Winter Layoff Chapter 3
| Winter Layoff | |
|---|---|
| Chapter 3 of 21 | |
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| Read this chapter | |
| Time frame | December 26th, 2005 |
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Locations
- Jim's immobile home in the immobile home park behind Hannegan’s Cove, in Spearfish Lake
- On the road between Spearfish Lake and Helena, Arkansas
Characters
- Jim Wooten
- Jim's mother (on the phone)
- Aunt Rita and Uncle John Fleming
- John’s sister Sharon and her husband Floyd
Summary
Jim decides to take the pickup camper, mainly to have a warm place to throw a sleeping bag, despite the decreased gas mileage. He loads clothes, sleeping bag, a blanket and some canned food and heads down the road, stopping for fuel and propane. He drives for the next several hours, stopping only for fuel and pit stops, trying to keep pushing south to get the storm behind him.
As he drives he spends some time thinking about his ex-wife. Once upon a time he’d had the vision of building a good life with her – a nice house, kids, a good job, and all those things that a lot of people hoped for and usually managed. It hadn’t worked out for him, and not for the first time he kicked himself mentally for not seeing Carolyn’s problem before he’d gotten married.... Now, looking back at the whole experience with Carolyn, he couldn’t help but wonder if he really wanted to try his luck again.
He continues south, again stopping only for food and fuel, and parks overnight in a truck stop. He doesn’t sleep real well – he has vivid dreams of a more settled, domestic life, with a wife, a house, and a couple kids. It was the kind of thing he’d wished he’d had with Carolyn and never managed. The odd part was that while he could almost see the woman in his mind, whoever she was, he couldn’t quite make out her face..
The next morning he has breakfast and shits the road. He arrives at the address in Helena, Arkansas where Aunt Rita and Uncle John' are staying in the middle of the afternoon.
He discovers they are living with John’s sister Sharon and her husband Floyd, their daughter and her three children - a total of eight - all living in a too-small house. It's really crowded but Rita says it's a lot better than staying on a gym floor.
The chapter ends with Rita saying It’s even hard to tell where (our) house was, everything was so destroyed. But it’s clear that we’re going to have to do something. Sharon and Floyd were nice enough to take us in, but we don’t want to have to mooch on them forever. Jim replies Without having seen it, I don’t want to say that nothing can be done. And there may not be much I can do, either. But I can’t tell without taking a look, and maybe I can do something.
Also Mentioned
- Sharon and Floyd's daughter (unnamed so far) and her three children
