Mitchell the Promise Keeper
This is post 5 of Section IV. To begin at the beginning, go here. Section II begins here. Section III begins here. Section IV begins here.
Mitchell Grout ended his conversation with his father abruptly as he pulled his Chevy under the porte-cochere of the mobile home his family occupied in the trailer park he managed. He strode in, slamming the car door behind him.
Mitchell’s wife, Denise, rose smilingly from the table where she had been homeschooling their eldest, Matthew, and ran to get the two heavy bags of groceries he had left out in the car. “How was the store, honey?” she said, giving him a peck on the cheek as she went out.
Mitchell trailed out to the kitchen with his bag and set it on the counter. Through the window over the sink he watched the white kids and black kids riding their bikes together under a golden sky that promised an unusually glorious sunset. He was of two minds about the scene. On the one hand, it showed America was the greatest country—God’s country, in fact, where white people and black people could live in perfect harmony, if it weren’t for the liberals (like his father) and their Affirmative Action crap. On the other hand, it showed he wasn’t wealthy enough to buy a home in a really good neighborhood, a fact his hypocrite father’s face never failed to register on those rare occasions when he visited and saw the black kids playing around.
Denise’s reentry distracted him. She was lovely, he thought, as he watched her hoist the two plastic bags onto the counter. No one would ever call her exactly a looker—she was a little too thin, perhaps—but he didn’t want some floozy mothering his children. He remembered making this point at his last Promise Keepers meeting. A man can’t lead without the right kind of follower.
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Mitchell Grout ended his conversation with his father abruptly as he pulled his Chevy under the porte-cochere of the mobile home his family occupied in the trailer park he managed. He strode in, slamming the car door behind him.
Mitchell’s wife, Denise, rose smilingly from the table where she had been homeschooling their eldest, Matthew, and ran to get the two heavy bags of groceries he had left out in the car. “How was the store, honey?” she said, giving him a peck on the cheek as she went out.
Mitchell trailed out to the kitchen with his bag and set it on the counter. Through the window over the sink he watched the white kids and black kids riding their bikes together under a golden sky that promised an unusually glorious sunset. He was of two minds about the scene. On the one hand, it showed America was the greatest country—God’s country, in fact, where white people and black people could live in perfect harmony, if it weren’t for the liberals (like his father) and their Affirmative Action crap. On the other hand, it showed he wasn’t wealthy enough to buy a home in a really good neighborhood, a fact his hypocrite father’s face never failed to register on those rare occasions when he visited and saw the black kids playing around.
Denise’s reentry distracted him. She was lovely, he thought, as he watched her hoist the two plastic bags onto the counter. No one would ever call her exactly a looker—she was a little too thin, perhaps—but he didn’t want some floozy mothering his children. He remembered making this point at his last Promise Keepers meeting. A man can’t lead without the right kind of follower.
Continue
posted by Hobbes at 8:10 PM
3 Comments:
Was that a paper or plastic bad with the groceries? Interesting story, but I just don't know what to say now.
Homeschooling? What a bunch of rednecks!
I think plastic, T&I.
Ha ha, Doug. Mitchell and Denise are based on my sister-in-law and her husband, though they are Catholic and do not homeschool. But I may have distorted them. For some reasons we've only seen them a few times over the last 13 years.
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