Kissing Cousins by Barry Rachin (best ereader under 100 .txt) 📖

to do with my parents’ marriage?"

"In one of his darker moments, your father confided that your mother approached their marriage as just another 'job-in-the-abstract'. The woman was an insufferable egomaniac - a nag and malcontent. She never cared one iota for her husband’s welfare and, after so many years of beating his goddamn head against a brick wall, my brother simply gave up the fight." Uncle Ned tapped his nephew lightly on the forearm. “Do you ever watch the Nature Channel on cable TV?"

"Yeah, they have some nice documentaries."

"I've seen feral animals on the Nature Channel that were more accommodating to their mates than your mother was to my poor brother during their marriage."

"Nice sentiment," Phillip replied.

Uncle Ned tossed off the rest of his coffee and rose to his feet. "Twenty years, Phillip," the older man was strapping on his tool belt. "I think that about brings us up to speed."

What the older man conveniently omitted from his narrative was equally as damning. Six months Eleanor Peters mourned, playing the grieving widow like some character actor in a Greek tragedy. Then without fanfare, Phillip's mother rushed off to a justice of the peace and married a man twenty years her senior who owned a string of butcher shops over on the east side.

What struck Phillip most was his uncle's utter lack of pettiness. He spoke in a slow, plodding manner, the voice thoughtful, ruminative, devoid of malice. This is what happened. Here, let me tell you about how your mother tore my identical twin brother's heart out. In the end, the physical entity was damaged beyond repair, but, early on, it was the ephemeral organ that gave up the ghost and caused the medical train wreck

"Are you ready to build a log cabin, Phillip?"

"Today's as good a day as any," he replied. There was no more talk of Eleanor Peters, and it was clear that, as long as Phillip scrupulously avoided the topic, his uncle would never mention his sister-in-law again. They cleared away a mound of brush and grabbed a quick lunch at a sub shop near the center of town around two in the afternoon. By the time the sun began to dip below the trees and the mosquitoes drove them off the property, all the metal joist hangers had been secured in place along with a ten-inch main beam that ran the length of the building. The huge beam had to be shimmed in a few places and checked for level, but it was a very auspicious beginning!

The next day Phillip visited the woods, his uncle was already bustling about, loosening the forms around the foundation. “More lumber arrived late yesterday.” A huge stack of logs had been arranged in three, neat piles around the worksite. Some were considerably longer than others and, even with an army of helpers, Phillip couldn’t imagine lifting them into place. Meanwhile, Uncle Ned was arranging a collection of ropes and pulleys on the ground.

“Give me a hand.” The older man had abandoned the chaotic tangle of rigging and was pawing at a short length of wood. Together they lugged it to the right side of the building and positioned it with the notch facing up on the foundation. “One down,” Uncle Ned chirped. “Nine hundred and ninety-nine to go!” When Phillip’s mouth went slack, his uncle slapped him on the back. “A sick joke... nothing more!” They positioned the matching log opposite, then laid the two, smaller pieces on either side that framed the front doorway.

“Here’s where things get interesting,” Uncle Ned noted. The heaviest logs that ran the entire length of the rear wall were lying off to one side. They rolled, pushed and dragged one into position behind the foundation. Uncle Ned draped two pressure-treated poles over either end of the concrete lip. Rolling the unwieldy log over the rigging, he secured the line with a double half-hitch. “Put my truck in low gear and back up slowly. Only now did Phillip notice his uncle’s Ford-F150 parked fifty feet away with the tail end of the rope secured to the bumper. “That truck,” his uncle explained, “is rated with a tow capacity of eleven thousand pounds. These toothpicks should be a piece of cake!”

Phillip climbed into the cab and fired up the engine. Five minutes later the unwieldy log had been dragged up the impromptu, pole ramp and was seated in place with Uncle Ned binding the joints with huge twenty-penny spikes. In this makeshift manner, they raised the walls on all four sides another foot. “One more row,” Uncle Ned announced and we’ll have to take window openings into account.”

“Shouldn’t we break for lunch?” It was already past noontime.

“Food is being delivered... not to worry.”

Fifteen minutes later a brown Toyota puttered down the trail and a skinny wraith-like blonde with alabaster skin and dark glasses approached the worksite. "Cousin Phillip?" The odd-looking girl reached up on her toes, kissing his cheek. “I’m Katy.”

“Enough with the smooching!” Uncle Ned barked. “You got the food?”

“Yes, Daddy.” She traipsed back to the car and returned with an armload of bags. Firing up the hibachi, the girl began preparing the meal.

Uncle Ned scared up a couple of folding chairs out from behind the camper and they sat watching the blonde girl working over the grille. The sloppy, unassuming kiss caught Phillip totally off guard and even now as he studied the strange creature he didn’t quite know what to make of her. Dressed in cut-off jeans and a plaid blouse, her slim white legs seemed to go on forever. She was cute as hell but certainly not beautiful in the traditional sense. A squat nose perched above lips frozen in a perpetual smirk. The skin was flawless, the eyes the palest liquid blue. She strutted about with almost a clunky, childlike grace.

