the fishing series (in progress) - 2000
Telltale Ears
My brother Bowling is really observant. He gets hit by fewer trucks than anyone else in town. So of course my brother Bowling was the first one who noticed that our dad’s ears were redder than usual. These ears are normally the color of old Doctor Jilly Ted’s crabapples, but, when our dad is by accident imbued with lite beer, these same ears slowly turn into Mrs. Rolly Cooper’s prize beets. Now these very ears have been purple-red for a handful of days — almost a week — and there hasn’t been lite beer in the fridge since they fired that blind guy at the liquor store.
Facts had to be faced, so Bowling and I drew pencil tips to see who would have to break the news to the other. Bowling drew the short pencil tip (because I knew which one to pick), so he had to call it for what it was : Ruthie DeMont was a’courtin’.
‘Fishing,’ Bowling told me, ‘I think a lady must of crowbarred into Dad’s heart.’
Now there aren’t too many ladies in our town, so we weren’t sure of who it could be. Still, the signs were there, slapping us in the face every morning. Our dad was brushing his teeth three times a week, was tucking the right side of his shirts in his jeans instead of the left and had bought a new raspberry comb from the Gofer’s Drugstore. Even last night the factory phoned our neighbors to say that Ruthie was slipping up at work.
It turns out that all this week our dad has been shipping rotoengines instead of receiving them, which is a very embarrassing mistake for our dad to be making, seeing as he’s a rotoengine receiver. Even if we had been born stupid, Bowling and I could not have denied that some bewitching woman had felled our dad with Cupid’s ax.
Because it was as bright as a Kansas day : Ruthie DeMont was wearing his courting shoes.
Posted on décembre 13, 2001 09:21 AM