Old Man Read online

“He send enough?” I’d never thought of us as struggling financially, but we weren’t exactly the rich people on the block either.

  “He sends money.”

  She reached for a little more casserole and asked me something about school, so I figured she was finished talking about the old man.

  6

  If you are going to read this, there are things about me you need to know. One of the things you need to know is that I don’t like dogs. Pretty much hate them all. Including Jen Wertz’s golden retriever. I’ve only seen the dog a couple of times and everybody says it’s a real nice dog, but I figure once I’m in solid with Jen, like real solid, I’ll just quietly mention to her that either the dog goes, or I do.

  Yeah, that should work.

  7

  When I was four years old, I had a bad experience. Scary bad. My mom and I were visiting my aunt and uncle and their kid in Regina, Saskatchewan. I can’t remember if the old man was there or not. He could have been because he didn’t take off with the college student until a year later.

  My cousin and I were playing outside. Her name was Sandra. I didn’t like her much, I can’t remember why, probably because she was two and I was four, and two-year-olds can be a giant pain in the ass to four-year-olds. I remember that it was a big deal if you called her Sandy.

  “Her name is Sandra, S-a-n-d-r-a.” I heard that a few times from Aunt Meg. She was okay as long as you didn’t call the kid Sandy. Or swear. I remember one time I committed the worst of sins when I said “Sandy is a poop ass.” Four-year-old swearing. I got a couple of whuppings for that, the first one from Aunt Meg for “Sandy” and the second one from my mom, who hardly ever laid a hand on me. I guess she figured “poop ass” was a little over the line.

  Anyway, we were outside in the front yard and a dog, a big dog, got in the yard and went after my cousin. Attacked her. I don’t remember the details all that well, but I think she tried to pet the dog, and it just went for her.

  I jumped in to try to get the dog off her. I yelled at it, and I tried to hit it to make it go away. It stopped attacking my cousin and turned on me. I heard my cousin screaming. I don’t know if I was screaming or not. The next thing I remember was being in the hospital, with my mom and my aunt standing beside my bed telling me what a brave little hero I was, and how I had saved Sandra.

  I wound up getting sixty stitches, most of them on my arm but some on a leg too. Some cuts on my face, but those weren’t major. The worst part was the needles for rabies. The dog was a stray, and he was gone by the time the adults got outside.

  I was in the hospital overnight and the next day when I got home, they had a party for me … like a birthday party. There was a cake and some of Aunt Meg’s neighbours were there and some little kids from around the neighbourhood. I didn’t even know most of them. Sandy the poop ass was there too. I mean she would be. I saved her, didn’t I?

  My mom carried me in from the car and set me in this big soft chair in the living room of my aunt’s house. I liked that chair. There was more of the “brave little soldier” talk, and people I’d never seen before were taking my picture and smiling big smiles at me and touching me on the face.

  It was okay for a while, but then I started crying and couldn’t stop, which pretty much wrecked the party. My mom finally carried me upstairs to bed and read me a story. I don’t remember which one.

  I think maybe the reason I was crying was that I knew they were wrong. I wasn’t brave at all. I was scared to death. Long after it happened, if I thought about it, I’d start shaking, and I’d clench my eyes shut to try not to see that dog.

  But it didn’t work. For a really long time I’d see that dog’s face right in front of me, the huge jaws, the terrible teeth, always coming back at me, even though I was already hurt and not doing anything to him anymore.

  I don’t see the dog’s face anymore. Haven’t for a few years now. But I’m still scared of dogs, especially big ones. Little dogs don’t scare me as much, but I don’t like them. We’ve never had a dog. I’m probably the only kid I know who doesn’t bug his parent to get a dog.

  8

  Another thing about me you should know is that I get headaches. Mom even had me checked out a couple of times to see if there was something wrong with me, like really wrong with me, but nothing showed up. “Tension headaches,” the doctor said. Stress. When he said that, I was like, Come on, I’m fifteen years old. You can do better than playing the stress card. But maybe he was right. Sometimes I get pretty wound up, I guess.

