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Shadows of Mercy

by John Stover

250 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #02-0128; ISBN 1-55369-315-9; US$22.50, C$29.95, EUR19.50, £13.50

If you were given the chance to see inside someone's heart, what might you find in your own?

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about the book      about the author      excerpt      catalogue info

About the Book This book was written in Hinckley and Parma, Ohio between July 2000 and April 2001. The year before John Stover wrote it, a friend of his had a heart attack and two days later, a triple bypass surgery. Seeing someone he cares about go through that experience influenced the author in ways related to the book. It put things in perspective. Along with trying to write a mystery/suspense story, some of the elements Stover tried to deal with are love, loss, true friendship and the issues of prejudice and tolerance.

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About the Author John Stover has worked at Medical Mutual of Ohio since 1996. He is currently pursuing a degree in Liberal Arts. An avid skydiver and basketball player, Stover has been previously published in Western Digest and on Poetry.com.

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Excerpt

That same night around one thirty in the morning, Robert Mulling saw a pair of car headlights reflect across the TV. He was sprawled across his uncle's couch watching a rerun of Happy Days when his Uncle Stan's car pulled in the driveway. Remembering vaguely he had left something out of place, he lifted his head, gave the room a cursory glance and saw his dinner plate of green beans spilled on the coffee table.

Maybe I'll be lucky and he'll be too drunk to notice, he thought.

Robert had not always lived with the uncle he had grown to fear.

When Robert's mother was alive, Angela Mulling could be found in the living room most evenings, sitting in her rocking chair. She was usually putting the finishing touches on a knitted sweater or sewing buttons on a shirt as she waited for her husband Conrad. For her, seeing his blue station wagon pull in the driveway was a relief.

Conrad had worked in a coal mine in the city of Burgesfield and at least once a week would arrive home with a new story of a worker involved in an accident. Angela's eyes would widen as he paced the hardwood floor, mimicking with hand gestures and contemptuous giggles a miner's reaction to falling rock and debris. For him, it was just another example of a rookie's inexperience but for Angela it was a forecast of danger her husband might one day have to face.

She knew her husband couldn't be bothered by nervous, wifely advice so her customary method of showing her disapproval was her long exhaling of sighs whenever the mine was brought up in conversation. The slightest hint of lampooning in Conrad's voice could trigger the nerve that would get her huffing and puffing. Even without a word spoken, her point was always clear. Conrad was aware that miner's wives were often afraid for the safety of their husbands, but Conrad regarded his own wife's anguish as "plain and simple paranoia." Conrad loved Angela but weeks after she was killed in a car accident, an unspoken part of him realized he was happy to be living in a house that excluded the droning sighs of a worried brain.

Conrad worked ten miles south of the house he shared with the remainder of his family: his only son Robert. Having the pressure of being a single parent, Conrad had often shunned the responsibility of spending time with the seventeen-year-old. Most weekends Conrad could be found in the garage building what he had commonly referred to as "new fangled contraptions."

His son Robert never saw anything that fit the description of a contraption, but understood that any time his dad was going out to the garage, there would soon be a new birdcage or coffee table collecting dust in the living room. Robert knew his father was a gifted craftsman, and had encouraged him to sell some of the items he had amassed. It had been dually noted the extra money could do them some good, but Conrad was usually too tired from a day in the mine to make his weekend hobby a second source of income. He was so tired in fact that he often sought the hardwood kitchen floor as a bed, to quiet the terrific pain in his back.

It was rare for the Mulling men to entertain guests, but when Conrad helped his brother Stan get a job in the mine, there was a new face at 2486 Sullen Rd. Most evenings Robert would do homework or play baseball with his friends, while the two men sat on the back porch drinking beers, and complaining about the poor working conditions in the mines. It had been good for Conrad to work and socialize with his brother. Stan was a welcome fireball of electricity, and even though Conrad thought him to get a bit tipsy sometimes, his brother's presence healed the loss of his wife like a balm on an open sore.

A day in the mine that began as many others saw the end of the forty-seven year old Conrad Mulling. A beam that supported the ceiling collapsed, and a shower of rock struck and killed him instantly. The day would serve in his son Robert's mind, as a haunting reminder of human mortality.

Robert was a sensitive sort who seemed to take upon himself the sorrows he saw around him. This pilfering of sadness, coupled with the loss of his parents, imprinted on him a loneliness he could not quite trace, or put into words. He grieved for days over his father's death, rejecting meals and skipping school, content to spend his school days cuddled under the quilts of his bed.

In the days that followed his father's funeral, Robert was informed by a social worker that he would be moving in with his Uncle Stan. There were no other living relatives so the choice was clear, but accepted with much trepidation.

