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This appears in a pre-2010 issue of Down in the Dirt magazine.
You can get saddle-stitched issues that are now longer printed
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Down in the Dirt v067



Order this writing
in the 2009 book

Crawling
Through the Dirt


 Crawling Through the Dirt
this writing is in the collection book
Ink in my Blood (prose edition)
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 Ink in my Blood (prose edition)
To Be or Not

Pat Dixon

    For ten minutes the gray-haired man stared at the contents of the envelope marked IMPORTANT—OPEN IMMEDIATELY. Finally he turned to his wife and said, “What’s . . . this? Can’t . . . figure it out.”
    Smiling with pleasure at his uncharacteristic curiosity, the brown-haired woman looked at the envelope and then its contents for a few seconds.
    “It’s just a special offer from Reader’s Digest, Hon. They’re offering you a trial subscription to their magazine—for less than half the cover price.”
    “But they’ve got . . . my name printed in there . . . with graphs I . . . don’t . . . understand.”
    “Computers nowadays will do that for everybody’s name, Hon. The graphs merely show what it would cost for the full price—this tall bar here—in contrast to what it would cost for the special sale price—this shorter bar here. See—it’s only about half the height of the tall bar. That means it would be a lot cheaper to buy the magazine on sale, that’s all. Fifty-two percent off, they say—a little more than half.”
    The man scowled for a minute and then stared blankly up at her.
    “That’s why this one bar is tall while this other one is short, Honey Love.”
    She patted his forearm as his brows twitched.
    “But we can save a hundred percent, Hon—just by not getting the magazine at all. You’d never read it anyways, so we don’t really need to get it at all, right?”
    The man’s brows stopped twitching, and he stared at her face expectantly.
    “So—I’m going to save us one hundred percent by just throwing this away. Would that be fine with you, Hon? I think it’s fine—don’t you think it’s fine?”
    After a long pause he looked down at his shoes and replied, “That . . . would be fine.”
    Twenty minutes later his elder daughter came into the room, and the man said with a frown, “I want you to put some . . . something in the . . . thing . . . now.”
    The young woman pointed to various objects and asked fifteen questions about where the second thing was. Finally she determined that he meant a humidifier that was on a low table against a side wall.
    “Daddy, would it be fine with you if I put some water into this humidifier? It would be very fine with me. Would it also be fine with you—Daddy?”
    After a pause her father turned to look at two well-dressed men walking outside the far window and replied, “That . . . would be . . . fine.”
    One hour later his other daughter came into the room and told him that the choices for lunch were hamburgers, fish sandwiches, and hot dogs with chili. When he did not respond, she repeated the list, adding, “You always like those hot dogs, Daddy.”
    He stared at her blankly.
    “They come with fries, and you like fries,” she said.
    Still his stare was blank.
    “Daddy, would it be fine with you if I put you down for two chili dogs and some nice warm fries? Would that be fine with you—Daddy?”
    Again, after a long pause he replied, “That . . . would be fine.”
    While lunch was being cleared away, a younger man whom he dimly recalled seeing yesterday came in and spoke to him.
    “Sir, your first appointment is here to see you.”
    The gray-haired man looked blankly back at him.
    “Sir, it’s one of those important men—from overseas,” the younger man added.
    Again the stare.
    “Sir, he’s going to want you to authorize a two-million-dollar-a-day increase in aid to his—folks. And he’s also going to want you to agree that lots more sanctions should be put in place against those people he’s against.”
    Still the blank stare.
    “Sir, I think those are both very fine ideas. Would they also be fine with you—Mr. President?”



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