Now sure only of insomnia, I sleep at once. Immediately I dream of medicating my parents. They each stretch out on pink shells that are, I slowly recognize, alligator-shaped soapdishes, only huge. My folks have shrunken to fetal size, their skin is sticky, sticky but drying. I must feed them each milk. I squeeze it through an amber glass eyedropper—old-fashioned as Madame Curie’s gear; it is the forgotten eyedropper our family used to sustain baby rabbits found in the high weeds of rustic North Carolina during the early 1950s, centuries ago.

Daylight Comes and I Wanna Go Home

“e’ve got your whole schedule planned already. Some work, more play, makes Jack …” Mother greets me over the sound of bacon frying. “Excellent,” I say, as Father often would, when he was better, younger.

We now glance at him, a frown, the official bearing. He’s outdoors already—trying to fill the birdfeeder. His movements were once so precise, so torqued. Now, spilling blond seed everywhere, he scowls at us, then tries to bodyblock his small mistake. A blur of millet in the foreground while, beyond, a sticklike floating gator seems to idly watch my dad. Plans, Bosco?

During breakfast, a tiny white TV blares news, gives cutesy handicraft hints. After the Tampa Trib yields local football scores, Dad asks if I am sufficiently coffeed up to maybe help with those few chores? Since I am here after all …

He’ll need a hand in trimming the lower fronds off that fast-growing palm tree out there. See the scrubby one past the feeder? Darn thing keeps blocking part of the lake and golf course view. Quickly, I agree.

I change clothes.

I dress down.

Mom, already fixing lunch salads, hurries outdoors first. She opens a folding lawn chair then helps Dad shuffle forth and settle. Yesterday’s car-search robbed him of so much. She retreats. And Dad, just from this exertion, is huffing. He tries pretending it’s intentional—one form of chuckling. “So, best get, this done, ha, huhn, ha, yes, ha, yeah, good lick, work, har.”

He will supervise me from there. Ten feet nearer the house than this shaggy five-foot Sego palm. My father is a former tyro of the golf links. For me, he was once the sound of a lawnmower after dark. He now admits he has grown too winded to even use a saw: “Disgusted with myself, but there it is.” I appreciate this admission; a new tenderness? A tenderness?

—I vow to myself I’ll try to do my job here with real medical precision. Whatever residual rage I feel, I’ll put away. There are two kinds of people in the world. I want to do right by him. Because it seems I can.

My father founded an insurance agency. My father made major money and never lost a big-time client. My father taught Sunday school and tithed and was called a true gentleman by most persons in Falls, North Carolina, black or white. His unwed prettyish secretary remained in love with him for thirty years, and he never took advantage of her, never let us joke at her expense. In public he still acts sunny, always ready with the latest joke, a back-slapper, speaking to everyone at every party, including all the help.