Passing

by Jim Parks
100 words

Two tipoffs a kid wouldn't notice.

We went to the cancer doctor. I was twelve. Wearing a fedora and marching World War Two tall, he came out in fifteen minutes grinning. "Let's go to the zoo."

We didn't spend much time there.

"Place smells like cat piss."

For lunch, rye bread toasted, Spam fried, with mayonnaise. On the crackling radio, Eddie Fisher sang "Oh, My Papa."

He hugged me and cried.

At the airport, he said, "No tattoos." I asked why.

Your grandmother wouldn't like it.

Why?

Why? Can't be buried in a Jewish cemetery.

"I'm not Jewish."

"So, convert."

Jim Parks is a native of the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, son of a merchant and a bank teller from the black lands where they grow the cotton. Raised in Houston, he did his time in the Navy, college in California, newspapers there, Texas and Florida. Truck driver, deckhand on tugs, tuna clippers, oyster barges and shrimpers; a railroad bum and laborer, he can't remember ever not trying to work hard to tell his stories of sudden death, love, lust and life in print. Tagged as The Legendary Jim Parks by a less than complimentary police captain in Houston, he uses that moniker still to find out who among us has a sense of humor and who does not.

Copyright © 2007 Jim Parks