| OCR Text |
Show Blue Run/92 afternoon, two weeks before the surgery, we drove to Jim Ed Brown Men's on Cantrell, where I made him try on two dozen-suits before choosing the deep blue one that made him look like the man I met in the bread aisle at Tabor's grocery. Then he drove me to Ballou's Boutique in the Heights where I picked out what I'd wear for the viewing, real unusual-outfitting yourself for those eyes. That was April-two months ago, and I'd just deposited twenty-thousand buckeroos into Lonoke Bank & Trust-disability insurance. It was a boatload of money, more than we'd ever had at once-me and O.W.-and before I could get his name scratched off the account he'd gone out and bought a four-wheeler and new set of dentures, Ping golf clubs, a knife set, a beard trimmer. One morning while wheeling me into Waffle House, he mumbled something about a Cadillac Seville. "O.W.," I said "You don't wear a beard. What's with the trimmer?" "I take care of you," was what he said. And he had a point~I was invalid. Have I said I'm invalid? Does that matter in the least at times like this? "Nobody drives Cadillacs anymore." My wheel chair banged the glass door. "Uh-uh, Josephine," he said. "Not after all I've stood " And that was that-case closed. Then came the operation, and I was honestly supposed to die. I believed it in my heart's heart, enough to draft a longhand will. I made pallbearer lists and wrote out the words to the songs my people'd sing in Sanctuary Hall of First Baptist. "I'll Fly Away," and "Pow'r in the Blood," and "Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground." I asked Joey to give my eulogy~to put some umph into it. He's the son left standing, only from Buddy, a man I loved in Arizona who just happens to be the biggest liar in the world. |
