You Will Call Me Drog (10 page)

Dad. Ringing the bell of a house that used to be his house, even though he knew I was the only one inside. I breathed out, reminded myself to keep Drog put away, tried one more one-point, and opened the door.

“Hi, Parker,” Dad said, looking straight into my eyes.

I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked right at me at me like that.

I wasn’t expecting him to be dressed like he was, either—faded jeans and hooded sweatshirt instead of a dress shirt and pants. I looked down at his feet—green socks and leather moccasins, newer ones like the scuffed old pair in the back of the hall closet. He was dressed to hang out.

He smiled. “Well. Okay if I come in, Parker?”

I said something that sounded like “’k,” and he came in and sat down on the couch as if he lived here. I almost expected him to put his feet up on the magazine table.

He started talking about this wild-looking scarecrow he had seen in a cornfield on the way over from Moline and about a huge flock of migrating red-winged blackbirds that swooped down and stuck all over it. He asked me what I did for Halloween. I relaxed a little and tried to make the conversation go on, being careful not to mention Mom or Wren. Or Drog. Postponing, postponing.

Finally Dad said, “So, Parker, How about letting me see this puppet everybody’s been talking about?”

One-point. One-point.
“You don’t really want to meet him, Dad.”

“Sure I do. That’s one reason I’m here. The other reason is, I wanted to see you.”

I wanted to see you
. I let that sink in.

“Dad, I don’t think ... I mean, I need to keep him put away.”

He didn’t argue, just stood up and said, “C’mon. Let’s go for a ride.”

I grabbed my jacket and followed him out. When I opened the car door it hit me, the smell of him in the car, the brown smell. That sounds awful, but I mean the smell of warm coffee and leather and cloves and cinnamon—from his shaving lotion, I guess—all mixed together. The memories in that smell surprised me, made me feel like a little kid again, and I wished I could cry for myself.

Dad drove north on Prairie for a few blocks, humming, then he signaled left and said, “Mind if we check out my old family place out on Maple? I haven’t been by there in years.”

“Okay,” I said. I couldn’t get over how easy he was being with me, like we were a couple of good friends getting together on a Saturday. Hope crept up on me and filled my chest. Maybe I could talk to Dad after all. Get him to believe me and understand. He was taking his time with me. We had all afternoon. Maybe there was enough time.

He pulled up in front of a small green house with one of those white plastic fences around it that you order from a catalog and set down in your yard.

“I sure had some good times growing up here,” he said, “even though we didn’t have much. Of course the place was different then. Wonder why the new owners painted it green? Makes it look even smaller.” He turned to me, faking a pout-face, and said, “Parker, this house is supposed to be
yellow
!”

I tried to imagine it yellow. I tried to imagine Dad as a kid.

“And our fence was wood. Of course it needed to be fixed and painted all the time. My job. They’ve solved that problem, all right. This one looks like it will last past the end of the world.”

“It’s kind of ugly,” I said.

Dad laughed. “You got that right. Oh no, they’ve ripped out the Concord grapevine now. That was the one thing we did have that was special. See that oak tree over there? Dad hung a tire swing from it for me, and I used to come home from school, pick a big bunch of grapes to eat, and swing as high as I could, spitting out the skins.”

There was only a clothesline where he pointed now.

“Oh well,” Dad said. “It’s their house. They can do what they want with it.”

He started up the engine again, and we drove to the to the baseball park and got out. The grass was all brown and matted, but we could make out the diamond. Dad jogged over to the batter’s box and said, “Pitch me one of those killer high slow ones that’ll drop right on me.” I pretended to pitch him a ball, not so easy with one hand in my pocket, and he swung.

“Strike one!” he yelled, and crouched down again. He tapped home base with his pretend bat and said, “Now put one right where I want it.” I pitched it again and he swung and ran for first. But I made it a fly ball, caught it one-handed. Would he be mad? No, he grinned.

“Got me,” he said.

His breathing slowed down, and then he said, suddenly, “About this puppet, Parker. Do you really think you’ve got a big psychological problem here that needs a doctor?”

I looked down and shook my head.

“Well, I’m glad, because neither do I. It seems like you’re just stuck and can’t find your way out of this. I’d like to help you get unstuck. How does that sound?”

“Good,” I said. “That sounds good.” At last.

He put his arm around my shoulder and led me over to a picnic table. We sat on the same side, facing out toward the field.

“Do you know that when I was about your age, I got chosen to be the world’s youngest astronaut?” Dad said.

“You didn’t!”

“You’re right, I didn’t, but everybody I knew thought I did.”

“How could you be an astronaut? You were just a kid!”

“Well, that didn’t stop me, as you’ll see in a minute. You comfortable? This could take a while.”

“I’m good,” I said. I wouldn’t have moved for anything.

“I didn’t just love math and science in school,” Dad said. “I also loved Julie Anderson who sat in front of me in sixth grade. I can still picture her shiny hair hanging down almost over the top of my desk. Julie’s smile ended in a dimple on one side, and she wore furry pink sweaters and smelled like bath soap.

