Home Delivery

Getting back to the Browns. There was an unfortunate side effect of my mom's friendship with Natalie and that was her husband, Luke. Sometime back in the early 70's, he had taken one acid hit too many and since then been a fidgety, rambling, nervous, and at times frightening figure around the neighborhood. He was a stay-at-home dad to Little Luke, so his days were left open to speeding through the town in his beat up orange suburban. A lot of the time, he simply did laps around my block, honking his horn every time he passed our house.
I have a feeling he was a little sweet on my mom and this was his way of expressing his affection.
One afternoon I was watching my little sister when he came roaring into our driveway. He would often pull into our driveway and immediately pull out again and take off, but not today. He got out of his car and came to the front door, holding a crumbled up grocery bag. When I opened the door, he immediately began a monologue about how kids these days were hard to control and how a young lady like me had to be prepared for everything, including discipline. The whole time he was rambling, he would mess with the aviators he always wore, and giggle nervously. For his big finish, he took off his belt and handed it to me, saying that the key to kids these days was discipline, put the bag down at my feet and walked back to his car. After he had finally left I looked down at the bag, not knowing if I should open it. For all I knew, it was probably a dead animal. With my poor little sister peering out from behind me, I slowly opened the bag far away from my face and looked inside. This is what I saw: