"The Old Fort"
The Western Auto Store was new and exciting. Our new house was nice, and we could ride our bikes all over the neighborhood. There were lots of other kids in the neighborhood and our first year there was good.
Marshall and Shirley started having their occasional blow ups which were terrifying at times. But the school was nice and all in all I enjoyed Fort Scott, until….
One evening we were putting together a circular puzzle of the United States’ Presidents when Marshall got a call. By the look on his face, I could tell it was bad. The Western Auto Store had caught fire. He left in a hurry, but the store was destroyed before he got there. That was the end of the store for us.
This was a very stressful time, and Marshall was at his worst. Things went downhill fast. I really didn’t know if they would make it through staying together.
One time they were physically fighting when Jan and I were leaving for school, and we ran to the neighbors to ask for help. They told us it would be ok, and we should just go on to school, while we could hear the yelling and screaming coming from the house. We found out later that Shirley had to go the hospital to get stitches.
Not too long after, Marshall found a job as an electrician at a coal mine and within a year or so took a position at another mine in Kentucky.
One night, a couple of weeks before we moved, I had a dream. In the dream a man was standing in front of a fireplace using a handmade crutch from a tree branch to hold himself up. His back was to me at first but as I drew closer, he turned to me and it was like he knew me, and he seemed very familiar to me. He smiled at me, and it looked like he was glad to see me. He had on bloody bandages, and I could see he was in a lot of pain.
The fireplace was huge and blazing. I just stood there for a few minutes trying to figure the man out and wondering what this dream was all about, not saying anything until the dream ended. I knew in the dream that this all took place in the second story of a Civil War era hospital at the old fort.
Right before we moved, we drove by the Old Fort which was being rebuilt. I asked which building was the hospital and it was pointed out to me, but it was only one story. It made me wonder about the dream and if that was the hospital of my dream or not. I felt like it was but it being only one story confused me.