Sammie & Budgie

by Scott Semegran

  "Are you mad at me?" he said, sensing my uneasiness with the topic and conversation. Kids are very perceptive, more than most people give them credit for. It's true.

  "No, son. I'm not mad at you. Not at all. But if you're special then I'd like to know. That's all."

  "That's all?" he said, releasing his legs from the hard-boiled egg position, ready to dart. In the side pocket to his door was his trusty sketchbook, which he quickly pulled from the pocket and pressed to his chest.

  "Yes. Ready to meet the new doctor?"

  "Yes!" he said, unbuckling his seatbelt, opening the door, and bolting from the car. He cradled the sketchbook under his right arm like a football player, holding it tightly. I quickly followed. Kids are crazy and nobody seems to watch where they're going when they're driving. As a parent, you have to watch out when your kids are acting crazy. They could get smooshed.

  He bolted across the parking lot, not looking where he was going, at a speed that was way too fast for my old bones. But I could at least see him and that's all that mattered. He climbed into a landscaped area to the right of the entrance to the building, lifting his arm as if he was going to karate chop the shrubbery, and he made his way in the foliage like an explorer trudging through the Amazon jungle. The bushes shimmied as he shoved his way through them, some leaves and twigs falling here and there.

  "Sammie!" I said, worried, rushing over to see what he was doing. I didn't want him destroying anything, which any kid can do when you stop watching what they are doing. Kids can be a real pain in the ass if you stop watching them. They are bound to get into all kinds of mischief if you don't. It's true.

  "Yeah Daddy!" he said, calling from below the sea of leaves that spread out across the front of the building, supplying some color and ground cover--no doubt--cheaply and effectively. It looked lovely until my boy rummaged through it like a deranged wolverine. "I think I found something!"

  "What?!" I said, worried. Hopefully, he didn't find a dead animal or something like that. Now that would have ruined my day. "What do you mean you found something? Just come on out. We have an appointment to go to."

  "But I found some treasure!" he said. Loose leaves flew above the shrubbery as he excavated his 'treasure.' I worried that he had found a cover to some wires or pipes or nozzles for the irrigation system or something of the like that would spark the imagination of a young boy who--of course--would want to open something like that and gaze inside, hoping to find treasure or frogs or toys or rocks. "It's in the dirt. It's silver! I almost got it!"

  "Please come out, Sammie. We have to get inside for your appointment."

  "OK, Daddy. I'm coming. I got it! I GOT IT!" My little, deranged wolverine hacked his way out of the shrub jungle, leaving a few broken limbs behind, unfortunate casualties of his excavation. When he emerged from the bushes, his face red from holding his breath while tearing through the shrubbery, he extended his little hand to me, opening it to reveal a silvery-looking hunk of metal. "Look! I found treasure!"

  "Give it to me," I said, examining it. I wiped the dirt from it, some of which was a crusty mud layer that had been there for some time. I immediately knew what it was. Good ol' Sammie Boy had discovered some treasure all right: an old Zippo lighter. "Amazing."

  "Can I keep it, Daddy?!" he said, his hands on his hips, his sketchbook shoved into the waistband at the front of his pants. I love how kids just shove things into the waistband of their pants like that was the most practical thing to do. Can you imagine a grown man holding a thermos of coffee at work then shoving it in his waistband when a coworker approached him to say hi and shake his hand? That's a funny thought, isn't it? I knew you'd think it was.

  "No," I said, wiping the last of the loose dirt from the old Zippo. Engraved on the front, in big, bold, serif letters was: FULL FLAVOR. Directly above the engraving was a caricature of a flame, almost cartoony in appearance, floating above the obvious advertising slogan like a punctuation mark. The tiny dents, scratches, and patina of the metal told me that the Zippo was quite old--if not ancient--and had been in the dirt for quite some time. I flipped the top open and a tiny cloud of dirt and dust billowed out, some of which good ol' Sammie Boy involuntarily inhaled. I immediately apologized. "Sorry son! Didn't mean to do that." He coughed and wiped the dust from his lips and nostrils.

  "Why can't I keep it?" he said, grabbing me by the belt, pulling at my midsection as if he was trying to get me to his height (which was way down there). "It's my treasure."

