Morning coffee needed. Had a dream where twinkies were going into battle against cheese doodles. It was a strangely animated dream. Olives were being shot out of catapults. I’m sure my subconscious is trying to tell me something. No clue what though. Let’s set the timers and try to think of something else shall we? Timers up and we are off.
Okay I am in love with this story line. I may be taking notes as I drink coffee and then coming back to this at lunch. So many things to play with.
Thursday, October 5th: He didn’t like to stay in one place too long.
He didn’t like to stay in one place too long. He knew those around him simply thought he had wondering feet. Most thought it was a youthful thing and that he would grow out of it. He didn’t know quite how to explain to them about his childhood.
He lost count of the number of times they moved growing up. They would settle in a place and it seemed as though it would be a good place to stay. Then his father’s paranoia would rise. People were after him. It was his claim although no one ever explained what people. He asked when he was younger and was finally told it was just in his father’s mind. Asking made it worse so he stopped asking.
His father had a decent enough paying job, and one that he could do from anywhere. And so the money continued to come in, his father often seeming the happiest when he could work from the passenger’s seat as his mother piloted their car from the place they were leaving to the place they were going. On the move seemed to suit him well.
Andy didn’t have his father’s paranoid and he hated explaining it to anyone. He had yet to find a way that didn’t make his father sound crazy and somehow making him sound that way made Andy feel disloyal. He father was a good father. In every other way he was just like anyone else, sometimes better than the fathers of the other people he met. It was only when his father caught someone looking in their direction a little too long or began to think the routine driving habits of their neighbors were designed to take them past the house so they could observe him that things started to slide.
His mother coped well with this, turning it into a rational feature that sounded logical to the outside world. She grew up in a family filled with tradesmen and learned many skills. So each time they moved, she picked a house that was down at the edges and in need of repair. While they lived there, she repaired it and usually made quite the profit before they had to move again. Her sister, his Aunt Marcy was their realtor and while Andy knew she understood his father’s paranoid, she too made it seem as though it was normal. The two of them worked to make it seem almost as though they were a team. One did the repairs and the other sold the property.
It made for a pretty story to tell the others when he was once again moving. Sometimes the move was to another part of the city, other times across the country. It depended on how far his father felt he needed to move to get away from those chasing him.
As an adult, Andy found himself one day buying a house that was a fixer upper. At the time, there were few apartments around and as he had some savings, he decided to try his luck. He worked and after hours he put to use the skills that his mother taught him. He didn’t plan to move. He thought he was making himself a permanent home.
Then the final work was done. The house looked like a show piece. And Andy found himself in his Aunt’s real estate office talking about listing it. The conversation was a tense one at first. It was only after he assured her that he didn’t think anyone was chasing him that the tenseness faded. He admitted to somehow not feeling comfortable in the house now that the work was done.
Once an understanding was reached there was a partnership of sorts, not just with her but with the firm. He often bought a house on their recommendation and fixed it up. They sold it at a profit when he was ready to sell. His intention was to always find someplace to settle. One day he hoped one of the houses would in fact speak to him and whisper of home.
Ten til Midnight 