Headphone System Nib
Recovering Charles - Chapter 4 Excerpt
It was hard to think of 9 / 11.
The coverage, network graphics, polished and Storm official logos. The death toll.
Pain.
Maybe watching television both in the days after Katrina, because he could not turn off lens inside my photographer. He was more than water and dirt, was that the eyes of the survivors crying for help. Many wept with her mouth too, insulting the camera and asking for ransom.
Some also cried with cardboard signs:
FEMA'S WHERE?
FIND Bush and Cheney!
Looters will be shot
Katrina killed MY BABY
Nagin LIED
During a commercial I sat back and relaxed on the futon neck and shoulders. I had not realized how he had become a pain in my leaning forward and pulling the hour of TV after the hour. Exercise made my eyes hurt. And once again brought me back to memories of September 11 and felt that the number of constant coverage had made in my mind and soul.
I decided to take the air and lunch in Little India will serve me well. As was my custom, I took my camera. The hike was invigorating.
I was sitting on the Pious Pio in Jackson Heights, when my cell phone rang and an unknown number of area code 504.
"Hello?" I replied.
The low smoking man's voice was unknown. "This Millward Lucas?"
"It."
"Jerome Harris calling from New Awlins. "
I changed my cell phone from one ear to another. "What I can do for you?"
"Your father is Carlos?"
"Yes." I wondered if I could get this call. I never imagined I would be sitting in a Peruvian restaurant.
"Have you heard of 'im?
"Not lately, no."
"How the time you were?
"Two years maybe more. "
At that moment I remembered a larger package than usual that he had received a couple of months from Dad. I had not bothered to open it. It was the latest in a series of packets that arrived every six months or less to some new zip code. Usually contains a curious trinket Dad bought or sometimes at random to one of his personal belongings he wanted me to have.
I always wondered if the shipment of old keys car or a dice keychain luck in Las Vegas was his way of making peace. When asked, he said he just wanted me to have things in case something happened to him him.
Like all the other packages, stacked in a corner of the closet of my apartment building.
"What is is this about? "I asked the man.
"Your dad is missin ', Lucas. Livin I've been here in New Awlins of' bout a year."
Here it comes, I thought, closing her eyes.
"Nobody has seen 'im for a couple Sundays ago. Overnight"
"Katrina."
"Right THA. Have you been teachin and playing with me and my kids in a place in Chartres Street in about seven months. Livin 'in a in the five and four years. "
"Five and four?"
"Lower Ninth, son."
I imagined his body was one of those rotting in a public restroom or face down and bloated floating under a bridge somewhere.
So this is how it feels to be an orphan. "I Sorry to hear that, sir. "The words brought unexpected upset. My father is dead.
"Do not be sorry, Luke. Get down here and find" im. "
"Excuse me?"
"It's why I'm calling."
"Do not you just call someone when found? "
"You kidding? There he got a television."
Understood.
"Even the kids good meanin 'here do not have the time to do a lot. "He paused." Come and see your father, Luke Millward. For alls we know he is alive somewhere part. Most of our cell phones are not workin', which could be hurtin 'somewhere, or San Antonio or in the north. We're hopin 'that is.
We are praying it. "
"Even if I wanted, I can not just stand by my life and go on a wild goose chase. Simply I can not. "
"Then do it for his girlfriend. "
"What did you say? I changed my cell phone back to the other ear. "My father he do?
married "a wonderful. Gettin 'some time' fore Christmas."
Who is she? I thought.
"Luke, she is my little sister." He let the words have an impact. "His name is Jez."
Jez. I did not know what surprised more my system: the probable death of my father or a woman marry a practicing alcoholic who had a premonition problem.
"I'll call you back," I said. "The number on my caller ID, is yours?"
"It's a club cell phones. Call anytime. But the service is hit and miss, you know.
"I'll call back."
"Soon?
"Yes, sir. Goodbye. And thanks. "I hung up and left the restaurant and the noise of the city. I moved through the crowded streets in the afternoon to the subway.
I do not remember riding home.
That night I sat in my apartment with Jordan and listened as she repeated back to me the call details of Jerome. She seemed to hear things in history that had not said.
"This guy, Jerome, who was the best friend of your father."
"Who knows?"
"And his father married the sister of this man, or was it anyway ... "
She scratched his back. "Sorry."
"No need."
"I have to ask, how did he get your number? You should ask that. What if it is a kind of scam? I see this a lot. "
"Jordan is not a scam."
"It's probably true, but even so, how are you in? Sure you do not want money or something? Maybe he thinks is fair, since you helped his father when needed. "
I had forgotten that he had ever told him. "I have not sent money to dad in a long time. Not since the last time we spoke."
