by Sheree Fitch
The football field was a shin-deep ocean of water. I hightailed it across, slipping and sliding. By the touchdown zone, I went ass over teakettle.
According to what Teddy told me later, I had a cheering section and a jeering section back at school that day.
“Some kind of a bozo moron, what the hell’s the guy doin’?” someone said, and they all rushed to the window. “Isn’t that Jake?”
Skye’s binder flew out of my hands into the air, skimmed across a puddle like a duck zooming in on a lake, then plopped as if dead into that puddle. The wind whipped up. The binder jackknifed open, spitting pages out like a psychotic photocopy machine. I flapped around, lunging at page after page, chasing one that loop-de-looped like a paper airplane. “Gotcha!” I shouted, like I’d just won a geedee arm-wrestling match.
According to Teddy, a round of cheers went up in the cafeteria. To hear him tell it, I was better than the intermission act at the Superbowl game.
“Shep was there, too, Jake. ‘Boy against the wind as in man versus nature, one of the major themes in English literature. Get away from the window—now!’ Shep said, and then she herded us back to our tables and lunch trays. When she realized it was you, Jake, she stayed at the window herself. Looked worried. You know Shep, she’s got a soft spot for you.” Teddy teased me about Shep a lot. “Are you teacher’s pet, and maybe you even have a crush on her, eh?” he said once.
“Get your mind out of the gutter,” I told him. “She’s way too old, and besides, she was a friend of my mother’s.” (See, even if Shep, my very patient tutor, didn’t want to be in the story, she has to be. She saw it all from the start.)
Shoving pages back in the binder, I slip-slopped on, socks soggier than seaweed. The water was cold, my toes numbed up; I imagined ten ice cubes.
Fifteen minutes later, gasping like a marathon runner, I reached the front door of Black Bear Brewery.
v
My dad’s worked at Black Bear Brewery going on almost thirty years in just about every department. Brewing, bottleshop, engineering, kegging, the lab, shipping. He knows about carbonating and fermenting, was once a labeller and lift operator and kettleman—you name it. My dad can tell you about grind and grist, about mash and trub and hops, and explain how hot wort needs to be cooled or it will kill the yeast.
“Rage is a lot like hot wort,” he tried to tell me once, after one of my “episodes.” “You got to learn to cool it, son.”
I’d been in the middle of another homework tantrum that time and threw a book across the room, smashing a picture on the wall, shattering the glass. My dad said nothing, not a word, but walked out of the room and returned with a broom and dustpan. “You made the mess, you clean it up.” No matter how many times he’d told me that, and how many times I found myself on cleanup duty, the safety valve holding in my monster anger still blew off more than I wanted. I was forever tripping. My father can really get on my nerves at times, but I can’t imagine the damage I’ve done to his nerves, and he never really preaches at me despite his leaf-listening, star-gazing prayer stuff and all. He belongs to a group called the Disciples of Christ. Doh. How’s that for a hard act to follow. It’s not a church, just some sort of Bible study prayer group. You probably think I’m the kind who’d trash his father in a second and call him the old man and make fun of his beliefs and be ashamed at those high-waisted flood pants he wears, say what a jerk-off he is, but you just can’t assume things about anyone. Here’s the thing. My dad, Timothy Upshore, kicks ass. He rocks. He’s built like the former basketball player he was and swaggers like his knees need replacing, which they do. He’s got a mop of hair the same dusty silver as the trophies he’s got pushed so far back on the shelf of his bedroom he’s forgotten them. He could be a ladies’ man if wanted to be. Even with those hiked-up pants and that green plaid lumberman’s jacket, women of all ages giggle when they’re around him, but he’s so damned stunned, my father, when it comes to women, so full of mashed potatoes, if I didn’t know better I’d say he’s shy as a forty-five-year-old virgin. I’m the only proof he isn’t. My point is, my dad’s got nothing to do with why I can be such a screw-up loser and he’s one damn hard-working funny dude who raised me on his own after my mother died. Personally, I’ve got a bone or two to pick with his God on account of that. Besides, if there’s a God, I figure he or she or whoever’s way too busy working overtime where there’s bombs dropping and kids starving and he or she or what have you doesn’t really have time to waste on the likes of me. No, I just can’t imagine that me or Poop-er Hills is anywhere on God’s radar screen.