  "It's not treasure. It's a lighter, for starting fires."

  "Cool!" he said, more excited about his find now, knowing that it was a tool of potential destruction. I slipped the beat-up Zippo in my pocket and placed a gentle but firm hand on his back.

  "We have an appointment to go to. Let's go!" I said, leading him inside the building to find an elevator to the second floor. We immediately found one and went up.

  On the next floor, Sammie bolted out of the door and immediately ran to the left at full speed, his sketchbook under his arm again. But when I realized from a sign on the wall that he was going the wrong way, I called out to him to come back. "That way," I said, pointing in the other direction. "To suite 218."

  "OK, Daddy!" he said, bolting the correct way. He found the door and went in. I soon followed.

  Inside, we were greeted by a doorbell and a sparse waiting room--one couch, a coffee table with some magazines on it, and a fake, plastic tree that looked like a miniature palm tree, bare white walls, a French door with curtains on it--and a window for a receptionist who wasn't to be found. But before I could sit down on the couch, a woman opened the French doors and greeted us.

  "You must be Sammie," she said, extending her hand to my son. "You're a fine looking young man."

  "Thanks!" said Sammie, all smiles and blushes. He ate that shit right up. Most kids his age do. It's true.

  Then she turned to me, extending her hand, and said, "You must be Sammie's father, Simon."

  "Yes. Yes, I am. Nice to meet you, Dr. Davis," I said. I shook her hand which was delicate and brittle, like a bunch of tree twigs that had dried through the autumn and were bundled at her wrist. Her skin was very white, almost translucent, and the road map of blue-green veins and capillaries went up her sinewy arm in a pulsing zig-zag of intersections and freeways and toll ways. Her hair was pitch black, as dark and black as the night sky in rural Montana. She was at least 60 but may have been older but I really couldn't tell, to be honest. My mother told me to never ask a woman her age and that advice has stayed with me through thick and thin. I wasn't about to ask Dr. Davis how old she was. That would have been plain rude, according to my mother. It's true. "I hope we aren't late."

  "Not at all. Let me take Sammie back to my office to get him comfortable. I'll come back shortly with some paperwork for you to fill out."

  "OK," I said. "Sammie, give me your sketchbook."

  He handed it to me then she put her arm around my boy and led him to her office down the hall. "We're going to become fast friends--you and me," she said to him.

  "OK!" he said, excited.

  I sat on the couch, adjusting myself to get comfortable. I could hear them from her office as Sammie ran around, touching this and that, no doubt, asking what this thing was and what that thing was. I wasn't too worried about him and his behavior. Dr. Davis came highly recommended by Dr. Dimes so I had hope that she at least knew what she was doing. But for some reason, I was certain that she never dealt with a kid like good ol' Sammie Boy. He was special. I knew it.

  After a minute or two, Dr. Davis came back in the waiting room with a clipboard full of papers and a pen for me. As she sat next to me, my nose was assaulted by her fragrance--a combination of patchouli, some kind of pungent, flowery soap, and a musty earthiness I can only describe as the smell of mold after a hard rain when the hot Texas sun comes out. Her scent was so hard to ignore that I pinched my nose in a nonchalant manner, as if pretending to hold in a sneeze, and tried not to reveal my true motivation
for protecting my nostrils.

  "Can you fill these out for me?" she said, handing me the clipboard. Holding the clipboard made it difficult to pinch my nose so I suffered in silence. "I understand you have medical insurance, correct?"

  "Yes."

  "Good. The co-pay will be $50, due at the end of every appointment."

  "OK."

  "And let me get this straight. When you called... And you were referred by my dear friend, Dr. Dimes?" she said, placing her bony hand on my leg, touching it ever so gently with her twig fingers. I inhaled in short breaths to control the amount of her scent entering my nose. It didn't help so I allowed her scent to molest my nose hairs. Those poor hairs shriveled.

  "Yes. She is Sammie's pediatrician."

  "Great! Good woman, great doctor. So--" she said, withdrawing her hand then placing it on her forehead. Her head tilted back as if she was searching the deep recesses of her mind for our previous phone conversation. "You mentioned that you believe--and I'm quoting you here--you believe that your son, Sammie, 'can see things before they happen.' What do you mean by that?"

