Carlie Mooney's Boiled Tongue

The old man gathered together every bit of his super human strength and pushed the last remaining barrel of his life toward the street. On top lay her comb and brush and the small notebook she kept beside the bed to register the daily symptoms of her illness. There, too, lay the last wills, crumbled pieces of discarded paper. The wills she and he had drawn up together, bequeathing the remains of the estate to the sole survivors.
He straightened the concrete swans in the barrel - those birds his wife had dragged home from the neighbors for him to fix. Someone else's junk. Didn't she know that he had a boat to build and a model airplane to put together? Couldn't she see how important his time was? Why did she think he might fix those damn birds?
It didn't matter anymore. She was gone and he would no longer need to find an excuse for not mending them. He had all day and all night if he wanted to putter in his basement and his shop. Never again would he have to say "I'm sewing a button on an egg" to her query as to why he'd spent all day in the basement at the grinder.
Beneath the birds were the pictures - fifty-two years of pictures to be exact - that captured every living moment - a lifetime of pictures - births, birthdays, holiday gatherings and anniversaries, departures and arrivals, weddings and funerals. Here too were the pictures of a son's body released from the coroner's office - a handsome young man who tragically met God too early in his lifetime because he agreed to ride with a drunken friend. The man remembered how he had told the son that evening that he couldn't drive the family car. "You'll have to hitch a ride back to school," was his reply. He wasn't sorry he had accidentally spilled the slimy machine oil over all the pictures - he never wanted to look upon them again. "I have my memories," he'd told the oncologist. "I don't need to relive them."
At the bottom of the barrel lay the cookbook - his mother's book in fact. "Recipes of a Kentucky housewife." Boiled cow's tongue, the green beans cooked with ham hocks and a sprig of fresh dill. And the tea that steeped on the sideboard all afternoon before being poured over ice and served with lemon and mint dusted with powdered sugar. And her coconut cake.
His mouth watered.
He remembered the look on his mother's face when he'd eaten the whole plate of cake without sharing with his brother or sister. "Carlie Mooney ate it all," he'd flatly stated. The mother had laughed. "How cute," she'd said.
The old man straightened and slowly began his trek back up the crumbling asphalt drive to the stone cottage where he'd been the master for the largest part of his life. Tomorrow he'd turn the keys over to the new owner and drag the remaining family fixtures to the yard for the auction. As he turned the corner, he saw it - the familiar red gremlin - pull to the curb and stop. The daughter emerged. Frantically she pawed through his trash pulling out the birds and the book and the few unstained pictures.
"Dad, oh Dad, whatever are you doing?"
The man raised his fist in the air and shook it. Every vein on his forehead popped as he filled with rage. "By God, these are my things. I'll do as I please. You can't tell me."
With that he turned and continued toward the empty house, straining in the fading light to see the narrow stone path to the porch. The doctor at his last check-up had been right. It wouldn't be long before his eyesight would be completely gone. But for now he was going back to the house to devour his solitary dinner. No boiled tongue for him tonight. Just a huge bowl of ice cream covered with chocolate syrup. The forbidden food. Food the doctor said had probably caused his blindness. And Carlie Mooney was going to eat it all. Just as he had done all his life.