Anyhow.
At the brewery door, I found myself staring in through the rectangle of window at Miss Florena Ferriweather’s yellow cone of hair and generous behind. Her bubble butt sticking out from her ramrod-straight spine made me think of the letter d. Her breasts were like two filled-up water balloons. Florena Ferriweather, a real-life blow-up doll. I reached out and rang the buzzer.
“Jake, that you?”
“It is.”
“Here to see your dad?”
“I am.”
“He expecting you?”
“Nope.”
“Emergency?”
“You could say that.”
“Oh, heavens. That was just a joke. Come right in.”
Ferriweather buzzed. I opened the door.
w
The air was warm, thick as porridge, a hot mashy smell from the vats filtered in through the air vents and filled the room. I sniffed it in and the smell made me feel like my dad was close by. “I’ll call him for you right away,” Ferriweather said. “Have a seat.”
“Hurry, okay,” I said.
“Patience,” she said. “And say ‘please.’ ”
“Puh-leeze,” I said.
“Much better,” she sniffed.
“Better,” I said under my breath.
The black leather chair whooshed a sigh heavy as my heart as I plunked down.
The stuffed head of a black bear, old Guzzle, company mascot, mounted above the electric fireplace, glared down at me. For over sixty years, Guzzle had lorded over the Black Bear kingdom. An ugly-looking hunk of fur old Guzzle is, what with his boogly topaz eyes and rotten razor-like teeth, his mouth wide open like he was belching after a six-pack.
“Jake! Jake Upshore, what brings you here today?” Arthur Robbins, my father’s big boss, flashed a smile as he marched through the foyer. I stood up and shook the man’s outstretched hand.
“Old Guzzle, pretty ugly, what?” he said, cocking his head towards the bear.
“Yes, sir.” I grinned. “Scared me foolish as a kid.” I could barely focus let alone make small talk.
Arthur Robbins’s laughter seemed forced.
“Keep up the hard work, son, and who knows, maybe next year we can see about reviewing your application and hiring you.” Robbins slapped me on the shoulder and left, swinging his briefcase like it was full of air.
How could anyone get his shoes that goddam shiny or the crease in the trousers so razor-edged sharp? I wanted to know.
I’ve never been a big fan of Arthur Robbins. Maybe that’s on account of Robbins playing Santa at the annual company Christmas parties. How dumb do they think kids are? I was never fooled by the stuffed pillow belly and fake beard. Everyone said Robbins was a good guy, generous to the employees of Black Bear Brewery, but he creeped me out. Man, he really did. He wore a toupee for cripe’s sake. Rug head. I mean, sure, he talked a good line. Family first and all that. Employees’ kids got good summer jobs, wages were decent and lots of kids paid their way through university that way. Well, great. But not me. I wasn’t university material, for one thing, and the summer before I was rejected outright for work at the brewery because of my sketchy past and my so-called criminal record.
The weird thing is, though, if you want to know, that morning, even if Arthur Robbins might have been faking it, even if he was as phony as his matted hair, I was some damn grateful he said what he did. Eventua
lly, I sat there thinking, I could work my way up and the money would be good enough to support a child. If I had to, that is. Just in case, I couldn’t help dreaming. Put a child through school. Yep. Get a good health insurance plan.
See, that’s the damn strangest thing. The way my mind was working overtime. Just an hour or so after hearing about Skye, I was having flashes of the future—I was seeing a saucer-eyed baby in a high chair with chocolate pudding all over chubby cheeks, a happy family of three at a beach, flying a kite, like in those television commercials for joining some kind of church. Those ads? Gag me with a wheelbarrow, I used to say. But there I was texting the following:
Skye, need 2 talk. okay with u having baby if u want.
