“I’ll bring the lemonade. You going to be waiting long? I’ll bring over some fish nuts while you’re waiting.”
Madison didn’t have time to ask what they were. He yelled out, “Okay,” but Karla had gone in the kitchen.
“Hey there, Chip,” his father said from behind Madison’s booth. “I know the back of a Kent head from a mile away.”
Madison didn’t know whether to say, “Hey” or, “Hey, Dad,” or, “Hey, Mr. Kent.” He giggled nervously, and blurted out, “Our waitress used to be a cheerleader.” Charles Kent sat down across from his son. His broad, pink face beamed. Madison hadn’t seen his father in four years; he remembered less hair and more Vitalis or Brylcreem.
“Does this place serve beer?” his father asked. “I don’t drink anymore. I mean, I don’t drink every day like the old days, but I’ll have a beer or two on special occasions. You know what I mean? You and me—let’s have a beer, and order some fried oysters.”
He looks like that actor who’s always having a mugshot aired on TV, Madison thought. He said, “I have to be twenty-one.”
“Screw that, son. Are you kidding me? They don’t teach law in high school anymore?” Charlie Kent said, his voice high. He rubbed both his sunburned arms down toward the table top, and his son couldn’t tell if sand or dead skin landed. “You with a parent, you can drink all you want. Hey, cheerleader. We need some service over here.”
Madison almost said, “Dad.” He said, “Come on, she’ll be here. Shhh.”
“Can I help you?” Karla asked. She held a squirt bottle of tartar sauce in one hand and her order pad in the other. “Y’all ready?”
Charlie Kent said, “I’m Charles. This is my boy Chip. Charles, Chip. Charles Chip.”
She said, “Uh-huh.”
Madison said, “She already knows me as Madison. Back in high school I went by Madison.”
Charlie Kent lifted his scaly eyebrows. He said, “Okay. Not a problem. I bet you were scared how I’d react, taking your momma’s maiden name and all. Fuck. Madison’s better than another million names. It’s a president’s name, by God. It’s a president’s name, and it’s better than Adams, or Jefferson, or Roosevelt for a first name.”
Madison remembered his mother’s stories: His father swore off drinking one time, but within a week came back from the grocery store loaded down with three dozen jars of Vita brand pickled herring in wine sauce. The next morning Madison’s mother found the jars sucked dry, the fillets standing on edge in their containers. She told a story of his father one time scraping his knuckles on purpose so he could apply isopropyl to the abrasions, in order to lick the alcohol. Madison could remember others.
Karla said, “I know you ain’t twenty-one.”
Charlie Kent said, “Damn. A psychic! We can’t get past her. Maybe you should get a job down at the carnival.” He tousled his own hair, making it stand up in unnatural ways. “What do you want, son.”
“Lemonade.”
“He ordered lemonade already,” Karla said.
“Y’all got any vodka? Y’all ain’t got no vodka, I know,” Charlie said, craning his neck around in search of a proper bar. “Okay. One lemonade, and let me get two beers so you don’t have to keep returning to us every five minutes. Two draft beers. I don’t care what y’all even have, as long as they’re not light. Y’all got regular, regular draft on tap? I want two of those. And his lemonade.”
Madison looked at his father. Karla didn’t question Charlie’s order. She returned with beer, lemonade, and straws. She said, “Your teeth are in good shape.”
CAP’N DEL KELL kept a cheap gold-plated bell by the door, with a sign beside it that read IF ALL WENT WELL, RING CAP’N DEL KELL’s BELL. Various knotted ropes hung on the walls. The booth backs had been painted to resemble the sterns of Key West and Cape Cod yachts. Charlie Kent raised his mug. “Perfect attendance, huh? Damn. I’m proud of you, son. I don’t think I ever went a month without missing a day of school. Back then, though, I had to help out on your granddad’s farm.”
Madison didn’t process this last statement. He didn’t mention how his father’s father sold insurance, lived in a subdivision, and never seemed to dress in anything outside of a short-sleeved white shirt and slacks bought from the back page of a Sunday magazine. Madison said, “How’d you know about that? Were you at graduation?”
