📖 Part 9 – The Longest Saturday
Sunday came with wind.
It rushed through the maple like it had something to say — scattering leaves across the porch and stirring up dust from the gravel road. Inside, Harold stood in the kitchen making oatmeal the way Marianne used to: thick, with a spoonful of maple syrup and a pinch of salt.
Tommy didn’t come down.
Harold waited. Called his name once. No answer.
He climbed the stairs slowly, each one groaning beneath his weight.
Tommy’s bedroom door was open.
The quilt was folded neatly at the foot of the bed. The cassette tape lay on the pillow, side A facing up.
The bed was empty.
Harold’s chest tightened.
He found Tommy outside, standing at the edge of the field where the grass gave way to a ring of wild pine. He was staring at the treehouse.
“Couldn’t sleep,” Tommy said without turning. “Thought I’d sit up there a while. Just in case.”
“In case of what?”
Tommy looked back, his eyes tired but clear.
“In case I don’t get another Saturday.”
They climbed the ladder together.
Harold noticed how slowly Tommy moved, how carefully he held the rail. But he didn’t offer to help. Not out of pride — out of respect. Brothers knew the difference.
Once they were up, they sat in silence, knees bent, backs resting against the wall they’d nailed together with uneven planks.
The air smelled like pine sap and dust.
Harold reached into his coat and pulled out two wrapped sandwiches — peanut butter and banana, crusts off.
Tommy smiled. “Now that’s a memory.”
They ate in slow bites.
Below them, the swing set swayed in the wind, empty and creaking. A bird landed on the window sill, then fluttered off.
Tommy looked at Harold.
“There’s something I want to ask.”
“Anything.”
“When it happens — when I go — can you play the tape? Just once more? On the black-and-white?”
Harold’s throat clenched. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I can do that.”
Tommy nodded. “And… bury me with Dad’s ring. I think he’d want it that way.”
Harold didn’t trust his voice, so he just reached over and gripped his brother’s hand.
It was colder than he remembered.
But steady.
That evening, Harold lit a fire in the living room. Tommy lay on the couch, wrapped in the quilt. They watched The Flintstones on Channel 3, though neither of them laughed much.
The episode ended.
The static returned.
And then — just before Harold clicked the dial — the screen flickered again.
This time it showed something new.
Two boys.
One older, one younger.
Sitting side by side on a swing set, heads tipped back in laughter. The image was grainy, but the joy in it was real.
Harold turned to Tommy.
But he had already fallen asleep.
His chest rose and fell.
Slower.
Then slower still.
Harold sat beside him for hours.
Not out of denial.
Just out of love.
And when the sun finally broke over the trees, casting gold across the wooden floor, Harold whispered the only goodbye that mattered.
“Thanks for coming home.”
📖 Part 10 – Channel 3 Never Fades
The funeral was small.
Just Harold, a few neighbors, and a scattering of strangers who nodded at the name Thomas E. Dunn like they’d once known it, but couldn’t remember why. The sky was clear that morning, too bright for grief, but Harold welcomed the sun on his face.
He placed the cassette tape in the coffin himself.
No music. No eulogy.
Only a single note, folded twice and tucked beneath Tommy’s hands:
“Thanks for not waiting too long.”
Back home, the house was quiet.
But it wasn’t empty.
The swing set moved in the breeze. The treehouse stood tall against the sky, with the sign still nailed proudly to the front:
DUNN’S DEN – REBUILT 2025
No girls allowed (unless they bring cookies).
Harold walked up the ladder slowly. It creaked beneath him, but he trusted it. He sat down on the old cushion, pulled the transistor radio from the shelf, and let the static wash over him.
Then he smiled.
Weeks passed.
Neighbors brought casseroles. Church ladies left flowers. Someone from the local paper called and asked if they could run a story: “Brothers Reunited Through Vintage TV.”
Harold said no. This wasn’t a headline.
It was a promise kept.
One morning in late spring, Harold pulled the black-and-white TV into the backyard.
He set it beneath the tree, next to a lawn chair and a cooler full of orange soda. The same kind they used to sneak out of the garage fridge. He sat down, turned the dial to Channel 3, and waited.
Static.
Then a burst of color.
Not from the TV — from memory.
He could see Tommy on the tire swing. Marianne waving from the porch. Rusty chasing squirrels in the tall grass.
And somewhere, beneath it all, the soft crackle of a Saturday morning just beginning.
Harold leaned back, eyes half-closed, and whispered:
“Still here.”
The screen pulsed once.
Then blinked.
Then, clear as ever:
“Channel 3 remembers.”
💬 Epilogue
Three months later, a boy named Lucas moved into the old farmhouse with his parents. On his first day exploring, he found a treehouse with a sign, a tire swing that worked, and a black-and-white TV stored carefully in the barn beneath a tarp.
That night, he turned the dial.
And smiled.
Because somehow — against all odds —
Channel 3 still worked.
