Will Not Attend: Lively Stories of Detachment and Isolation Read Online Free

Heh-heh. They okay.”
    He turned around and smiled at us, flashing a gold tooth and pushing his cap back to scratch his forehead.
    That was the moment my brother and I realized that the gentleman in the front seat with my father wasn’t Booker. Booker didn’t have a gold tooth. Nor was he missing a tiny piece of his lower lip. In fact, this man looked nothing like Booker. He seemed nice enough, that’s for sure, but again,
not Booker
.
    It’s difficult to describe the wave of fear that overtook us. Merv’s temper could be triggered by anything that caughthim off guard or reasonable human error. Things like accidentally dropping your fork at the dinner table, shuffling a deck of cards, or petting the dog too loudly (yes, it’s possible). So it was safe to assume that if he discovered Mike and I had put an unfamiliar black man in the car, well, it wouldn’t be ideal. Our fate now rested in the hands of the enigmatic pilgrim in the front seat, and we prayed that the words “Why you keep callin’ me Booker?” never rolled off his tongue. From this point forward, as far as we were concerned, the guy
was
Booker
. He had to be.
    The good news was, “Booker” wasn’t saying much. Merv continued to do all the talking, choosing topics, I assumed, he felt would be of particular interest to our guest.
    “You may not know this, Booker, but I played second-string varsity halfback my sophomore year at William Penn. Then I found basketball. That was my real game. The guys on the other team used to piss in their pants when they’d see me. I got every fucking rebound. You hear me, Booker? I
owned
the backboard.”
    I could see the back of Booker’s head bobbing in polite agreement.
    “Yeah, I had those rednecks trained like cocker spaniels. They only had to fuck with me once and, I can assure you, they didn’t fuck with me again.”
    My father swore around everybody. Children, kings, orclergy, it didn’t matter. He exploded into this world untethered from decorum and was incapable of communicating any other way. If you gave a team of speech pathologists five years and fifty million dollars, they’d never be able to get Merv to stop saying “fuck.”
    “Yeah, I used to swat those fucking hillbillies around like they were horseflies,” he continued. “Christ, when we played Steelton, it was a free-for-all. They’re not civilized in Steelton. Bunch of drunks. Townies, we called ’em. I fell into the bleachers once and a lady beat me with a metal crutch. Real Okies, you know?”
    A small chuckle came from Booker. “She really give it to ya, huh?”
    “Ah, fuck her. We were unbeatable. I was out with a sprained ankle for a month and we lost every game. See, I owned the fucking backboard.”
    We stopped for gas at the Arco station on Sixth Street. While the attendant filled the tank, my father instructed Mike and me to run inside and get a few Cokes.
    “You want a Coke, Booker?” he asked.
    Booker replied, “Naw, it’s that pop that took half my teeth by now. Heh-heh.” Merv didn’t quite know how to process that information and was further flustered when Mike followed up with “So how many should we get?”
    “Just get the goddamn Cokes!” he barked.
    My brother and I dragged ourselves from the backseat as Merv let out a frustrated sigh, remarking to Booker, “These fucking kids move like Stepin Fetchit.”
    The Coke machine was out of order, but that was the least of our concerns. Inside the gas station, Mike and I were finally alone and could discuss our dilemma out loud. We were panicked and irrational, and things swiftly turned heated. Who was responsible for the mock Booker inside our father’s Oldsmobile? Mike blamed me, I blamed him, and in a fleeting moment of détente, we both blamed Al Hirt. I suggested we pull Merv aside now and confess, while we were safely parked, rather than risk a car wreck when he figured it out. Mike told me to keep my mouth shut. He wanted to roll the dice. So far, the fake