Sarah Court Read Free Page A

containers or ice cream tubs containing
our offsprings’ turds. Everybody shamefaced except
Saberhagen, who took evident pride in his son’s
heroic sample. Wasn’t flashing it around or anything
so crass but you could tell. Everyone felt sorry for his
son Nick, who went on to become a boxer but not a
very good one.
    The Inoculation Wagon: room enough for Colin,
myself, a nurse. Colin hopped on the butcherpapered bench. Shivered. Two kinds of shivers: the
fear-shiver and the shiver of anticipation. First time
I’d ever marked a clear distinction.
    “This is Verminox,” the nurse told Colin.
    “What’s it do?”
    “It’s a bit of a disease. We inject you with a teenytiny bit, your body fights it. The worms can’t fight. They die.”
    “Gonna make me sick?”
    “A little sick so you won’t get a lot sick.”
    Colin rucked his sleeve up. Fascinated he’d be infected. The nurse gave me a look. But it was
heartening to see my boy cleansed of fear. All the
other pansy kids blubbering as my son practically jumped onto that hogsticker.
    Later I recognized parents should be thankful
their kid is like everyone else’s in the most critical
ways. Pricked with a needle, they cry.
    “A prototype , Pops.”
    “Prototype? It’s a plastic oil drum.”
    “I got people working on a better one.”
    Ball’s Falls is located off old highway 24 in the shadow of the escarpment. The sun slants through
clifftop pines highlighting the schist trickling
through the rockface. Only vehicle in the lot is a
delivery van. SWEETS FOR THE SWEET on its
flank. Bark on silver birches peeling like the skin of
blistered feet.
    Colin boots the drum down the drywash where a
waterwheel churns the creek. Parkhurst has pillows
stolen from the Four Diamonds motel where they’ve
been shacked up. Next to the KOA campground so
when funds run short it will be a painless transition.
Colin’s earned a chunk over the years: those TV
specials in the ’90s, action dolls, video games. Tells
me he’s been working the state fair circuit lately.
Jumping junked cars in razed Iowa cornfields.
Junked cars in Idaho potato patches.
    “You got scientists building you another drum?”
I ask. “What, it’s going to have non-motel pillows for
superior cushioning?”
    “I got people, Pops.”
    “Don’t call me that. Pops. Like I’m running a malt
shop.”
    “You’ll see it.”
    “Who says?”
    I’ll see it. Take this morning: said I wouldn’t
come but here I am. My refusal wouldn’t stop it
happening. What if he busts a leg? Pulverizes his
spine? Parkhurst bawling into his ratty mop of hair.
The real thumbscrews part is that Colin knows he’s
putting me in a bind.
    He boots the drum down a gulch littered with
sunbleached paper cups. We reach the shallows near
the head of the falls. Water clear over the flat shale
bottom. Minnows dart and settle. A fifty-foot drop
into a deep rock amphitheater. My son strips to his
skivs. Goddammit, it’s autumn. What’s the purpose
in him going over as he entered this world? Wearing
ballhugger Y-fronts—a banana hammock, I guess
you’d have to call it—presenting the shrivelled
definition of his privates. Gawking at my kid’s
frightened turtle of a wiener. Hell’s the matter with
me?
    “It’s not watertight,” he tells me. “Why ride home
with wet clothes?”
    My son, the pragmatic daredevil. Settling into
the drum, he sighs. Can’t tell if it’s voluntary or if
the compression of those old hurts forces it out.
    Muffled laughter as the drum bobs into the
current. Follow it upcreek, skipping over rocks with
a galloping heart until it bottoms out at the head
of the falls. Water booms over the creek-neck but
Colin’s hooting like a wild bastard. I find a strong
branch. Goddamn, sixty years old and aiming to tip
my half-naked son over a waterfall in an oil drum.
The sun’s at an angle where I see him through the
blue plastic: an embryo inside an egg held up