A Living Grave by Robert E. Dunn

from me. “But we both agreed what we really needed was to get you a man.”
    â€œI just bet you did. But I’d just as soon you keep out of my sex life.”
    â€œNo one said anything about sex. You stay away from that. It’s bad stuff. You just need a boyfriend to do things with, like . . .” Waving a hand in front of his face, he searched for something a woman might possibly want to do.
    â€œLike dinner?” I helped him. “Dancing? Going to movies or shows?”
    â€œFishing.”
    I loaded up a brat and took a bite, then washed it down with a long drink of cold beer. I felt so good I almost forgot why I felt so bad. We talked and ate for over an hour, luxuriating in the feel of family, spicy sausage, and beer.
    Finally, in a quiet moment, I said, “I kind of met a man.”
    Uncle Orson scooted his chair up close and took a swallow that emptied the last half of his second beer. It struck me how odd this was, but how natural. I had no idea how it would have worked to have this discussion with another woman. In a way, my tough-as-old-callous, sixty-eight-year-old uncle was my best girlfriend.
    â€œWell, come on. Tell me,” he said as soon as the bottle was drained and a new one opened. “Are you going to bring him around?”
    â€œSlow down. I just met him. I don’t know him, but he seems pretty nice. I don’t think I’d mind getting to know him.”
    â€œJust met him? Is he a perp?”
    â€œYou need to stop trying to talk like cop shows. No one says perp .”
    â€œSure they do. It’s short for perpetrator .”
    â€œI know what it means, and no, he was not a suspect. He was jumped by a biker.”
    â€œSounds like a weenie.” Uncle Orson let his face tell me what he thought of weenies. And I knew for a fact that wasn’t the word he would have used if he wasn’t talking to me or any other woman.
    â€œThe biker tried to back him down, but he went down swinging. Went down and got back up three times.”
    He grunted, but it was a grudging sound of reconsideration. Orson liked men who won their fights but he gave respect to any man who lost with honor. “You should have brought him with you. I’d have thrown on steaks.” Throwing on a steak was my family’s idea of slaughtering the fatted calf.
    â€œI told you, I don’t know him. I just met him. Besides, the ambulance took him to the hospital.”
    â€œHospital? Was he hurt that bad?”
    â€œI don’t think so, just stiches. They probably took him for observation. He might have had a concussion.”
    â€œHow’d he get into it with a biker?”
    I told him about Nelson Solomon and how we met earlier that day. Added to that, I told him how it intersected with the murder of Angela. He pulled down the calendar from the wall behind him and examined each page as I talked.
    â€œYou know,” he said, folding the pages back to the current month, “I’d actually looked forward to turning the page each month. Now I’ve flipped through it, I ask myself why I waited on things so amazing.”
    I had the definite feel that he was trying to tell me something more than he liked the pictures.
    â€œSo was Clarence Bolin the friend that called you about me?”
    â€œI guess you were listening,” he said. “Clare’s a good guy. Makes good whiskey.”
    â€œYou know about the whiskey?”
    â€œI sell it. Off the books, of course.”
    To say my jaw hit the table and bounced would not be much of an exaggeration.
    â€œDon’t look so surprised, Katrina. Homemade whiskey has a long history around here. My granddaddy sold a few jugs to Pretty Boy Floyd himself.”
    â€œI’ve heard the story, Uncle Orson. That was in the depression. Why do it now?”
    â€œIt’s a fad. Like cigar bars and microbrews. Whiskey is hipster cool.”
    â€œHipster? Do you even know what that