  "Well," I said, hesitating. It did sound crazy when she asked in that way--why I called her and all. But I didn't know what else to do or who to talk to about my boy's special ability. I believed deep down in my soul that good ol' Sammie Boy could see the future but I didn't want to come off as sounding crazy, especially since I was talking to a psychotherapist. I tried to tread lightly. "I know it sounds crazy."

  "Crazy? My business is crazy, you see?" she said, chuckling. "Do I think you're crazy? No, I don't. Do I think your son could have the ability to see things before they happen? Who am I to say at this point? It remains to be seen," she said, patting the paperwork on the clipboard on my lap. "Can you fill these out for me?"

  "Sure," I said, sighing.

  "And one other thing: To instill trust in your son, I will tell him that whatever he and I talk about will only be between him and me. I will let him know that I will not be talking to you about what he and I talk about during our sessions. Make sense to you?"

  "Yes," I said. "Makes perfect sense to me."

  "But," she said, standing up from the couch, straightening her posture by pushing back and forth on her hips. "I will call you at a later date to tell you everything Sammie and I discuss. You do need to be kept in the loop. Just don't tell Sammie that. OK?"

  "You got it."

  "Make yourself comfortable. Our session will take about 55 minutes." She walked down the hall to her office and closed the door, leaving me to myself--all alone--in the waiting room.

  While I filled out the paperwork, I thought of my junior high friends, Jason and Stanford, who I was friends with when my family lived in Montgomery, Alabama while my father was stationed at Gunter Air Force Base. Jason was pudgy and goofy and all kinds of hyper, like a lot of white kids who drank too much soda and ate too much junk food. He was the one I used to play Mad Libs with, when we were kids. Stanford was a black kid who was skinny and gawky and wore huge coke-bottle glasses that made him look like Urkel before Urkel even existed on TV. He was the one I was telling you about that I believe stole my copy of copy of The Amazing Spider-Man #6 in fair condition when we were kids. Anyway, Jason, Stanford, and I were great pals and we would ride our BMX bikes in the wooded area behind the junior high and, this one time, the three of us camped out back there and Jason told us about how his parents forced him to see a therapist because he was having problems in school, bad grades and tardies and having a potty mouth and all. He really hated going to his therapist. He told us it was humiliating and boring and he never really understood why he had to see the therapist. He said he enjoyed talking to his friends more than talking to the therapist because he felt like we were really listening to him, not pretending to listen to him. I wondered if Sammie would feel the same way as Jason did. I wondered if he would clam up and not say anything at all to her. Good ol' Sammie Boy was really good at doing that sometimes: clamming up. Maybe his new nickname should be Clammie. That's just too good. It's true.

  Anyway, the next thing I knew, I could hear the door open to Dr. Davis' office. She and Sammie were conversing and laughing. It sounded like--to me--that the appointment went well.

  "You can keep that comic book, if you'd like," she said.

  "Really? Can I?!" he said, excited.

  "Sure. It belonged to my son but that was many, many years ago. It's all yours now."

  "Gee, thanks! DADDY! DADDY!" he said, running up the hall toward the waiting room. He burst through the French doors, a comic book rolled up in one of his hands, the doors slamming against the wall. "Look what Dr. Davis gave me!"

  He jumped on the couch next to me and unraveled the comic book, a withered, yellowed copy of the Silver Age semi-classic: The Defenders. It was issue #25 with a cover price of 25 cents.

  "I don't know, son," I said, knowing that there may be some collector's value to the early 1970s comic book. I looked at Dr. Davis and said, "Are you sure? I'd hate for Sammie to take something of value from you."

  "Of value?" she said, then a deep bellow blurting from her reedy throat. "My son left behind piles and piles of comics and books and board games and trading cards when he moved away to college. That was ages ago. I let my clients have as many as they want and can carry home with them. You'd be doing me a favor."

