Love Songs: The Wrong Note - A Collection of Short Stories

Rouse Harper

1

They said Rouse Harper had been born with a scowl on his face. From all indications, they were probably right, although to give the Devil his due, I personally witnessed a smile on the old man's face once or twice in the last twenty years that I had known him.

His brother, Roosevelt, on the other hand was the polar opposite of his more morose brother. Cheery and happy-go-lucky by nature, Roosevelt seemed to glide through life with the ease of a schooner whose sails billow with favorable winds. But maybe Roosevelt's cheery demeanor stemmed from never having been forced to join the Harper family business.

From his first free day after high school graduation, Rouse's father insisted that his eldest son join him, adding a shred of truth to the company name of Harper & Sons Septic Services.

Rouse's mother did not lend her opinion one way or the other about Rouse being groomed to take over the business. She did however make it all to plain that her youngest son, Roosevelt, was too delicate for such a crude occupation.

Rouse said nothing, choosing to ignore his mother's statement. Roosevelt was her favorite child, and in all of his eighteen years, Rouse had never been able to gain favor with his mother. In the end, he had simply given up trying.

Physically, Rouse and Roosevelt could have had two different fathers. Rouse took after the senior Harper. He was broad-shouldered and big. There was not an ounce of fat on his stocky, muscular frame, and while not quite reaching six feet in stature, Rouse's build gave him the appearance of being a much taller man.

He resembled a big boxer, just like his father, while Roosevelt was delicate and slim, to the point of emaciation. If Rouse and his father were the boxers in the household, Roosevelt and his mother sprang from other bloodlines.

Rouse's mother looked like a basset hound, short and low to the ground. Two pregnancies had left her carrying extra pound of 'baby fat' that she could never seem to lose.

To finish the canine analogy, Roosevelt might be called the greyhound of the family. Tall and painfully thin, Roosevelt could never seem to pack on the pounds, no matter how much food their mother stuffed into her son.

Roosevelt had always been prone to sick spells as a child, so growing up, their mother had naturally sheltered her youngest son. If there were chores to do, they were assigned to Rouse. If there was heavy lifting or dirty jobs around the house to be done, Rouse was the one called upon.

To give her due, the boys mother loved both of her sons, but the degree that she lavished attention upon her youngest, Rouse might have been labeled the neglected red-headed step-child.

For his part, Rouse's physical prowess greatly outstripped his intellectual swiftness. Slow and deliberating, Rouse was an easy mark for his younger brother's cutting wit. But for the most part, Rouse ignored his sibling.

Most of what Roosevelt said floated high over Rouse's head anyway. By the time it sank in, Rosie was off on some other tangent.

It was just easier for Rouse to ignore what Rosie said. Mother would never allow Rouse to knock some sense in Rosie, so the best thing to do was treat whatever his younger brother said as so much background noise.

***

Pumping septic tanks for local residents had not been Rouse's idea of a perfect dream job, but he couldn't think of any real objections to his father's demands. Rouse did not want to go to college.

He and Roosevelt would be the only members of their family to graduate high school. For his part, Rouse had barely scraped by with a D average. No college would take him with his grades, and at eighteen, the young Rouse had no ambitions to even enter trade school. In fact, the way Rouse figured, any job that provided him with some pocket money was alright with him.

So after the first moments of embarrassment had passed, and Rouse had actually gotten a few tanks successfully emptied, driving one of his father's honey wagons had become second nature. It was hard, back-breaking work, sometimes, not to mention the smell, but Rouse had little imagination for greater things, and so with time, assumed the mantle of owner and operator of Harper & Sons Septic Services.