Free No Story to Tell by K. J. Steele Page B

times when she was a young girl, her mother sitting her down and lamenting tearfully the rudeness of those who would not call her by her proper name.
    “But tell them that they have to. Tell them you won’t answer unless they do,” an indignant Victoria had offered, hands on hips, rising to the defense of her offended mother.
    “Oh, no. No, no. I couldn’t do that, Victoria. That wouldn’t be very nice. I suppose folks are just used to calling me that, that’s all. It’s fine, really. Not that important. Just a name . . . just a name,” she’d digress and drop the subject, until the next time she began to suffer acutely the insignificance of her life and raised a feeble cry against the injustice of it all.
    But there was one thing she was adamant about; Victoria was not to let anyone abbreviate her own name. The first time she came home from school crying, however, distressed because the teacher had reprimanded her for insisting that he please not call her Vickie, her mother had completely buckled and scolded her as well, telling her it was not a child’s place to correct someone in authority. Before the school year was through, she’d been reduced from Victoria down through Vickie, and ended up just Vic: no further reduction possible short of being called nothing at all.
    Doris and Tom’s farm began to peek through the poplars, and Elliot idled slowly into the yard so as not to disturb too much dust. The place was quiet and unassuming, like the couple themselves. Doris’s face appeared, disembodied, at the window, then reappeared attached to a lumpy frame that shuffled across the porch and over to Elliot to receive her sister like an expected parcel. Gratuitous, faded smiles were given, small words exchanged and Mrs. Spiller thanked young Johnny for his help as they disappeared back into the house. Elliot got into the truck and guided it out onto the main road, opening his window wide.
    “Sorry about that. The old gal doesn’t smell so good, does she?”
    “That’d be a major understatement,” Victoria tried to respond lightly, opening her window wider as well, hoping to blow the sobering effects of morbid reality from their space. “You think they’d do something about her.”
    “Do something? Like what?” Elliot questioned her loudly, adding the fan to the wind whipping wildly through the cab.
    “I don’t know. Put her in a home or something.”
    Elliot shrugged. “Well maybe, but a home probably wouldn’t work, either. She’s okay, doesn’t hurt anyone. I worry about her, though. She gets herself a long way from home sometimes.” He shook his head lightly, “I just don’t know what the best answer would be for people like that.”
    Victoria knew perfectly well what the best answer would be but refrained from offering it. Too many people in the valley were willing to look far and wide in order to avoid seeing the plain hard truth before them, and it seemed sweet, gentle Elliot would prove no exception in this case. He drove along encased in private thoughts, and she wondered at the genuine sorrow evident on his face. Sorrow for an old woman, denied the liberty of death, who didn’t even know his name.
    “Who was George?”
    “Who?”
    “George . . . she called you George. Do you know who that was?”
    “No. I don’t think it was anyone, really. Just her imagination,” Victoria countered quickly, anxious for the conversation to end before it got started.
    “Hmm, maybe. I’ll bet if you asked the old-timers, they’d be able to tell you who George was,” he offered helpfully.
    “Probably could. Oh, look, your groceries fell over.” Victoria busied herself rearranging them, hoping to shift the conversation.
    “She always calls me Johnny. Benson Ferguson told me Johnny was a neighbor boy her sons spent a lot of time with growing up. Spent so much time together people took to calling them the triplets. He said Johnny’s parents forbade him from enlisting, said they needed him on the