Yellowcake Read Online Free PDF Page B

Sunday fare: Rosy roasts beef and potatoes, with that good brown gravy and homemade bread. On Sundays, Ryland gets to choose between regurgitated bird food—a little can of something called Ensure that won't upset his stomach—or Rosy's roast beef. He has been known to choose the bird food, though not very often.
    This Sunday, the third Sunday in August, the NFL season begins, so Ryland has the game on, the volume muted. He doesn't want to contribute to the noise. His son Eddy's kids are running around screaming, and everybody else is in the kitchen—Maggie and her fiancé, George, Eddy and his wife, Sue. Teri, Ed's youngest, has just come into the living room and is staring at Ryland's feet. His feet are on Teri's chair, his footstool.
    Though Teri can't talk yet, she has a book under her arm that he knows she wants to read to him. Two years old, but she still talks a line of gibberish. He pulls his feet from the stool and says, "Have a sit-down." He doesn't like to play favorites, but she is his favorite by far and has been from the day she was born. She looked him in the eye from the incubator, stuck out her lower lip, and he fell in love. In her own little way, she seems to prefer his company, too. Now she sits, opens the book, holds it in two hands, and begins reciting like a schoolmarm. The sounds make good enough sense.
    Teri isn't afraid of him. The two older girls, Pooh and Sandi, are afraid of the tube in his nose and the cup, his spitting cup.
Look in it. I dare you. I'm not going to look in it. You look in it. Ask him. You ask him.
But Teri seems to take the tubes and dials and pills in stride.
    Eddy comes in from the kitchen with George behind him, both holding Coors cans. Ryland likes Maggie's fiancé. George has big, goofy feet that come flopping into a room, and he always seems to be blushing. Tall and awkward. He's twenty-eight years old, same as Maggie, but George looks like he is still growing into his body, his arms almost as long as his legs. He doesn't say much, not with his mouth. Ryland can tell why Maggie fell for him, though. Can see in his eyes that the kid's no fool.
    "How you doing, Mr. Mahoney?" he says.
    "Okay."
    Eddy sits down on the couch opposite Ryland, and George sits in the overstuffed chair. "She bothering you, Dad? Come here, Ter."
    "She's not bothering me. Are you? She's my pal. Aren't you?"
    Teri frowns and scolds a line of gibberish. She's teaching. He should shut up and listen.
    "Who's winning?" Eddy says.
    "Dallas," Ryland says.
    Eddy shakes his head. On this they agree: they have no use for Dallas.
    "I always thought I'd have roses at my wedding," Maggie is saying in the kitchen.
    "Have what you want," Sue says.
    "Do you know how much roses cost?" Rosy says.
    "Look at that!" Eddy jumps, and beer sloshes onto his knee. Ryland watches Troy Aikman sprint from the thirty-yard line, holding the football out in front of himself. "Showboat," Eddy says. Aikman sashays over the line, hoisting the ball over his head.
    "Teri, take your thumb out of your mouth," Eddy says. Teri is twirling her hair with one hand, sucking her thumb with the other, completely absorbed in the book. "Dad, take her thumb out of her mouth, will you?" Ryland leans over, wiggling his big finger like a worm in front of her. Teri scowls at the finger, then grabs it with the hair-twirling hand, grins, and continues to suck, so Ryland wiggles the fingers on his other hand. She laughs, dropping the book on his lap, grabbing a finger with her wet hand. Their hands dance together until a wave catches in Ryland's throat and he has to shake loose to cough. And cough. His first good cough of the day, the ball of it rising from his stomach, hurtling through the rusted pipes, whipping metal bits against his throat; he doubles over, groping his stomach.
Dear God,
he prays, a torrent of hard nothing whiplashing through, and behind it the something that never comes—oh, he wants it out, the thing that never comes.