  So, no surprise — the night after the old man’s call, I woke up with a headache. The pounding kind … like there’s somebody chopping wood, and they’re using your head for a chopping block. This time I could definitely see stress as the cause. I got out of bed and crunched a toe trying to get to the bathroom in the dark.

  I swore, fumbled for the light switch, turned it on and made it the rest of the way to the bathroom. I took a Tylenol, drank a glass of water, and stumbled back to bed, pain now throbbing at both ends of my body. Terrific. I hoped the painkiller would kick in real soon.

  Meanwhile, I lay in bed thinking about the old man’s phone call and my mom talking about him and sort of defending him, but all that did was make my head feel worse, so I tried thinking about something else.

  When I was little, if I had a headache or an earache or a fever, all I had to do was let out one squeak and Mom was in my room like a shot. Then it would be a hot towel or ear drops or ground up baby Aspirin, whatever she figured I needed. Usually worked too. And she’d stay there until I fell asleep again.

  She told me once she’d wanted to be a nurse. Couldn’t afford to go to school to become one. Sometimes I think it must suck to have this thing you really want to do with your life, and you don’t get the chance. She doesn’t complain or even talk about it except that once, but I sometimes see her staring off out the window, not really looking at anything, and I wonder what she’s thinking about.

  I figure Mom would have been an awesome nurse — she loves to do things to help people, and if anybody we know gets sick, she’s the first one over there with a casserole and a magazine for the sick person to read. Same kind of stuff that she did for me when I was younger.

  Mom works for an accounting firm. Does some bookkeeping and receptionist stuff. She goes crazy at tax time. Gets home late pretty well every night for about a month, and I get to practise my cooking skills. I make killer Pizza Pops, chicken noodle soup, and peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Most of my meal preparation doesn’t involve actually turning on the stove. Even the soup is a microwave creation.

  It’s weird but she never watches any of the doctor shows on TV. No ER reruns, none of them. I don’t either, but with me it’s because I hate watching shows about sick and dying people. I figured the way Mom likes to look after sick people, she’d be into every medical show on television, but it’s just the opposite.

  Maybe it starts her thinking about how she wanted to be a nurse and never got to be one.

  9

  The rest of that school year was pretty forgettable. I’d kind of lost interest after the phone call from the old man and the change to my summer plans. I did pretty good in English, social, and French. Okay in math and science. Kicked in phys ed. And that was it. End of tenth grade.

  I tore up my list for the Summer of the Huffman. And gave up on Jen Wertz.

  Shit.

  Summer Part One

  1

  The old man pulled up to the house in a Dodge pickup. Black, dually crew cab. Not a bad truck except that it looked like he washed it every three, four years at the most. We wouldn’t be picking up any girls in this tub. Not that we would’ve done any better in a Maserati. My girl, the lovely Jen, wasn’t actually aware I was alive, and my summer wasn’t likely to change that. And the old man, last time I checked, likes ’em young. The only dental hygienist in town was like fifty and wielded that cleaning thingy like a pickaxe.

  So, no, I didn’t need a fortune cookie
to tell me babes weren’t in my future. Which meant it didn’t matter that the Dodge had little “Wash me” notes finger-scribbled into the dirt that was layered up on all four doors.

  I was sitting on the front step holding a copy of Catch-22. I hadn’t actually opened it and wasn’t sure I would since it didn’t fit in with the summer this one had become.

  The old man didn’t try to hug me, so at least he wasn’t stupid. Didn’t shake my hand either or even say much. Climbed out of the truck, nodded to me on the way to the front door of the house, and said, “Throw your stuff in the back seat.”

  I did that. My “stuff” was the duffle bag I’d found in the basement and my school backpack. Then I went back up the sidewalk, put Catch-22 in the mailbox (I’d let Mom figure that one out) and sat back down on the front step. Mom had made blueberry muffins, so I figured he’d be a while talking to her, drinking coffee, and eating muffins. I liked where I was — outside, far from all of that. Far from him.

