Roz goes home.

 Roz goes home. 

Roz and I were back on the road the next day but only after we had slept late and had a late breakfast with Uncle Albert, and then only as far as Kinross, or Chippewa County International Airport, on the long, broad runways of old Kincheloe Air Force Base, which was deactivated in 1977. Her flight home took her to Detroit, then to LaGuardia, then Roanoke, where her hippie-parented friend Blue was going to pick her up if she remembered.

     “She’ll remember,” Roz said. “Anyway, she has a cell phone now. She sold a bunch of pots.”

     “Or pot,” I said.

     “Unfair,” Roz said.

     “Yes, I know,” I said. “‘She’s very talented.’”

     “She is.”

whitefish chowder

Everything was on schedule, and I was back to Uncle Albert’s by five.

     Then, we went to get some whitefish chowder. We go to the same place every time I come to visit. And we have the same waitress, “Lou,” who tells me the same story every time we come, though first I have to ask the size of Paradise. Usually, I ask Uncle Albert, when I see her coming to get our order.

     “I keep forgetting,” I say, a little louder than I need to. “How big is Paradise?”

     “Oh, I can tell you that,” Lou says. “It’s exactly 432. I mean the population. Four hundred thirty-two exactly. Every day.”

     “Never changes?” I ask.

     “No, never changes.” She hits the pause button, then: “Cause every time a woman gets pregnant a man leaves.”

     *Ba dum tss* And all three of us laugh because the joke is always funny.

The chowder is always good.

09.13.17