“Saw it on the news. It was on CNN, a big thing on how only a few kids nationwide never missed a day of school.” Charlie drank half of his beer. He said, “Beer tastes about the same here as down in Myrtle Beach.”
Madison sat forward. “Are you kidding me? Did you record it? We don’t have cable TV anymore. I didn’t see it.”
Charlie Kent smiled. He rose his hand to Karla. When she approached he said, “We’re both going to get the fried shrimp and oyster extravaganza. Y’all use real mayonnaise in your coleslaw?”
She said, “Fried shrimp’s my favorite.”
“If the coleslaw’s made with no-fat mayo, or whatever it’s called, you can keep it. And listen. I know this’ll sound strange. But Chip and I have this old family tradition where we eat our shrimps and oysters using fancy toothpicks. You know what I’m talking about? You got any of those toothpicks back there with the cellophane twirled on the other side of the business end?”
Karla said, “A toothpick can be a valuable tool in the prevention of gum disease and tooth decay.” She said, “We use them on the BLTs. I’ll bring you a handful.”
“I don’t remember that particular tradition,” Madison said. He remembered his mother locking his father out of the house when he showed up drunk at two in the morning. He remembered his father, drunk, throwing his own socks, underwear, and ties into the fireplace on Christmas morning, and his father borrowing the neighbor’s dog whenever he drove to the liquor store drunk, for he believed that no police officer would arrest a drunk man driving his dog around town. Although Madison tried to block certain memories, he saw himself leaving the house for school and hearing plates crashing into walls behind him—that particular tradition.
“You weren’t on CNN, Chip. I mean, you weren’t on CNN, Madison. Goddamn. Are you sure you’re ready for college? Maybe you should’ve played hooky a time or two and watched some kind of documentary on how gullible people can’t make it in the real world.”
Madison’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket, then rang. He said, “I bet it’s Mom.”
“I bet it is, too. You better talk to her. Settle her nerves. Let her know that I didn’t kidnap you back to having some fun.”
Madison flipped open his phone after his mother had hung up already. He said, “Hello?” and paused. “That’s so nice. Thank you, Mr. President.”
“The president’s calling you?” Charlie Kent said.
Madison shoved his phone back in his pocket. He shook his head, smiled, and pulled the other mug of beer his way. “I think that makes us even. Dad.”
KARLA SAID SHE piled three or four extra shrimp on each platter. “My graduation present to you,” she said to Madison. “What did you get him, Dad?” she asked.
“I haven’t given it to him yet,” Charlie Kent said. “I still got it in the car.” Karla dropped a couple dozen toothpicks down on their folded paper napkins, then left for a table of two other graduates that Madison knew, with their parents. “I meant to wrap it up, but I was running late,” Charlie said to Madison.
“You don’t have to give me anything,” Madison said. He pushed his father’s beer back across the table. “That stuff’s nasty. I don’t like beer.”
Charlie Kent took the paper sleeve off of one straw. He looked around, then sat up to check on Karla’s whereabouts. “Watch this,” he said. He stuck a fancy, frilled blue cellophane toothpick in the mouth end of his straw, leaned his head back, and blew hard. The toothpick stuck in a textured ceiling tile above their booth. “You ever done anything like that?”
Madison said, “Please don’t do that. We’ll get kicked out of here.”
“It’s like horseshoes. It’s like that bowling game the French people play all the time. In a perfect world toothpicks are blue, red, and yellow. Or green. Now, you blow one and see how close you can come to that first one. The first one’s like a stake.” Charlie Kent picked through the remaining toothpicks and said, “I’ll continue being blue. You’re red. We’ll just remember the original stake up there.”
“No.” Madison ate one fried shrimp and set the tail down on the side of his plate.
“You might go off to that fancy college in Oregon and end up studying anthropology and need to know how indigenous people shoot blow guns,” Charlie Kent said in a singsong voice.
Madison envisioned shooting a toothpick across the booth perfectly and landing it in his father’s forehead, or eyeball. He said, “I’m serious. How’d you know about that award I got?”
Karla brought two more mugs of beer. Madison wondered if he’d missed his father making some kind of secret sign, or if Cap’n Del Kell instructed his waitresses to keep them coming no matter what. Karla said, “Everything okay?” She didn’t look up.
“Great!” Charlie Kent said. “You’re the best.” He smiled in an unnaturally large way, Madison thought, then said, “No.”
“Eat up,” Karla said.
Someone rang the bell, and exited.
“No matter what she says, your mother still loves me,” Charlie said. “I ain’t bragging. And I know that I wasn’t exactly husband material. I’m a good father. I could be a good father, if your mother would let me. Please understand that when I talk to your momma—and I do way more often than you’d know—I always ask that she let you come down and live with me. I’ve got a fold-out couch, after all. And we have a high school you could’ve gotten to without missing a day.”
Madison tore the end from his straw and blew the wrapper toward his father. It dive-bombed into tartar sauce. “I’m not going to study anthropology,” he said. “I don’t know what I’ll end up doing, but I’d bet that I’m going to major in mathematics, or astronomy. I would also be willing to bet that Mom told you that, too.”
Charlie Kent blew two toothpicks at once. One veered off like a haywire missile and stuck in the ceiling three feet from the original one. The other actually hit the first toothpick and fell back down onto their table. He said, “So tell me about this young woman Laney. Would I approve of her?”
When he daydreamed about the future, Madison saw Laney and him graduating from college, then going off to graduate school, then joining the Peace Corps. He saw himself trying to convince tribe members that they could count beyond, “One, two, many.” Madison said, “She’s really smart.”
“That don’t cut it,” Charlie Kent said. “Smart cuts it only in France. Does she have a nice set? Does she give it up?” He picked up a homestyle fry and shook it at his son.
“Laney’s perfect,” Madison said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Your mother was perfect,” Charlie said. “I bet you can’t shoot a toothpick and land it anywhere between those two up there.”
Madison said, “Some people now call me Mad. Or Madman.” He stuck a red-ended toothpick into his straw and blew it hard at his biological father. It, too, landed in the tartar sauce.
“You’re a terrible shot,” his father said. “Listen. I want you to do something for me. I want you to talk to your mother. I know she still has a little fire in her for me. She never got remarried, did she? Did she ever even date anyone? You know, and this is neither here or there, but I didn’t have to help her out once you turned eighteen. I kept on sending in child support, though. I sent in what I could send in. I’ve been working kind of part-time, doing people’s taxes at the trailer park, you know. I use that money to help you.”
“I don’t care what y’all do after I go to college. Y’all can get remarried for all I care.” Madison picked the breading off of his oysters and set it aside. Laney’s mother had had a gall bladder attack twice.
“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Charlie said. “Maybe we could live together, at best. I could quit all my bad habits for ten years and your mother would find a way to bring them up once a day. Person like her drives people into drinking and doing drugs. If you’re going to be guilty all the time in someone’s eyes, you might as well have fun.”
Karla came up to the table, took a french fry off Madison’s plate, and ate half of it. She said through clenched teeth, “I’m looking the other way best I can. Hurry up with that beer before Cap’n Del shows up. He always shows up around six.” She placed the other half of her fry on top of Madison’s discarded breading, and skipped to another table.
“She likes you, Chip,” Charlie said. “She’s flirting with you. Hotdamn to be young again.”
“No, she’s not. She’s a cheerleader. Cheerleaders don’t go for guys who make straight A’s, except in American history.” But Madison wasn’t thinking about what he said. No, he thought of Laney, and how she brought up daily how he couldn’t get his grade point average up to second in the class. Every day she found ways to bring up, “I’m first and he’s only third,” into the conversation. They could never watch a baseball game together, Madison knew, or she’d bring it up every half inning.
Charlie Kent reached over and picked up an oyster from his boy’s plate. He said, “Anyway, your mom and I aren’t getting back together. The company that owns my trailer park’s starting up another development way up in some place called Pleasant Unity, Pennsylvania. I might be asked to move up there and get things started. I might do it. That’s one thing. I also have this buddy who’s a bagrunner, needs some help.”
Madison said, “Running drugs?” He reached over and drank more of his father’s beer. It wasn’t as bad as the first had been.
“No. Idiot. Driving lost luggage out to hotels and such.” Charlie Kent laughed. “What’s your mother been saying about me? I don’t do drugs anymore. Too expensive, for one. Anyway, my buddy’s a bagrunner, and he says that the airline industry—especially Delta/Northwest—is so fucked up that you might as well forget seeing your suitcase arrive when you do. I ain’t even talking about making a connection in Atlanta or Charlotte. I’m talking you get on a plane for New York nonstop, and they send your Samsonite to Nova Scotia. Luggage could write a travel book, man.”
Madison blew a toothpick into the ceiling. He and his father tried to high-five each other and knocked over a full mug of beer.
“I GUESS I’M supposed to give you some fatherly advice,” Charlie Kent said. “One, don’t take any wooden nickels. Two, don’t ever work for H&R Block, and probably not for Delta or Northwest airlines. Three, make sure your wife has a sense of humor, and some patience. Well, don’t ever get married and you can strike off that little problem right away. Four—do you have a checking account?—write a bad check so you don’t go around worrying about having bad credit all the time.” He drank from his mug. “Five. Goddamn. I practiced this whole speech on the way up there. I had six things.”
Madison said, “I don’t care if you call me Chip.” He craned over to the beer with his straw and sipped hard. “You can call me Chip.”
Karla brought two more mugs. She said, “Cap’n Del called in sick. Do you know what this means? He never calls in sick. They say he ain’t missed a day since his wife died two or three years ago.”
“Thanks, Karla,” Madison said. “I tell you what, when you become a dental hygienist I’m going to start going to a dentist every month. You know what would be cool? If you could clean teeth, and do a split at the same time.”
“Five!” Charlie Kent yelled out. To Karla he said, “Well, we’re sorry that we’re going to miss Cap’n Del. Give him our regards.” He gathered empty mugs and slid them toward the table’s edge. Turning back to his son Charlie said, “Five. Your first day of college? Miss all your classes. Listen. Every day you show up for school, or a job, or a marriage—it’s like winding up the rubber band on one of those balsa wood airplanes with the plastic propeller. Sooner or
later the rubber’s going to crack up and break, you know what I mean?”
Madison looked at his wristwatch. He thought, I need to call Mom. He said, “I have to pee,” and got up. In the men’s room, which had only a toilet, he locked the door. He punched his home number, it rang four times, and the answering machine picked up. He said, “I’m still here. Everything’s fine. Dad might get a part-time job as a bagrunner, which isn’t the same thing as a drug runner, according to him. Anyway. I’m still here. Cap’n Del called in sick, though.”
He hung up, then peed in the sink.
WHEN MADISON RETURNED to the booth, he found his father sitting there with his plate pushed aside. In front of Charlie Kent sat a folded map of the Southeastern United States, an auto-parts calendar, and a car jack. “Happy graduation,” he said. “Like I said, I’m sorry that I didn’t have time to wrap them up. Six—I remembered the sixth piece of advice—always have a dog with you, no matter what. And get a stray. Don’t go buying some kind of fancy pedigree. I meant to get you a dog for your graduation, but I figured it’d be best if you picked one out yourself. Plus it might be frowned upon by your roommate.”
Madison sat down. He said, “Dad.”
“Anyway, these are all things you might need in the future. Fold-up map? You need to find a way back home, correct-o? The jack’s so you can either change a tire, or mess with your roommate’s bed in college. One day I’ll tell you what I did to my roommate in college. The story takes too long. It involves a fold-out from one of those magazines, a bunk bed, and his girlfriend. Your mother knows all about it. She was there! Your mother knows all about it, but she wouldn’t want me telling it yet. The calendar’s so you’ll know, you know, the date. So you’ll know that it might be the day not to be such a goddamn drone. Worker bee. Ant, you know?”
Madison thought to say, So I’ll be totally irresponsible, like you? but didn’t. He thought to say, Go put this shit back in your car, but didn’t. From what stock do I hail? he thought. He said, “Thank you.”
You Want More Page 34
