Doubt

I haven’t seen or read the novel my mother’s brother might have written sometime in the eighties.

My dad and I were standing on my grandmother’s concrete carport watching the grass grow under our feet.“Your uncle has written a book.”

My father lit a cigarette and puffed gently, the way he did most things.

“Really?” Not that I didn’t believe my father, the history professor. He usually told the truth. But my Uncle Eldon had barely graduated high school according to my mother, and I couldn’t picture him reading a book. He wrote a book?

“It’s some kind of historical romance set during World War II.” Emphasis on historical, and the disdain in my father’s voice was clear.

Did my father mean he had dreams, too? Dreams that take the form of a job first? History professor, or technical writer, for example.

That novel could be in a drawer somewhere. I don’t know if it was any good. Most certainly it was not published. I didn’t find any manuscripts in my father’s apartment during those last days he spent in a hospital bed.

If you don’t have doubt, you’re Uncle Eldon.