My Father Tossed a Blue Savings Passbook into the Mud at Cedar Ridge

I walked back into the kitchen and picked up the five-thousand-dollar check.

He was trying to buy me out.

The red stamp account was real, it was still active, and he knew it.

I slipped the five-thousand-dollar check into my front pocket and shut my apartment door.

I listened to his heavy boots hit the floorboards until the front gate clicked shut.

Two days later, I sat across from Arthur in his strip mall office.

The small room smelled of damp wool coats.