Mr. Wonderful by Daniel Smith

Author:Daniel Smith [Smith, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-01-18T22:00:00+00:00

9 | danny

So I have to take Pops to the airport. Mom has some early morning conference call or whatever to get ready for, leaving yours truly to get up at six damn thirty in the morning. Dawn is dead to the world at that hour so there’s no way she’s joining me on the airport run. She barely moved when my dad knocked at the door, startling me out of a pretty hot dream, btw.

I grab some coffee and a day-old donut as my dad throws a big suitcase and backpack into the car. He looks like he’s in a foul mood. And who wouldn’t be? Having to travel to visit your old man as he nears the grim end of things cannot be a good time for anybody. I try to cheer him up as we tool away for the eight-mile ride to Lambert Field. I bring up some of my memories of Grandpa, especially the good ones. (And, yes, there are definitely some bad ones—like the way he basically made me work half a day every day I was visiting him in the summer when I was a teenager. I don’t think he liked it when I called him out on it: “Hey, Grandpa,” I said, “aren’t there, like, child labor laws?”) So I focus on the good stuff. Like how when I was six or seven, he’d let me sit on his lap and drive his tractor around the massive wooded lot out behind the house. He loved to put up little street signs at various turns in the pathway he’d made—like we were pioneers or something laying out the path in the wilderness—and one of little signs he made, I swear to God, was called Danny Drive.

I don’t get much of a smile out of Pops, but at least he seems more at peace with the trip. He asks about me and Dawn and what’s going to happen there. I tell him good things will happen, which he at least pretends like he might believe is possible. No doubt his mind is on the hell he’ll be landing into when he arrives in Texas. God, I hate to think what I’ll feel like the day I have to go visit Pops when he can’t really dress himself or know who—and where—he is. The last time I saw Grandpa was maybe five years ago, and though he could hardly hear, he sure as hell knew what he wanted to say and he told you in no uncertain terms. I distinctly remember him yelling at Grandma Claire on what was the exact route and proper speed for driving us to the ice cream place. Grandpa was going to get him some chocolate chip ice cream or World War III was fucking breaking out!

At the airport, Pops grabs his bags and gives me the usual Fenton stiff, manly handshake—no shoulder hug or knuckle bump—just the awkward traditional “time to go, see ya later,” farewell. But before he leaves he looks me in the eye and says, “This is probably not going to go well; be a good son to Corinne.

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