Chapter 21: The Garage in Iowa

My mother stood in the doorway of the old garage with her arms crossed.

It was the same house, the same white siding, the same cracked driveway.

She had cut her gray hair short since I last saw her.

She looked at Deirdre first, then at me.

"You didn't say you were bringing someone."

"This is Deirdre."

"I'm the motel," Deirdre said.

My mother's mouth moved.

"Good," she said. "He needs somebody with a roof."

She turned and pushed up the garage door.

It rolled up on a smell of oil and cold concrete.

My father's workbench stood against the back wall, under a bare bulb.

On it, under a gray tarp, was a shape I knew.

"I kept it covered for three years," my mother said. "I couldn't look at it. And I couldn't let anybody else have it."

I pulled off the tarp.

It was his camera.

The old Pentax, with the leather strap he had worn through at one end.

I picked it up, and it was heavier than I remembered.

"He said it's yours," she said. "He told me the week he was diagnosed. He wouldn't say it to you, because you'd say he wasn't dying."

"I would have."

"I know."

Under the camera lay a yellow legal pad.

My father's handwriting ran down the first page in blue pen.

At the top he had written: Route 66, Adams Street to the pier.

Below that, a list.

Cuba, Missouri, a motel that looks like it's been there a century.

Joplin, the pie shop.

Amarillo, where the old Cadillacs are buried nose down in the field.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Rules Bend, Just Not for Me from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.