"Katy,” Uncle Ned noted, “she ain't the brightest bulb in the firmament, but that girl's got a heart of pure spun gold." He reached out and thumped his nephew on the arm to further drive the point home. "Simple creature like her, she don't interview for ‘jobs in the abstract’... ain't shrewd or conniving enough. My daughter's got her PhD in horse sense. She's the real deal!"

Katy approached with a paper plate weighed down with potato salad, a cheeseburger and tossed salad. "Here, Cousin Phillip. This should keep you occupied ‘til the hotdogs are done." The girl flashed an angelic smile before retreating back to the smoky grille.

"The other day,” Phillip stabbed at the potato salad, “you mentioned the Second Continental Congress and made it seem like the colonists didn't trust each other any better than the British."

An orangey monarch butterfly emerged from a profusion of flowering weeds and fluttered around the edge of the pond. "The northern colonies had their own commercial interests - whaling, fishing, lumber, which the British needed desperately.” Uncle Ned stopped talking just long enough to savor a bite of his hamburger, washing it down with a splash of soda. “The southern colonies had tobacco, cotton and the lucrative slave trade, exporting their goods." "They didn't get around to actually ratifying the articles of confederation until March of 1781. This country has gone steadily downhill ever since."

He waved a hand distractedly at the mish mash of logs and tools. "In another year, when this cabin will be habitable, I'm gonna buy some chickens, a cow and clear enough land to grow my own vegetables."

"Now you sound like a survivalist."

"No, just an old-fashioned, bona fide American."

After the food was done, Phillip walked down the pond. The log cabin was coming together nicely, but he couldn’t imagine his uncle using the truck and crude pole ramp to raise the log walls more than another few feet. Because of the sharp incline, any logs hauled beyond that height would be extremely dangerous. Uncle Ned surely understood this and was hiding an ace up his sleeve.

A chain saw fired up and Phillip could hear the two-cycle engine revving. Uncle Ned had mentioned clearing a section for a chicken coop. It was all part of his 'Grand Scheme'. He would acquire several dozen chickens, both for laying and eating, a dairy cow and small tractor. The tractor would allow him to grow enough vegetables for his family’s needs and to sell at the annual Triboro Farmer's Market. Each autumn he would gather and split timber to heat the place with a wood burning stove. The goal was to sever as many ties that bound him to the cradle-to-grave welfare state. As fatalistic as he was about the country’s future, he was every bit as intent, groping his own way, inch-by-solitary-inch, out of the national morass.

Heading back toward the clearing, Phillip stumbled across Katy wielding a McCulloch 18-inch, 40 cc chainsaw. Seeing him, she shut the machine down. "Are you leaving?" Phillip nodded. Draping an arm casually over his shoulder she leaned forward and bussed him on both cheeks. "Hope you enjoyed the barbecue." She buffed the wetness away with the heel of a hand.
The girl, Phillip learned earlier from his uncle, worked second shift as an LPN at the Pine Haven Nursing Home. "Everything was just fine."

"Two decades is a hell of a long time between visits. Don't be a stranger, Cousin Phillip."
"No, I won't." He wanted to say more but the gawky girl, who had already turned away, pressed the primer bulb on the chainsaw - once, twice, thrice - and the humongous machine fired up with a mind-numbing roar, killing any possibility of further small talk.


Over the remainder of the month they erected the walls to a height of one row below the front door before Uncle Ned called it quits. "Too dangerous."

"What now?"

"Yesterday, I hired a contractor with a hydraulic crane and a construction crew. He'll finish the last few rows and also raise the roof." He grabbed a bucket of half-inch lag screws. "Got to get the sill ready for the subfloor."

Katy stopped by pretty much every day. In the early afternoons she disappeared into the camper, emerging in white scrubs and a pink smock before heading off to her shift at the nursing home. She continued to kiss, pet and paw Phillip like a younger sibling or lapdog. There was never anything overtly sexual or inappropriate to the girl's dopey antics. In many respects, she was her father's daughter.

"Got a boyfriend?" Phillip asked.

“Now and again," she replied with an insouciant half-smile. They were laying down a half-inch thick subfloor in anticipation of the outer shell being completed and the building finally enclosed. Katy was on her knees pounding anodized nails along a blue chalk line snapped over the parallel joists. Every five seconds she had to pause to push her glasses back up on the bridge of her pudgy nose.

Phillip nodded. Uncle Ned had been grousing the previous day that his daughter, who had a wild streak, sometimes went off carousing and didn't come home for days. "What about yourself, Cousin Phillip? You spending timed with any of those erotic educators over at the high school?"

“Lately I've sworn of women,... taken a vow of celibacy." Swinging the hammer in a broad arc, he buried the nail almost to the nubby head then set his hammer aside.

They completed a row of finished nails and shifted over to the next sheet of exterior-grade plywood. Katy draped an arm over her cousin's shoulder and pressed her lips up against his ear. "And why is that?"