And Did Those Feet ... Read Online Free Page A

Sometimes he would drink at home, but other times he would be at clubs with Rufus O’Malley until the wee small hours, when suddenly on an impulse he would ring me up. It was like he suddenly remembered he had a son. He would get all sentimental, say the sort of things he would never say normally. Stopping every now and then to sip his drink before he rambled on.
    “That you, Sandy?”
    “Yes, Dad.” (Like who else would it be?)
    “I’m going to be a bit late home.”
    “I figured.”
    “What?”
    “It’s already after ten so I guessed it.”
    “Is that the time? My God I thought it was about seven. You must be starving.”
    “No I’m okay, I nuked a couple of burritos.”
    “What about Ada’s dinner?”
    “What about it?”
    “Why didn’t you eat that?”
    “Too risky.”
    Then there would be a pause while he drank or lit up a smoke or spoke to someone he was with.
    “So you’re okay?”
    “Never better.”
    “That’s great.”
    It was a bit like being trapped in one of those cheesy Walt Disney movies. Smiling Mum and Dad, lovable Junior with his fluffy dog Scruffy. It wasn’t him and it wasn’t me, and I didn’t even have a dog.
    “Hold up, Dad, there’s a call coming in on line two…”
    “Whaa …”
    Then I would drop the phone on the couch and carry on watching TV.
    Just when you think that you are stuck in something and it’s never going to change, it does, in some unexpected way. Dad had the home base covered with Ada. He was well on the way to becoming his new self – “The Party Dude” – when the whole thing blew up in his face. I got suspended from school.
    It was as much of a surprise to me as it was to everyone else. I quite liked school, it kept me from thinking too much, you know, brooding on stuff. It was this brooding that used to ruin my weekends. They kept us busy at school and the work was easy. The teachers, what can you say?They were just your standard issue teachers, boring but harmless.
    Anyway, that particular day, I was sitting on a bench outside my form room with a couple of other boys at lunchtime, it was a day like any other, no lightning strikes or freaky visitations. We were just yakking on about stuff when this guy Liam came over and said something to me that made me explode. You know those bombs on the cartoons? The sort of ball-thing with a wick. That was me, but the wick was about one millimetre long. We were discussing the parents’ evening which we had all just been told about and Liam said something about my mother.
    I’m not going to repeat it now, it probably wouldn’t sound like much anyway, but it was enough. I turned instantly into a “raging engine of death and destruction”. (I wrote that in a report for the counsellor, pretty good description I reckon, even though I say so myself.)
    Anyway, to get back to Liam, all I can remember was this puzzled look on his face while I was punching it, again and again. A look that seemed to say, “What did I say? What did I do?”
    After this there was a whole bunch of stuff that happened pretty much one thing after the other. I was hauled around by sets of hands, first big kids, then, when they weren’t strong enough, adults. I was talked to by one face after another. Mr Tyndall the DP, then, after he had run out of things to say, Mr Redbone the principal. I didn’t get involved this time, let them do all the talking. I thought it best to sit back and not say much. It was only going to make things worse.
    After a while the counsellor and community police officer talked to me. They talked to me about causes and consequences. Mrs Larkin the counsellor sat next to me on the couch. She smiled sweetly at me and then said in this soft purry voice, “Why do we do silly things?” I said nothing so she began a long talk about my mum and dad, and love and tolerance, and how we were all part of a big family at school. I leaned back on the couch and closed my eyes, I could tell that sleep was near, but it was