I used to pass by the old Watkins place every day home from work.

Old lady Watkins would be on the porch. She always waved, a kind gesture as I passed by her. I often wondered what her life had been like, the people that she knew and the ones who had passed.

She lived in a two story country house painted blue and with white shudders. She had a white picket fence where she let her little dog run lose. I had met her a few times, just passing fancies, hello and how are you. We never got too close until I saw her one morning fooling with her lawnmower. Even in her 70s she still cut her own lawn.

I pulled over my truck and got out. “Having a hard time with that old mower?” I asked as she put her hands on her hips.

“It wont start, I did everything I know to get it started but it just won’t fire.” She said perturbed.

“Might be the spark plug.” I added.

“Well, that’s beyond my pay grade son. I can put gas and oil in it. But when it comes to other things I’m as dumb as a bunch of rocks.”

“What do you say I take it back to the garage and completely clean it and I’ll head down tomorrow and do your lawn with my riding mower.” She was blown away and happier than a blue bird on the tree singing its song.

“You sure you don’t mind?” She asked.

And it was nothing, nothing but a few minutes’ worth of work of my time. She asked if I liked beer, I said yes with a laugh. “Doesn’t every country boy?” I said.

“You aren’t a country boy. You might have been born here but you have a college education, I got the call from your momma when you graduated with that PhD and with honors. So, call yourself a country boy but you’re an educated man and always will be.” I Just laughed.

She was right, I had a degree in Psychology and my doctorate in mental health. I ran a psychiatrist office out of my den and office. I had eleven patients and more on the list to get too. Seemed living in the country came with its set of problems just like living in the city.

I went back to the farm and loaded up my mower and an hour later I was finished with her yard.

“You know I don’t mind doing this for you every other week. I can knock out your entire yard in thirty minutes, its really not a problem.” We made our way to the front porch with a beer in each of our hands. She pulled out a pile of cigars and clipped off the end and handed me one. I wasn’t really a cigar smoker, but if she was offering I was taking.

“What will you charge me?” I laughed so hard I blew out my beer.

“Lets make it a beer and a cigar and a good long talk. I bet you got some stories that would make me blush.” She laughed as she took a long draw on her cigar.

“I’ve been smoking these things since my husband died. He always wanted me to come sit with him on the porch and smoke with him and have a beer but I was too damn set in my ways, but I do it now every chance I get. Most every afternoon I have a beer and a cigar. Its my way of remembering his sorry old ass.”

“Seems like you two didn’t end on good terms.” I added.

“No, we were soulmates, I’m still pissed he left before I did. He left me this old farm and all the chores. And no damn body to do what he did. I thought of hiring a team of lawn men but I ain’t rich. I barely get by with my garden and what little they give in social security.” She said sipping her beer. It was the real stuff not any of that lite shit that they served at the bar, no straight old fashioned Coors.

“Then let me do it. I won’t charge you, except for a beer and a smoke. We can talk and you can tell me about your life.” I said as I sipped my beer, it was cold and stout. Good stuff.

“Well, you are a professional listener aren’t you?” She said laughing.

We finished our beers and smokes and I loaded up my mower and headed home.

Two weeks went by and I showed up to cut her grass and she was ready at the end with an ice cold beer and a cigar cut and ready to smoke. She had an old silver lighter; it must have been her husbands. “Nice lighter.” I added.

“Husband, Harry, carried it through out the war. It was his good luck charm. He fought a good fight. Came home with a bullet hole in his thigh. Got an honorable discharge. He needed to come home, the war was making him crazy. He didn’t know who to kill and who to save. Poor guy tried his best.”

“You two were married early weren’t you?”

“At age of eighteen and then he went off to war. He was gone for three years, got himself captured and escaped a POW camp, he tried to take as many with him but they were all shot. He always felt responsible for that.” She confessed.

“He did the right thing, he survived and that was the objective for every soldier. I work with a lot of men with PTSD and they have a lot of similar problems, coming home alive isn’t really coming home.”

“Amen to that. I’m sure you have had your stories. I’m also sure you can’t share them.”

“As long as I don’t say their names or give out personal information, I can tell you all the stories but what I want to hear is stories about your life. I bet you can spin some tales.” I said.

