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Bud Grossmann’s
Words of the Week
for the Week of
October 23, 2011
Previously unpublished fiction.
© 2011 by Bud Grossmann.
All Rights Reserved.
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Lawn Tractor, 2011
© 2011 by Bud Grossmann
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SHIRTTAIL RELATIVE
From: DA Albertini <d—@gmail.com>
To: Dave Fischer <d—@juno.com>
Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2011 17:39:09 -0500
Subject: coughing and all
Dear Dave,
I am coughing my way to well. Or at least I hope I am. Actually I don't feel so bad, but I sound lousy. Several of the faculty and staff can be heard coughing. The school children seem to have recovered from their back-to-school bug.
...
From: David C. Fischer <d—@juno.com>
To: Deborah Ann Albertini <d—@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2011 18:23:44 -0500
Subject: Wednesday Report.
Glad you are feeling better, Deb. I seem to be, knock on wood, perfectly fine.
...
Two things mildly pathetic.
One,
Dad has a bright blue polo shirt, size Large, that used to be mine, but I didn't like the color and gave it to him, hardly used, when I moved here. The tail is square-cut and it's like three inches longer than the squared front of the shirt, both obviously (to me) designed to be tucked into a man's trousers. Dad wears the tails outside his pants, today to rehab and to the Chinese restaurant with a waist-length jacket over the shirt. I've told him what I think, of this shirt and of an aloha shirt with rounded tails that he wears the same way. Perhaps I should not have prefaced my advice with "Dad, I'm no expert on fashion, but."
Two,
Dad checked at Ninian Equipment this morning to see how they were progressing with repairs on the garden tractor he brought to them two days ago. No one else was in the showroom when we went in. Dad spoke with the only person at the service counter, a nice-looking slender white lady in maybe her early forties, maybe not even. She answered his inquiry with what I took to be a gentle threat: "There are a lot of others ahead of you. I'll call you when we have a chance to look at it. If you keep asking, you'll have to take it out of here."
Dad nodded and looked weary and defeated, I thought.
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From: DA Albertini <d—@gmail.com>
To: Dave Fischer <d—@juno.com>
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2011 06:58:42 -0500
Subject: TGIF
Good morning Dave.
The 4am coughing & cuppa will be much more enjoyable when I can then go back to sleep until 8am. I'm sure that I have important work to do, so up I am.
How's your Dad? He usually looks so dapper, that an occasional shirttail is a very benign way to let it all hang out (haha). So sorry the lady (?) at Nin. Equip. was less than kind to an old man. Shame, shame on her!
...
From: David C. Fischer <d—@juno.com>
To: Deborah Ann Albertini <d—@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2011 08:00:37 -0500
Subject: Bummer!
Sorry your trip was cancelled. Now, cancel your cold.
...
The transaction at Ninian Equipment was slightly ambiguous (as is most of life, for me). I'm not going to ask Dad his memory of the exact words. The woman's tone sounded gentle to me, and seemed "different" from the way an adult might ask a child to be patient. I might have reported the words slightly inaccurately to you, and I, as an author, am constantly aware of the importance of slight alterations of word or rhythm. The volume, the body language, little things, ambiguous.
In "great" movies—Secretary, maybe—so many little things (the camera angle, the costumes, the length of time of the shot, the lighting, the background music, a blink of Maggie G.'s eye) come together like a well-miked symphony. And still Secretary is larded with ambiguities. I say Dad "looked defeated," but perhaps you, watching what happened, would have characterized his "look" differently.
Perhaps the counter clerk went home to someone who asked, How was your day, and she, looking defeated, shook her head sadly and replied, Oh, I tell ya, my heart was almost broken this morning when an old man came in to check on his lawn tractor, and we're so short-handed I had to send him away, gently as a Wisconsin woman possibly could. And all those frickin snowblowers backing up on the lot! Gimme one a them Leinies there, wouldja. How about them Packers!
But thank you, sweet Deborah Ann, for your loyal support of my dad!
...
♦
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