Another pause ensued before, Jack spoke again.
“When we got to Mom and Dad’s house, the paramedics were already there working on Dad. He was laying on the steps to the garage with his shirt off while the medics calmly worked on him. I think he was dead already. Mom, Ceila, and I huddled off to the side, crying, shaking, not willing to let go of one another. They said they got a weak pulse so they took him in the ambulance to the emergency room where we met them. We waited in a room off to the side from where they were working on Dad. It seemed like we waited for hours, although I’m sure it was only about fifteen minutes. After a while I couldn’t stand it so I went into the room where Dad was. The doctor and nurses had stopped trying anything and all I could say was, ‘is that it’? The doctor nodded. I was dumbfounded. I went and got Mom and Celia and we stood there and talked to Dad, no, ordered him to fight and come back to us… but he didn’t.”
Gabe spoke, “That’s when you called me and Sydney to let us know.”
“Yeah. That was the hardest call I’ve ever made in my life.”
They both sat, elbows resting on their knees. Words weren’t coming from either one so Gabe picked up the bottle of Jeremiah Weed and filled their glasses again.
“To Dad!” Gabe said as he raised his glass in the air. Jack did the same and they clinked them together, spilling a little of the weed on the ground.
“That’s a terrible waste of the weed! Be a little gentler next time,” Gabe said jokingly.
Outside, the weather was getting stormy. The sound of the wind whipping through the leaves of the trees became stronger and a chill filled the sanctum of the shelter. Smoke from the dying fire no longer drifted lazily to the center of the abode, moving gently throughout and then over to the cracks between branches that made up the walls. It now moved directly to the east causing them to move their handmade chairs.
“Looks like a storm to me,” Gabe said in a voice rising above the noise of the wind in the trees. The wind driven rain began pelting the shelter with a vengeance, followed by hail. They both moved a little closer to the center to avoid the drops blown in from the side walls.
“Couldn’t you at least have constructed these walls a little more water proof? You are the woodsman of the group,” Jack yelled above the roar of the wind, rain, and hail.
Gabe retrieved his wide brimmed hat from a corner where the shelter leaked pretty good and plopped it on his head.
“I’ll bet the golfers are a little pissed off at this turn of events,” he said with a chuckle.
“I checked my smart phone before I came and it didn’t look like anything coming through until later. Guess the weather man was wrong again,” Jack said.
The hail only lasted a few more minutes before the rain took over again. After ten minutes, the wind died down and the rain stopped revealing patches of blue skies and sunshine.
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