Stacy's Dad Has Got It Going On Read Free

“Dad’s a
glorified panhandler.”
    “It’s true, and I’m never off the
clock, so if you’ve got any spare change lying around, I’d be glad to take it
off your hands.”
    “Students aren’t the best demographic
to hit up for cash,” Savannah replied. But she felt a little guilty giving
nothing when she reflected on the four dollar latte she’d downed between her
microbiology lecture and her bio-chem lab. “I’ll see what I can dig up after
dinner.”
    Stacy and her dad finished their meals
at exactly the same time. She cleared their plates while he explained, “That’s
why I always ask people where they’re from…”
    “I’m from here,” Savannah quickly
interjected. She didn’t want the assumption that she was born somewhere else to
remain hovering on the air.
    Eric picked up the TV remote and
turned down the volume. “Well, ‘here’ is a place. We fund projects all over the
world, including ‘here.’”
    “Really?” Savannah asked. “That seems
weird to me. This is an affluent country we live in. Shouldn’t our money be
going to people who need it more than we do?”
    With a nod, Eric grabbed his water
glass from the side table and took a sip. “Good question. I feel like I’m being
interviewed.”
    “Oh,” Savannah said. Had she been
rude? “Sorry. Inquiring minds are always humming.”
    “No, it’s good to ask questions,” he
said. “And yes, you’re right. Most fundraising dollars do go to developing
countries with world majority populations, but I always like to tell people
what’s going on close to home. Here, we don’t feel the government is doing a
great job in supporting the First Nations and Inuit populations. In fact,
they’ve really dropped the ball.”
    Savannah nodded. “Amen to that.”
    “There are reservations in this
country akin to shanty towns, where clean water is not always available and
disease is rampant. And those who hold the money all live in urban centres, so
they never see this level of poverty first-hand. It’s out of sight, out of
mind.”
    “That’s one thing about studying
biology,” Savannah reflected. “You get so caught up in the internal lives of
individual organisms—you know, on an organic scale—that you sometimes forget to
look out into the world. What other work do you guys do?”
    “Lots,” Eric began. “Let’s try this:
where are your parents from?”
    Now that she realized why he was
asking, she didn’t mind telling him. “My mother was born in Laos, but her
parents came here when she was little.”
    “Laos?” He looked at her in a way she
couldn’t quite decipher. It wasn’t sleazy or dirty or anything along those
lines, and yet his gaze warmed her in a way she couldn’t quite describe. “Our
big project in Laos is bomb disposal. The Americans dropped hundreds of
thousands of bombs on Laos during the Vietnams war…”
    “Yeah, I know,” Savannah replied.
Unzipping her grey hoodie, she slipped it from her shoulders and tossed it over
the arm of the couch. “That’s why my grandparents left the country. A lot of my
relatives were killed in that senseless war.”
    Eric nodded. “And those bombs are
still killing Laotians to this day. The countryside is ridden with undetonated
explosives, and in the rural areas there’s a thriving black market for scrap
metal. That’s a lethal combination. In poor villages, people—adults and
children alike—come across old bombs and try to dig them up to sell. Quite
often, the jostle reactivates the detonation device and…”
    “God. Those people could be my
cousins.” Savanna fished all the change from the pocket of her jeans. “What do
you guys do about the bombs?”
    “We have teams,” he told her. “Bomb
disposal teams. They go into these areas and safely dispose of the explosives.
Can you imagine? All these years after the war, and innocent people are still
being killed.”
    Savannah took a deep breath as she
considered Stacy’s father. He looked so much younger