Tietam Brown Read Online Free Page A

hesitated just for a moment, just to make sure that it wasn’t a joke. It wasn’t. Then I hugged him back. I hugged my drunk, naked father . . . and how many kids can say that?
    My dad stepped away, not embarrassed, but obviously not used to this father-son bonding thing. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I’m glad you didn’t use those condoms tonight, son.”
    I didn’t quite know what to say, so I opted not to say anything. In the wake of my silence, my dad finished his thought. “Because I’m all out, and that broad upstairs would never forgive me if I didn’t plow her field another time.”
    â€œHey Dad,” I said, smiling in preparation for what I had to say next.
    â€œYeah, kid.”
    â€œI thought you said the second one was all about ol’ Tietam.”
    With that my father grabbed me and tousled my hair the way he might have if I’d been ten and hit the winning home run in Little League, or any other number of reasons that fathers who don’t disappear for sixteen years and nine months might have for tousling their son’s hair. He then followed the hair tousle with a bit of verbiage that most children won’t hear from their dads in their lifetimes. “Now give me those condoms, you little muskrat.”
    Then he was off, condoms in hand, bounding up the stairs, gold medallion slapping off his chest, middle-aged balls slapping off his thighs. “Hey Gloria,” he yelled as he opened the door, “let’s just hold hands tonight!” Gloria laughed.
    Gloria, I knew, meant Gloria Sugling, as in next-door neighbor Gloria Sugling, whose cop husband Charlie worked the midnight shift in Cortland, keeping the streets safe while my father, in his own words, plowed his wife’s field.
    By my own count, this was Mrs. Sugling’s third visit to Tietam Brown’s bed, which meant, whether she knew it or not, it was also her last, in accordance with my dad’s “three strikes, you’re out” rule. As I pulled the half gallon of vanilla out of the freezer, I couldn’t help but think my dad was right. Over the sound of bouncing bedsprings and the thumping of the headboard, I could hear Mrs. Sugling’s voice, and she certainly did seem to be having a good time. Or maybe she was just agreeing strongly with whatever my dad had to say.
    I lay down in my little bed with my half gallon of vanilla, and Nat King Cole’s angelic voice competing with the not-so-angelic acts in the room next door. It took a couple of flips of the album, but then the headboard and bedsprings stopped, and Mrs. Sugling headed down the stairs and out our door for the very last time, and now Nat had the room to himself. I closed my eyes and listened in the darkness, the last taste of vanilla ice cream still cool upon my tongue. I listened to the beautiful voice sing about “the dear Savior’s birth,” and I listened to each sacred scar and crack of my mother’s old LP, each one as beautiful to me as the music itself. With my eyes still closed, I thought of Terri, her head against my shoulder, her hand holding mine, and even that slightest hint of her breast against my arm. And then, for the second time in ten years, a tear rolled down my cheek. I slipped into a beautiful dreamless sleep with one last thought . . . she had wanted me to kiss her.

The Rage / 1973
    My mother died giving birth to me in 1968, and after Antietam Brown IV realized that changing diapers and warming bottles wasn’t his heart’s desire, I was sent to live with Maria DelGratto, the wonderful woman I would come to call Auntie M, my mother’s best friend in the town of Boyer, just outside of Richmond.
    She was a big buxom woman, my Auntie M, and Italian to the core. Indeed, my initial remembrance as a part of this world was not one of sight or sound, but of smell, taking in the fragrance of her culinary efforts, which never seemed to end,