He’s a patient man.
He built a ramp for a wheelchair I’m not in yet.
Here is what we do instead.
Sunday evenings at my house.
Pot roast. The news.
Him washing. Me drying.
Tuesday evenings at the church basement, because we never stopped going, and now we bring the coffee.
Two creams.
Thursday evenings at his house, on Cedar Hollow Road, in the buttercup kitchen, where I cook my mother’s chicken and dumplings and he sits at the table and reads me things out of the paper.
He drives me home.
Every Thursday.
He walks me to the door.
He doesn’t come in.
“When the pecans come in,” he says, and goes back to his truck.
Brenda says we’re ridiculous.
Brenda is probably right.
The group has opinions too.
The pastor’s wife has a betting pool going on which holiday I’ll finally say it.
Dale drove in from Waco in June just to ask Gene, in front of everybody, if he’d “closed the deal yet.”
