A Tapless Shoulder (31 page)

I leaned
toward him, “The funny thing about that is; those are all books I
have yet to read.”

He stopped
and looked to be thinking for a moment. “Oh, well, that certainly
could have added to the confusion, possibly” he nodded, “I’ll see
if I can fill you in then. Although, um, I didn’t actually
read them
read them, but I did read the
backs
of all of
Clark’s books if that helps.”

“
Carlos.”

“
Right.”

My mouth
dropped open, my hand shot up, “Wait a second; I really doubt my
reading those books you didn’t even read could make what’s been
going on make any sense. I don’t even know if what I just said
makes sense – but, I mean, at least you did read
the backs
of some books.” I squinted. I tried to see what it was
I desperately needed to see. Nothing was coming into focus. I shook
my head; something that was fast becoming my automatic reaction to
everything around me. “The back of the book doesn’t count, Dad,” I
said firmly, “backs don’t count. Hey, Nate, did you show my dad
your back?”

“
Come on,
man; don’t be an asshole.” Nate said loudly from behind my
dad.

“
I like how you being stupid makes me an asshole.” I said
loudly back. “I know,” I said rather convincingly, “we’ll have a
‘back of the book’ book club, it’ll be super affordable. We just go
in to a bookstore when we have a spare three seconds and read just
the back cover of a book. Then we’ll go for coffee and talk about
the back cover’s
strengths
and weaknesses
; whether it
met our expectations after reading the title and if it sounded like
a book we might open if we were in one of those other book clubs.
We’ll go around the group, you know, each giving our opinions. Dad,
you can get drunk – drunker, and yell, ‘YOU KNOW WHAT I LIKED ABOUT
THE BOOK? THE BACK WAS JUST A PICTURE OF THE AUTHOR! WHAT’S NEXT?’”
I nodded my head, picturing him doing just that. “I’m excited about
this,” I continued, “I think it’ll be a good group activity for us.
Hell, maybe that’s what I’ll do if I start writing again: just a
collection of spiels for the backs of books, and even then they’ll
just be about where I’m living and how many dogs I have. Dad, I
really don’t understand how you think you were doing…
something
from seeing some books.”

My dad was
smiling, laughing gently, and nodding. “Well, yeah, I would have
thought to maybe borrow them had I known I’d have to come up with a
summary at some point. I just,” he sighed. “I just kind of opened
up one of them and read a few pages. I didn’t really think much of
it until much later. Where I opened up to in the book; there was
this guy flying his hat like a kite for someone. The point, so I
took it, was to jar the other person’s soul… or maybe shake
something loose. Does it feel like we may have
jarred your soul
a little
?
” His face said it
all; he meant that question. I blinked rapidly. My head hurt. I had
had too much to drink and now my father wanted to know if a book
neither of us read had possibly ‘jarred my soul’.

“
That,” I
made a face like I was trying to swallow my mouth, “that is the
most ridiculous thing I have ever heard… and I know Nate!” I looked
past my dad to Nate; he smiled and gave me the thumbs up. I looked
back at my dad, “So, jarring it; is that, like, as in bottling it?
Or…”

“
Oh, I don’t
know,” he said like we were betting and the stakes had just
doubled, “What would that mean exactly?”

“
What do you mean
what
would that mean
? I’m asking
you what you meant, hell,
by
any of it
.”

“
Well… it doesn’t sound right, maybe it wasn’t
your soul,
maybe it was your spirit. You don’t think it would
have been
destroying
your spirit, do
you?”

My eyes
widened. I wanted them to just fall out of my head.
Look: I can do weird shit
too
. “I really hope not,” I
said softly.

It looked
like he was about to say one thing but decided against it. “This is
a little awkward,” he said, “
We
, well,
I
was talking to some people at Wakers, and –”

“
Wait, wait…
Wakers?
What is
that?
I don’t,” I shook my
head.

“
Sorry,
Woodland
Acres
, everyone there calls
it Wakers, ‘W’ acres, Woodland Acres, yeah:
Wakers
.
Pretty neat, eh?”

“
Uh, yeah,” I agreed and nodded slowly like we had fallen
away from the point and were now pretending that was the direction
we wanted to go. “Wait, so you mean, this thing, like, okay… I’m
trying to follow along, but I must only be hearing every other word
or something because I just don’t get it.” I held out my hand as my
face winced with frustration. I shook my head
yet again
and had a feeling it may have made more sense not to
stop.

“
Well, the book was the start of it all, kind of: it planted
the idea, maybe. Like I said; I only read about a page, if that. It
struck me as a little too
different
to really
get into, especially while watching the boys. I’ll start from the
beginning next time,” he laughed, alone. “I’m more of a mystery man
myself, but one that you can solve without having to die to find
out.”

“
Uh,
did you just
wreck the ending for me too?
That’s like ten books or something, it’s a lot of reading
to go, ‘oh, he dies,’” I said.

“
No, no, how
the hell would I know, I just looked at the backs of them,
remember? Anyway, not long after that; I was at Wakers, sorry, at
Woodland, pretty hung over, and I had mentioned a thing or two
about you while we waited for the day to get going. Well, I said I
needed to shake some sense into you. Candy piped up and said, ‘Do
it without even touching him.’ I told her it was funny she would
say that because of what I had come across in,” again he failed to
recall the name of author and pointed at me for help.

“
Car Seat
Casserole,” I said quickly.

He paused a
moment and looked at me like he didn’t raise me to act like that,
then he continued, “I told her about the soul or spirit thing I had
come across. So we had the basic idea that we just wanted to give
you a bit of a jolt. The next thing I knew; a bunch of crazy people
were sitting around a table coming up with crazy ideas, I mean, we
were really in our element.”

