This is the way, Jess,” said my father, pointing with his
cane across the deep valley below us. “I want to show you
something you’ve not seen for many years!”
“Isn’t it too hot for you to do much walking?” I wiped the
streams of sweat from my face to keep them from stinging
my eyes.
I didn’t want to go with him. I had just finished walking a
half mile uphill from my home to his. I had carried a basket
of dishes to Mom. There were two slips in the road and I
couldn’t drive my car and I knew how hot it was, It was 97
in the shade. I knew that from January until April my
father had gone to eight different doctors. One of the
doctors had told him to get a taxi to take him home. But
my father walked home five miles across the mountain and
told my Mom what the doctor had said. Forty years ago, a
doctor had told him the same thing. And he had lived to
raise a family of five children. He had done so much hard
work in those years as any man.
The narrator has siblings.
