by John McNally
“You’re right!” I said, nearly yelling to show my enthusiasm.
We waited until dusk before tooling around Beverly, a Chicago neighborhood I didn’t even know existed. Some houses were smeared in stucco and had roofs made of orange tiles instead of shingles, the kind of tiles that looked like flower pots cut in half. I’d seen houses like these on TV shows that were set in California or Florida, but I’d never seen any in Chicago before. The streets had been plowed all the way to the concrete, the excess snow lugged away. I couldn’t imagine where it had been taken, though. The curbs were lined with garbage cans—large, squarish plastic cans placed neatly side-by-side. No slumping Hefty bags. No punctured Glad bags oozing intestines of spaghetti. But there were also no large items here—no appliances, no bicycles. Did these people buy things that didn’t break so easily? Or had someone already beaten us here, someone who knew the best time to swoop in and pick through the hoity-toity’s trash?
Dad said, “We better take a closer look. No telling what they’re storing in those trash cans.”
“Really?” I said. “You think?”
“Absolutely. I didn’t burn all this gas to come here and admire their lawns.”
“I don’t want to pick through garbage anymore,” I said, a whine creeping into my voice.
“Oh, okay,” Dad said. “I see. You’re embarrassed to be with your own father.”
“No, that’s not it,” I said.
Dad held up his hand, palm out, as if to say, Halt! He said, “I didn’t think it would ever come to this, but then, I don’t know why not. I was embarrassed by my old man, too. He was senile and sometimes went out in public without his pants on, but maybe I should have gone a little easier on him, the crazy old coot.”
The knife-stab of guilt punctured me. Who was I to thwart my father’s project? Picking through garbage was a small price to pay for being in the company of genius, so I told him okay, that I would do it.
“No, you don’t have to,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to embarrass you.”
“Stop it,” I said. “I said I’d do it.”
Can after can, I raised the lid while my father aimed the flashlight inside. Each and every bag was neatly shut with twist ties, so my father gave me his Swiss Army knife with the pair of minuscule scissors for me to snip the heads off, allowing my father to poke about with his trusty tire-iron. The tire-iron was such a useful tool, I was starting to wonder why I didn’t own one myself. I was about to ask my father if I could have one for Christmas when a police cruiser rolled up and flipped on its swirling lights.
My father’s face alternated between blue and red.
The cop got out, shining a flashlight into our faces, and said, “How are you gentleman doing tonight?”
My father lifted his flashlight, shined it into the cop’s face, and said, “Just fine. And yourself?”
“Put your flashlight down, sir!” the cop called out, squinting. “Now!”
Under his breath, my father said, “They don’t like it when you do to them what they do to you.” He lowered the flashlight.
The cop came over, took a good long look at me, then looked down at the Swiss Army knife in my hand. He cut his eyes to my father and said, “Looking for food?”
My father laughed. “What, do we look like hobos? Do we look like vagrants? Ha! That’s a good one. No, my son and I are looking for junk.”
“Junk? What kind of junk?”
“The kind of junk a person can use to decorate his house.”
The cop nodded. It was clear he didn’t know what my father was talking about. He said, “Look, sir, I’m going to let you go with a warning. But you can’t be coming here, rooting around other people’s trash. The people here, they don’t like it.”
“Tough,” my dad said. “The law says that once you throw something out, it’s fair game. Isn’t that the law where you live, too? I bet it is. Unless, of course, you live in one of these houses. Hank, do you think the officer lives in one of these houses?” Though the question was directed at me, my father didn’t move his eyes from the cop. He snorted and, before I could answer, said, “Nope, I don’t think so.”
“Don’t get smart,” the cop said.
I snickered. Little did he know that he was telling a genius not to get smart.
The cop said, “I see you’re raising your kid well, too.”
