Where We Live and Die Read Online Free PDF Page B

literary estates for our families. I was pretty sure that was what Cassi and her friend were discussing, as well, because in addition to the literary estates, we wanted to legally draft an agreement wherein if either Cassi and I or Jesus and his wife died unexpectedly, we would gain legal guardianship over the other’s children. Cassi was of a mind that we didn’t need to worry about things like that yet, but I wasn’t so sure. Both of our parents are too old to care full-time for a child, and my oldest son, who was eighteen at the time, had his whole life ahead of him. It didn’t seem right to burden him with the possibility of having to care for his younger half-brother, should something happen to us.
    Creating a literary estate took money, something that neither Jesus nor I had much of. I’d gotten a sample draft from a link Neil Gaiman had posted, and was weighing the possibilities of finding something similar on LegalZoom.com or another website. I wondered if such a document would still be considered legal. This was important to me. I didn’t want to die and have the rights to my work fall into the hands of one of my publishers. The money, what little there was, should go to my sons.
    This was what I was thinking about when Sam started growling. I glanced down at him. He was staring at the top of the driveway. His ears were flattened and his haunches were raised. His tail was between his legs and he stood stiff as a board. When I reached for him, he growled again. His eyes never left the spot at the top of the hill.
    I looked around, thinking he’d seen an animal, but the driveway was deserted. Annoyed, I picked up Max, sat him down and then took Sam inside. When I came back out, Max had run off to the garage and was standing outside the door, meowing to be let in. Although he is an outdoor cat, Max sleeps in the garage at night. It provides him safety from the cold in the winter and protection from nocturnal predators like coyotes and foxes and owls in the warmer months. I opened the door and let him in. Then I closed it behind me and returned to my cigar.
    As I sat down again, the porch glider began to move. The rocking was slow, but noticeable. Back and forth. Back and forth. The aluminum struts squeaked. Max began howling inside the garage. In the house, I heard Sam start growling again. He barked once, loud and powerful. Then Cassi hollered at him to shut up. Her voice was muted, almost lost beneath the forcefulness of his bark. Through it all, the glider kept rocking. There was no wind. I glanced up at the treetops to confirm this. No wind, not even a slight breeze. Sometimes, when a dump truck or tractor trailer goes barreling down the road, they’ll vibrate our deck, but the road was clear. There were no vibrations, no disturbance.
    And yet the glider was moving.
    I said, “What the fuck?”
    The glider’s rails squeaked in response as it continued rocking. Cigar clenched between my teeth, I walked over to it. It stopped moving when I was halfway across the deck.
    If this was fiction, this would be the part of the story where the protagonist starts to put two and two together— the dream of the girl on the glider (so eerily similar in setting to what was now occurring in real life), the glider moving on its own while the protagonist watches. But this isn’t fiction, and I didn’t put those two events together. Not then.
    That came after my son started saying “Hi” to something I couldn’t see.
     

    ENTRY 11:
     

    Been a few days since I worked on this. Real life intruded. To paraphrase Bob Segar, deadlines and commitments, what to leave in and what to leave out. I finished the extra material for Darkness on the Edge of Town tonight. It’s a little after 3am and I’m sitting here wondering how “Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll” by Vaughan Mason & Crew ended up in my iTunes library. I’ve got about ten-thousand songs on iTunes, the culmination of a lifelong music collection, and when I write, I