some loss is gain
Patrick’s toothy grin suits the cab of his many-wheeler. He owns them both, grin and cab. The cab, shiny and at the side of his starter home, is out of sorts for a Pleasant Valley Sunday cul-de-sac. It did little for the Rhodes family, in the shadow of his rig. But Patrick has enough home-spun to forgive his pre-dawn grinding of gears. His iron rooster.
The other loves of his life: wife Cheryl and daughter Sarah. Cheryl obsesses about remaining a homecoming queen. The skirts, mini. The shirts, bottom-tied. Talking speed, the reciprocal of Patrick’s drawl. And Sarah, a sleepless waif since another kid in kindergarten told her pillow crunch isn’t feathers. It’s spiders.
Patrick and Cheryl asked me to buy their place and rent it back. Not sure whether it was a compliment, but his grandmother intervened by dying. Berta was an enigma. Patrick and I went over to inventory Berta’s house. A hoarder’s house. Books and coffee cans and more of the same. In the cans were wads of 20s and bigger bills for bookmarks.
Pat bought Cheryl yellow roses. He bought himself every book by Patrick F. McManus. (Reader and author look more than a little alike.) Cheryl bought a sports car. They bought Sarah a foam pillow. Everything went to Patrick in the will, including property under a gas station. Long-term lease. Seems I won’t be buying Patrick’s place after all.
Nor will he. He had to move. Cheryl took all but the rig in settlement. Patrick is happier for it; Cheryl less so. Her fountain of cash, Patrick says through toothy grin, spews no youth. Patrick is on the road again, and somewhere there is an iron rooster gathering no rust.
