A New Excerpt From "A Flare in the Dark"
“You ready,” Dad got up, slowly, from the bed of the truck. He'd been moving slower and slower but I hadn't noticed how much so before. Age had caught up on him one of these nights, his face a shade of gray ash, his hands tight and wrinkled. Lines of time and hard work, janitor chemicals bleaching spots on his arms, singing the hairs above his wrists. The hair on top of his head not much better as the salt and pepper was turning more salt.
I threw my tool box in the back of the pickup and hopped into the passenger side, eyes cast down, not wanting to see those tired hands up close as they gripped tightly to the steering wheel. But, I couldn't avoid the glance that showed me not only were they tired. They were skeletal. The bones jutting through his skin like branches on a barren tree in winter. These were not my father's hands. These were hands that belonged to a man twice his age.
We drove in silence to the lake, a mile away from the house. Not a long distance, I walked there often times during the summer, after school, whenever the urge to be alone, absolutely alone, hit me. Dad had driven slow and what should have taken us five minutes at the most took closer to ten.
The scent of dust, dirty gravel roads filled the truck and the familiarity comforted me in the quiet stillness of my thoughts.
We trampled through the overgrowth to the lake, shining reflections of the stars, the moon above, dancing on the surface in a mirror of light. Too deep for swimming, to filled with debris from towering branches, victims of wind swept mutiny, it was left mostly alone besides the fishermen who were willing to wade the weeds and thickets to their destination. The community lake, it's man made beach and catfish stocked waters was no place for real, true fishing. The kind of fishing meant not only to catch tomorrow night's supper, but to revel in the solitude.
-Happy 4th of July, dearest readers. Grab the closest Trois Pistoles beer, (or budweiser if that is more your thing), lemonade for you youngsters, your kindle, and download a copy of Gate's Creek or Aisling's Field for your reading pleasure!!! La
“You ready,” Dad got up, slowly, from the bed of the truck. He'd been moving slower and slower but I hadn't noticed how much so before. Age had caught up on him one of these nights, his face a shade of gray ash, his hands tight and wrinkled. Lines of time and hard work, janitor chemicals bleaching spots on his arms, singing the hairs above his wrists. The hair on top of his head not much better as the salt and pepper was turning more salt.
I threw my tool box in the back of the pickup and hopped into the passenger side, eyes cast down, not wanting to see those tired hands up close as they gripped tightly to the steering wheel. But, I couldn't avoid the glance that showed me not only were they tired. They were skeletal. The bones jutting through his skin like branches on a barren tree in winter. These were not my father's hands. These were hands that belonged to a man twice his age.
We drove in silence to the lake, a mile away from the house. Not a long distance, I walked there often times during the summer, after school, whenever the urge to be alone, absolutely alone, hit me. Dad had driven slow and what should have taken us five minutes at the most took closer to ten.
The scent of dust, dirty gravel roads filled the truck and the familiarity comforted me in the quiet stillness of my thoughts.
We trampled through the overgrowth to the lake, shining reflections of the stars, the moon above, dancing on the surface in a mirror of light. Too deep for swimming, to filled with debris from towering branches, victims of wind swept mutiny, it was left mostly alone besides the fishermen who were willing to wade the weeds and thickets to their destination. The community lake, it's man made beach and catfish stocked waters was no place for real, true fishing. The kind of fishing meant not only to catch tomorrow night's supper, but to revel in the solitude.
-Happy 4th of July, dearest readers. Grab the closest Trois Pistoles beer, (or budweiser if that is more your thing), lemonade for you youngsters, your kindle, and download a copy of Gate's Creek or Aisling's Field for your reading pleasure!!! La