x
You don’t know what you know until you know it, you know? So I was glad Robbins didn’t stay long, or press me for an answer as to what I was doing there, because I was feeling pretty antsy. “Your dad’s not answering,” Florena said. I cursed, paced the front foyer, then sat back down and flipped open the binder. Pages were out of order, some were wet and torn and the ink had smeared. The diary looked sad to me. Tear-streaked. I’d ruined it. Like the way I ruin everything, I couldn’t help thinking. I skimmed through, searching for a note I could read, one that would tell me what the hell was going on. The truth was inside, she’d written. So was there a page that might say where she’d gone? All I saw was chaos. I shuffled through faster, still hoping some words would jump out at me, a street address, a date, anything. One page fell to the floor. It was partly dry and the writing was clear. The words on the page still seemed like a rippling wave of centipedes to me, but I started reading, like I do, my thumb under each word, my mouth moving to form every letter.
When I think of Jake I smell sweet rich earth, the fresh fallen leaves of autumn. He is gold and orange. He is red and amber, topaz, rust and burnt dark gold, toasted and tan. Sad, too, like fall is, when cold creeps in and erases the strong warm arms, the lingering beams of late-summer days. Does he see me like that? A colour, a season, a smell? But…who am I to him? Am I something in action, a verb like spelunking, an adjective graceful as sonorous? Joyful?? Might I be, could I be, delicate, sturdy, ferocious or hot? If I were a metaphor what would I be? A puzzle, a pothole, a code to be broken? Constellations? Hieroglyphics? A shimmering pool? A mirror of hope? How does he think of me, does he?
Whoah. What kind of code crapola was that? I wondered. Was this a metaphor exercise for English class or something? I covered my face, embarrassed, as if the bear on the wall had been reading over my shoulder. When had she written that? I wondered and turned the page over, looking for a date. Would it have been before the trip to D.C.? Before we got together?
“Damn,” I said, and slammed the binder on the table in front of me. “You reach my dad yet, Flo?” I said. She shook her head no and frowned. I rifled through the binder again. I saw nothing but gobbledygook: !@#$%$%^^&&*&**(((*&%^$%^#@$@$#%$^%^^&^&(**()(_)__)(**^%$$@#@$^ %^**())&@#$%^&&*)&#$^&(*()*. Page after page. Maybe I was tired, reading’s worse when I’m tired. Or scared. Like at test time, and if this situation wasn’t some kind of test, then what was?
I cracked my thumb knuckles, then my ankles, then each of my fingers until Florena shot me a look like I was bugging her. I checked my cellphone again. Still nothing from Skye.
y
“What’s keeping my dad so goddam long?” I said.
“Watch your language,” she said.
“Please, would you just page him again?” Her phone buzzed then. She eyed me as she said, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, and then hung up.
“Jake, your father told me to tell you to meet him outside by the picnic table.” Florena Ferriweather’s nasal voice sounded like it was coming through a bullhorn. I realized then she’d been watching me like I was some kind of germ under a microscope.
“Great, thanks,” I said, and smoothed out the paper in my hand, snapped the three rings of the binder open, secured the page back inside, satisfied when the metal jaws clamped back in place. Skye’s words. At least some of them. Tucked safe. I was still hopeful. If I could find her most recent entries, maybe I’d be able to figure things out.
“Anything I can do?” Ferriweather sashayed over and stood in front of me. “Nice binder,” she teased. The sequins and warthogs and the name SKYE were easy to read. “It’s a friend’s,” I said. I turned the binder over and hugged it to my chest.
“Oh, I’d never have guessed.” Ferriweather smirked right back, and stood so she blocked my exit. Her smoky blue eyes looked me over, lazy like. Now that was the kind of look I’d say she practised in front of her bedroom mirror. She wiggled her hips slightly from side to side as she spoke.
“I gotta go! Ya mind moving?” I said.
“School can really suck, honey, but hang in there, it’s well worth it.”
“I asked you to move?” The phone rang and I was saved from further cheerleading. Ferriweather spun around and did this high-heeled wiggle dance back to her desk. With that head of hair, she reminded me of some kind of human dandelion.
