They eased the photos down in front of the old man, who gnawed a lip and peered at them through narrowed eye.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease,\u201d his daughter said, pushing the hospital tray full of photos toward him, \u201cyou need to remember.\u201d<\/p>\n
In one photo, the old man\u2019s father \u2014 their grandfather \u2014 sat in the cab of a gleaming John Deere tractor in the middle of a bright, broad cornfield, the tractor eclipsed by a giant, fat-necked Rhode Island Red hen with a rose comb on top. The hen was caught mid-gobble, her beak snapping up whole corn cobs right off their stalks.<\/p>\n
In the photo after, the old man as a boy sat on his father\u2019s lap as the man handed over his farm ledgers to a goat-legged fellow wearing suspenders and a pair of mud-caked boots. Everybody wore smiles.<\/p>\n
In the third and fourth photos, the old man as a teenager was gunning a 1952 Chevy Bel Air hard-top across beach sands the color of custard. A mermaid sat on the hood, black ravens-wing hair cascading behind her, her eyes wild, her red mouth laughing.<\/p>\n
\u201cPop,\u201d the son said, \u201cthey\u2019ve seen the hen down off of Route Nine, and godsamnit if she hasn\u2019t torn the top from the Walsatch\u2019s silo. You need to think on how you get that chicken to leave this town again, \u2018cause this world isn\u2019t made for that kind of thing anymore. Think, Pop, think. We need you to remember.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis can\u2019t go on,\u201d the daughter says. \u201cEleanor Walsatch says they might sue. We can\u2019t handle another lawsuit.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIs it a word?\u201d the son asked. \u201cIs that what sends the hen away? Is there something you used to scratch in the dirt?\u201d<\/p>\n
The old man looked at the photos one more time, but the truth was, the stroke had left his brain a mess, and no matter how long he stared, he remembered none of it.<\/p>\n
Lethe and Mnemosyne by Chuck Wendig They eased the photos down in front of the old man, who gnawed a lip and peered at them through narrowed eye. \u201cPlease,\u201d his daughter said, pushing the hospital tray full of photos toward him, \u201cyou need to remember.\u201d In one photo, the old man\u2019s father \u2014 their grandfather […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":73,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3375","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","post","no-featured-image"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/Pv7MR-Sr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3375"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16384,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3375\/revisions\/16384"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/73"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}