Autumn Blue Read Free

lady from the trailer-house had emerged, arms full, bending at the knees while trying
     to lock the house up as her two girls headed down the steps and got into the car. He had met her at the mailbox not long after
     the family moved in and the For Rent sign was yanked out of the yard. She was a nice enough young lady, he guessed. No husband.
     Not much meat on her bones, but she dressed neatly and wore her dark blond hair like she put some effort into it. Not at all
     like her yard, which was a downright eyesore to the neighborhood with patches of grass and weeds growing down the middle of
     the gravel driveway, a couple of scraggly half-dead azalea bushes clinging to the cementlike dirt, and a bent downspout hanging
     off one corner of the double-wide house.
    She had a boy, too, a boy old enough to be out there mowing those patches of grass and getting up on a ladder to secure that
     downspout. But on rare sightings the kid had clattered down the blacktop road on a skateboard, baggy pants at half-mast, his
     tufted hair, even from a distance, looking as mangy as their lawn. Millard blew out a disgusted sigh, remembering how he had
     hoped the kid’s pants would slip down and hog-tie him. Why, when he was that age, every boy he knew had chores after school,
     and there was no fishing or pasture baseball games until the chicken coops were clean, eggs gathered, firewood cut, fences
     mended, and anything else that needed doing done. He shook his head, turning to go inside. Punk kids nowadays. Wouldn’t know
     how to do an honest day’s work if their life hinged on it.
    He shook the paper open, pulled his reading glasses from his shirt pocket, and sank into the worn blue recliner by the picture
     window. First he perused the obituaries (seemed like the only contact he had with old peers anymore, their entire lives summed
     up in a few neat paragraphs). He then worked the crossword until his daughter’s pale blue Chevy pulled into the drive. She
     pushed through the front door with a grocery sack in each arm. “Hi, Dad. How are you feeling?” She bent to kiss the top of
     his forehead. “You should be wearing a sweater. It’s not summer anymore. Where’s your gray cardigan?” She proceeded to the
     kitchen to begin her weekly ritual. He heard cupboards opening and closing. “Nicole has her first cheerleader gig Friday night—first
     football game of the season. I hope this weather holds. You know those girls are going to freeze their little tushies when
     it gets colder. And they just hate to bundle up and cover their cute little outfits.”
    “I need a six-letter word for ‘jump.’ Starts with a
p
.”
    He heard the suction-release sound of the fridge opening. “Prance?”
    “Pounce.” That’s right. Why hadn’t he thought of it? He penned the letters into the appropriate boxes.
    “You haven’t even touched this squash, have you, Dad?” She sounded hurt that he had not appreciated her boiling and mashing
     the disgusting gourd’s flesh into a stringy pulp. “You know you need the vitamin A, Dad. It’s good for your eyesight. What
     are you going to do when you can’t see anymore? No crossword puzzles, no
Wheel of Fortune
. That won’t be any fun, will it?”
    Nine across had him stumped. He gazed out the window. Seven letters with a
d
in the middle, meaning “inner substance.” “I just saw a starling drop a bomb on that shiny blue car out there,” he said.
     The splat on Rita’s windshield was purple. It was a good year for blackberries. They hung like grapes from tangled vines on
     the far side of the field next door. He might go out and pick another coffee can full if he felt like it that afternoon.
    Rita came around the corner and peered out the front-room window as if she didn’t believe him. She clicked her tongue and
     shook her head. “Nasty birds.
    “Well, don’t take anything for granted,” she continued. “Not your eyesight or anything else. At your age every day of good
     health