“Black Bear Brewery, how can I be of help?” she twanged. I shot out of my chair. The leather squeaked—a farting sound. Florena Ferriweather looked at me with distaste and old Guzzle grinned at me, smug as the devil, as if he knew something I didn’t.
z
“So, Dad, remember what you always told me? Keep your pecker in your pants and if not, wear a raincoat?” My father’s entire face crumpled. “Even when it’s sunny?” Stone cold silence. Stab me. Stab me hard. Stab me with a spear-tipped stalactite.
“Sorry, Dad,” I said.
He nodded and wouldn’t look at me.
“Well, I listened 99 percent of the time,” I finished off, weakly.
My father sat down at the edge of the picnic table and reached in his coat for his pack of cigarettes. Smoking was his only vice. Some things aren’t genetic because it was the only self-destructive habit I hadn’t taken up at some point in my delinquent past. Not because I’ve got willpower. Just plain cigarettes made me woof my cookies first time I tried. I hate puking. End of temptation. As for why all those bongs and reefers never bothered me back in the day, I guess I must have never really inhaled. Whatever.
My father struck a match, lit up a cigarette and sucked in big time, then blew the smoke out thoughtfully.
“It’s that one percent that’ll get you every time,” he said finally, staring straight ahead.
“So, Dad, I’m…sorry.”
“You said that already,” he said, like a thick crust of ice just froze in his voicebox. Bitterness was not usually in my father’s emotional repertoire. This is yet another phrase I’d learned from a shrink. Amazing the vocabulary I’ve learned over the years. Yeah, that guy was a doozy, almost losing his own temper, bitching that I’d need “more than rage in my emotional repertoire” if I ever wanted to be happy. “Happy comes, happy goes,” I’d replied, and the sad, mad, nervous little man started crunching his fingernails like he was biting into a piece of peanut brittle. I always kind of liked him but I don’t think the feeling was mutual.
As if I wasn’t there, my father blew smoke rings off to the side and gazed into space.
“Dad?” I said, my voice a squeak. “Would you say something, Dad? Please?”
“I really wish your mother were here right now,” is what he said, and those words slashed through my heart like some kind of machete.
Then he spoke as if to himself, as if he were to blame.
“You were never a kid easy to talk to about serious things—not about your mother’s death, or long-term consequences, and certainly not about sex, and I even bought you condoms, a year’s supply, a book on sexually transmitted diseases, that DVD on the relationship between sex and love and the sacred bond between man and woman called Responsible Loving. I left that on top of your computer.”
“Nice try, but I was sooo not going to watch that,” I said, hoping to lift the mood. He didn’t laugh.
“And just w
hen you were starting to get ahead,” he said, with regretful, side-to-side headshakes. “For the past six months it seemed like you’d turned such a corner. Such a shame, yep, a crying shame, a damn shame,” he whispered.
So as my dad was not in any way cool with the news, I stared at my hands as if they were the eighth wonder of the world as he continued. “You entered a place of more light than dark, Ms. Shepherd told me that just last parent–teacher meeting. She said almost overnight it was like you shed layers of your former bad-boy self, took off that wannabe-thug mask.” He took a long drag on the cigarette, sucked it in, didn’t let it out, and searched my face.
“Mask?” I said, touching my chin. “Thug?”
He finally exhaled. “Yes. She said you were only playing at tough hoping to believe it. And now that you were clean and thinking clearer, your softer edges would start to come through. Said you were such a hard worker. Said she thought your job helped your volatility. ‘Physical work can be a kind of therapy for some,’ she said, ‘hands plunging in the earth, the feel of soil through fingers, the satisfaction of watching things grow and bloom. And come to life.’ ” I think my dad had forgotten me by then. His breath was raggedy and pained. He droned on and I drifted. My father came to life when Shep talked. I think her breathless explanations and progress reports about me were soothing and encouraging even when the news about me wasn’t. I pictured him there in her office. He’d probably got all tongue-tied, just looked down at the scuffed tips of his shoes and nodded. I always thought he had a bit of a thing for her. And why not? Picture a little chipmunk-cheeked garden gnome with boxing gloves on. She’s cute and fierce and smart. Still, Shep was dead wrong about why I’d made progress.