She was everybody’s girlfriend—they wished—but I had one particular rival for her attention named Brad. He was way better-looking than me, so I had to hope Julie liked smart boys and didn’t listen to Brad when he called me a nerd. She did seem pretty impressed when the solar-powered model car I built took first in the district science fair. These days, you can just order one online, but not then.

“So off I went one weekend to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago for the state-level competition, and when I came back to school the following Monday, showing off my Honorable Mention ribbon, I found out that Brad had asked Julie to the movies on Saturday, just the two of them. I didn’t like the way she kept smiling at him that day. I had to do something, fast, right? So I asked her if I could talk to her alone because I had something important to tell her, something private.”

“How much you liked her?”

“Well that would have been the simple truth, wouldn’t it? But what if she’d said thanks, but she liked Brad now? I’d have died.”

“So what did you say?”

Dad chuckled then. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this ...”

I couldn’t either, but I hoped it was going to be a very long story.

“Don’t ask me where this came from, Parker, but I told Julie that my trip to Chicago wasn’t really about the science fair at all. That was a cover so I could have a top-secret interview with NASA. They were planning to send three young boys on an expedition to Mars. I was accepted, so I would be going into training at the NASA academy that summer, and the launch would be about nine months later. We’d be twelve years old at liftoff. I told her she had to swear to secrecy—nobody was supposed to know about it until it happened, because we had to surprise the Russians.”

“But Dad, why would they send boys?”

“Of course Julie asked me the same thing. I had all her attention by then, and those pretty eyes of hers got bigger and bigger, so my story did too.

“Mars is a lot farther from Earth than the moon, I explained, and even with the new superfast rocket they were working on that very moment, getting there and back would take a lot more time than people had ever spent out in space. Most experienced astronauts were too old to endure the exposure, but scientists thought young boys could take it. The astronauts would communicate with us from Earth, telling us what to do, but we’d be the ones up there doing it. ‘But Brian, they don’t actually know you can take it, do they?’ Julie said. ‘It could be dangerous!’ I tell you, Parker, Julie was mine!”

“You mean she actually believed all that stuff?”

“She sure did. Heck, I got so wound up inventing it that I half-believed it myself. But the other half of me realized I was going to need a way out when all of this didn’t happen, especially if I wanted to spend the summer going to movies with Julie. So I said of course it really all depended on NASA staying on schedule to develop that high-speed rocket and the special Mars suits for us. If they got too far behind, they’d have to choose three other boys. We’d be too old.”

“Geez, Dad. But you said everybody thought you were going. Did Julie tell them?”

“Not right away. She asked me why I had told her about all this if it was supposed to be top secret. I said, because when I go off to the Space Academy this summer, no one will know where I am, and I want you to know. She got tears in her eyes then and said it would be our secret. I was in heaven. Of course, it wasn’t so heavenly having to pretend to be getting in perfect shape for the training, because I had to pass up french fries and sloppy joes in the cafeteria and settle for carrot sticks and skim milk. Julie was there to remind me.

“Meanwhile, of course, Brad was ready to explode watching Julie hang around me all the time. One day I guess he’d seen about enough of her Brian worship, and he found an excuse to tackle me on the playground.

“He couldn’t get in a punch though, because Julie came over and pulled his hair and said, ‘Don’t you dare hurt Brian, Brad. He’s special. He’s not even going to seventh grade with us next year, he’s going to Mars!’

“Suddenly twelve kids were all ears, and I had to swear them to silence. You can probably guess how well that worked. Brad went straight to my sister and asked her if it was true, and she said no, all I had done was go to the fair and the museum and she had been with me the whole time. And Brad told Julie. This time Julie said she wanted to talk to
me
alone.”

I drew my finger across my throat. “So you had to admit to her that you lied, right?” I said.

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But no! I didn’t!”

Dad burst out laughing then, and it was catching. When he could talk again he said, “Of course my sister would deny it, I told her. She had to try to stop the secret from spreading and getting us into trouble with the government. My sister was really mad at me for breaching security, I said. Then Julie started crying and saying it was all her fault for not keeping quiet, and I felt like a cockroach in a manure pile.

“Meanwhile my sister threatened to tell Mom and Dad. Unless of course I gave her half my allowance and took out the trash until kingdom come. But at least Julie was still my girlfriend. For about a day.”

“How’d she find out?”

“I had to tell her myself. Somehow my parents got wind of it, and I got the I’m-so-disappointed-in-you lecture of all time from Mom. Dad informed me that I would not be breathing the air, much less eating at home until I came clean with Julie and apologized to her and to everybody who had believed me.

“So I went to her house and stood there until she came out. She just cried and said ‘No, no’ when I told her and asked me how I could do that to her. What was I going to say, because I liked her so much?

