Free Miles to Go by Richard Paul Evans Page A

miles to the outskirts of the suburb, then back, a journey of 5 miles in all.
    My walk started out well, at least for the first couple miles, but after that my thighs and calves were burning, not so much from the injury as from being out of shape.Even empty, the pack seemed heavier than I remembered. I was moving at a turtle’s pace when I arrived back on Nora Street, grateful to be home. On my way inside the house I stopped and picked up the mail. There was a postcard from the cable company marked RETURN TO SENDER.
    A Friendly reminder from Larcom Cable
    Dear Valued Customer,
    Your Larcom Cable account will expire in just 90 days.
    We value your business, so if you re-subscribe now we’ll bonus you two months of Spokane’s greatest entertainment value absolutely FREE. Plus, we’ll send you a coupon for a FREE large, 2-topping pizza from PIZZA HUT.
    This is a limited time offer, so act now to keep the excitement coming!
    Across the bottom of the card were scrawled the words
Please cancel my account, I won’t be needing it
.
    I checked the postage mark. The card had been sent just three days earlier.

    Angel came home late from work again, and I expected another night of uncomfortable silence. Instead, as soon as she walked in, she called my name. “Alan.”
    I walked from the kitchen to the hallway. She smiled sweetly when she saw me. “Hi.”
    Her complete change in temperament surprised me. “Hi.”
    “Do you want to go out tonight?”
    “I made dinner.”
    “Can we freeze it? I’d like to take you out.”
    “All right,” I said, a little bemused.
    “How does Chinese sound? The Asian Star has fabulous potstickers and their walnut shrimp is life-changing.”
    “Say no more,” I said.
    We put dinner in the refrigerator, then drove immediately to the restaurant, which was near the university and crowded with students. After the waitress had taken our orders, Angel said, “I miss going to school. I love the energy.”
    “How long did you go?”
    “I had to drop out my junior year, when I …” She stopped mid-sentence. She looked down for a moment, then back up into my eyes. She looked soft, full of contrition. “I’m sorry I’ve been so irritable lately. You must feel like you’re living with a crazy woman.”
    “No,” I said. “But I’ve been worried about you. If I can do anything for you—if you need to talk, I’m a good listener.”
    “Thank you,” she said, but nothing more.
    I cleared my throat. “So, I’ve been thinking. I would really like to prepare Thanksgiving dinner.”
    “I don’t really celebrate Thanksgiving,” she said.
    “I know. But maybe you could make an exception, so I could thank you for all that you’ve done for me.”
    “You don’t need to do that. Besides, I have to work Thursday.”
    “We’ll eat when you get back.”
    She didn’t respond; rather, she looked quiet, as if suddenly lost in thought. Then she glanced up at me. “Okay,” she said, relenting. “That sounds fun.”
    “Thanksgiving it is.”
    After dinner we stopped by the video store for the next video on our list. They didn’t have the movie we weresupposed to be watching,
The Third Man
, starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, but they did have number fifty-six:
M*A*S*H
.
    As a child I rarely missed the TV series spawned by the movie, but I had never seen the original with Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould.
    Not surprisingly, the movie was darker and edgier than the television series, with an antireligious agenda about as subtle as a mankini.
    About halfway through the movie there is a scene where Waldowski, the camp dentist, decides to commit suicide.
    Predictably, Hawkeye and Trapper John make a joke of it and offer Waldowski the “black pill,” which is actually harmless but which Waldowski believes will bring sudden death. At the scene’s climax (a spoof on da Vinci’s
Last Supper)
the group gathers for Waldowski’s death, and a soldier sings the movie’s title song:
“Suicide