“You doing okay?” she asked.
“I’m good,” he said.
A look at how the 2012 Republican candidates for president differ on key issues.
GOP PRIMARY TRACKER: The race for delegates
She could afford to help him only so much, since she had spent the past year relying on help herself. She had worked for 20 years as a retail buyer for local amusement parks until the company downsized in 2010. “I’m retired,” she had told friends then, smiling. But now she had blown through the modest savings intended to send her grandchildren to college and started searching for red stickers at the grocery store’s meat counter. She had two weeks left of her unemployment insurance and no job prospects in Myrtle Beach, a tourism town with diminished tourism in the summer and none now in January.
“Real retirement will never be an option now,” she said. She sat at a table in her sunroom and watched her son work, his gray shirt darkening with sweat as he stuffed leaves into 20 bags, 30, 40. This was Murdock’s favorite kind of task, one that would take all day and end with the visual satisfaction of a clean yard, a job well done, some tangible sense of accomplishment.
But it was also hard labor, and now his mother wondered: Should she pay him? She had agreed to give his friend $40 for the day, but she and Murdock had not discussed money.
“He looks like his old self when he helps somebody,” she said now, still watching him. She had never seen him happier in the past year than at Christmastime, when he spent a week tearing up a neighbor’s carpet and then surprised her with two tickets for a Christmas show at one of the resort hotels in Myrtle Beach. She was overwhelmed by the gift, but it was the memory of Murdock watching her open it — leaning in over her shoulder, beaming with pride, “Oh, no, it was nothing, Mom” — that had stuck with her long after the show.
Maybe it would be best to let this yardwork be another gift, another boost for his self-worth.
But a friend in Conway had mentioned seeing Murdock at the soup kitchen. His work boots looked ratty, and his clothes needed to be washed. He had told her that it had been a slow week, only $9.50 earned so far, by collecting and selling aluminum cans.
Maybe it would be best to pay him.
Murdock and his friend came inside and grabbed glasses of water. “Seventy bags,” he said, nodding with satisfaction. Kitty patted him on the shoulder. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she said. She paid his friend $40 and then reached back into her purse and found another $10. She thought the amount was big enough to sustain her son but small enough to preserve the fact that his work had been a favor. She held out the money for him.
Here it was, the latest transaction in the ongoing debate over dependency.
Opportunity?
Entitlement?
Murdock shook his head. Kitty continued to hold out the bill.
“Please,” she said. “You need it.”
Loading...
Comments