“Come on, BC! I don’t want to wait here all day!”
I stood in the doorway, yawning.
“You’ve been there for five seconds.”
My father held up his hands in the air, as if to demonstrate the enormity of five seconds. Five seconds, his arms seemed to say, was substantially more time than it took the bullets that killed Lincoln and Kennedy to exit their respective barrels.
“Well, that’s five seconds I’m not getting back, isn’t it?” He began to fidget, wondering why I hadn’t yet shoulder-rolled out of my mom’s house and into his car.
Instead of explaining that every time I had ever been dependent on him to be ready for an event of mine, he had always been at least fifteen minutes late, I just sighed and picked up my tool belt. It was light since I knew better than to bring a tape measure, utility knife, or carpenter’s pencil. My father would manage to lose all three of these in less time than it would take me to notice they were gone. Somewhere, I like to think, there is a room in my father’s house full of all the tool’s he’s lost.
It’s gotta be in some kind of hidden space/time pocket though, like the Tardis in Doctor Who. Otherwise the room would be bigger than the whole house.
“How many roofs are on this house?” I asked.
“Three.” That meant a lot of tear off work.
“Can’t you ever get a goddamn re-roof? Just once?”
The idea of being able to just lay down shingles all day, instead of tear off someone’s old roof and get covered in attic dust seemed almost heavenly. I wished I would one day be a lucky enough son of a bitch that I would get construction jobs that easy.
Or get paid. As far as I could tell I was still working to pay off Rachel’s second car wreck. My dad was using me to cook his construction books so his new wife wouldn’t find out he was funneling money to Rachel.
“Get in the car, BC.”
I followed my father down the front porch steps, trying to be quiet. The kids were sleeping inside the house, and I didn’t want to wake them since it was still too early for anyone else to be awake.
I threw my tool belt in the back of my father’s truck, inspecting to make sure that he hadn’t “forgotten” anything he’d have to go back for as soon as I started tearing off the roof.
“These people got a chimney, dad?”
If they had a chimney he was going to need to put the grinder bit in his skill saw. That was something he loved to “forget.” Christ, if I had a nickel for every time my dad forgot his skill saw when we had a chimney to flash….
“Hold on, I have to call Laney to see if she can bring us lunch later on.” Laney was my father’s fourth wife, and the reason he had employed me in his money laundering scheme. Let’s just say that my dad loved her so much he got her name tattooed on his arm. Right underneath a tattoo of a great white shark.
Some things you just can’t make up.
I got in the car, and buckled by seat belt out of old habit. I was seven years old and in my grandfather’s car before I actually understood what seat belts were for. I had never seen them used before then. I had previously thought that half the job of riding in a car was making sure you didn’t get slammed against the windows or other people.
“Fuck!” My father screamed all of the sudden.
I turned to face him, quickly.
“For all the fucking shit in the fucking world! Oh you goddamn prick motherfucker!” He punched his steering wheel. The horn honked.
“What’s going on, dad?” I asked.
“Some fucking punk ass kid stole my god damn cell phone!”
I knew better than to ask him how he knew it was a “punk ass kid” and not an old drifter. Once my dad gets a vision in his head of who the guilty part is, it doesn’t shake loose. His imagination is like an etch a sketch made out of instant cement. You can’t change what’s already written.
“Are you sure you brought it with you?” I began to browse through my immediate surroundings.
“You’re fucking right I’m sure. I’m…. fucking FUCK!” My father grunted as he pulled himself behind the steering wheel, and turned on the gas. His face was red all of the sudden, and I had to grab the side of the door as he accelerated. Even my seat belt wouldn’t hold me still. I saw the speedometer go from zero to fifty in less than eight seconds. He slammed on the brakes to turn the corner.
I was amazed that we hadn’t flipped over.
“I’m gonna find that fucking punk kid and I’m going to shove this cigarette lighter right in his fucking eye!” He screamed. Screamed like he was on a battlefield a thousand years ago, crying for great Wotan to bless his righteous kills.
“I’m going to fucking take him home, and slit his goddamn throat in front of his parents! And then I’ll kill the lazy fucks who raised such a shitty goddamn thief of a kid!”
Again, I knew better than to ask how he knew so much about the as yet to be identified thief, or his family.
“Dad… calm down. Let’s see if we can’t find….”
“No! I’m going to fucking kill him, BC! I’m going to wrap my arms around his scrawny little neck and hold them there until he stops breathing through his cunt whistle!”
I looked at my father, and realized two things. If I didn’t find his cell phone very soon, or at least demonstrate to him that it had never been in the car, he was either going to run someone over in his frantic search or worse, he was going to find some poor kid walking around on the street and kill him.
I gulped, and opened up the compartment in the armrest. I noticed that one of the cup holders was missing. If my dad had put the cell phone there and it had slipped through… it was right there. Right where I figured.
Big as life and twice as ugly, I picked it up. My dad turned another sharp corner. I barely managed to keep hold of the phone.
“Dad! It’s right here!”
“Gonna fucking have to kill his whole family! That’ll take hours and there goes my whole fucking day, the stupid little dickhead! Steal my motherfucking phone!”
“Dad!” I waived the phone again, like a cross at a vampire.
My father looked at me without seeing the cell phone right in front of his eyes.
“What the fuck do you want! I’m trying to find the fucking kid that stole my phone!”
“It’s right here!” I put the phone in his large calloused hands. I wrapped his fingers around it, like Annie Sullivan trying to teach Helen Keller how to use language.
He stared at his hand for a moment, confused.
“Oh.” He said, finally.
He bit his bottom lip for a few seconds, scratched his head, and then nodded to himself.
“Okay.” He said.
He put the cell phone in the other cup holder and drove away at a much more reasonable speed. His mood change had been instant, and much faster than the acceleration of the car.
“Well, we certainly don’t ever want to talk about that.” I said, sarcastically.
“Hmmmm…” My father said, staring out at the road ahead.
“Yup, best not even to address it.”
“Hmmmm….” he replied.
“Totally wrong on your part, but what the hey. It’s not like the time I put a faded red shirt in with the whites. I mean, no damage was done, but it was the principle of the thing. That’s something to be upset about.”
“Uh-huh…”
“I mean, I put a faded red shirt in with a load of whites. What the fuck is wrong with me. I got yelled at for forty minutes about that. But you were going to kill someone because you forgot where you put your phone. That’s completely okay.”
He didn’t say anything this time.
“Or the time you told me that I was responsible for AIDS. That was something I needed to be lectured about too. So thank you for that. I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me just sitting back and letting everyone in Africa die of AIDS. I guess I’m just a prick like that, what with being sixteen and not having cured AIDS yet.”
I prattled on for another five minutes or so.
He heard not a word.
I continued only because it was good to hear a sane voice. Even it was only my own.
