The List

By Gary Flood

Going “all in” with everything you have is hard for some folks to understand. For me, it’s just another day. When your raised a certain way, totally dysfunctional, what seams insane to some is just normal to you. Once again, perspective. It’s a personal decision how to run your life. Life does not come with directions, it comes with mental programming. Your mind is programmed from birth with what you see and hear from your parents and then in school by your teachers. By the time your off to the real world you’re a product of what your programmed to be. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can have a gift come along in the shape of a book or person or near death experience. It can deprogram you mid-life and allow you to rethink yourself again. Hopefully for the better. Living life “all in” can come with some amazing rewards. It can take you to places you never dreamed of. From the outsider looking in it looks like you have the biggest balls in the world, when to you it was just a natural reaction. The downside to living “all in” is it can leave you flat ass broke without a single possession to call your own, living in a shack in the hills of North Carolina.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gary Flood
• Release date: Jun 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370700813

Gary Flood

Hello, Im Gary Flood Born and raised on the Texas gulf coast. I am a single father of 5 children and 3 grandchildren. Spending my life on the coast has been a gift. Once the saltwater gets in your soul its hard to be away from it. I spent my earlier years pursuing music, and still do write and record. Lately I've been writing books, taking my 47 years of life experience and sprinkling places and situations I've found myself in with a little fiction for your reading pleasure. I hope you enjoy Blood Beef, Dead Shrimp & Gold.

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THE LIST

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A successful, middle-aged, single father relives his past, being raised by his con artist dad in East Texas, as he travels from Texas to North Carolina to surprisingly pick up the dying old man and go for a bucket list trip. When the dying ex con discovers whatever is on the list can come true, things get interesting.

Copyright 2017

Written by: Gary P. Flood

Present day

Staring down in the passenger seat, at the piece of scrap paper that I’d been jotting notes on, im in a daze. The words on it, for the last 3 months, were just letters to me. Ink letters all put together making words, making short incomplete sentences. It set there right along with me, alone in the cab of my truck as we stared at each other. That’s all they were until now, just words on the back side of a piece of junk mail that never made it to the trash. Staring at it now it was staring back at me, taking on some new form of identity. The truck set idle with the hot south Texas sun cutting through the windshield.

Snatching up the words that wouldn’t leave me alone, I leaned over and rested my shoulder against the driver door to hide in the shadow and let the cold air vent blow in my face. The scribbly hand writing on the paper was easy to read because it belonged to me. It was a list, a simple list I’d been putting together through conversation with my dad. Realizing I’d had my foot mashed down on the brake I eased off the peddle and relaxed my leg. Nobody would be coming down this dirt road. The thoughts running through my head had already made up their mind. It wasn’t a matter of if, it was just when and how. Looking up at myself in the rearview mirror and seeing my father’s reflection look back at me, now was the answer. Tossing the old man’s bucket list back in the seat next to me I started making the calls. It didn’t take long because there were only two to make. One to the clientele I consulted for in the oilfield and the other to the ex-wife. I could do without both. Me and Dad were going for a ride.

Snatched up by the ear

1986- Get that fucking ear ring out of your ear the words cut like a knife from the lips of my old man. Setting in the Baytown TX juvenile probation department lobby. The rare occasion to have him and mom together at the same time. We all sat and looked at each other. I looked at her for confirmation to follow the man’s demand that I only saw every other weekend. He looked at her in discussed and disapproval for the way she was raising me. And she at him for the last fifteen years of her life. Living on the lush greens of a private country club one day and then hiding in the woods in a double wide trailer the next because he owed someone money. She could still smell the vodka on his breath.

Reaching up and taking the jewelry from my ear as the standoff subsided, I didn’t need the look of approval from my mom. The old man’s words cut threw me like the knife he intended them to. He never laid a hand on me my whole life. He didn’t need to. His look and words could take you down faster than any physical punishment imaginable.

Im taking him home with me Throwing in the white towel she’d had enough. We were all gathered together today for my latest adventure of breaking in to people’s homes and steeling their jewelry. If this had been my first time in trouble I’d probably been going home with her to my Grandmothers small coastal town of Seabrook TX.

Mom and dad had already dismissed the pot boiling over time and time again in my teenage quest for rebellion. When I stole my grandmother’s car at the age of fourteen and drove to California in search of rock n roll they should have turned off the burner then. That trip was dismissed with a half-grinned stare of amazement in the Houston intercontinental airport parking lot from my dad. Once out of site from everybody at the waiting terminal (back when you could just walk to the gate to greet your loved ones) and handed over by the, marshal sworn, flight attendant that flew us home; You see me and my buddy were gonna be rock stars. Living at my Nanas house with my single mom held lots of freedom. My grandmother, recently widowed, was being flown from one vacation to another, in her grieving, by my wealthy uncle trying to get her mind off things. My mom was trying to work and find new love I guess. Either way no one was around except the keys to Nanas 81’ Chevy citation. Me and my guitar picking friend threw our Guitars in the car and headed west. Motley crew and the rest of the hair metal of the 80s were waiting on us, so we thought. Anyways with a How in the hell did you know how to drive to California son?." you