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A Place to Wait Pat Spears Frances Jo had pulled a 3-to-11 at the Crispy Creme on top of her regular day shift at the Levi's factory. Her feet and legs hurt clear to her tailbone. She'd Soured herself half a tea glass of bouron , kicked off her oxfords and flopped, face down, across the unmade bed when the telephone rang in the kitchen. She thought about not answering, but then it might be Silas. "Hello." "Jodie." Silas had called her Jodie since they were kids. "Yeah, Baby. What do you know good?" Her voice warming. "Not much." Then he paused and it stopped sounding like just another one of his late-night calls she'd come to expect. "What's the matter, Silas?" "Hon, your old daddy's had a stroke." "Oh, Lord, how bad is he?" "Well, he's down and not able to take care of himself. Different ones are looking in on him." "When'd it happen?" "Last Tuesday. Figure him and Buster was on one or their walks because he was taken down back of the house. Buford Ellis just happened by and found him." "Lord! I'd better get ready and come down there and see about him." "Well now, Jodie, it don't look like he's in any danger, it's just that your sister and her old man's talking about him going to live at their place. ' "At Sister's place?" "You heard me right. You know Mr. Red's totally agin it, but them two won't listen. That's why he sent me to call you." Silas went on to say that Sister and her husband were going to stick Daddy in a room built onto the back of their house and not let him keep his dog. That would be bad enough, but working through Frances Jo's mind, the whole time Silas was talking, was the fact that her daddy needed whiskey to get along. Sister wouldn't let him have anything stronger than iced tea. "Silas, you can look for me day after tomorrow." Frances Jo left Selma on a Trailways bus, her boss's threats rattling around in her head like steel balls in a Prince Albert tin. By the time the bus pulled into Wewa the next day, her body ached like she'd been dropped to the ground from the top of a fire tower. There wasn't a soul to drive her the five miles home, so when Silas offered to take her when he finished patching Miss Ida Mae's recap, she thanked him. While waiting, Frances Jo stood outside the filling station, picturing the town square the way it had been, hating it that they'd torn down Gaskin's drugs to put up a Western Auto. Her daddy had taken them to Gaskin's on Saturdays for double dips of strawberry ice cream. He'd say, "Miss Jodie, I got a taste for strawberry cream. Don't reckon you'd consider riding along with me?" With that, the family had loaded up in his maroon, four-door '49 Dodge and raced along the bumpy road to town. No matter how hot it got, the drugstore had stayed cool. Overhead, big fans had turned, and the black and white marble floor had stored the coolness, giving it 39 up just as they walked across the floor. Frances Jo had been careful to step only on white for good luck. Just inside the front door, hidden from view by a case of hunting knives, there'd been a swirling rack of comic books. Her daddy would say, "Here you go, girl, this quarter about to rub a hole in my pocket." Momma hadn't known about the comic books or the fifteen cents change. If she had, she would have burned the books and made Frances Jo put the change in the Sunday school offering plate. At night, Frances Jo had read to Sister under the covers using a flashlight , and that may have been the only thing Sister ever did that their momma hadn't known about. It hit Frances Jo for the first time...

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