{"id":810,"date":"2007-03-07T05:05:40","date_gmt":"2007-03-07T05:05:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/tire\/"},"modified":"2007-03-07T05:07:20","modified_gmt":"2007-03-07T05:07:20","slug":"tire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/tire\/","title":{"rendered":"Tire"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the morning when I got out of bed and looked outside from my second-story window down to the front lawn she was sitting on a tire except we did not have anything like that in the neighborhood because we lived in the suburbs where my old man paid some guy fifty bucks every two weeks to mow the grass. But there was Mom in her robe her hair tucked up behind her head her bare feet stuck out in front of her like pale little twins. So I went downstairs and walked outside and already I could see Mrs. Benjamin peering out of her window from across the street and I imagined she must have called fifty people by now and soon fifty more would be called and before ten o’clock the entire city of Altoona would know about mom. She was crying and she had a book of poetry resting upside down on her lap and her butt was touching the grass because the tractor tire was so big and she was sitting in the middle of it. The night before it had rained and my feet were already wet and I knew mom’s robe had to have a big water stain on the bottom and I did not want anybody to see her that way. I called her name and she did not even look at me and I knew the poetry book was Plath’s Ariel<\/em> because I recognized the white cover it was the book mom always read when her bi-polar condition kicked in. Dad called it a disease but mom called it a condition and no matter what anyone called it even when she was so low I thought she would never come out of it she was always so beautiful with her blue eyes and high cheekbones and the dimple in the middle of her chin. She had a perfect smile the most perfect I had ever seen and that morning when I knelt in front of her and whispered her name all she could do was cry about how much she had paid for the tractor tire and how Dad would be so upset when he found out. But he was a pilot and I knew he was in Argentina and not due home for days so I took Mom’s hand and walked her into the kitchen where she laid her head on the table and continued to cry. It was not until after lunch that she gave me the number and not until the next day when the tire place picked up the tire. Mom was better by then and she had on a summer dress and a flower in her hair and she waved at Mrs. Benjamin who had come outside to watch and who waved back like nothing had happened and nothing would ever again.<\/p>\n

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:<\/strong>
\nMichael P. McManus<\/strong> currently lives in West Monroe, Louisiana. He had aspirations of becoming a Bible salesman until he became a Buddhist. His poems and short stories have appeared in numerous publications. One night when the selection committee was frat-house drunk, he was awarded a Fellowship from the Louisiana Division of the Arts. It was the easiest five grand he ever made.<\/p>\n

\"michaelpmcmanus.jpg\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"michaelpmcmanus.jpg\"In the morning when I got out of bed and looked outside from my second-story window down to the front lawn she was sitting on a tire except we did not have anything like that in the neighborhood because we lived in the suburbs where my old man paid some guy fifty bucks every two weeks to mow the grass. But there was Mom in her robe her hair tucked up behind her head her bare feet stuck out in front of her like pale little twins.<\/p>\n

By Michael P. McManus<\/b>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-flash-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}