A Tapless Shoulder

by Mark McCann

  “Yes, yes,” he exclaimed; very pleased we were able to come up with the name. He even looked like he still had some dance in him, despite his bad knees and old age. I stepped back as he shook and moved like I was cheering him on. I only stared, caught between awe and disbelief. I was the stillest I had ever been in my life and was so not cheering him on. It was apparently quite a victory we had won against the odds of our terrible memories and he knew it well… that, and who knew how much he’d had to drink.

  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.”

  He had faded into his memories but then returned. “I didn’t know what to do with you,” he said honestly. “You seemed to be too stubborn to let anything really get at you or to at least let it show. Since your mother passed away; you’ve never once had a serious talk with me about anything. You stutter from topic to topic. And I’m sorry for that too; I know I can do it too. I maybe should have just grabbed you by the shoulders. Maybe you should have grabbed me by mine. But we didn’t, on account of, well – I guess I got carried away myself… with carrying on,” he said with another short laugh. “I kept expecting you to blow up at me, something, and you didn’t and you wouldn’t! It got to the point where I thought anything would have been for the better. I talked to Donnie and he said he’d go along with it and tell you if you asked that, yes, he liked to get ‘dressed up’. So I guess that was something in terms of a plan.” He seemed impressed that he had actually done something intentionally amidst all his ‘planning.’ He shook his head. I wondered if he shook his head as much as I did and if it wasn’t then genetic. “Anyhow,” he continued, “Candy said that she and you actually talked today.” He smiled proudly, “I love you, we all do,” he nodded and looked at the others. “We just all fear you’re fading farther and farther into that head of yours – life is on the outside,” he exclaimed with a big laugh. I wanted to shake him, to tell him there was nothing funny about any of it and that he hadn’t done anything but have a big party for himself.

  Katie stepped forward, with a sympathetic smile, like I may have been cured of something awful or possibly given something awful. “Well, it’s true: we do all love you. That part I’m in complete agreement with. As for the rest of it, yeah: no idea,” she squinted like it’d been her fault. “I am going to say this though, you have built a wall and that just isn’t you, it’s not the person your dad and I and everyone else have known for so long, and, well, we want – I need you back too,” she said desperately.

  My dad was nodding in agreement. Candy and Nate unintentionally caught my attention. She was slowly tilting this way and that, showing Nate different angles of her cleavage. They were giggling like little kids… or little perverts, I mean, come on, you’re at the mall.

  I felt dizzy and like we were having an intervention but had singled out the wrong person. Katie held me up with a hug, or so it felt; with her arms around me, her cheek soft and warm against mine; my body unsure of its direction. Still smiling, my dad said, “The way I saw it, I needed to shake the ground beneath you so if the walls didn’t crumble, maybe we’d at least bounce you right out of that place you’d put yourself away in.” He chuckled a little, and I thought, so that’s how it’s done. He went on, “Our little group referred to itself as the crazies. That was easier than ‘people on the path to resolving problems.’ We…”

  “So,” I interrupted as Katie stepped away. I had to go over some things first, “you and the ‘crazies’ were sitting around and someone’s like, ‘hey, what are you doing,’ and you said, ‘we’re planning on destroying my son’s spirit or soul or smile, whatever we get to first or last; we’re crazy – we don’t know. And they’re like, ‘We like cake.’” I laughed a hollow laugh and shook my head. I shook my head too often, I thought, and wondered if it was possible to develop arthritis of the neck from something like that. These people were going to have to help me by not being idiots, I thought piercingly, as I stared at Nate and Candy, who now were dancing like they didn’t know each other but desperately wanted to.

  Was this seriously happening? This seriously could no
t be happening. Was that seriously happening? That seriously could not be happening. Did she seriously have a penis? She seriously could not have a penis.

  I shut my eyes for a moment. I struggled to make sense of what I’d just learned, or rather; what I had just heard. My dad’s ‘effort’ was a faint idea he stumbled upon and then held onto through a drunken haze. And for what: where had I been? From what were they saving me?

  “I don’t – you guys are the laziest plotters ever! And for what, Dad – what the hell was I doing or not doing that made it seem like I needed so much help or whatever it was you were offering?”

  My dad stepped forward. It struck me then just how meticulous time was about crafting each of us and how quickly we ran out of room for such detail. I stopped myself just shy of smiling at him out of pity. He ran a hand along his face, either by coincidence or knowing all too well what I had been thinking. He stared at me for a moment. “It is only when I’m unhappy that I fear death.” I flinched from how directly he’d spoken. His smile returned and I nearly thanked it. “When your mom died,” he said softly, “something came over you and that something hid you, my spirited son, away from me.”

  Apparently what had begun as an experiment on my head was now a something involving my heart and a wrench. There was a pain I couldn’t stop from showing on my face. I was tired and that only made it so much worse. I moved away from my dad, desperate for repair, and looked to Nate. “So who was Cathy then, the one you said was a hooker?” I asked him. I had different pieces to different puzzles and thought they might make for worthy distractions.

  “Oh, she really was a hooker,” he answered with a little too much honesty in his confession for my liking. “Yeah, I’m guessing that was not so much a part of any plan as it was… um.