  I thought about my first impression of him. Pretty well all of it was a surprise since I really didn’t know what he’d look like. He was pretty tall. And skinny. See, right away I was wrong. I guess I expected a bald, fat, slobby-looking guy, dirty T-shirt, ass crack showing over his jeans whenever he bent over. The only part I had right was the T-shirt, and it wasn’t dirty.

  If he’d shaved that morning, he hadn’t done a very good job of it, but his hair was neat, no Hank’s Auto Parts ball cap, a little grey but not much. He was wearing jeans, but they were clean and new-looking, crease down the front of each pant leg. Looked younger than sixty-two. Maybe fifty-two. Still, no kid.

  That’s about all I had time to notice in the time it took him to get from the Dodge to the house.

  I was right. He was in the house for quite a while. When he came out he was carrying a pretty good-sized brown paper bag. “Lunch,” he said. “Your mom’s looking after us.”

  I stood up as Mom came out onto the steps right behind him. She was smiling, but her eyes were wet. I wondered if he’d said something to make her feel bad. Or maybe she was just sad because I was going away. It popped into my head that the longest I’d ever been away from my mom was day camp. A couple of times we’d camped out overnight, which made it two days and a night that I wasn’t home. So this was a big deal, I guess.

  She hugged me like it was a big deal and said a couple of things in a squeaky voice. Be good, look after yourself kind of stuff. Eat lots of zucchini. Trying to lighten things up. We’d already done all the reminders — don’t lose the passport, don’t let the old man pay for everything (I wasn’t sure about that part — the whole thing was his idea), and try to look like I was enjoying myself. (I wasn’t sure about that part either.)

  I held onto the hug a couple of seconds longer than usual. “You take care too. I’ll phone, okay?”

  She stepped back, but kept her hands on my arms. “Okay? You better phone, mister.” She smiled again. I smiled back at her and turned to go down the steps. The old man sort of waved and started down the sidewalk toward the truck. His boots clicked on the pavement like there was something metal on the bottom. I thought about calling, What are you — fourteen? But I kept my mouth shut, probably the better idea.

  He went around to the driver side of the truck, climbed in, and started it up as I was getting in the passenger side. I looked back at the house, and Mom was waving. I nodded at her, hoping I was letting her know that everything would be okay. And then we moved out — ready to get my summer started.

  “They got car washes where you live?” I guess I wanted him to know right from the get-go that I wasn’t happy.

  I don’t think he got that, though. He just laughed and floored it. “They got ’em, but ol’ Betsy’s allergic to water.”

  The truck has a nickname. I’m about to spend half my summer holidays with the old man and Betsy the pickup. Can’t get better than that.

  2

  “Think of it as a buddy movie.” That’s what the old man said about an hour into what turned out to be the most boring drive in the history of the automobile.

  I didn’t bother to tell him that we weren’t buddies and that this wasn’t a movie, but I did mention that it was the most boring drive in the history of the automobile. I mentioned that a few times.

  Country music, a thousand miles of bald-ass, dick-all prairie, and rain that started about an hour into the journey. What buddy movies had he been watching?

  I figured out real quick that the old man wasn’t a big conversationalist. Which was okay for the first while since I was working on what Mom calls the teenager pout. The teenager pout doesn’t come with sound effects. In fact, silence is a big part of the pout. It’s designed to make any thinking, feeling adult within several city blocks feel like crap.

  If the old man felt like crap, he was amazing at hiding his pain. He sang along to some of the songs, chuckled a couple of times like he’d just thought of something funny, and ate sunflower seeds, spitting the shells out his side window, which he kept half open, even in the rain.

  After what felt like three days but was probably three hours, I changed tactics. “I think we ought to have some rules,” I said.

  “Sure, rules are a good idea,” he nodded. “Hungry? Feel like a sandwich? Your mom made up a bunch.”