  "Look, Daddy!" Sammie said, pointing at the wrinkled cover. "Dr. Strange is in this one!" Sure enough, Dr. Strange was flying on the cover, blasting some baddies with a red and yellow energy blast from his hand while the Incredible Hulk and Luke Cage pounded some other dumbass baddies with their boulder-sized fists. It was a striking cover, really. I'm certain it caught Sammie's eye, mostly because Dr. Strange was on it but it was a nice fight scene nonetheless. It had that classic Marvel look.

  "I see that, son. Did you tell Dr. Davis 'thank you'?" I said, placing a hand on his shoulder.

  "Thank you, Dr. Davis!" he said, beaming at her.

  "You're welcome, Sammie," she said, patting him on the back. Then she looked at me and said, "Same time next week?"

  "Yes, same time," I said, handing her the check for the co-pay.

  "Great! I'll talk to you then," she said, then flashing me a not-so-subtle wink. I'm surprised Sammie didn't notice, the way she winked at me and all. As if in slow motion, her wink was as obvious as siren lights on top of a police cruiser in a traffic jam. Fortunately, he didn't notice. He was too enthralled with the cover to his issue of The Defenders #25. She lifted her hand, shaped like a phone receiver from the 1980s, to her face.

  "OK, talk then," I said, pushing Sammie toward the door to leave the waiting room, handing him his sketchbook.

  "I didn't know Dr. Strange was in a super group!" he said, holding the comic book up to my face as we left the waiting room. All the way down the hall, he continued to flash the comic book to me as if I was ignoring him on purpose. Partially, I was.

  "Yes, son."

  "Can you believe it?!"

  "Yes, I read them all when I was your age," I said, pushing the down button for the elevator when we came to it.

  "Is there more you can show me?"

  "Of course. I would love to," I said as the elevator dinged and the door slid open. We stepped inside.

  "Do you have them at home?"

  "We can check tonight after dinner. Sound good?"

  "Yeah!" he said as the door slid shut.

  The elevator took us to the ground floor and we walked back to the Volvo S70 together, hand in hand.

  Chapter Six

  The fuzzy grass covering the cemetery grounds was lush and green and fluffy and soft, ebbing in waves as the wind gently pushed the blades back and forth in a spring time dance. Good ol' Sammie Boy stood on the curb in front of our parking space, glaring at me, his legs taut with excitement. He was ready to run and was growing impatient, waiting for me and his little sister to get out of the car and accompany him across the great lawn and down the path to where his mother's grave lay. It was
a nice day for a visit. The sun shone brightly high up in the pale, blue sky; the only clouds present were wisps of cottony white, like down feathers slowly drifting towards outer space.

  "Can we go now?!" he said, performing a jig somewhere between a pee-pee dance and the nervous prance before a competitive 50-meter sprint. He could barely contain himself, the poor kid. He was that excited. "What's taking so long?!"

  "Hold your horses!" Jessie said, releasing her seat belt in the backseat of my Volvo and looking for her sunglasses in the pocket behind the driver seat in front of her. She had these kid-sized sunglasses that were styled like Oakley Sunglasses (the kind you would wear in the outdoors doing outdoorsy things like skiing or hiking or shooting unsuspecting animals) that wrapped around her head with a bright red frame and polarized lenses that refracted the sunlight in rainbow streaks and flares. She loved them like nothing else she owned except maybe for her taekwondo dobok (that's her uniform, if you didn't know). She wore her dobok and her sunglasses whenever she could but she wasn't wearing her dobok that day. The thing was stinky and dirty and balled up in a wad under her bed. Her sunglasses were usually stuffed in the pocket behind my seat but they weren't there, for some reason. She wasn't going to spend a significant amount of time in the sun without them so she was determined to find them whether her brother was anxious or not. Kids can be real assholes to each other when they don't want to be rushed. It's true. "I'm not going down there without my shades!"

  "Since when do you call your sunglasses shades?" I said, curious.

  "Since last week, Daddy. You know? Forever ago!"

  "I see."

  "Where are they?!" she said, getting down on the floor board and twisting her body into the tiny space so she could look under the driver seat. She looked like a turtle balled up there on the floor board, most of her arms and legs tucked under her body. Then she sprung up, her arms stretched above her head with her kid-Oakley, bright red sunglasses in her hand, and said, "I found them!"