“The next day I had real pains in my stomach and didn’t want to go to school, but Mom wasn’t buying it. At least I didn’t have to give my sister any of my allowance and I could eat all the french fries I wanted, but I had lost Julie, who still sat in front of me but didn’t turn around anymore.”

“I bet Brad was happy.”

“Not really. Turned out, she didn’t want to have anything more to do with him, either. You know, the only thing he ever said to me about it all was, ‘Well, genius. How smart was that?’ He had a point.”

“Were the other kids all mad at you?”

“Oh sure. Nobody likes to be fooled. But pretty soon they realized they had something big on me they could tease me about for the rest of our lives. They called me Space Cadet way into high school.

“But it wasn’t a complete disaster, really. I finally figured out that everyone loves having a great story to hold over somebody they know. Even I thought it was funny after a while.”

Space Cadet. I smiled and shook my head.

Dad crossed one leg over the other knee and retied his moccasin, then leaned back, his arm around my shoulder again.

“It could be like that for you, Parker. With this puppet business. If you let me, I’d like to figure out with you how this all happened. But for now my advice to you is, just tell the whole truth, quick and simple, and get it over with, like ripping off a Band-Aid. People like you. They always have. And they’ll forgive you. It won’t be so bad, I promise.”

I leaned into him. “I wish I could do that, Dad.”

“You can.”

“No I can’t, I mean, not the way you think.”

He pointed to my pocket. “How about bringing that puppet out now, so I can see it?”

How could I say no? I pulled Drog out.

“Wow,” Dad said, still relaxed and friendly. “That sure is one nasty-looking guy.”

“Dad. He probably won’t—”

“Ah,” Drog said. “This must be the charming Mr. Lock-wood, best known for the space he no longer occupies. What brings you to town, a sudden daddy-attack?”

“Drog!” I yelled and tried to stuff him back in my pocket. But Dad took hold of my wrist.

“Please, Dad.”

“No. Let’s hear everything this ugly puppet has to say.”

“Everything?” said Drog. “Wheee! Don’t get me started.”

Dad tightened his grip. “I don’t see its mouth moving, Parker.”

“It’s not, he ...”

“It’s snot!” Drog said and cackled.

Dad’s eyes turned a harder blue.

“Please, Dad, let me ...”

“Let’s face it, Daddy-O.” Drog said. “Parker and his mom, they were your practice family, no? And now you’ve got a new wife and a new kid, and you’ve got it
down
. So Parker’s just kind of an embarrassing first try, am I right?”

Dad jerked back like he’d been punched. “No! Parker! How can you think that?!”

“Want me to answer that?” said Drog.

“Please, Dad. Let go!”

Instead he grabbed Drog with his other hand and tried to rip him off. Of course he couldn’t. Dad glared at me, then looked away and loosened his grip.

“Listen, Mr. Lockbrain,” Drog said. “You want my advi—” But by that time I had him back in my pocket.

Dad sat for a long time with his arms hanging at his sides, staring off across the ball field. I felt like I’d had my breath knocked out. I guess he did too.

“See what I mean, Dad?” I finally said.
See what I’ve been going through?

He turned back to me and said in a husky voice, part angry, part ... I didn’t know what, “Parker, we’ve obviously got some big problems here, and it looks like they’re going to be harder to work out than I thought. But one thing I’ve never seen from you until today is disrespect. I’m not used to that, and I’m not going to get used to it.”

“But Dad, I didn’t say anything. It was—”

“You know what would have happened to me if I had talked like that when I was a kid?”

I shook my head.

“My mother would have sent me to my room for a week.”

I fought not to cry. “How about your dad?” I said. “What would your dad have done?”

“Well, he’d certainly have demanded an apology.”

A tear got loose, and I wiped it off my face “I’m really sorry, Dad,” I said. “Drog ... shouldn’t have talked to you that way.”

Dad sighed and rested his hand on my knee. “Okay, Son,” he said, “if that’s the best you can do. Apology accepted. But can you promise me it won’t happen again?”

I couldn’t. How could I?

“Parker?”

“No.”

“Get in the car,” he said.

Neither of us spoke on the way home. This time the brown-spice smell of him practically suffocated me. Everything was so wrong, so unfixable. I rolled down the window for some cold air.

Dad pulled into the driveway but kept the engine running. “We both know this can’t go on,” he said, looking straight out the window. “Your mother asked me to be patient while you and the doctor try to figure out why you’re doing this. I am trying, Parker.”

He turned toward me then, but I couldn’t look at him.

“I wanted to help you today. But you have to let me. And you have to try, too. If things don’t get a lot better soon, I’m going to have to do something myself. This just can’t go on.”

I got out of the car and stood there as he backed out. He raised his hand in a small, sad wave. It was a minute before I could raise mine back, but by that time he’d turned out of the driveway, and I wasn’t sure he saw me do it. I wanted him to see. He had to! I ran out to the street, with my hand high, high. The back end of his car, huge in front of me at first, got smaller and smaller down the street until it turned into a dot moving north on a map toward Moline.