The only thing Robert knew of his uncle was that he was his dad's brother and drinking buddy. In the weeks that followed his moving in with Stan, Robert began to fear the idea of living with a thirty-five year old enjoying little more than to drink himself into a violent stupor.

Robert convinced himself things would be different after a while. There was no way a guy could be the caretaker of an orphan and continue getting drunk every night. Stan would have to change. But change he did not, and even though it was difficult, Robert knew that having an uncle as a legal guardian was far better a predicament, than a trip to Burgesfield Mountain Orphanage.

Like the woodwork his father had once made, booze and cocaine were permanent fixtures in Robert's new house. He was left alone most nights, save the times Stan's credit was up at the local pub.

Robert made himself scarce on those nights, fearing that anything could set off the short fuse in Stan. An overflowing ashtray meant a spew of curse words or worse yet, a cigarette crushed out on his arm. A month after moving in, Robert was sure that Stan's all night drinking and drug binges were the sole reason for his sudden and violent outbursts.

As the late night rerun of Happy Days continued, Robert heard the screen door open behind him and knew that lady luck would not be visiting tonight. He closed his eyes and lay motionless like a dead man as he listened to his heart pounding like a thermometer about to explode.

"Wake up you faggot..." Stan growled; his word's trailing off in a whisper as he staggered towards the couch.

He saw the plate, Robert thought, his stomach tightening as Stan's boots thumped closer.

"A waste of flesh is what you are," Stan said. "I never seen it to beat. If it hadn't been for me you'd be rotting away in that orphanage and all I ask..."

Oh thank you Stan, Robert thought sarcastically. You are a Godsend for letting me live here. I was so thoughtless to forget a dirty plate. Anger throbbed in Robert's mind, but fear told him to keep still. Stan walked around the couch, stopping as he reached the coffee table. He picked up a copy of Newsweek and used it to soak up a puddle of buttery juice on the table. Robert's copy of the Radiohead CD "Ok Computer" was sitting on the edge of the table. Stan's angry blue eyes saw the plastic album case dripping with butter and with two yellow, nicotine stained fingers picked it up.

"And you waste your money," he said, raising the case above his head, "on this crap music you listen to."

Robert's eyes, still closed, felt tears welling up. He managed to stifle a sob as he opened them and looked up for the first time. With blurred vision he watched his uncle's six foot two frame standing over him as he held contemptuously the album Robert considered "The coolest ever." Remembering the sermons of the televangelist he had often seen on Sunday mornings, he began to understand the way David must have felt standing beneath the shadow of that Philistine, bully Goliath.

The sound from the television was faint, but Robert could hear a commercial for a local video store he had seen several times before. His mind had been racing since his eyes had met Stan's, and the commercial seemed a pleasant distraction, at least for the moment.

Stan let go of the CD, lifted the buttery plate from the table and propelled it like a Frisbee at the wall. Terrified, Robert sat up. The crash sent the dreary eyed seventeen-year-old into orbit, almost bucking a foot off the couch.

"You think you can do what you want around here?" the drunken man asked, his voice growing emphatically in waves of anger. "Well I've got news for you: You ain't going to be nuttin* but an old man like me working in the coal mine." The slurred barbarity of the edict made Robert's eyes widen, and he could feel the hairs standing up on the back of his neck. Stan balled up his hand into a fist as he moved closer to Robert. "You're going to pick up after yourself long as you're living here."

Stan's words were followed by a quick jab to Robert's mouth. The punch came hard like a fastball. Robert's head jerked back and believing he would go to bed with more than a bloody lip, he decided quickly that trying to get up and run was a bad idea. He rolled over on the couch, waiting for what seemed like hours until he heard the footsteps of his uncle leaving the living room.

"Never seen it to beat," Stan growled. Robert heard Stan lose his footing, and collapse on the linoleum floor of the kitchen.

Robert lay on the couch; his face pressed against its cushioned back, as he listened to the TV commercial. The sound was still faint but he rolled back over when he heard a warm voice. His eyes drifted over a poster of Courtney Love half folded on top of the TV and focused on the flashing image in front of him. A gray-headed man in a pin stripe suit was standing in front of a strip mall. The man*s blue eyes were engaging and kind as he smiled into the camera.

With his preoccupied father and angry uncle, Robert had never been close to a man. Now he wondered what it would be like to wrap his arms around the old man and embrace him.

The man was pointing at a sign that read "Joe's Video". Robert's eyes fell from the man's wrinkled face to the other hand at his side. Odd as it seemed, something looked strangely missing. Robert squinted and noticed the index finger on the man's right hand was gone.

"Wonder how that happened?" he asked the empty living room. Robert lay back on the couch and it was this question that swam through his mind as he closed his eyes and floated into the arms of unconsciousness.

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Catalogue Information

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