This Is About A Shirt

 (reprised for Ida in honor of our shared affliction)

 

 

For breakfast I had a double order of hashbrowns with Louisiana hot sauce.  My mom had oatmeal and my dad had a pancake.  We all had coffee.  Normally I would also order two giant coffees for the drive back to the city, but Jo died the week before and, evidently, she’s the only one who could authorize such transactions. 

 

Lung cancer is a bitch.  People die, and then other people can’t get coffees to go.  At least not without a thermos at The Little Chicago Cafe in Onionville, Missouri. 

 

After breakfast it was time to help my mom at the shop.

 

As an aside, before its breakfast incarnation, The Little Chicago was a bar called The Friendly.  My father frequented the establishment before retrieving my mom from work, and my small brother and I would wait in the Rambler, pretending to drive and smoke pencils. 

 

The eraser was the lit end, of course.

 

When we were older, we went to The Friendly to play pool, and dance, and sometimes fight.  When the world is all wrong, sometimes folks just need to fight.  If you don’t introduce anyone to Mr. Broken Beer Bottle or break a pool cue over anyone’s head, they don’t kick you out every time.  Especially if your Granddad just died or your best friend shot himself deadcenter through the emblem on his Chief’s cap.  Sometimes they just buy you a Hamm’s and make everyone keep away from you until you’re feeling better.

 

So I was saying, after breakfast it was time to help my mom at the shop.  I carted in clothing donations and helped her sort and shelve them.  There were some books, too, but nothing good I hadn’t read already.  After we finished we opened the doors and the customers started coming in right away. 

 

 

I was standing by the winter coat racks looking for a CPO like the one I had in 6^th grade, when a disheveled woman approached and stood beside me.  She said I can make a birdhouse out of that, and pointed to an orange tupperware.  I considered her claim, and then replied I can make a curtain out of this, and gestured to an army jacket with Thompson stitched in cursive on the pocket.  She shook her head hard that I couldn’t and headed toward men’s shoes, stopping first to threestep with a cotton robe caught in the arrhythmic breeze of an electric box fan.  

 

That’s when I saw The Shirt.

 

It was hangered in between a denim long sleeve with a sweatshirt hood and some other hybrid that defies description or considerate thought. 

 

I can’t tell you what The Shirt looked like.  I can make no accounting of color or design.  It was more about feeling than thinking.  I can only say that it drew me in, and I wanted it badly.

 

I eased The Shirt from its hanger and brought it to the checkout.  I looked through the books once more, and then paid my mom a dollar for The Shirt and 2 dollars for a wooden Jesus I’d found propped beside the football cleats.  Then I left for the city with the wooden Jesus riding shotgun.  He might have suspected this isn’t about a shirt, but He never once let on.