And she did, she had years of stories to tell and she needed to. She needed to let all that go to a good ear. And I was the best she had in town.

We didn’t live in a big town; main street was a mile long and there were three red lights on that street. It was pretty boring. The closest Wal-Mart was thirty minutes away. To say it was a small town was an understatement but it was growing. Urban sprawl and gentrification were coming our way, they were even talking about a new grocery store that would carry all that we needed. I didn’t know if I liked it or not. For one thing it would make shopping easier but where would it end, I hated to see our little town die.

I wanted to hear her deepest secrets; they were my passion. Collecting stories, I had journals full of them and I had started one that said Mrs. Watkins. I kept it by my bed. All of our talks went in the journal and I kept up with every word she said.

One summer day she opened up and told me about the time that her and her husband ran away. They packed their bags and he picked her up in his old ford truck at the stroke of midnight. They drove for days until they found this town. She fell in love with this house and it was for rent. Her husband Harry got a job at the mill and worked twelve hours shifts to put up the money to buy the place out right. “The owner had no interest in renting, she had moved two states over and was glad to get an offer. We moved in and made it our home.” She said.

“And what was it you did, surely you weren’t content with just being a housewife, you have too much energy for that.”

“I took up alterations, I hemmed pants and took up dresses and let more out than I can remember. We both worked hard to get this place and I’ll be damned if I let it go.”

“Do you still owe money are do you own it?” I pried.

“No, I own it but my daughter wants it and wants to put me in a home where I can live out my final years around a bunch of old farts. But they don’t allow beer and cigars there so I said to hell with that. She will just have to wait until I finally die.”

I laughed, “That’s a girl. Go down fighting.” She chuckled.

She told me a story about how they liked to hike and would drive to the mountains and climb them together, she told of one particular hike where they made a discovery that shocked them silly.

“It was the summer of ’54 and we were climbing Millers trail up the side of the Crystal Mountains. They got their name because in winter the whole mountain turned to ice and it was unclimbable until the spring came, then all the water ran down the mountain into Crystal Lake. It was beautiful out there. I miss our walks together but these old knees cant make it that far. They barely can cut the grass.”

“You don’t have to worry with that. I got you covered. What did you two find in the mountains?”

“What you need to know about Harold is that he was stuck in the war, he carried his marine knife everywhere, sticking off the side of his belt and always wore an old marine button up shirt to conceal it. But he wouldn’t go anywhere without that knife. It brought him security and I never questioned it. That day we were seventy five percent up the mountain when he saw a piece of a shirt off to the side of the trail. Curiosity got the best of him and he pulled out his knife and began digging. He dug deep enough to find the remains of a man in the dirt.”

“You found a body; did that horrify you?” I was invested in this story.

“Hell yeah, I was terrified but Harold didn’t bat an eye. He marked off the place on the trail and we went back into town. He went to the sheriff who knew Harold well. They were old war buddies. Harold told him where to find the body and there was a team that went up the next day and found him. Turns out it was Tony Hammonds, he had went missing a month or two before. His wife just thought that he took off and moved away. It was hell on her to find out he had been murdered and buried on the side of the mountain.

The sheriff enlisted Harold to walk the rest of the trail and look for any signs of other bodies. They had a list of missing persons a mile long. And they just figured they all got smart and left town. Harold had lost his job when the mill closed down and he got a job at the Feed and Seed. He still carried that old knife every day, he said it came in handy on a daily basis.”

“Did Harold find anymore bodies?” I asked. She was hard to keep on track, she had so much in her head.

“They found three more. Harold found each one, he was an excellent tracker, that had been his job in the Marines. He searched for tunnels and dove in with his .45 and killed any Vietcong in the tunnels. He hated that work but he was a skinny man and fit in the tunnels just perfectly. They would lower him down by his feet and he took care of business. But finding those bodies put thoughts in his head. The Sheriff said we had a serial killer in the area and to keep it quiet. It left me afraid to go out. I stuck close to home.”

“Harold was more invested and the sheriff made him an honorary deputy and he joined in the investigation. He knew the killer knew the mountain very well and he must be a local. He went out on a dozen searches looking for more bodies. In all they found ten. This little town was in an uproar about a killer on the loose.”

