An excerpt from You Wouldn’t Believe Me If
I Told You ... short stories that could be true
...Pap refused to work after the accident, although he was never too friendly with work before the mill crane fell on his legs, breaking them both in two places. He was laid up in the hospital for months. The Cotton Mill owners paid him a lump sum, and he received a small disability check for a couple of years after, mainly because he complained that he was in too much pain to work. The company got wind of his in-town bar excursions, where he spent most nights falling down drunk and feeling no pain. Pap tried to support his lifestyle on Keely’s paycheck when the money ran out. He would get her purse, bring it straight to her, and say, “Gimme twenty dollars, Keely,” while fingering a few loose coins in his coverall pocket.
She laughed at how he’d ask in a cartoonish way, then got mad at herself for laughing. Keely thought it was decent of him never to go inside her purse and take the twenty dollars physically. Yet, he’d pester her until she gave it to him, yelling, “Take it. Take my last brown penny.” Although it wasn’t.
I don’t know why she let him convince her that her money was his, too. I guess because his money was hers, and when he had some, he told her so. Marriage will do that to you. Even so, Keeley was the one who got up with the chickens and walked two miles down the long dirt road to Mrs. Kinsey’s big old house to cook, clean, and scrub. Keely was tired. After 30 years, she was tired of Pap, too. She said it often enough when he came home late and was too drunk to perform.
One Saturday night, after a bad rainstorm, Pap didn’t come home at all. He had gone to the juke joint down the road a piece, but he always managed to make it back home no matter how drunk he got. Even if he made it to the front porch, Keely was satisfied. She’d throw a quilt over him wherever he fell and let him sleep off his drunk. That night was different. She could feel it in the foggy air. “Where is that man?”
by Toretha Wright
