Deaf Row

DEAF ROW AMYSTERYBY RON FRANSCELL WildBluePress.com DEAF ROW published by: WILDBLUE PRESS P.O. Box 102440 Denver, Colorado 80250 Publisher Disclaimer: Any opinions, statements of fact or fiction, descriptions, dialogue, and citations found in this book were provided by the author, and are solely those of the author. The publisher makes no claim as to their veracity or accuracy, and assumes no liability for the content. Copyright 2023 by Ron Franscell Represented by: Linda Konner 10 West 15th Street, Suite 1918 New York, NY 10011 212-691-3419 [email protected] All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews. WILDBLUE PRESS is registered at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Offices. ISBN 978-1-957288-55-0 Hardcover ISBN 978-1-957288-54-3 Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-957288-53-6 eBook Cover design © 2022 WildBlue Press. All rights reserved. Interior Formatting by Elijah Toten www.totencreative.com Book Cover Design by Tatiana Villa www.viladesign.net Table of Contents CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER 7 CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER 12 AUTHOR’S NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR OTHER BOOKS BY RON FRANSCELL To all old folks who feel overlooked,underestimated, invisible, andone good fart away fromthe Big Sleep. “We’re growing old. It’s getting late.”—Ben Folds“The tragedy of life is not death ...but what we let die inside of us while we live.”—Norman Cousins CHAPTER 1Woodrow Bell checked his watch, although he had no place special to be. Nursing homes just made him feel that time was passing unusually fast.The big man damn-near filled the cramped visitors’ foyer as he surveyed the dreary day room of the Old Miners Home. The sun was going down. It was Sunday, and the two nurses were elsewhere. Pale September twilight swathed the cheerless room as white-haired shadows silently drifted in for dinner, like dust that hadn’t yet been blown away.Now past seventy, Bell knew he, too, was closer to the end than the beginning. It haunted him.It wasn’t just the drabness of the Old Miners Home, with its dog-eared furniture, folding dinner tables, or the giant craft-paper calendar on the bulletin board that was utterly empty. It was the stiff knees … the hard mornings … the shrinking social circle … caring less and less about more and more … not remembering if it was the first time or the last time … getting up twice a night to pee a thimbleful … the AARP junk mail … the unreliable pecker … the fear you can’t finish the Sunday crosswords because you must have Alzheimer’s … the daughter who never calls … the mystery of why you ever voted for Democrats … already knowing which suit you’ll be buried in ... and being invisible to the rest of the world.It all pissed him off most days.And today was one of those days. After months of making excuses, he’d been tricked by his closest friend, Father Bert Clancy, into visiting the Old Miners Home. It wasn’t because a priest lied, not even because a friend lied, but because Bell didn’t immediately realize he was being played. He especially hated that.In truth, the St. Barnabas Senior Center hadn’t been the Old Miners Home since the Nixon Administration, but everybody in the trifling mountain village of Midnight, Colorado, still called it the Old Miners Home. Good or bad, small towns seldom quit on a memory.Ironically, there was more life in the Old Miners Home than the rest of Midnight.But Bell still hated the place—or maybe the metaphor of the place—no matter what they called it. It made his prostate clench because of all the ways he might die, he most feared cancer down there.The reason for Father Bert’s subterfuge was George Tomer, once one of the regulars from the coffee shop, now confined to a wheelchair with Lou Gehrig’s disease. He was only sixty-eight, only a few years younger than Bell. He was near the end.Orphaned by a house fire as a teenager, the town had never expected much from George. He was liked well enough, or rather not disliked. He inspired no strong feelings either way. Neither academically nor athletically gifted, nobody noticed that he wasn’t there with his twenty-nine classmates to collect his diploma.That summer, he took a job as a mortuary apprentice at Richter’s Funeral Home, sleeping in the dank basement with the occasional corpses and his boyhood rock collection (the only thing to survive the fire that killed his parents and sister). Every day, he had turned paler in appearance and spirit until he had lapsed into forlorn invisibility.So when George Tomer unexpectedly announced his engagement to a beautiful out-of-town girl, his upcoming nuptials made him visible again. He rose, phoenix-like, from the ashes. This pallid orphan boy was no longer the pitiable night undertaker, but now a man in full, with prospects. He reveled in the attention.For months, he glowed when he spoke about his beloved, a music major—or was she an art major?—at the University of Colorado. She grew more splendid with each retelling. The townsfolk of Midnight grew keen to meet this siren, but she never visited. Exams, you know, and European vacations to study the masters. Oh, and summers in the city.Finally, the blue-haired ladies of the Sanitary Aid Society decided to throw an engagement party for young George and his bride-to-be. They set the date with a unanimous voice vote and dispatched a delegation to inform George, who was rendered literally speechless by the news.On the day George’s beloved was to be introduced to Midnight, tragedy struck. The girl was killed in a car crash. When the girl’s obituary appeared in the next week’s Midnight Sun, the town grieved as much for her as it might for any favorite daughter. Poor George had endured another unspeakable loss, and still so young. The community tried to express sympathy to the young lady’s family, but the cards and bouquets all came back as undeliverable.It wasn’t