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Emory's Story
Paul Holleran
Copyright © 2020 Paul Holleran
All rights reserved
First Edition
NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING
320 Broad Street
Red Bank, NJ 07701
First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2020
ISBN 978-1-64801-088-0 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-1-64801-089-7 (Digital)
Printed in the United States of America
Table of Contents
To Patrick and Lee
Prologue: Buying the Farm
Buying the Farm
May 2, 1999
“He won’t sell you that house. He has been in that house alone since his wife and son died. Everyone says he will burn it down before he sells it. He’s crazy.” The realtor they were talking to was showing her impatience. She had been showing them houses for weeks. They had not liked one of them. Her frustration was apparent. The house they were looking at now was beautiful. It was just what they had asked for. It was new construction. It had the open concept that was all the rage these days. The bathrooms were immaculate. The location was perfect. The realtor was about ready to give up on them when they mentioned old man Story’s house. She had to admit that his house was full of character. It sat alone at the end of a ridge. A row of red maples lined the quarter-mile-long driveway. Old Glory flew atop a thirty-foot flagpole, surrounded by a bed of purple irises. The apple tree in the front yard was in full bloom, and the flower beds circling the house were ripe with tulips and creeping phlox. The house itself was in disarray. It had been neglected for a couple of decades.
The old man who lived there was a loner. He had been alone since a tornado had damaged the house and left his wife and son dead inside. When Paul asked the realtor if she was willing to approach the old man, she respectfully declined. She commented that a colleague of hers once tried to persuade the old man to move. He literally threw her off the property. Paul asked her more questions, but he could tell that she had already given them all the information she had. He decided then that he would visit the old man himself.
Paul and Yvonne had just gotten married and were looking for a place in the country to start and raise a family. Paul had just been discharged from the US Air Force and had a guaranteed GI loan. He always assumed he wanted a new home because he was not too handy, but when he saw the house sitting majestically at the end of that ridge, he fell in love with it.
Paul asked the locals about the old man and found out that he built the house himself when he returned from World War II. That made the house almost sixty years old. He and his wife lived in the house for twenty years and had one son. When his wife and son died in a terrible tornado, he became a recluse. For thirty years now, he had lived there alone. He was in his seventies now and had never quite returned to normal. He had been a prominent farmer throughout the fifties and sixties, raising more than twenty acres of tobacco every year. Now he lived by himself with a dog and a few chickens and rarely left the ridge. Some said he would never leave the ridge. He used to ride horses with his wife and son, and he was very religious. For the past thirty years, no one had seen him in church.
May 3, 1999
Without hesitation, Paul decided to visit the old man. He told his wife that he would like to visit him alone. He had learned that the old man had also been in the air force. When he served in World War II, it had been called something else. Paul thought the old man might need a friend. He could break the ice with a conversation about the air force. The old man would still have to be interested in the air force. He had to be one of the first airmen.
Paul parked his car at the end of the ridge, just off the roadway. He walked back the puddle-filled lane and looked at each of the red maples as he passed them. They were beginning to bud. He could not wait to see them in full bloom. He could picture them as they would look in the fall season. Suddenly, he felt a sense of home. This seemed like a place full of love. When he approached the house and saw the apple tree in front of the house, it looked like it belonged there. Everything about the house made Paul feel like he was somewhere that had seen a lot of love.
He
