Trinket Nib
Chapter 4 Excerpt – Recovering Charles
It was hard not to think 09.11.
Coverage, network graphics, polished and logos officers of the storm. The death toll.
Pain.
Maybe watch TV much in the days after Katrina, because he could not clear the inner lens of my photographer. Was more than water and dirt, he saw the eyes of the survivors crying for help. Many said cursing the mouth also in camera equipment and asking ransom.
Some also cried with cardboard signs:
WHERE IS FEMA?
FIND Bush and Cheney!
Shoot looters
Katrina killed my baby
Nagin LIED
During a commercial I sat back on the futon and relaxed neck and shoulders. I had not realized how much pain had become my leaning forward and pulling when TV after the hour. That realization is my eyes hurt. And once again brought me back to memories of September 11 and felt that the figure was taken Constant coverage on my mind and soul.
I decided to take the air and lunch in Little India that serve me well. As was my custom, I took my camera along. The walk was invigorating.
I was sitting at Pio Pio in Jackson Heights, when my cell phone rang and an unknown number of area code 504.
"Hello?" I replied.
Man quietly smoking was unknown. "This Millward Lucas?"
"Is."
"Jerome Harris from New Awlins calling."
I changed my cell phone from one ear to ear. "What I can do for you? "
"Your father is Carlos?"
"Yes." I wondered if this call may come. 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 package larger than normal that he had received a couple of months of Dad. He had not bothered to open it. It was the latest in a series of packets that arrived every six months or less of some new ZIP code. Usually contains a strange trinket father had purchased or from time to time one of your random personal items that I wanted have.
I always wondered if sending old keys or keychain drive as the fate of Las Vegas was his way of making peace. When I asked him said that only I wanted to have those things in case something happened to him.
Like all the other packages, stacked in a corner cabinet storage of my apartment building.
"What is this?" Asked the man.
"His dad is missin ' Lucas. Livin 'in New Awlins combat' a year. "
Here it is, I thought, closing her eyes.
"Nobody has seen 'im for a couple of Sundays. Night before "
"Katrina."
"Right THA. Teachin been and is playing with me and my kids in a place on Chartres Street in about seven months. Living in a place in the five and four years. "
"Five and four?"
"Under ninth child. "
I imagined that her body was one of the rotting in a public restroom or bloated floating face down under a bridge somewhere.
So this is how it feels to be an orphan. "Sorry to hear that, sir." The words brought unexpected upset. My father is dead.
"Do not be sorry, Luke. Get on here and find 'im."
"Excuse me?"
"It's why I'm calling."
"Will not someone just call me when he has found?"
"You kidding? There he got a TV."
Point taken.
"Even the guys in good meanin 'here do not have time for much of that." He paused. "Venga to see his father, Luke Millward. For alls we know he is alive somewhere. Most of our cell phones are not workin', which could be hurtin 'in somewhere, or San Antonio or the north. We're hopin it 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?" Changed my cell phone back to the other ear. "My father was involved?
"To a wonderful human being." Married at some point 'GETTIN both Christmas. "
Who is she? I thought.
"Luke, she's my little sister." He let the words have an impact. " His name is Jez. "
Jez. I did not know what surprised me more system: the probable death of my father or a woman marrying a practicing alcoholic there was a problem premonition.
"I'll call you back," he said. "The number on my caller ID, which is yours?"
"It's a club cell phones. Call anytime. But the service is hit and miss, you know."
"I to call back. "
"Soon?"
"Yes, sir. Bye. Thank you." I hung up and left the restaurant and the noise of the city. I moved through the afternoon streets full of people towards the metro.
I do not remember riding it at home.
That night I sat in my apartment with Jordan and listened as she repeated back to me the call details of Jerome. She could hear things in the story that he had said.
"This guy, Jerome, who was the best friend of your father."
"Who knows?"
"And you Dad is getting married to the sister of this type is, or was anyway … "
She scratched his back. "Sorry."
"No need."
