I get him a coffee with powdered creamer in a Styrofoam cup and he stands one hand on his hip, legs locked, feet planted. His eyes dart around from person to person, to anyone he might know, who might know him. Afew old men stop to talk and he nods and mutters incoherent things like “we’ll get em, gonna get em, win lose or draw.” But the square dancing starts up and eyes turn to swirling dresses and petticoats goin’ round and round and the old men move on. Dad is getting tired anyway. She gives him a smoke and he looks at me and then just sits down in the wheel chair. Up on the stage a geezer spins off in a solo routine . . . like a beer bellied scare crow on a string—perfectly immobile from the waist up but going crazy from the waist down—working his legs like a puppet on dope trying to dig through the floor boards with his big white plastic shoes. Dad sits there smokin’—watchin’. Then she starts to yell at me about “dat noise und lout music” and “how vee need to get because he ees a wery seek man.” I just yell at her, “He’s not sick, you idiot, he’s dyin’.”