B008J4PNHE EBOK Read Free Page A

paper, and I’m planning a new bathroom or something,” he once said apologetically to Sam. “It passes the time. Maybe someday I’ll have a family and we can play hide-and-seek.”)
    The house had gone as far backward as it could. Perched above a steep embankment and upheld by cement pillars, a redwood deck extended to the edge of the property, where the forest cropped up and the landbecame the town of Hasbrouck’s. On a clear morning like this one, the view was glorious; the rustling canopy of orange, red, and yellow swept away for miles, to the umber-colored shapes of the mountains.
    Sam leaned against the balustrade and inhaled the crisp air and, as he released the breath, attempted to exhale his irritation along with it. A grand, towering sugar maple stood before the deck. On a branch just a few feet from the deck’s railing, a bluebird perched in a resplendent tuffet of leaves and twittered. Sam had a dismal recollection of the anthology horror film A Thousand Deaths : Booth had played a barbarian chieftain and bitten the head off an obviously rubber pigeon, which had produced a geyser of fake blood from its neck and drenched his face in syrup.
    “But I am being honest! You must admit that the whole story is heavy. There is, throughout, a sort of funereal drumbeat.” Booth refused to give up. Showered and dressed, he had tracked his son to the deck and sidled right up beside him, almost shoulder to shoulder at the balustrade. On his way through the house, Sam had laid what had seemed a sure trap to divert his father’s attention, setting the television in Tom’s study to the Turner Classic Movies Channel, but Booth must have walked by during a commercial break.
    “Okay, okay. What if, like, a gigantic hole opens up in the middle of the campus and it swallows all the characters?” Sam asked. “Could there be some fun in that? And suppose if there were mimes, too, a visiting mime troupe, and we put them in the gigantic hole and let them mime for their lives. How about that?”
    “This poor young man who becomes a drug addict, for instance, and a little later, abracadabra, he turns into a little puddle of clothes. It is so harsh. And I do understand that college isn’t all fucking and giggles, but it’s certainly more fucking and giggles than you make it seem. I also think that young people are more self-aware than you give them credit for being. In fact, most young people I know, especially the young females, are—”
    “Do you listen to anything I say, Booth? Because I have this impression that, to you, my voice is on the same frequency as a dog whistle.”
    “No, no. Samuel, I listen to everything you say.”
    “Because I was just being sarcastic. About the clowns. Did you catch that?”
    Booth raised an eyebrow at him. Errant gray hairs stuck out from theeyebrow like frayed wires. Several of the wires had dandruff. “I thought they were mimes.”
    “Yeah.” Sam dumped the last of his coffee over the side of the deck. The bluebird alighted.
    Sam was aware that he was not an especially relaxed person. He was reactive. Optimism was not among his favored emotions. But Booth brought out the worst in him. Sam just wanted him to butt out. It was 2002, and Sam was twenty-two. He thought he had earned the right to finally have a bit of his own space. “Can you move away an inch or two, Booth? There’s a whole deck over that way. We don’t have to share this one spot.”
    His father’s shrug seemed to imply that the request was over the top, but he was willing to cooperate for civility’s sake. He shifted down the railing a few feet.
    “Okay, then,” said Sam. “I’ll grant you that it’s heavy. The story is heavy. So what?”
    “So nothing!” Booth’s chuckle boomed across the open air. On film, he had utilized this same sonorous chuckle on many occasions, often when playing the role of an insane person. “It is a very grave work of art. There is nothing wrong with that.”
    “Terrific. We