"I have to wonder, 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 did you meet? Are you sure you do not want money or something? You may think that it is loaded, as he helped his father when needed. "
I had forgotten that I've always said that. "I have sent money to dad in a long time. Not since the last time we talked."
"But Luke, I would ask. How are you? "
I remember it was an intelligent question and promised that arise when Jerome called back.
"Huh. His father lived in New Orleans." She looked Diet Dr. Pepper. "You just told me about him."
Not much to tell. I have not talked much about my mother either.
We chose our sesame chicken and rice.
"So let's go" he asked. "No?"
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."
"Can not stop now, Jordan. Not the end of the quarter. You closed pass. "
"Yes I do, but I would go with you if you ask."
We returned to our dinner china, while Heating of The Killers' Fuss, played in the team room.
An hour later, Jordan hugged me goodbye in the elevator of my building and prepared sleeping. The bathroom mirror reminded me of the dark circles under the eyes that I inherited from my father. When I was particularly tired or stressed out as I looked 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 I was an only child. If I had more children the effect would have spread through the other children.
I keyed in a collection of classics on my iPod. Tracks of the Boston Pops, something Mozart, you just added songs from a CD by Jenny Oaks Baker that Jordan had given me for my birthday. I turned off the lights, put on my headphones, and a violin Jenny majestic moment transformed my room into a concert hall, drowning out the steady stream of horns and sirens below.
My mind on fallen leaves Images of Katrina anger.
***
Mom was not always unhappy.
Dad was not always a drunk.
Just before my second year of high school, the year before the grandmother died, the three of us made a road trip to spring training the Yankees 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 to this through Shreveport, Jackson, Mobile, and across the Florida Panhandle. Each stop brought a little history of AAA Dad's phone, a key pickup for mom and snacks.
I bet that mom ate seven kilos of licorice on the trip. It's funny, I used to joke about her mom addiction bags Nibs.
Dad's official trip was to try Tab cola and Planters salted peanuts. I remember losing a peanut slowly to the bottom of each can as a mom playing jokes, "You're gross. Yuck. Who put the peanuts in the drinks?" Even Dad could not explain the appeal, but I do not remember a single mile of the journey, or any other for that matter, when Dad was not a can in your hand or in ready-in cup holder. I always threatened to say when mom and dad won sips gas pumps or check the tires.
But all I had to do was slip me a handful of Licorice and I promise to keep his secret for another leg of the trip. I do not even like licorice.
My staples are Twinkies, Ho-Hos, and Big League Chew gum only worthy of a little leaguer. That is, unless you were crazy boy Mrs. Armstrong. He did a great show one day at practice that Big League Chew was a "candy gateway "to the fake cigarettes, then the real cigarettes, then real snuff. So Mrs. Armstrong banned from the bench and told his son, Mikey Magic, our only left-hander, who would chew a hundred packages at once if she never caught him with things. Dad said some things not worth fighting.
Sometimes, when he and another trainer was working with infielders, I took a couple of guys behind the house and give them a wad of pink gum from his bag of shredded aluminum foil. Few things are more exciting for a boy of thirteen years, to give a gum banned teammate. Not long after Mrs. Armstrong ban came into force, Dad stopped at a Circle K on the way to practice and came out with three packages Major League Chew. "Just in case." He winked. "You never know when you run out."
My dad told me that Mrs. Armstrong was a sweet woman who just had some "problems." I think he thought I should know what that meant. I did not. I was just a gardener right.
That spring training vacation, Mom read in the stands for hours while dad and I pushed for autographs and memorabilia professional sports fought dogs and small children alike for firms and foul balls. She smiled kindly when I arrived at our place over the line third base 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. "bet this is a special place in his room, no, dear?"
"Of course I I will! "
Dad bought us a game, old school Yankee baseball caps cotton. I lost mine a couple of months later and never found again.
(From the recovery of Carlos and reprinted with permission of the author, Jason F. Wright)
(Originally published in GoArticles and reprinted with permission of the author, Jason F. Wright).
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