Short Stories by John Hendrix

It was Grandpop who taught me to drink my coffee black. That’s what growin’ boys like me ought to do. It’s important for me to get used to a little bitterness. Ain’t everything in life is sweet.

‘Course Grandpop’s dead now. Might as well be, at least, with the condition
he’s in. I don’t visit him much any more. I’ve gotten sick of that beeping noise his heart monitor makes every second – in the mornings it’s twice a second – a habit he must’ve learned from the many mornings he lived before his heart attack.

I just started my first year of college, so I can’t visit him often anyway, which is probably why that beeping noise is starting to cross my mind less and less. I had already grieved Grandpop when he first fell into his coma, so part of me felt like he was already dead and gone. But the other part of me was still stuck at that Baker’s Kitchen Diner, sittin’ ‘round one of those cherry wood tables with Louie and Grandpop, Ma off I don’t know where, with mine and Grandpop’s fingers wrapped around a mug of black coffee.