A Small Loan...or Maybe a Big One - Carol Arnold

The way I look at it, it’s a loan that I’ve already paid back. I mean look what I’ve had to put up with all those years, Johnny spending his days at the Philosopher’s Club, coming home high as a kite and me having to listen yet again to one more get rich scheme while cooking up another batch of beans I bought in sacks from Food-for-Less. And then the house! I agree twenty-four days isn’t long in the whole scheme of things, but in THIS house, it’s the rest of your life. How would you like to sit all day in an attic with your nose burning from that under-smell, the one I couldn’t quite figure out until I pried up that board? And that’s on top of the over-smell that wafted all through the house, that just plain rotten stench that made my skin shrivel so much I had to load on a whole bottle of Jergin’s every night just to bring it back to something resembling human. So many years of wretched rain soaked up into that big sponge of a house made everything smell like wet cow-pie, or worse. You couldn’t give me enough money to get rid of that smell, or all those wasted years. So, what me and Gwennie found under that board was just a little down payment if you ask me.