(no subject)

[seymoure]

15.
“Absent”

Pappy had spent the rest of the day immersed in the folders, and came home without spirit or hunger. His wife had fixed his favorite kind of potatoes (it was something she did with bacon & mushrooms fried in bacon grease that was so good you never noticed what the main dish was) and he just moved them around his plate with the fork.

She had seen him like this, and she let him go. Nothing she might have said would have done anything but make him apologize for feeling how he felt. He left the table while she was going out to get blackberry cobbler, and she found him already sitting on the bed.

He told her he was going to Ames to talk to some of the science folks there, and he was going to take the Nash if it still ran.

She read for a while and he pretended to sleep.

He got up before she woke and was out in the back with the car. It had a dead battery and so he came back inside to call Chaney from the garage to give him a jump.

“Were you going to leave without saying anything?” Is wife said, clutching her robe and standing at the foot of the stairs.

“I didn’t want to wake you. Chaney’s coming over to jump the Nash.”

“I’ll fix some eggs,” She grumbled as she walked past him.

“Just some toast and coffee for me,” He said absent-mindedly.

“Butter or preserves or both?” She shot back.

“Just black,” He said as he walked back onto the porch.

 

© 2005 by C. Wayne Owens