  Actually, I did feel like a sandwich. “Sure.”

  “Okay, rule number one, you’re in charge of the sandwiches.”

  I reached into the back seat and grabbed the bag Mom had sent. It was heavy. I pulled it into the front seat and opened it. There had to be six or seven of those see- through baggies things in there. That’s a lot of sandwiches. Plus fruit and a couple of juice boxes.

  I studied the baggies. “Looks like roast beef, cheese with jam, and maybe tuna. What do you want?”

  “Roast beef … unless you want it.”

  I shook my head and passed him a baggie. “Want a juice box?”

  “Not right now.”

  “Rule number two,” I said.

  He opened the baggie, pulled out the sandwich and took a bite the size of a small town. Then he looked over at me, chewing and nodding like he was ready to hear the rule.

  I started unwrapping a cheese and jam. “We switch up on the music every couple of hours. If I have to listen to that shit all the way to wherever we’re going, my brain will turn into Cream of Wheat.”

  “Not a bad rule. You say ‘shit’ in front of your mom?”

  I shook my head and bit into the sandwich.

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t say it in front of me.”

  “Is that a rule?”

  “Not a rule. A suggestion. Don’t talk with your mouth full. That’s a rule.”

  “You asked me a question.”

  “Good point.”

  “And your mouth is full.”

  “Was full.” He opened it and showed me, which was about as mega-gross as you can get.

  “When are you going to tell me where we’re going?”

  “Why don’t you switch up the music? You remember, rule number two?”

  I messed with the radio for a while until I found a rock station. I listened to a couple of songs — one oldie, Fleetwood Mac, I think, and “Rock Star” — Nickelback. I wasn’t a big Nickelback guy, but it was way better than what we had been listening to. I looked at my watch. “Twenty after one. You can change it back at twenty after three. I’m giving you a break. We had country a lot more than two hours.”

  “Gettin’ more like a buddy movie all the time.”

  “No, it isn’t, you know why?”

  He looked in the rear-view mirror and shrugged.

  “Because in a buddy movie both buddies know where they’re going. I don’t know sh—crap.”

  “Fair enough. I’ll tell you at twenty after three.”

  “Why then? Why not now?”

  He nodded at the truck’s radio. “I don’t want to take away from your two hours.”

  I reached out and hit the on-off button. Silence.
“I’d like to know now.”

  He crumpled up the baggie from his sandwich and flipped it over his shoulder into the back seat. “Minneapolis.”

  “Minneapolis.”

  He nodded.

  “Why Minneapolis?”

  “Airport.”

  “We’re going to the airport in Minneapolis?”

  He nodded again.

  “Why?”

  “Why do people usually go to airports?”

  “Okay, so we’re getting on a plane at Minneapolis. Then where?”

  He reached across and hit the button on the radio. Aerosmith, “I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing.” “We talk at twenty after three. You don’t wanna miss this thing.”

  Just a zany guy.

  At a quarter past three, I said, “Five more minutes.”

  The old man looked over at me. “You don’t look like I thought you would.”

  “What did you think I’d look like?”

  “Taller, skinnier maybe … pimples.”

  “I’m one of the tallest kids in my class. I’m not exactly fat. And see those? Those are zits.”

  “I thought your hair would be brown. That’s how I remembered it.”

  “Yours isn’t brown.”

  “No, but your mother’s is. You’ve got her dark eyes. I thought you’d have her hair. That’s how I remembered it.”

  I wondered why he said that twice. “Maybe it was brown then and sort of blonded up as I got older.”

  “Blonded up?”

  “Got lighter.”

  “I figured that’s what ‘blonded up’ meant.”

  “So you think I look like you?” I hadn’t thought about that until right then. I didn’t want to look like him.

  “No, you look more like your mom. I’m better looking than either of you.”

  I didn’t laugh. I didn’t plan to laugh at any of his jokes. Maybe we had a couple of rules for driving and maybe we’d had a minor conversation, but this still wasn’t any damn buddy movie.