The Oven (a short story)

The Oven
(North St. Paul, Minnesota, 1951-52)



Who can remember when you are four or five the many things that made you who you are today, it is difficult, by the time you’re ten, you got layers and layers of sketches to write about, or at least I do. But you can remember a few fearful items, I sure, and as years go by, put the pieces together if one wished to get the full story out of the experience. And that is how this story came to being. My brother and Steve were the culprits, and we were staying during the week at what was called a boarding farm, “Kiddy Corner,” in North St. Paul, our mother, would pick me and my brother up on the weekends, until in 1952, my grandfather asked my mother to come live with him and bring the kids. So we left the farm for good, and the apartment in the city, on Igelheart, in St. Paul, and moved to 109 East Arch Street, with grandpa.

But that is really getting ahead of the story, and is simply just background.

My brother and Steve came down the stairs from the upper level of the farm house, where everyone slept (during the day, there were some twenty kids, at night some five or six), they walked me down with them, I was half awake. Janet the owner was sleeping, in the far bedroom down the hall, the opposite side of our bedroom, we all slept from 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM daily, usually; Steve was the owner’s son, and he and Mike got along well, Steve being a year older than Mike, and Mike being two years older than I.
“You want to play a game with us?” asked Mike and Steve.
“Oh, yes.” I said, wanting to be with the older boys.
Mike and Steve watched each other for another moment, as if they were deciding if they should or shouldn’t do what they were planning on doing. I looked at them wondering when the game started, and they walked me over to the kitchen oven, and put me into it, closed the door. I remember being in the cramped space, never quite knowing exactly what the game entailed, just being gullible and following the blind, but I was there, it was dark, and I saw nothing, heard their voices fade.
There must have been air in there because I am writing this, but the boys went off and played some other place. When Janet got up, she asked where I was—the kiss of death was coming.
Mike and Steve looked at one another, ´now on the bottom of the steps, they had been outside, “We woke up early,” Steve expressed to his mother.
“But where is your brother Mike?” asked Janet.
They were next to the kitchen, and Mike and Steve must have popped their eyes wide open, looking at Janet and the stove, which you really could not see, but looking in the direction of the stove, in the kitchen, and the kitchen being somewhat divided into a room for cooking, and one for eating, a long table was visible, and around the corner, was the stove.
“We’ll go look for him mom,” said Steve, and Mike repeating what Steve said, Janet now thinking, and the boys hoping Janet will go outside and look, and they’d run to the oven, let little Dennis out, but Janet knew something was wrong, very wrong, good intuition.
“Where is he!” yelled Janet, in a frenzy.
“In the oven I think,” said Mike, and Janet ran to the oven, and Mike mumbled, “We forgot…”
She saw me sleeping, pulled me out, held me tight, I was breathing, but shallow, and she screamed something like “What has gotten into you both, get on up to your beds and stay there—and don’t let me hear you talking.”

Janet was really fearful that my mother would find out, and all hell would break loose, perhaps even lose her license to have children stay overnight, the county was always trying to take her to court on that matter. Matter-of-fact, she may have been the first overnight daycare center in the USA (yet it was a farm of sorts). At any rate, she gave me a lot of attention, and the boys were scolded for a week. And it all slipped into a faded fairytale, and my mother never found out until I was in my late twenties. My brother would bring it up a few times, and I laughed about it. But I suppose it was no laughing matter for Janet, especially when she saw me motionless, almost bemused—her face sad, brooding and inscrutable.

I suppose it told me, I wanted to be with those around me, at any price, and such a price I might have had to pay for that. You know what I mean; it starts at four and doesn’t stop until you forty sometimes, trying to be like the big boys, accepted into their presence, or like the Jones’s. And often times the culprits know this. Of course, I am now going to another level, I do not hold any grudges against Steve or Mike, never have, it was all in play, but play could have been a very costly thing for me, my mother, and surly my brother would never have forgiven himself. I am just glad the boys did not decide to cook me up like a turkey.

Written 5-26-2008