Linus

In Colorado there is a blanket that I like to curl up in. Old men have blankets just like anyone else.

     So there.

     Colorado is where my daughter lives. I don’t much like her husband. He looks down to me and I don’t know why, because he is rather short for a man.

     I don’t like my daughter’s husband, but I like Colorado.

    The sun moves along the mountains, an invisible dot to dot. Stick trees shoot up out of the ground – so many toothpicks.

     My blanket is made of wool. It is the good sort of blanket any God-fearing man should own. None of this fleece or cotton stuff. Wool is the way to go — tough, scratchy. Fierce, even when the wind about tears it to shreds and the sun bakes it alive in the trunk of the jeep. Even when my daughter swaddles her dogs in it and my grand baby coos and barfs in it.

     Most of all, I like to sit out on the front porch of my daughter’s cabin and whistle into the gusts of the old frosty wind. The old Richards. The old miser just like me. We whistle together, see? Even when I have lots to do. I like to think I have lots to do but I don’t know what. Church. I go to church on Sunday morning and men’s Bible study at eight.

     A red fern grows up in the middle of my daughter’s yard. I am reminded of the novel, Where the Red Fern Grows, which I read in seventh grade. I would like to tear the red fern out of the yard.

    Most days I only get twenty minutes on the porch. Sammie does not like me to be outdoors for too long. She does not like it when I take off in my metal trailer to go hunting. She does not like it when I run to the drug store and back. She does not like it when I eat steak for dinner and pork chop for lunch.

     She says I am too old to act like a young man.

     I disagree.

     Colorado is a beautiful place, you know? I am sitting here on the deck and the mountains are my old pals with all of their arguments and annoyances tucked up in their sleeves, cutting down the last fall leaves that cling to stick toothpick trees, humming the last song of the year — the baseball song — while long horn sheep crawl up the surface — mites on a mattress.

     Sometimes shadows cover up whole sections of their heads until only a nose or so shows through, and only a barren nose sticking up out of their spotted face.

      I sit here with my blanket.

     Sammie comes out of the house with a serving of her “healthy” hot cocoa. I take a sip and my tongue tingles. Blasted fake sugar. Sammie flinches. She does not like the wind. Why ever not, I ask her? She lurches her neck forward, “Daggers from the firmament, Linus. Daggers.”

     She says that every time.

     I say the wind makes my palms feel tough and smooth all at once, like stones of an Alaskan beach. A whiff of wind suggests particles of the sun, the wails of red ferns drifting up and floating down.

      My blanket is the color of a red fern. Red and slightly orange. A nice color, I think, although it makes me sad.

     Sammie comes outside, again, and demands that I come in. No, I say. I’d like to stay out here and whistle with my sad friends. With the wind, with the mountains, with the fern.

      She calls her husband that I hate and they pick me up like I’m a dead horse carcass and carry me inside to the living room. I am clinging to my red blanket that smells of so many delicious things. Dog, baby, daughter, dust, smoldering ash. . . .

     Sammie rips the blanket from hands that no longer feel so strong. She holds it up to the light.

     My eyes are open but I have nothing to say. My mouth is numb from the wind. All I can do is moan.

     Sammie throws my red fern blanket into the fire,

     And I watch it burn.