“And Brenda.”
“And anybody from the group who’d want to see a ramp.”
“I’d like some witnesses.”
“For what?”
“For asking.”
PART 4
Christmas was three weeks away.
Gene didn’t wait.
That Sunday, there were nineteen people in his driveway on Cedar Hollow Road.
Rachel and the kids.
Brenda with two pies this time.
Eleven people from the Tuesday night group, in their church clothes, carrying casseroles like it was a potluck.
The pastor’s wife.
And Dale, Gene’s old foreman from Mercer Electric, who’d driven in from Waco with a card signed by forty men I’d never met.
Gene had hung white lights along the ramp rails.
He’d put a wreath on the garage.
The pecan tree was bare and the sky was that hard Texas blue and the whole place smelled like pine and coffee.
Two creams, right?
He’d made a pot.
I walked up the ramp with everybody watching.
