Standing in the Rainbow - Fannie Flagg [208]
Macky sat there and watched the ant struggle along until it was out of sight and he smiled for the first time in weeks. “Who knows?” he thought. “If he keeps on going, the little son of a bitch might just make it.”
Hey, Good Buddy
THE NEXT DAY Norma marched in the door and said, “I have made a decision. Since you won’t go to any of the groups, I have taken the bull by the horns. Come out to the car and help me bring it in.”
When they got to the car there it was, in a box that looked like the hide of a black-and-white cow. Norma had bought him a computer.
“Norma, I don’t know how to use that thing.”
“Neither do I but we are going to learn. I’ve signed us up for lessons over at Comp World. It can’t be hard; they say now that even first graders can do it. Besides, Linda said if we got one we could E-mail each other.”
“Norma, I’ll help you set it up but I’m not going to any classes over at Comp World. You go if you like.”
Five months later, after much cussing, he let Norma show him how to get on the Internet.
One day while she was gone, Macky was pleasantly surprised that after a few tries he was able to get into a chat room.
“Hey, any old guys out there remember the Hardy Boys?” Within two minutes Marvin from Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, answered.
“Hey, good buddy, affirmative. I just found three old copies—The Tower Treasure, The Missing Chums, The Clue of the Broken Blade. Have two copies of Missing Chums would be happy to send on.”
The next thing Norma knew she could not get him off the Internet. He was all over the map. He was even able to locate fly-fishing experts on the thing. What they had to discuss about the mayfly was a mystery to her but he chatted for hours with someone in Wyoming. And they seemed to know what the other meant. As for Macky, after he got the hang of it, he announced to Norma, “This is just like ham radio, only better.”
Norma said, as usual, “See? I told you.”
Life started to perk up a little more for Macky. His little granddaughter, Apple, started coming down for visits and he was able to teach her all the fine points of baseball. One beautiful Sunday the two of them went to the Dodgers game over at Dodgertown, USA, and had a wonderful time. The little girl did not know it, but one day years from now she would look back on that day and remember how the sun felt and the smell of the grass . . . all the hot dogs and peanuts her granddaddy bought her, the feel of his hand holding hers as they walked home, and she would smile.
All’s Well That Ends Well
TAKE WHAT HAPPENED to Betty Raye, for instance. Although she had started out poor in life and had been deprived of her rightful place in the world, the universe sometimes has a way of righting things. Her two boys were lucky in business and made a killing in real estate. Her uncle Le Roy Oatman’s guilt over leaving the gospel group and joining a hillbilly band finally paid off in a big way. In 1989, while on a three-day bender in Del Rio, Texas, he wrote a song about how fortune and fame don’t mean a thing because, as the title says, “I Never Said Good-bye to Momma.” Country-and-western star Clint Black recorded it and it became an overnight hit and had grown men sobbing in their beers for years. When Le Roy passed on, he left Betty Raye, the only one in the family who had been nice to him, millions of dollars in royalties that just keep on rolling in.
Then there was money from Hamm’s life-insurance policy, which Vita helped her invest in several stocks. One was a pharmaceutical company that just happened to manufacture birth-control pills. When the sexual