The Metaphysical Ukulele (14 page)

With Judy Flynn looking straight at Rodney Butler and singing perhaps the loudest, the class belted out, “C-U-P.”

In the wave of excitement, Rodney dropped his shorts to his ankles, lifted his T-shirt over his prodigious belly, and watered the black schoolyard dirt. The class roared. Sean Carswell accompanied their laughter with a few more measures on his homemade ukulele. Miss Shore leaned into Mrs. Matthews' shoulder and snickered. “Look at Rodney's little dickey-doo.”

The slightest laugh was rerouted from Mrs. Matthews' pursed lips but managed to escape through her nostrils. She looked at her half-smoked cigarette and decided that intervention was still not yet necessary. Rodney had finished and shaken and hiked up his shorts once again. Sean Carswell strummed without singing.

What Mrs. Matthews couldn't know was that, with no more names left to sing, with Rodney's spectacle outshining his song, Sean Carswell had to take his art to the next level. When the hoi polloi settled, he sang out the last possible line of the refrain: “Mrs. Matthews may I?”

Instead of the usual “C-U-P,” Sean Carswell's classmates responded with silence. In his mind's ear, Sean Carswell heard the “C” and the “U,” but before the “P” could slide into the song, Mrs. Matthews wrapped her nicotine-stained fingers around his upper arm and started dragging him principal-ward, with ukulele in tow.

On this final infraction, Mr. Carswell was called into the meeting of Mrs. Matthews and Principal Cowling. Suspension at this point had moved beyond consideration and into implementation. Mrs. Carswell would have to withstand the gossip and barbs of breakroom politics for the rest of the school year. Sean Carswell would spend one day of his institutionally mandated two-week break in his father's truck, completing the schoolwork he was missing. He would spend the other weekdays working a series of small jobs on his father's construction site.

At the end of the suspension, Sean Carswell's ukulele would be returned to him. His father would drive him home from the day's job site. Mr. Carswell would tousle his son's slightly graying blond bowl cut and say, “Don't worry, kid. I always find a way to fuck things up, too.”

Sean Carswell would pluck at the strings of his pencil box ukulele, seeking a way to turn that sentiment into a song.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Pam Houston and Patricia Geary for reading the stories in which I made them each a main character, and for giving me their blessings to publish those stories. They both have also done me the huge favor of writing blurbs for my books. That means the world to me. I borrowed passages, true stories, and stylistic tricks from all the authors in this collection. Thanks to each of them for being a muse and an inspiration. Thanks in advance to the living authors in this collection and the estates of the dead authors for recognizing the difference between homage and plagiarism.

Jim Ruland and Mickey Hess have been reading my manuscripts and giving me feedback for years now. Thanks to both of them for the help on this book. Brad Monsma, Mary Adler, Bob Mayberry, and Sofia Samatar workshopped several of these stories with me in our writing group. Without their encouragement, I might not have tried to publish any of this. Ben Loory blew my mind when the two of us did a reading in San Diego, and he had an Elmore Leonard story that seemed to fit in the spirit of this collection that I had just finished. Thanks to him for endorsing this book. Several editors published these stories before they became a
collection. Thanks to all of them. Robert Lasner and Elizabeth Clementson took a chance on this book. I can't thank them enough for that.

Most importantly, thanks to Felizon Vidad. It takes a very special person to be married to a guy who spends a lot of his time obsessing on ukuleles and other things literary.