Hog (revised from Coffee, Light and Sweet)

I hold the cell phone to Dad’s ear.

“You want me to come bust you out of there?” Lise asks. Her voice on the speaker echoes into the hospital room and I watch my father laugh — a real, full-throated belly laugh.

“Sure,” he says. “Bring the horse.”

Lise, the eldest daughter of one of my parents’ oldest friends, is a real horsewoman, working on a ranch.

“I’ll bring my hog.”

“Hog?” Dad asks.

“My bike.”

“No kidding!” Dad chuckles, shaking his head.

“I’ll strap you on the back and we’ll blow out of there before they know what hit them!”

I imagine Dad on the back of Lise’s motorcycle, holding on for dear life as she shoots down the hospital corridors.

“You still there?” Lise’s voice fills the room.

“We’re here,” I answer.

Dad leans back against the pillows, grinning. “I’m kinda tired,” he says. “But I’ll keep your offer in mind. Maybe another day.” His cheeks are flushed with life. His eyes are bright.

“Okay,” Lise says gently. “You have my number now. You just let me know.”

I take the phone out into the hallway. I want to make sure Lise knows how much her crazy call to freedom meant to him.

“I love that guy,” her voice breaks. “He believed in me when no one else did. You tell him that, okay?”

When I come back in, Dad’s gone misty. “I have trouble with relationships,” he says.

“Maybe you’re too hard on yourself.” I tell him what Lise just said about him.

“She had a rough patch back there. All I did was listen.”

—

We sit quietly for a while. Then I go down to the deli across the street and buy him a coffee, light and sweet. I come back and feed him chunks of chocolate chip cookie, which he sloshes around in his mouth with the coffee, sipped through a straw.

“Heaven,” he smiles.

—

This is a scene from The End of Men, a memoir I started years ago. The previous chapter, Chill, is here. If you’re new to the project, read the first chapter here: Keys. The full list of scenes, in order, is here. Want to support the work? Leave a comment. Share a chapter with a friend. To receive the chapters by email, subscribe here. To support the writer (me) and the project, become a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers also get SOSI: The School of (Words and) Images.

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