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Frank took a socket wrench from his rolling toolbox and started loosening the bolts on a Ford straight-six engine block he was rebuilding for a neighbor for cash.
“Your sister thinks the air conditioner can talk to her. Did you know that?”
“No, I didn’t,” said Jack.
His father broke loose a stubborn bolt and nodded. “She stands in front of it and just jabbers away. And she likes the way it blows her hair. Apparently, General Electric and Lucy are good friends.” He wiped some crud off the socket and leaned against the metal stand the engine block sat on. “When your momma and me are gone, she’s gonna be your responsibility, Jack, you ready for that? We’re not gettin’ any younger and my lungs are gettin’ worse every dang year.”
As he said this Frank lighted up a Camel, sucked on it, and flicked ash into an old paint can, which hung on a nail half-driven into a wall stud. He held up the pack of smokes showing off the surgeon general’s dire warning on the spine.
He grinned. “Now they tell me these damn things are no good for you. Day late and a dollar short, I say.”
Jack drew a dirty penny from a coffee can full of nuts, bolts, and loose coins. “You can always quit.”
“Don’t smoke in the house, just out here or in the truck. Can’t smoke at work. Too many flammable products around.”
“You got some of those in here, too,” said Jack, eyeing a shelf full of gas cans and a quart of forty-weight motor oil.
“Yeah, but it’s my garage. So my rules.” The words were uttered in a joking manner. Jack had long noted that his father’s mood improved considerably when he removed himself from the tactical confines of the house. There was also an old recliner with its stuffing coming out set in the corner, and a boxy twelve-inch black-and-white TV with crooked rabbit ears perched on a stack of cinder blocks, its power plug spliced into an overhead light.
That setup was new, he noted. “You’re not sleeping out here, are you, Daddy?”
His father flicked away more ash as he worked the socket wrench on another bolt with his free hand. He squinted at Jack through the Camel smoke. “Not yet, but tomorrow’s a new day.”
Jack stared down at the penny and gave it a flip. He caught the coin and turned it over. A grim-faced Abe Lincoln came up to greet him.
“Jacky, you ready for that, son? Your sister I’m talkin’?”
“How am I supposed to be ready for something like that?”
“You just do what you gotta. I love that girl, but it ain’t been easy.”
“I know that. I grew up with her.”
His father shook his head. “She just flat wears you out. It’s why we waited a few years before we had you, and then your brother. We wanted kids that... well, you know.” He gave the wrench another hard tug and the bolt came free. “She was tryin’ to stick the end of a hanger in the wall socket the other day. Sometimes I think I’ll come home from work and find ’em both stretched out on the floor dead. Lucy from electrocution and your momma from the guilt of lettin’ her do it.”
“I know, Daddy. I know.”
“No, I’m not sure you do. Legally, she’s not your responsibility. Hell, you’re a lawyer, you know that. Now, we can put her in a state-run nursin’ home. But that’s surely not your momma’s first choice.”
He drew all the remaining juice out of his cigarette and then crushed the remains on the concrete floor with the heel of his steel-toed work shoe.
Jack said, “Look, if I can take care of her I will. But some days it seems I can’t even take care of myself.”
“You’re thirty-three today, Jack. Long past time you figured things out, son.”
“Yes sir,” said Jack because he could think of nothing else to say.
His father went back to his bolts and his features relaxed. Jack understood this change. Engines his old man knew intimately; but dealing with people on such sensitive subjects was probably like being back on Okinawa, all foreign and incomprehensible.
“Did you see Miss Jessup?” asked Jack.
“Saw the back of her. She didn’t look so good.”
“Maybe she has some legal trouble since she wanted to see me.”
“Don’t know what that might be. She’s a God-fearin’, church-goin’ woman. Those people sing up a storm. And dancin’! Seen ’em come out onto the street doin’ it when I was headin’ to work on the Sabbath. More fun than I ever had in church, which is why I stopped goin’. That and our preacher knockin’ up the choir director’s wife.”
“I’d like to know what she wanted.”
