Cry for Help From Home
In his last hours he escaped the house and walked to the 7-Eleven and bought a lottery card.
My grandfather kept bees. I never saw him at this enterprise and do not know precisely how I know that he pursued it. I have had the urge to have bees myself but so far have not procured a single bee. My father was a gambler. I think that was his essence. In high school he hustled pool halls, in WWII he joined the Marines before being drafted, in life he struck out in entrepreneurial ventures and real-estate developments. In his last hours he escaped the house and walked to the 7-Eleven and bought a lottery card, got lost and tired on the way home, and was brought to the door by two women who wanted to know if they could keep him. They had found him sitting on their low garden wall, they found him charming, and they brought him home. I have never gambled on a thing in my life.
This story is taken from the collection Cries for Help, Various, available now from Catapult.
More in this series
The Woman in the Garden
“She was a sidelong glimpse through sunglasses and a veil of latticework.”
“As soon as you agree to soup.”: Excerpts from Erin McGraw’s ‘Joy’
“We need more soft bedding; everything now is hopelessly stained. We need better antiemetics. We need a miracle, and somebody to say so. It’s not going to be him.”
