titusnowl | The Time Dan Saved The Day (No, Really) PART ONE

You'd think after the time I lost the baby they wouldn't give me kids anymore. I can only assume that every woman in my family, and particularly Rosie, is secretly in favor of retroactive abortion.

On the occasion in question the one they pawned off one me was the one Rosie and Cal named after me. Now, I got to wonder why they saddled the little guy with that kind of a legacy. It's big shoes to fill. And you know what they say about guys with big feet. Yeah.

Anyway, this was... oh, I'd say right around '29. Dan was up in Denton still, anyway. The kid was just a little smidgeon of a thing, and Rosie handed him off and took herself and Cal and the twins away somewhere for a long weekend, and I stood there cussing and in between cusses looking down at the kid and saying "don't go repeating none of this for your first word, mind you."

I think really she picked on me because at that time I was kind of living in their house without paying rent and anyway she knew I owed her one after I lost Cora or Catey or whatever its name was. However it worked out, it was gonna be me and little Jimmy boy for the duration.

First thing I did, of course, was go in and call Dan.

"I've got a kid," I said when he picked up.

There was silence on the line for a long minute.

Ohhhhh. "It ain't MINE," I told him quick. "It's my sister's. She just gave it me."

"Oh," he said, like he never thought anything else.

"Yeah, we're gonna come up and see you, ok?"

"You can't bring a kid to camp out in my dorm!"

"Then you come down here."

He considered that for a bit. "You're not joshing? They left you alone with a kid? How old is it?"

I poked at it and tried to remember how long ago it was now he was born. "I can't find the date-stamp," I told him. "How do you tell, do I cut off its head and count the rings or what?"

"Jesus, Jim."

"A year maybe?"

"A little one! They trust you with a baby? After you lost one?"

"Well, Rosie maybe don't like her kids much," I shrugged.

"You know what, I'm gonna be there in two hours. Don't sit on it, or fill its bottle up with liquor, or hang it off the ceiling fan, or try to teach it to ride a motorcycle, or anything stupid like that, okey?"

Now come on, I've got more sense than that. I was a baby once myself, you know. And I kind of grew up around them - the nieces and nephews started getting born when I was six or seven. I could've probably kept both of us alive for three days straight without trying too awful hard. But I wanted Dan there, anyway. I could probably get him to change the diapers if I got him thinking I'd break the kid if I did it myself.

So that is how it came to be Dan and me and the baby made three, camping in Rosie's house from Friday night until Tuesday morning.