Excerpt 3 from What Remains:
It’s moving up on ten o’clock. Time to get on my way if I’m going.
I clean up the kitchen and pull on a boot, lace it up and pull on the other.
Then I freeze.
All the questions I’ve been swatting away turn back on me, less questions than bare-knuckled fears.
You are seventy-four years old, John. Are you sure you want to do this? Three thousand miles of back roads on a twenty-year-old motorcycle?
What happens if that bike breaks down in the middle of nowhere? Or you do?
Your back or your heart, out in desert west Texas?
I stand up and walk out onto the deck, the relief of motion. I don’t want to pretend. I’ve got some fears and a few hard-to-answer questions. Can I just be okay with that?
I’m down the steps now and walking out along the ridgeline to a point high above White Lake. It’s as calm today as Lake Michigan was last night, everything I am not. My long-deceased mother walks alongside — “When are you going to settle down, Johnny?” — shaking her head with sham exasperation, then breaking into a grin.
My father joins us, his sad, smiling grace as Parkinson’s takes his car keys, then his life.
“Do it while you can,” he whispers. “You can rest later.”
What Remains, page #9
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