“I’ve never read about any of this.” And I had read the towns history many times.

“For good reason, this town was almost dead. People were moving out of town and businesses closed down. Harold took it upon himself to find the killer. He knew it was someone who knew the mountain and someone who knew those people. He was convinced it was the kid who lived in an old trailer down off the new highway. Few people lived out there because of the noise. It was before the zoning laws kept people from living directly off the highway.”

“I imagine it was hard on you worrying about him.” I said.

“Harold? No, I didn’t worry about him, I worried about the killer because Harold was still in soldier mode and was out hunting the hunter. He knew the killer killed in the summer time and buried the bodies when it was warm, he knew the man would be burying a body soon enough. Killers are a curious and superstitious lot.”

“Sherlock Holmes said that.” I added.

“He might have said it but Harold lived it. He knew the man would be back so he camped out on the ridge where he could see everything. He waited weeks until he saw a man carrying a body up the trail. He followed the man through the woods and waited until the man started digging and that’s when he arrested him. All by himself up on that old mountain with just an old .45 and his knife.” She said.

“He caught him!” I said excitedly.

“Yep it was the kid he suspected all that time.” He got a medal from the city for that.

“Sure, he caught him, he did and they locked the bastard up. He got the chair thirty five years ago. And our serial killer was over.”

“You ever thought about writing a book about it?” I asked.

“Nobody wants to read that trash. I know I wouldn’t. I just like to tell the story.” She said as she finished her beer and got up to go inside.

“I guess I’ll see you in a week or two.” I said as I handed her my empty bottle.

“Come in I want to show you something.” I was surprised as she had never invited me in.

She led me to an old military footlocker. “This is all that’s left of my Harold.”

She opened the box and there was his knife and his gun and a bunch of military clothing and a stack of pictures and a neatly wrapped stack of letters.

“All those letters are the ones I sent him, he kept everyone. And every veterans day he would get dressed up in his dress uniform and march in the parade. You ever been to the parades?”

“Never missed one, I told you I have several soldiers who use my services. I feel like its my responsibility to be there cheering them on. I am proud of all of them.”

“Good for you, fewer and fewer people come out every year. They even talked about stopping the parade and just having a party for the vets. But those vets need their parade. It means so much to them to get dressed up and show their pride.”

“I agree.” What else could I say, I believed it and felt she was right.

I spent the next three years cutting Mrs. Watkins grass until she had a bad fall and broke her hip and cracked her pelvis. It was then that her daughter put her in a home. I found out where she was and visited her every month until she died one night in her sleep.

I was heartbroken and even more heartbroken when I found that she left the old military locker to me. She kept it locked and her daughter didn’t know where the key was. She asked me if I knew. I told her that if her mother wanted her inside of the box she would have left the key. The box was mine and I was ready to fight for it, but instead her husband helped me load it in the trunk of my truck.

I took it home and broke the lock and went through every letter and every article inside. I put the knife up on a stand on my mantle and had the gun framed in a shadow box with his medals. That went on my bookshelf.

I spent the next three years writing a book about the love Harold shared with his wife and his adventures, I figured if anyone should tell the tale of the great man it should be me.

I had the book published and it went on the shelves of the bookstores on the shelves with the other war stories but to my surprise it hit no.4 on the romance list, and the books began to sell like hotcakes.

I had known the romance between the two and enjoyed sharing it with the world because all those days sitting on the porch Mrs. Watkins touched my heart with her stories. She loved her husband and entrusted me with her husbands last belongings. Some might say it wasn’t my place to write their story but I knew she wanted the world to hear the tale of the Great Mr. Harold Watkins.

I don’t regret sharing those secrets, they belonged to the world, to see what a Vietnam vet went through and the letters were all copied and put in the book. I told the story of a couple who had lived a full and adventurous life and that was a story that needed to be told.

I was just glad it was me telling the story. I miss my talks with Mrs. Watkins and our beers and cigars. To this day I still end my evenings with an ice cold Coors and a good cigar. Here’s to you Mrs. Watkins.

The End