"However, Lucas, I would ask. And how do you find?
I agree that it was an intelligent question and promised to assume when I called back Jerome.
"Huh. His father lived in New Orleans." He looked at his diet Dr. Pepper. "You just told me something about it."
Not much to tell. I have not talked much about my mother either.
We chose our sesame chicken and brown rice.
"So you" he asked. "Really?"
"I do not know yet. "
"You have to go, Lucas. Just to know, of course, you have to. "
"I do not know." "
Took my two hands. "I will go with you."
"You can not leave this time, Jordan. Not the end of the quarter. You have to move the closure. "
"If I do it, but I'd go with you if you ask."
We returned to our Chinese food, while the murderers Hot Fuss, played in the living room stereo.
An hour later I hugged goodbye in Jordan elevator of my building and prepared to sleep. The bathroom mirror reminded me dark circles under the eyes that I inherited from my father. When I was particularly tired or stressed out at me as if I had popped in both eyes. The rest of the time I looked like a raccoon. When I was young, Mom said they were so dark because it was only child. If I had more children the effect would have spread through the other children.
I cued a classical playlist on my iPod. Topics of the Boston Pops, some Mozart, just added songs from a CD by Jenny Oaks Baker Jordan had given me for my birthday. I turned off the lights, put on my headphones, and a majestic violin when Jenny transformed my room into a concert hall, drowning out the constant flow of horns and sirens below.
My mind dropped leaves on the images of Katrina anger.
***
Mom was not always unhappy.
Dad was not always a drunk.
Just before my sophomore year of high school, the year before the grandmother died, the three of us took a road trip the Yankees training spring at Legends Field in Tampa Bay. Mom let me go ahead for most of the trip while reading or sleeping in the backseat of our white Saab. Dad took us east through Shreveport, Jackson, Mobile, and across the Florida peninsula. Each stop brought a bit of history of AAA Dad's guide, a key ring for the collection of mom, and sandwiches.
I bet mom ate fifteen pounds of licorice on that trip. It's funny, I used to joke about her mom addiction to bags Nibs.
Dad's official travel treatment was Tab cola and Planters salted peanuts. Remember that peanuts fall little by little to the bottom of every mom and can playfully joked: "You're gross. Yuck. Who put peanuts in your soda?" Even Dad could not explain the appeal, but I can not remember a single mile of that trip, or any other for the case when Dad did not have a can in his hand or the ready-in cup holder. I always threatened to tell mom, when I won as Dad sips gas is pumped or checked the tires.
But all that was needed was a handful of licorice slip me and I undertake to keep his secret for another leg of the trip. Do not even like licorice.
My nails are Twinkies, Ho Hos, "and Big League Chew gum only player worthy of a little. That is, unless you were crazy son of Mrs. Armstrong. He did a great show one day practice that Big League Chew was a candy "gateway" to counterfeit cigarettes, then the real cigarettes, then real snuff. So Mrs. Armstrong banned it from the dock and told his son, Mikey Magic, our only left-hander, who had let him chew one hundred packages at once if she ever more surprised with the matter. Dad said that some things are not worth fighting over.
Sometimes, when he and another trainer was working with infielders, I'd have a couple of guys behind the booth and give them a wad of pink chewing gum from his bag of crushed aluminum foil. There are few things more exciting for a thirteen-year-old banned chewing gum to provide a teammate. Not long after the ban took Mrs. Armstrong into force, Dad stopped at a Circle K on the way to practice and came out with three packs of Big League Chew. "Just in case." He winked. "You never know when you may die. "
My dad told me that Mrs. Armstrong was a sweet woman who just had some "problems." I guess he thought I should know what that meant. I did not. I was only a right fielder.
That spring training vacation, Mom in the stands read for hours while Dad and I jostled for autographs and memorabilia of professional sports fought dogs and small children alike for the signature and foul balls. She smiled kindly when I arrived at our place over the third-base line with a ball he had caught a bat splintered rookie. I can not even remember his name anymore.
"That's spectacular!" Mom took the ball from me and pretended to examine it. "I bet this is a special place in his room, eh, darling? "
"Of course I will!" "
Dad bought us a game, old school, caps Yankees baseball cotton. I lost mine a couple of months later and never found again.
(Excerpt from Charles Recovery and reprinted with permission of the author, Jason F. Wright)
(Originally published in GoArticles and reprinted with permission of the author, Jason F. Wright).
About the Author
Jason F. Wright is a regular contributor on Fox News and is founder and managing director of the political destination, PoliticalDerby.com. Jason is the New York Times Bestselling Author of Christmas Jars and The Wednesday Letters. To Learn more about Jason and his most recent novel, Recovering Charles, visit:
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