The Trouble Way by James Seloover Read Free Book Online

sure as hell afford to give me a lousy forty-one bucks.
    When I think more on it, I remember old Uncle Wendell mentioning that three-dollar rain slicker damn near every time I saw him after that. Tried to put the old guilt trip on me, like I owed him three bucks or something. I never asked him to buy me a rain slicker in the first place.
    I should spend time remembering better stuff. My grandfather deserves a hell-of-a-lot more of my memory time. Now, he was okay. I can tell you stuff about him all day and not run out. You know what I remember when I think of him. The first time he said “fuck.” He was sitting on the wooden plank cover of the well near the back porch just outside the kitchen. My grandmother had died and I don’t even remember why he said it. I’d never heard him use a swear word. It sure did catch me off guard and stuck in my mind.
    He taught me to drive a stick-shift on snowy roads, and how to operate a big old forty pound McColluch chain saw; that ’s what I should be remembering.
    He could split wood too, like Abraham Lincoln.
    The best thing I remember about my grandfather was that he trusted me. Hell, he didn’t trust his own son, Uncle Wendell.
    Dad (Dad is what my sister and I called my grandfather.) let me drive the old Case tractor to pull hay into the barn. I was only nine when he let me do that. I could have pulled the back end out of the goddamned barn if I hadn ’t stopped when the person on the trip-it line called “TRIP-IT,” signaling the tractor driver to stop. The tractor was hitched to a rope pulling the mound of loose hay into the barn up a pulley and down a track along the rafters into the barn. It was one serious-ass job, I shit you not.
    But what comes to my mind first when I think of those old days? Right ... old Uncle Wendell, the cheapskate. Why couldn ’t he have just written me a lousy check for fifty-five bucks right then and there when we were sitting in Pat and Len’s Cafe eating a dee-luxe burger with mustard and onion with fries and a chocolate malt? It wouldn’t have killed him. I could see his blue checkbook, the kind of checkbook that folds over and has a snap, sticking out of the pocket of his damn dirt-covered flannel shirt. I just don’t get it. I thought about making a claim against his estate after his widow dies. She must be eighty-six by now and has a caretaker coming in every day to help her. If I did that, it’d make me no better than he was. It’s been fifty years, probably more. Maybe I should just quit pissing up a rope about it. When you think about it, it is almost funny, in a way. Thing is, you just don’t get over being cheated out of fifty-five bucks.
    Another thing, I should think about my mom instead of her stingy brother, Wendell. She ’d have paid me if it were her log truck I was helping to load. In fact, she did give me some money once, even though she had damn little to fork out and scant reason to do it. She gave me three dollars once for being a shit-ass. No kidding. That’s what she said, word-for-word, “Here’s three dollars for being a shit-ass.” A person doesn’t forget something like your mom telling you that you’re a shit-ass. Now, you have to be a really good person inside if you’re going to give your son three dollars for being a shit-ass. I really was one. I can tell you that for sure ... I was there. It was the kind of person she was. She’s dead now too. But, I remember that three dollars she gave me. I almost didn’t take it. But, I did. I wanted to go to town and needed gas money. That sort of tells you what sort of person I am, I guess.
    Maybe that ’s why I give Bella dolls and stickers all the time, I’m paying my mom back for the lesson of how to be a good person.
    Bella told me not long ago, “Papa, I’ll still love you even if you don’t buy me presents every day.” I think she is going to turn out like my mom. Or my grandmother.
    I bet my mom never called her brother, Uncle Wendell, a