I blinked,
again and again. Maybe it was consciousness cutting out; maybe I
was supposed to guess who was behind me. I shook my head and
cleared my throat, but it didn’t help, nothing came
through.

“
That inspired the phone call,” he said, to which he added
quietly, “
and the death
threat
.”

I nodded and
looked over at Candy.
That
was the laugh
Nate would have heard that bizarre, fateful night: the laugh he had
been so traumatized over.

My dad put
the palm of his hand to his forehead. “I thought I messed it up
when I called Nate by mistake,” he said, “but it turned out
perfectly
since he dragged you into it anyway, mostly because I
plum forgot what I was doing entirely by the time I finally did
call you. I’m pretty sure I thought I was still just talking to
Candy. Yeah, um, that was,” his words suddenly got smaller and
quieter, “a bit of a… bender. I was – well, um.” He began to speak
clearly again, “I started out in good form, but, hell, you, yeah.”
He cleared his throat like it may have cleared the air. It
didn’t.

“
I thought about talking to Nate,” he scratched his head
while I wondered why he just kept talking, “but asking him to do
something strange was the same as asking him not to do something
strange, really.” He paused and nodded toward Nate who then yelled,
‘
Yup,
’ at us and put his hand in the air like he was
bidding at an auction. “I don’t know if he knows what he’s doing;
He doesn’t know what he’s doing; for good, for bad, for anything,”
my dad concluded.

I looked at
Nate and nodded, my face unflinching, “Yeah,” I agreed, “I know
what you mean. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t understand one of his
hands.” I paused in a stare and then turned back to my dad.
“
Seriously
, like I’ve seen him look down and throw
whatever it was in his hand away like it should never have been
there to begin with.”

“
Yeah, that’s definitely
different
.” My dad
laughed until he appeared to have become overrun with thoughts.
“Candy and I just started spending time together so weren’t alone.
We were both trying to work out the kinks in life, and, yes, we may
have had too much to drink on occasion, but…” He mumbled a mix of
sounds until he was again quiet. I cringed; I sometimes did the
same thing to Katie.

The way he
wandered to and from seriousness was beginning to take its toll on
me. I felt like I was in the middle of opposite emotions and
wondered if he wasn’t still trying to shank my soul or whatever it
was he thought he was doing.

“
Don dressed
up like a woman!” he exclaimed so suddenly I almost yelled at him
for startling me so badly. “The funniest thing about that is; it
had nothing to do with you.” His eyes were bright with that memory.
“It just happened.” He paused and considered something, maybe the
only thing he had yet to say. There was a glint in his eyes that
seemed to only be growing in brightness. He chuckled, “We were
making plans for disaster in the hurricane’s eye.”

A lack of
understanding had stretched my face open so much I expected
something to fall out. I hadn’t even the thought to close my mouth
at that point. “So… Uncle Donnie… was in drag
because…
”
I prompted, to remind him that neither
laughing
nor
surprise
counted as an explanation in my
book.

“
Oh, yeah, sorry,” he said. “Now
that,
”
he laughed, “was the result of an
argument between Don and Candy, I had nothing to do with it,” he
laughed again. I thought about leaving, but he carried on. “Donnie
was over, and he and Candy got into it over something he’d said
about how she’d taken the easy way out when she chose to be, you
know, to be the woman she is.”

Candy smiled
and curtsied, “
Easy my
behind
,” she scoffed with her drawn eyebrows raised. Nate tried
in vain to stifle his laughter but without success. Yes, he thought
that was hilarious, while I learned everyone I trusted had been
plotting against me. Candy was still offended by the statement. “I
told him,” she added sharply, “I’d like to see him try walking
around in size ten heels, just finding them is hell.” She rolled
her eyes. “You know I can see you,” she said suddenly, staring hard
at me and the face I was making.

“
What?
I… was just
remembering the taste of sour,” I said, too slowly, since I had
reached blindly from one word to the next. “That why, Candy, you
didn't... with the no shirt... forever?”

She looked at
me like I said what I had said the way I said it and then finally
chimed, “
OH
,” and walked
carefully toward me in her enormous heels. I wanted to yell:
WHY NOT WEAR SOMETHING COMFORTABLE,
JUST LOOK AT KATIE!
I looked
at Katie then, very glad I hadn’t said that.

I turned my
attention to Candy who had paused quietly in front of me with a
smile, “The way you looked at me, so awkwardly, so innocently, I
just... I really felt like a woman,” she giggled softly and pulled
my blushing face against her chest.

“
I love you
Katie,” I said loudly.

She released
me, and turned to Katie, “You're very lucky, you should be quite
proud.”

Katie smiled
and said as beautifully as only she could, “I know, and, believe
me, I am.”

My dad
cleared his throat, “Anyway, there you have it.” He continued where
he had left off, “Donnie got ‘done up’ and we went out. Just so
happened that we practically walked straight into Charlie and –
what’s that kid’s name? You know, Gerald Bentner’s son.”

“
Frankie,” I
deadpanned.

“
Right
, Frank. Boy, he
sure has filled in. I remember –”

“
I know dad, T-Ball, the story,
all that
, okay,
but after that…” I sighed and gave the air in front of me a mild
paddling.

“
Right,
right,” my dad agreed and continued, “by the looks on their faces I
knew it was sure to get back to you, and I had planned on getting a
hold of you to explain the whole thing, but then you ended up
calling me, and, well, I thought we were on to something. I must
have been too because, boy, when I caught up with you at the book
store, and saw that look on your face, it was the most familiar I’d
seen it in a long time. You looked worried, but also – hell, I
don’t know… thoughtful, probably best describes it. It was a face I
knew, a face I hadn’t seen for too long, a face I’ve missed. So I
decided, then and there, to wait a bit and see how it played
out.”