Lit in Progress

My dad is, well, most of you already know, but he’s almost done with his sentence and I want to ask you to pray for him that he can get a job and be, you know, a productive member of society. Also please pray for me that I can know how to rebuild our relationship because there’s a lot we’ve been through.
–Scott

Scott seemed thoughtful, his dad thought. He (Scott) was drumming his fingers along the armrest the way he used to when he was a boy, whenever they told him they were moving again. Tap-tap-tap-tap … thud.

“How’s your sister?” Frank asked, gazing out the windshield.

“Fine. She’s doing well, I mean.” Scott glanced at him, then back to the road. The barrenness of the country was slowly giving way to the barrenness of town, still yellow and brittle from winter though now mid-March.

They passed an old Volkswagon Beetle that had been set up on six long legs and painted like a black widow spider. A ways farther, Frank’s eye caught on the white fence of a horse breeder’s pastures, with the foals chasing one another around their mothers.

They turned slightly west with the road as it curved, passing a gas station and some newly-erected metal buildings. A dollar store. A barbecue joint. A sheriff’s office.

There was a new subdivision closer to town, with its bland brick buildings, posing awkwardly along treeless streets.

“What’s James been up to these days?” Frank asked.

“Nothin’ much. Graduated from nursing school a while back. He’s working at one of the Integris’s.”

Scott and James had been, as they say, thick as thieves when they were in high school together. They’d both gone to OU afterwards, but Scott got a Communications degree and James had stayed with Biology. They both went to Gracelake, but weren’t as tight as they once were.

“Wanna go to Sonic?” Scott asked as they rounded another curve through Noble.