The Way the Family Got Away by Michael Kimball

Author:Michael Kimball
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2000-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Glenallen to Anna

My father didn’t have any money left in his wallet or pockets. He touched at all his pockets and he showed the men standing at the countertop that there wasn’t any change money left in the change pocket or any paper money left in the long bill-folding part of his wallet either. There were just the cards with the names of other people and other places on them and there were the pictures of us from when our whole family was alive and together. Those men took my father’s wallet and took all the stuff inside the wallet out of it. They took the cards out and spread them out on the countertop and they took the pictures of us out and tacked them up on a wallboard that made it look like we were their family.

My father backed away from the countertop and walked away from those men. We got back inside our car and closed our car doors. My father drove our family away from those men there but we weren’t going to go away to any of those other places on those cards or see any of those other people anymore. There were cards for where to buy tires and fix the car or go to the doctor. There was this one card with the name of somebody that could build us a new house and one with somebody else that could paint the house and one more with somebody else that could lay the carpet down inside the house. There was this one card with the name of somebody that could make tables and chairs for the rooms of the house and there was one more with somebody that could sell the house when we were done living in it. But we weren’t going home or for help and none of those things were really going to happen anymore.

My father’s wallet, all those names of people and places on those cards, and all those family pictures of us got us all the way from Glenallen to Anna and we kept going away. My father traded our family away from us when he traded those family pictures of us away from us for miles. But those men probably tore the family pictures of us up and threw us away after we got away from them. That made us go farther away from them and each other and our family got farther away too.

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