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Show "Next time," he said, "apply the anesthetic first!" Those two old-lady sisters never cracked a smile. We chuckled a good deal over them, however, upstairs in our room. I was a lot like Pa, but not in telling funny stories. In my first thirteen years, nothing funny had happened to me; at least, nothing I wanted to tell anyone. In most other ways we were alike: two lanky, bowlegged, blue-eyed American cowboys; not long off the boat from Norway, with the Viking blood of our ancestors roaring through our veins. Looking for something to conquer. At least, that's what Pa said, though it could have been one of his funny stories. Pa died in that green boarding house, from pneumonia. He was only sick for three days, and he never saw a doctor. On the third day Mrs, Maxwell sent up some ginger tea and a hot-water bottle. He told me to go to work. When I came home that night, he was gone. I knew he did not want to leave me. And he had not expected to when he told me to go to work that morning. It just happened. Fast. I still talked to Pa in the evenings as I walked home to Mrs. Maxwell's, in the fog, telling him about my day and asking his advice about things. But each evening it became more painfully clear that the dead do not answer. |