I grew up, but never considered architecture until Marshall suggested it to me.

  He wasn’t artistic at all, but discovered his love for science in high school. On his summer break between his sophomore and junior year, he landed a job at our local hospital. I’m not exactly sure what he did there that summer, but whatever it was, it convinced him that his future was to become a doctor. Specifically, a doctor of internal medicine. From that summer on, his goal and obsession was to become a world-renowned doctor. A goal I’m very proud to say he accomplished. Today, Marshall is recognized as one of the best gastroenterologists in the world.

  He was still in medical school the day he brought his father into my new office.

  Through all those years we’d spent together, I hoped I had, but I wasn’t sure that I had, truly expressed to him how much I loved him like a brother, and how much what he did for me that day he brought his father into my office had affected my life.

  Marshall’s father’s subdivision was a very successful development. It sold out quickly, and two of the houses I designed made it into the pages of “Architectural Digest.” After that, my phone began to ring and my little architecture business took off like a rocket. Soon, I was spending more time in places like Dallas, Houston or Austin than I was in Huntsville.

  At first, I drove my car back and forth, but as my business grew, the time I was spending in my car became counterproductive. To solve this problem, I learned how to fly and bought my first private plane. It was an old Cessna 150. It only had two seats, one usually packed full of blueprints and spec manuals, but that old plane got me to my projects in half the time it took me to drive there. Over the next five years, I logged thousands of hours flying that old plane back and forth to my projects and back home to Huntsville.

  I landed a huge project in El Paso. It was without a doubt the biggest and most profitable project of my career. However, El Paso was 750 miles away from Huntsville, a 1,500 mile round trip flight. I calculated that flying my Cessna 150 with its cruising speed of 122 mph, would take at least 6 hours each way. So I began to look for a faster plane.

  I found a partnership deal on a Baron G58. It had twin engines, six seats and a cruising speed of 200 knots or 230 mph.

  It was ridiculously expensive, but it would cut my round-trip flights to El Paso down to about seven hours. The only problem was I had never flown a twin-engine plane before. So after a few months of training and getting certified to fly twin engines, I bought into the partnership and began flying that plane.

  My father used to tell me, “Save your money, son and count your blessings each day, because life isn’t fair and can turn on a dime.”

  I never paid much attention to that. I just filed it away as one more of Dad’s pessimistic philosophies of life. I had always assumed he felt that way because he was born during the Great Depression and learned it from my grandfather, who like so many others in those days, lost everything he’d worked for his whole life overnight. But now...I understand exactly what he was talking about. I learned graphically how very fragile life can be. I was living the American dream and in a blink of an eye...my perfect life...shattered into small pieces.

  I realize now I should’ve seen it coming. There were signals and warnings that I chose to ignore. All I could think about was my career, completing this new project in El Paso and all the money I was going to make when it was finished. Never once did I even consider the risk I was taking to get it done.

  Why would I ignore them? Well...it was because of whom the warnings were coming from.

  I have no doubts that you will think this is completely crazy and I wouldn’t blame you if you did…because the warnings were coming from my dog, Charley.

  I mentioned earlier that I thought Charley was psychic. And yes, I know that sounds a little nuts, too. Trust me, I was just like you, but now there’s no doubt in my mind it was true.

  I found Charley, or rather Charley found me, at the mall. I wasn’t there shopping for a dog that day. In fact, buying a dog had never crossed my mind. Growing up, my parents had a few different dogs, but they were those little yapping things and honestly, I never really liked them much. Rita grew up with cats, so the thought of us getting a dog was never discussed.

  I was walking out of Barnes and Noble, flipping through the pages of a new book I’d just bought, when I heard the commotion. It was coming from the next store over–it was the pet shop.

  I heard someone yelling, “Don’t get near him, he bites!”

  Curious to what was going on, I stopped in the doorway and looked inside. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There was a crowd surrounding two people, a man and a woman, holding long poles with loops on the ends. They were trying to slip the loops over a dog’s head, but the dog wasn’t having it, growling and snapping at the loops. Did I say dog? I meant to say puppy. The ferocious animal that everyone in the store seemed to be so afraid of…was a puppy maybe a foot long and a foot tall.

  It looked like something out of a Saturday morning cartoon. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. When I did, everyone in the store turned to see who was laughing. When the puppy saw me standing in the doorway, he took off running and jumped up at me. Not knowing what to do, I grabbed him up into my arms.

  Everyone in the store gasped and screamed, thinking this ferocious beast was attacking me, but instead of biting me, he started whining and licking my face.

  I put him down on the floor, but when I did, he started jumping up and down on his hind legs, reaching his tiny front paws up at me, howling for me to pick him back up. When I did, he wrapped his front legs around my neck and made a high-pitched whining, almost a crying sound as he licked my face.

  The store manager ran up to me. His face was flushed and he was out of breath. “Be careful with that dog. I’ve called for animal control. They’re on their way. He seems to like you, so if you could just hold on to him until they get here, I’d really appreciate it. You’re the first person he’s ever let touch him.”

  “Seriously? You called animal control for this little guy?” I asked. “What are they going to do with him?”

  “Well, sir, I�
�m convinced there’s something wrong with that dog. He’s crazy. They’ll probably put him down.”

  When he said that, the puppy laid his head on my shoulder, whined in my ear and got very still. Then he lifted his head and looked me in the eyes.

  “Are you really a crazy dog?” I asked him, staring back into his brown eyes. He lifted his upper lip, exposing his teeth and gave me a small growl. Then he licked my face and...I swear this is true...he gave me a smile and started wagging his tail. That was all it took.

  “Call Animal Control back and tell them not to come.” I said. “I’ll take him.”

  “Are you sure?” the manager asked. “That dog has been a real problem since he arrived in this country.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That dog is a full blood Irish Setter. His parents were both champion show dogs. He arrived a few weeks ago from Ireland and has been a pain in the ass since he got here. He hates everyone, snapping and biting at anyone who gets near him. Well, everyone except you.”