“Ann,
would you mind topping off my water baby?” Jim asks from the corduroy Lazy-Boy
that he always tries to pivot, painstakingly, toward his daughter in the
kitchen.
“Yeah
daddy. Just give me a second to put this food up,” she replies from across the
bar that divides the kitchen and the den.
It’s
a dreary Friday evening, just after a light supper. An old war film is on the
television. Jim peers over at the screen, squinting with his powder-blue eyes
to try and read the closed caption.
“Audie
Murphy was the most decorated soldier of WWII,” Jim claims. “Did I ever tell
you that?”
James
Talley Sr. is a 91-year-old World War II veteran and former Coca-Cola man of 45
years. The former First Sergeant and Assistant Sales Manager at Coke now spends
his days in his recliner watching old movies and working word-finds. A survivor
of the Great Depression, a war, a heart attack, and the death of his wife of 55
years, Jim always acknowledges how lucky he is to have made it through so much.
“There
aren’t too many of us left.”
He
alternates between watching his movie and dozing off, only to be awoken by the
barking of his golden retrievers or by his live-in daughter giving him his
nightly pills. He wears a Coca-Cola diner hat and a black windbreaker, with a
throw blanket covering his lower half. On the end table next to him lay several
odds-and-ends: a flashlight, a roll of paper towels, an atomic clock, and an
electric razor (for when company comes over).
- Nick Johnston
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