Читать книгу Love Without a Home - Shari Mong - Страница 18

Kyle Rimmer woke up with a massive and blinding migraine. Everything to him was blurry. It took him a while to get his eyes adjusted. He could swear his eyesight was getting worse. He felt sick to his stomach and his body was aching. He decided that today he would just stay under the bridge. He had enough food to get him through the day.

He sat there and ate looking around and hearing the birds. It was just him and nature. He remembers before his dad got sick that they would go to upstate New York and fish. His dad taught him to bait the hook and know when to pull on the line.

“Hey there boy, you’re doing great now keep it steady. Reel it in. Now you’re doing it.” Kyle reeled in his line. He had what looked to him the biggest fish he ever saw. His dad got a hold of the fish and took it off the hook. “Good job Kyle. I am so proud of you. I love you son. We catch some more of this; we will have some good eatin’.” Kyle smiled up at his dad.

After Kyle’s father got sick and died, Kyle never went back to that lake. It was too painful. He did not have a boy of his own to take there. Kyle remembers holding his father’s hand before he died. “I am proud of you son. Take care of your mother for me.” Kyle’s mother was standing in the bedroom crying. “Whatever you decide to do with your life Kyle, do it with honor, courage, and determination.”

“I will make you proud of me dad. I promise.”

“That’s my boy.” Kyle’s father died that night. If only he could see Kyle now, he would be so disappointed. Kyle homeless, can’t work, and living under a bridge begging for money from strangers. Oh yeah, his father would be so proud of him; a failed marriage too. He was glad that his father had not lived to see this.

Kyle had tears coming from his eyes. He remembers his father’s funeral. It had been a military funeral with a 21 gun salute. He remembers the American flag on his father’s casket and them folding it up giving it to his mother. Before she died, she had given it to him. When Janice left him, she took the flag. Kyle did not even have that.

He would hope when he died that he would get a military funeral but he did not hold his breath on that. If he could not get his disability from the military, why would he think that he would get a military funeral when he died? He was a homeless veteran who would remain this way and die without so much as a tombstone.

He closed his eyes again with the migraine still pounding his head.