Silent Retreats

Silent Retreats Read Free Page A

Book: Silent Retreats Read Free
Author: Philip F. Deaver
Tags: General Fiction
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voice.
    "Nothin'."
    "C'mon."
    "Vegetables."
    "Vegetables, great. Which ones?"
    "We had to write our favorite ones."
    "That must have been tough. Which ones are your favorites?"
    "Carrots, root beer, and grape juice."
    "Love it, man. Root beer's the best. I saw Daren—he's almost as tall as you are now."
    "We had a army guy today." They arrived at the north door.
    "Yeah? A real one?"
    "He let us sit in his jeep. Army guys aren't to kill people—they under-arrest 'em."
    "Did you sign up?"
    "Sign up for what?" Jeff said.
    "Hey, Jeffrey. I just thought of something." They were sitting on the north step in warm sunlight. "Remember when we played baseball last spring? When we played together in the park where the ducks are? Remember?"
    "Yip."
    "Know what that made me think of?"
    "Nope."
    "I thought of when my dad first played baseball with me." Tears.
    "How come?" Jeff said. He squinched up his nose.
    "How come what?" The handkerchief.
    Jeff laughed at that.
    "Once Dad and I were playing burn-out—you know?—when you throw back and forth real hard trying to make the other guy say ouch. And I threw this one real hard and it skipped off his glove and gave him a black eye. Playing baseball with you, it made me think of playing with my own dad and it made me happy. Back then, when I was playing with him, I never knew there'd be a you."
    "Your dad died, right?"
    "That's right, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about before that. When I was little like you are. Little kids don't realize you were little once too. It just . . ." Martin could feel the point evaporating, but he wanted to say something magic. "It just seems real . . . real interesting to me that my dad played baseball with me and then I played it with you years and years later. And you and him, you never met. You're flesh and blood, but you never met. I'm the bridge between you."
    Jeff was looking out toward the playground. "Hey, Dad . . ." Martin waited. "Wanna see the gym? It's time for lunch."
    Martin stood up. "Nah. I gotta go to work." He kissed Jeff on top of his blond head and squeezed him a good one. "I love you, boy," he told him, and Jeff's eyes wandered back toward the north door.
    "I love you too, Poppsy," Jeff said, still looking away. "I don't get it. Why did you come to school?"
    Martin was heading back toward the car. "I needed to know about vegetables. Grown-ups don't know everything, you know."
    "Hey, Dad," Jeff shouted as he pulled open the door to the school, "guess what?"
    "What?" Martin spoke over the top of his car and across part of the school yard.
    "Daren's got poison oak."
    "It'll go away." Martin smiled, getting into the car. When he looked back that way, Jeff had gone into the school.
    What an odd state of mind, Martin thought, to wander through the suburbs in broad daylight, drifting with the radio and the flow of traffic. These disc jockeys, they had the city mood perfectly calibrated with their rattling jokes and timed, practiced chaos. At the stoplights, he watched the other drivers. How many of them too were wandering? He came across the northside, all the way to Lake Michigan, and drove a short distance south on Lake Shore Drive until he came to Belmont Harbor.
    He parked at the far end of the parking lot and, in the wind and long shadows, sat motionless. There was a woman he knew and he thought of her now, because she always talked to him about being lonely and maybe she was alone now for all he knew, and she had talked to him about keeping a bottle of gin under the bed for nighttime, whether because she was afraid or because she was bored or because she needed love and had no chance of ever having it. It had been a revelation to hear her talk about being alone. She'd been in every kind of therapy known to woman, she'd even been Rolfed in a motel room in Danville, all for the company of it, because other possibilities seemed to have expired. She'd raised her children—they were gone from her except for

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