Some Can Whistle Read Online Free Page A

attention.
    “Oops, now he’s trying to hit the kitty with a brick,” T.R. said. “I’m gonna have to let this phone dangle for a minute, we don’t want no squashed kitties today.”
    Godwin and Gladys were staring at me. They loved watching me talk on the phone. The concept of privacy held little meaning for either of them. Sometimes I got the sense that the romantic peregrinations of my far-flung lady friends were the only thing keeping them alive.
    “My grandson’s trying to hit a cat with a brick,” I informed them. “He
was
merely trying to pee on it, but he seems to have become homicidal.”
    “All kids are murderers,” Gladys remarked.
    “All kids are murderers,” Godwin repeated. “Write that down. It’s another good title—rather Euripidean, wouldn’t you agree?”
    Wails began to come through the phone. More than one voice could be heard wailing.
    “What are you crying about?” T.R. said. “Your brother’s the one who got the spanking.
    “Now both these babies are crying,” she said to me. “Jesse don’t like me to spank her brother, even when he’s being a dick.”
    The wails of my grandchildren grew louder.
    “I hate trying to talk on the phone with them squalling,” T.R.said. “That dope dealer’s still around, too. He’s standing across the street trying to get his pit bull to bite a turtle.”
    “You didn’t tell me what town you’re in,” I reminded her.
    “I sure didn’t,” she said crisply. “Why would you even want to know, after all these years?”
    “So I can come and see you,” I said.
    The wails seemed to be diminishing, but T.R. was silent.
    “It wouldn’t be Houston, would it?” I asked, making a wild guess.
    “Mister, I don’t know a thing about you,” she said, her voice suddenly blistering again. “You could be an old scumbag, for all I know. You could have AIDS and give it to my babies.”
    “I don’t have AIDS, are you in Houston?” I asked. “I wish you’d just tell me that much.”
    “Wish all you want to,” she said more quietly. “Wish for me like I used to wish for you. I ain’t tellin’ you nothing. If you’re such a smart old fart, maybe you can figure it out. There’s two people waiting to use this phone, and anyway I got to get these kids out of this sun or they’ll be red as lobsters.”
    She hung up with some force.
    “I think she’s in Houston,” I said to Godwin and Gladys.

8
    “So are you gonna pull yourself together and put some clothes on and go get her, or what?” Gladys wanted to know.
    “Gladys, I’ve got clothes on,” I said. “A caftan is clothes. Millions of people in Africa wear them every day of their lives.”
    “Maybe so, but this ain’t Africa,” Gladys said. “If you show up at some Dairy Queen in Houston looking like you look now, your daughter’s gonna take one look and run the other direction, that’s my frank opinion.”
    I had picked up some caftans in Tunis several years ago, meaning to use them as crew presents for people who worked on my television show. But it was hot when I got back to Texas, so one day I tried one on, to see if what worked for NorthAfrican heat worked for Texas heat, too. Pretty soon I was wearing caftans day and night, week in and week out. I don’t know that they made me cooler, particularly—what they did was eliminate the problem of thinking about clothes at all. I just wore my caftans; they were perfect for the reclusive life I started leading right after I sold my production company and departed Culver City forever.
    Gladys undoubtedly had a point, though. Caftans would not be ideal garb for my first visit to my daughter. Unfortunately I’d become neurotically attached to them; the thought of having to change to normal American clothes produced a certain dissonance in my thoughts. The dissonance made me grumpy.
    “She doesn’t work in a Dairy Queen, she works in a Mr. Burger,” I pointed out, well aware that I was making a picayune