Short Story: Brother Quid, Part I

I peek as the final shaft of sunlight cuts through the low clouds over the Strait of Juan de Fuca and scatters on the wave tops. Raindrops are sitting on the window of my battered Ford 150, nosed up to the edge of False Bay. The tide is out; the Bay looks like a mud pie. For the most part, I have my eyes closed and try to meditate. Daylight is almost gone and it is only four o’clock. Ahh, winter in the Northwest.

Inhale…exhale. Inhale…exhale. The events of the day intrude on my ritual. I can’t even get to six or seven complete breaths without recalling the phone call out of nowhere. Brother, Quid, had been granted parole and is on his way to our island “to get reacquainted.” I can guess what he has in mind. He and his girl friend, Melba, the Queen of Clean, had both been jailed for a long series of thefts on the island. She is still there. It is almost funny how they were caught.

Melba, as wide as she was tall, cleaned houses. Quid, a muscular guy, did odd jobs when he could find them. As it turned out, Melba’s cleaning work included stealing choice items from her wealthier, second-home clients’ homes, usually when the clients were “off island,” as being gone to the mainland is called by locals. Quid did his part by selling the stolen items in various ways, far and wide across the state. Their mistake was Melba’s putting a few items into the local, consignment shop one day while Quid was traveling. On a subsequent Saturday, an island resident noticed a nice painting on the wall as she was browsing through the shop, Funk & Junk. “That picture looks a lot like one I used to have,” she commented casually to the clerk, a teenager. The lady took a closer look. It was her picture, which had recently disappeared. The lady knew the sheriff, and the rest is history.

Quid had been a minor challenge to our family off and on for years. He served in the Navy and then twenty-five years in the Louisville fire department. He was often humorous; at the same time he had a mean streak in him and seemed to be a magnet for barroom brawls. His journey through time included a couple of marriages and a continuing series of girl friends. He discovered Melba when he visited me for a small family reunion I organized two years ago. “One woman is too much, and zero isn’t enough,” was a Quid original. It was, however, the mean streak that worried me.

I start my engine and glance in the rear-view mirror. A few sheep munch grass in the empty field across the rutted, unpaved road. I back out and around and head for town and the ferry landing. The boat from the mainland is due in at five. I have to meet it and see him before I head back home for Reno on Thursday.

Copyright © 2013 by Steven C. Brandt