While the cop lectured my father, I reached into one of the garbage cans and pulled out a photo of a family. The photo had been glued onto a piece of artificial wood so that it would look like a slice of tree. In the photo was a father, mother, daughter, and son. Amazingly, the family looked like my family. It was dark out and I couldn’t see it all that well, but I could tell that the boy was about my age and the girl was about Kelly’s size and shape. The parents, though better dressed, could have been my parents. I looked at the house where the photo had come from, but the lights were out and I couldn’t see anyone moving around inside.
“Ah, forget it,” my father said to the cop. “We’ll go. There’s no good junk around here, anyway. Isn’t that right, Hank?”
I nodded.
The cop wrote up a warning and handed it to my father. He told us that he didn’t want to see us around here again.
“Not a problem,” my father said. As the cop walked back to his cruiser, my father looked down at the photo that I was holding and said, “What the hell’s that?”
“A family portrait,” I said, handing it to him. “Look familiar?”
Dad studied it a moment. “Nope,” he said and tossed it back in the trash.
Inside the truck, my father handed the warning to me and told me to stuff it in the glove compartment. I popped it open and a dozen other warnings sprung out onto my lap. My father said, “Don’t make a mess, you hear? Just cram everything inside and slam it shut.”
I couldn’t sleep that night, so I stood up and touched my toes a few times. Our gym teacher had told us that a good way to keep in shape was to do some sort of exercise whenever you were bored, and since I was bored all the time, I was always touching my toes. There were times when my mother or my father would be talking to me, and I’d reach down and touch my toes. Lately, every time my sister opened her mouth to say something, I’d reach down and touch my toes before she could get the first word out. Tonight, I touched my toes three times. When I raised up the third time, I saw Ralph standing across the street and taking notes. I had no idea how long he’d been there. It was two in the morning. I knocked on the window. Ralph looked up, saw me, and quickly folded his pocket notebook.
I put on my snorkel parka and shoes, then tiptoed downstairs. “What are you doing here?” I asked, shivering in the street.
“The house is looking sweet. How’s Pablo?”
“Who?”
“Your dad,” Ralph said.
“Oh. He’s okay.” Since Ralph seemed to know so much about art, I decided to impress him by quoting a line of Picasso’s that I had committed to memory. I cleared my throat. “You know,” I said from inside the cave of my snorkel hood. “We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given to us to understand.”
“Whatever,” Ralph said. “Hey, listen, I was wondering if you’d thought anymore about jumping those carolers. We’re only a few days away from Christmas, so our window of opportunity is, you know, shrinking by the second.”
“That’s why you came by?” I asked.
“Naw. I came by to check out the house, see how it’s coming along. But now that you’re out here, I figured I’d see where you were leaning on the issue of the carolers.” Ralph grinned, waiting.
“I don’t think I’m up to it. I’ve been working a lot of late nights.” I nodded toward the house.
Ralph said, “Yeah, well, I figured as much. The thing is, I’ve got a back-up plan to make some money. It’s a long-shot, though. Not like the carolers. The carolers were a sure thing.”
My fingers were starting to feel
like icicles attached to larger blocks of ice. I said, “I better go inside.”
Ralph nodded. “Go ahead. I’ll only be a few more minutes.”
Back in my bedroom, I peeked out my window again and saw Ralph scratching out a few more notes. What was he writing? Before I could shut the curtain, though, he caught me watching him. I started to wave, but he quickly tucked the pad into his pocket and headed toward home.
The day before the judges were to drive around and evaluate the houses, my father stayed home from work to put on the final touches. My parents’ voices occasionally floated up through the vents, and I heard my mother say at one point, “Frank, you can’t afford to stay home from work.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Dad said. “I’ve got enough sick time built up to get a brain transplant. Trust me. It’s no biggie.”
I had woken up that morning coughing and shivering, unable to concentrate on any one thing for more than a second. The flu had come to visit me in the night. I tried touching my toes, but halfway over I felt like puking. I ran to the bathroom and locked myself inside. Eventually, Dad came pounding at the door.
“Ready to give me a hand, big guy?” he asked.
“I don’t feel too good,” I said.
“Very funny, Buster,” Dad said. “The judges’ll be here tonight. I need your help.” When I opened the door, my father took a step back. “Whoa!”
“It’s the flu,” I said.
Instead of offering words of comfort, he was out of the doorway and yelling down the stairs, “Hey, Momma Bear, your son’s got the flu! He looks like death warmed over!”
When Mom finally came up to check on me, she was carrying a bowl of hot soup and four Flintstone chewable vitamins. She pulled out a thermometer, shook it a few thousand times, then stabbed the underside of my tongue with its silver point. When she slid it out, she said, “Poor kid. One hundred and three.” I groaned. Mom said, “Here, drink your soup and take your vitamins. I’ve got to make sure your father doesn’t set the house on fire. That man’s driving me to an early grave, I swear.” Before she left, she said, “Call me if you need something.” As I popped two Freds, a Barney, and a Wilma into my mouth, I heard Kelly say, “You’re faking it,” and then she appeared to appraise my illness. She was still wearing army boots, but she also had on a camouflage jacket and matching pants. All she needed was some green and black make-up for her face, and we could throw her into a jungle somewhere. “What excuse did you and Dad cook up today?” she asked. “The flu?”
“Listen, G.I. Joe,” I said. “I don’t have to prove to you that I’m sick. I have a fever of one hundred and three.”
She rolled her eyes. Then she took a step closer and said, “Why aren’t you outside helping Dad destroy the house we live in?”
“Destroy?” I said. I laughed. It wasn’t worth explaining to her about Picasso, about the tortured nature of artists, about how great art always goes unappreciated at first.
Kelly, without any inflection in her voice, said, “I’ve always wanted to be the laughing stock of the neighborhood. I’d like to thank you and Dad for helping me to achieve that goal.”
“No problem,” I said. “Anytime. But you didn’t really need our help,” I added.
Kelly stuck both hands into her camouflage jacket. I worried that maybe she’d bought an army-issue pistol, a sleek black job with a silencer, but she kept her hands hidden and backed out of the room, ghostlike, leaving me to shiver and hallucinate in peace.
Periodically, I’d peek out the window to see what Dad was up to. Twice, a black Monte Carlo with tinted windows crept slowly past the house. A judge, I thought.
All day I drifted in and out of sleep, freezing one minute, boiling the next. Mom occasionally poked her head into the room to check on me, though I was pretty certain that I had hallucinated some of those times, especially when the door opened slightly and I saw only an eye, part of an arm, and the first few inches of a foot, her body broken apart like one of Picasso’s paintings, nothing whole, nothing as it should have been.
It was after midnight when my father finally finished with the house. I waited for Dad to come get me so that we could look at it together. I waited and waited, but apparently they thought I was too sick. Everyone had already gone to bed by the time I made my way downstairs in my pajamas. “Hello?” I whispered. “Anybody awake?” I was dizzy from the flu, dizzy from being in bed all day, dizzy from not eating as much as I should have, but I really wanted to see the house so I put on the first coat I found—it turned out to be one of my mother’s coats, knee-length and insulated—and I slipped on a pair of my father’s too-big muck-lucks.
As soon as I stepped outside, wind blew sheets of snow at me, pelting my face, and I had to duck my head just to make it out into the street. Snow blew up the legs of pajamas, causing me to shiver, but I still had a fever and the cold air felt sort of good, too. I shut my eyes and turned around, preparing myself to take in the whole house at once, and then I opened my eyes. The moon, full and low, lit up our house.
“Holy smoke,” I said. I shivered harder, but it wasn’t from the cold this time. Dad had transformed our house into a masterpiece. And like most masterpieces, it was hard to put into words why it was a masterpiece; it just was. I remember reading in the Picasso book that Modern art wasn’t scientific and it wasn’t intellectual; it was visual. And when it came from the eye of a genius like my dad, any fool should have been able to see that they were looking at the real deal. As best as I could tell, Dad’s vision was this: Christmas gave everyone a good beating—the way the flattened reindeer leaned against the TV antenna, or the way that the plumbing pipe candy canes swung heavily in the wind, or how the trolls that could barely be seen appeared to be climbing down the drain pipe at the corners of the house, as if escaping the long, brutal hours of Santa’s workshop.
It was chilling, really, and I found myself wanting to weep right there at both the beauty and the sadness of it all, but before I could squeeze out the first tears, the black Monte Carlo with its smoky windows came rolling up to the house. The judges could finally look at Dad’s vision of Christmas and see for themselves how great it was, but when the windows rolled down, I saw that the people inside weren’t judges at all. It was a group of high school punks.
The doors opened and all four guys got out. They walked over to our Christmas greeting, and the driver said, “Jingle bells, Argo smells.” He looked up at me. “Argo smells, huh?”
I wasn’t sure what to say. It did smell. I said, “Sort of.”
“Sort of? Well, we’re from Argo and we don’t think it smells.” He kicked our sign.
I was about to tell him how sometimes you couldn’t smell something bad when you were standing in the middle of it, and I was going to give him a few examples when one of the guys pushed me.
“Look,” he said. “He’s wearing a woman’s coat. He’s making fun of the place we live and he’s wearing a woman’s coat.”
“It’s my mother’s,” I began explaining, but a fist met my stomach with such force that I was knocked clean out of my father’s muck-lucks. Before I could plead with them, I was surrounded by the rest of the punks and more fists landed against my ribs and my back. Oddly enough, it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected, and after they had sped off in their car, I didn’t feel hurt so much as sleepy. One minute, I was sitting in a mound of snow, leaning against the now-busted ARGO SMELLS sign, considering taking a nap. The next minute, the police were at our house, I was inside with a blanket wrapped around me, and some guy with a stethoscope was shining a penlight into my eyes. My father was pacing the living room and yelling about how he was going to kill the jerks who broke his sign.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Oh, honey,” Mom said. “Oh, sweetie. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said.
My father said, “I want blood!”
A short and stocky cop who looked like he might have been a high school wrestler said, “Mr. Boyd. You’r
e going to have to calm down, sir.”
Another cop, this one older and with a walrus mustache, came inside, blowing into his palms to warm up. He said something, but you couldn’t see his lips moving because of the thick mustache bristles. He looked around, as if maybe he’d stepped into the wrong house, then said, “There’s another little problem we’ll need to discuss.”
“What’s that?” my father asked.
“It’s a matter of the, uh, junk you’ve got lying around.”
“Junk? What junk?”
“Let’s see.” While he looked at his notepad, he tapped around the bottom edge of his mustache with the tip of his tongue. I’m sure it was an old habit, checking for crumbs, and I could imagine his wife saying, Honey, you’ve got a chunk of cake on your…right there…good…you got it! He said, “Those three old beanbag chairs? That violates the upholstered furniture ordinance. That loose sheet of metal up on the roof is a hazard. A good wind could take that down and slice somebody’s head off. As for that huge wooden spool, that appears to be the property of the telephone company. Do you work for the telephone company, Mr. Boyd?”
“I don’t see your point,” Dad said.
“The point,” the cop said, “is that I have a list here. It’s about four pages long. There are ordinances about maintaining your property, and you’re in violation of most of them.”
“Maintaining my property?” my father said. “What, are you crazy? Those are decorations!”
The cop looked down at his notepad again. “I think maybe we’re talking about different things here,” he said. “What I’m talking about is all that junk out there. I can show you the list, but I don’t think you need to see it. I called the department, and according to our records we issued a warning last week.”
“You did?”
The cop nodded. “It’s supposed to be cleaned up by tomorrow. There’s a stiff fine if it’s not cleaned up.” He stuck out his tongue again, as if to do some more checking, but then thought better of it. He nodded, looked around the house, same as he did when he first arrived, then walked backwards to the front door and let himself out. It was like watching a movie in reverse.
