Ticket to Ride Read Free Page A

Kenny still wore the uniform: the goatee, the dark clothes, the hipster talk. Then he met Sue and she changed him, which explained the short hair, blue button-down shirt, and chinos he was wearing tonight.
    â€œBennett really flipped out, huh?”
    I described what happened. Including the angry appearance of Linda Raines.
    â€œYeah. She gives bitches a bad name.” He stood up. “Have to hit the can.”
    I gave myself over to the pleasures of Nealy’s, the front part of which used to be a drugstore and the back half of which is a tavern. The east wall in the front still has the old glassed-in wooden cabinetry used for the pharmacy. There’s a soda fountain across from it where four or five generations of blue-collar boys and girls made each other happy and broke each other’s hearts.
    You’ll find the town’s two finest pinball machines here, as well as a pretty good shuffleboard table. There are booths along one wall where you can bring the plump roast beef sandwiches—their only menu item—and relax. It’s a workingman’s place, so country music fights rock for dominance on the jukebox and three blackboards chart the betting on various baseball, football, and basketball games. When Cassius Clay came on the scene, they started betting on boxing, too.
    After Jane Sykes decided to go back to the husband she’d divorced, I sort of took up residence here. One night I even got belligerent and got into a fistfight out on the sidewalk in back. Since I’d started it, I was on an informal probation here for two weeks. It was like being back in Catholic school after you got caught dropping a water balloon out of the second-story window. I apologized to the guy and we were now friendly if not friends, though I still wince when I see him. Not the finest entry on the biographical sheet.
    Kenny returned bearing two glasses of beer. He stretched out in the booth. “What a family. Bennett and all his military bullshit and Linda acting like Scarlett O’Hara and the kid—Bryce—I had some hope for him, though. I’d see him at the library a lot when he was in high school.”
    â€œI thought he was a football player.”
    â€œJust because you don’t like sports, you think everybody who plays is an idiot.” Kenny loved football games.
    â€œYou’re right. That was a stupid thing to say.”
    â€œGod, I must’ve caught you on an off night.”
    â€œNah. I’m just worried about my dad. I was just being sanctimonious because I’m in a bad mood, I guess.”
    â€œI need to pick up Sue pretty soon here. Maybe you should stop by and see your folks.”
    Gloom tends to paralyze me. I can sit and brood for long angry hours. Between the ruined peace rally and my mom’s whispers over the phone this afternoon, I felt alone and useless. Kenny’s suggestion got me going again.
    â€œThanks for saying that.”
    â€œSaying what?”
    â€œTo go see my folks.”
    â€œYeah, that was a pretty brilliant idea if I say so myself.”
    â€œMake a joke, asshole. It’s what I needed to hear.”
    He pushed out of the booth and stood up. “I’m going to start charging you for these ideas I have.” Then he was gone.

    There was a time when my mother was eager to tell my father which TV show she wanted to watch. And he was just as eager to tell her which show he preferred. As near as I could figure, they pretty much split even on their respective TV choices.
    But now as they sat in the living room, I saw they were watching a Western show called Laredo, which meant that my mother would not be seeing Bewitched, which was on at the same time. She wanted the shrunken man next to her on the couch to see whatever he wanted. Though neither of us ever said it out loud, my mother and I knew that my father’s heart condition would take his life any time now. Of course the doctors had told him three different