Found Money - James Grippando [5]
Ryan’s old man had lived his sixty-two years by one simple rule: “last” was the most vulgar of four-letter words. For Frank Duffy, there was no such thing as second place, no ranking of priorities. Everything was first. God, family, job—he devoted unflagging energy to each. A tireless working slug who never missed a Sunday service, never let his family down, never left a job site before someone had said, “That man Duffy is the best damn electrician in the business.” Only in the most important battle of his life did he seemingly avoid being first.
He was the last to admit that his cancer would kill him.
Not until the pain was unbearable did he finally concede he couldn’t beat it on his own. Ryan was furious with him for shunning medicine. Being a doctor had only seemed to make his incessant pleas less credible, as if Ryan were just another one of those test-crazy physicians Frank Duffy had never trusted. As it turned out, treatment would only have prolonged the inevitable—two months, maybe three, tops. Ryan would have welcomed any extra time. Had the tables been turned, however, he knew he might well have displayed the same stubborn denial. Ryan enjoyed it when people said he was just like his father, and they looked so much alike that comparisons were inevitable. Both were handsome, with warm brown eyes. His father had long ago gone completely gray, and Ryan was on his way, with distinguished flecks of gray in his thick dark mane. At six-one he was the taller of the two, though he would have been the last to point out that his proud father was shrinking in his old age.
The sun was completely gone now, dipping below the flat horizon. After dark, the plains of southeastern Colorado were like a big ocean. Flat and peaceful, not a city light in sight. A good place to raise a family. No crime to speak of. The nearest shopping mall was in Pueblo, a blue-collar city a hundred miles to the west. The closest fancy restaurant was in Garden City, Kansas, even farther to the east. Some said Piedmont Springs was in the middle of nowhere. For Ryan, it was right where it ought to be.
Ryan had supported his father’s decision to spend his few remaining days at home. Frank Duffy was well liked among the town’s twelve hundred residents, but the two-hour trek to the hospital was making it hard for his oldest friends to say their final goodbyes. Ryan had set his father up in the rear of the house, in his favorite sitting room. A rented hospital bed with chrome railings and adjustable mattress replaced the rustic pine sofa with forest-green cushions. Beyond the big bay window was a vegetable garden with knee-high corn and bushy green tomato plants. Ash-oak floors and beamed cedar ceilings completed the cabin feeling. It used to be the cheeriest room in the house.
“Did you get it?” his father asked eagerly as Ryan entered the room.
Ryan smirked as he took the bottle from the paper sack in his hand: a fifth of Jameson Irish Whiskey.
His face beamed. “Good boy. Set ’em up.”
He put two glasses on the bed tray in his father’s lap, then poured two fingers into each.
“You know the really good thing about Irish whiskey, Ryan?” He raised his glass in a toast, smiling wryly. “It’s Irish. To your health, laddie,” he said in an exaggerated brogue.
The hand was shaking, Ryan noticed, not from drinking but from his illness. He was even more pale today than yesterday, and his weakened body seemed shapeless, almost lifeless, beneath the wrinkled white sheets. In silence, they belted back one last round together. His father finished with a crooked smile of satisfaction.
“I still remember the first drink you ever took,” he said with nostalgia in his eyes. “You were a spunky little eleven-year-old, pestering my old man for a sip. Your grandmother said go ahead and give it to him, thinking you’d spit it out like medicine and learn your lesson. You threw your head back, guzzled it right down and slammed the glass on the table, like some cowboy in the movies.