Free Ghouljaw and Other Stories by Clint Smith Page A

stopped. I realized I was just making another list. Resolutions?—I needed to start making promises. Promises I could keep, especially if they were for Julie.
    I pulled my forehead away from the window and opened my eyes. I’m going out to the cemetery today, I promised. And I’m going to clean the house. So I decided to start here, with the house.
    After showering, I pulled on an old pair of jeans and a worn-out flannel and walked downstairs. When it comes to accomplishing dull tasks, I’ve become a creative practitioner of delayed momentum. And at first, I found a few things to distract myself from the real job of housecleaning. I started a pot of coffee, laced up my boots, and stalked through the snow and out to the mailbox to get the Sunday newspaper, and came back inside and started a fire in the cobblestone fireplace. Soon, the house was filled with good smells—the acrid percolation of chicory and smoky-warm fire scents. I turned on the radio to some static-lashed jazz station. At this point I could have easily given in to old habits—I could have dropped down in the recliner, started reading the paper, maybe turned on the TV. But this morning—more so than usual—I had self-disgust on my side. I stoked the crackling logs in the fireplace a few more times before setting the tongs down on the hearth.
    I parted the drapes hanging over every window on the first floor, noticing that a few gold spokes of sunlight were now piercing through the gray-wool clouds. Dim light streamed into the house. I began spraying and wiping down the windows, the panes regaining their clarity. I went into the bedroom, tore the sheets from the mattress, and tossed the bedding into the laundry machine. Now with washer going and the antiseptic light revealing dust and spider webs, I set out to rearranging the living room and picking up clutter. After that came the next chore—dusting. I went from room to room, removing items from shelves, pulling novels from the bookcases and wiping down all exposed surfaces. Copious amounts of disturbed dust filled the house—glittering motes swirling in the gray shafts of sunlight streaming in through the windows.
    Now that I recognized some semblance of Julie’s tidy and cozy Sunday-morning home, the work came easier. I whistled along with the staticky jazz station playing in the kitchen.
    After dusting everything, I prepared to start vacuuming.
    I couldn’t remember the last time I’d vacuumed the house. (Months? Last summer? I still can’t recall.) Suffice it to say, the vacuuming—like the whole issue of cleaning—was something I’d ignored for far too long. The old vacuum (a long disused domestic totem, which Julie and I had received as a housewarming gift) was in the back of the hall closet, standing behind a curtain of coats.
    I pulled the dust-caked device from the closet—the outdated thing protesting with a few plastic creaks—and unwound the cord. I waved away some floating particles that the flimsy dustbag had shaken off, trying to avoid breathing in too much of it, before flipping a switch. The vacuum, with a sustained wheezing, rattled to life. I began working over the carpet with smooth lunges, making my rounds from the den to the bedroom to the living room. At one point I realized I was smiling at the thought that Julie might be proud of my progress.
    This would be an appropriate moment to tell you something else. It was the dust that got me thinking about it then, and it’s the dust that gets me thinking about it now.
    I’ve had all day to turn this over in my mind, and had it not been for what happened, I might have completely neglected a conversation I had had with Uncle Jasper a couple months ago. It had been a Saturday night. I was at Uncle Jasper’s house for our monthly chess match, which, as usual, essentially amounted to me getting my ass kicked. It was my night to buy the beer. He was craning over the chessboard, his heavily lined forehead summoning more wrinkles