He returned to his house to see two men, one in work coveralls, and the other in a suit, stepping off his porch and shaking hands. The man in the suit glanced at a ‘for sale’ sign on the lawn that had seemingly just sprouted there. The man in work coveralls made his way to a locksmith truck.
Luther shed more tears as he sat, dejected, in his El Camino.
Sometime after the men pulled off, the one in the locksmith truck the other in the Scion, Luther gathered the courage to approach his home, only to see the freshly installed lock and the bank notice.
“Oh, Gawd, no!”
There you go, Luth, speaking to yourself and speaking like an uneducated man again, like back in the day, before the new you!
I’m not new anymore, just back to being Luther-with-nothing again.
I have the El Camino, the one great constant in my life. I own it outright and am still a strong, work-able man!
Luther angrily tossed his briefcase in the bushes and tramped over to his car, his faithful automobile bought before his granddaddy had even passed, way back in the day, when he became a laborer on Mister Jerry’s crew.
I’m still a working man! I will make my way, by God!
He looked up to see the moon low in the sky, being driven away by the sun at its apex…no, he saw no moon there. Just knew where it was, was all.
He drove his bookish, sky-gazing thoughts from his mind and set his sights on a job. He would not stop driving until he found a job site, and not stop inquiring until he got hired-on.
For reasons un-guessed, Luther Watts had lost everything he had striven for over these past twelve years, everything except what he had learned and earned in his youth. The fruits of his majority might have withered from the careerist vine of life due to this sneaky drought, but the simple, steady ways of his fresh manhood remained to buoy his troubled soul in this time of tribulation.
Luther Watts would survive, strive and then thrive.
Luther slid into the driver’s seat and thought to check his wallet. He pulled it out and took inventory. There was $157 in that old weather-worn wallet. That would buy gas and grub for a while until his first pay came in. He would sleep in his old El Camino until then; would sleep the sound sleep of the working man, not the fitful, dream-haunted slumber of the wonder-plagued academic.
