Dad's Friend Charle

            It took a lot to get Dad to open up and once it did, it took just as much to get him to stop. That’s not to say that he wouldn’t talk. There’s a big difference between talking and saying something. He was shy, my mother was the outgoing one between the two.

            This afternoon, two days after Christmas we sat on the back porch drinking beer in unseasonably warm East Texas weather. He took a sip of the Shiner Blonde and licked his lips. All my life he had drunk Miller Lite, but in retirement had expanded his taste in beer.

            “I had a friend named Charlie,” he said, starting his fifth or sixth tale of life in Van Zandt county in the 70s. I didn’t mind. His stories were genuinely entertaining. The stuff the best fiction writers couldn’t come up with. “Charlie was a smart son of a bitch. Van Zandt County was dry back then. There were all these places on the county that sold beer.

            “Charlie, like I said, he was smart. He would take a cooler full of ice to the beer store and he had done the math and knew how far he had to drive from each of these liquor stores it would take to get the beer nice and cold. He had taken into account things like how the beer and ice could react to bumps in the road.”

            A smile began to emerge as Dad told the story.

            “So he would map his route home from each of these places and with his calculations he would know how far he had to drive so that the beer and cold so he could pull over on his way home from the liquor store and have himself a beer.”

            We both laughed.

            “What happened to him? What’s he doing now?”

            The smile slowly disappeared off Dad’s face and he was quiet. I rolled my lips up and darted my eyes across the room waiting for him to speak again. I began to wish I hadn’t asked.

            “He ended up being a real bad alcoholic,” Dad said.

            I eyes dropped to the ground and I tried to think of a way to change the subject.

            “When I was off at college, he hit a kid and killed him. He spent some time in prison. He got out and got a job sweeping up at a machine shop.” Dad went quiet for a moment again and then finished his story. “He only drinks at home now.”