The Unexpected and Fictional Career Change of Jim Kearns
After the Incident: Chapter Twelve
Regardless of what else would unfold on this trip, what I’d reaffirm and what I’d discover, I knew comparisons would abound between my long-lost childhood and my children’s present lives. I’d started pondering this immediately upon departure, as I weaved the rented Pontiac Aztek in and out of six lanes of moron-tainted city traffic.
Rachel and Eric sat in the seats behind me, both of them already plugged into the DVD player; they watched Jeepers Creepers 2, a flying-mythological-unkillable-scarecrow-kind-of-creature movie using a school bus full of testosterone-laced high school basketball players and their spunky cheerleader companions as monster fodder. Occasionally, a hoot or a guffaw issued from the back (in their twenty-second-long, post-movie review the kids stated that all decapitations and rendings asunder were just rewards for crappy personalities, sheer stupidity, and bad acting).
Ah, to be so young . . . yet so jaded.
When I was Eric’s age, I recall being marooned in bed one night with William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist resting on my bedside table, my alarm clock shedding eerie light on the book’s cover while simultaneously turning over from 3:00 to 3:01. I had to piss like a moose, yet there I lay, scared stiff (barely breathing in the dark lest I caught the attention of those unnamed creatures waiting in the wings) and more than willing to risk permanent bladder enlargement, or worse yet, the ultimate humiliation, teenaged bedwetting, than risk that short yet perilous trek through the black, whisper-laden hall to the bathroom.
Would this trip ultimately prove that, before making those idle, intergenerational comparisons, you had to take into account that existence itself (or its peripherals, anyway) was as subject to inflation as the simple dollar? Probably. Entertainment now had bigger special effects, body counts, and budgets, but less emotional impact; war, always dragged out as a bogus, ideological measuring stick — another useless one raged at this very moment — had better weaponry but less reason (I rescind that statement; there’s never a reason other than stupidity); and technology held greater impact but earned less appreciation. Back in the summer of 1968, when my dad brought a shiny, metallic blue ’66 Mercury Monterey home from the lot, the four-door model with the rear breezeway, I couldn’t believe my eyes. A back window that opened and closed with the push of a button! And it sloped in at a forty-five-degree angle, too, for protection against the rain when left ajar. I ran that sucker up and down fifty times over the course of the first couple of hours, marveling at the Jetsonian technology of our times, unable to contain my enthusiasm as we cruised around town, hopping from the Dairy Queen to the highway to back roads, until my father, a much more patient man than I’ve become, finally said, “Will you leave the damn thing alone before you break it! And keep it open, too. I didn’t buy the car to have a back window like everyone else’s.”
And now, as my kids and I tooled the highway, they eyed their movie (on a fifteen-inch liquid crystal display monitor, no less) from beneath the droopy lids of the blasé; there’d be no I spy with my little eye or silly old books for them on this trip.
But as we drew closer to our destination, I think the kids could feel an excitement of their own starting to build. They hadn’t been there since they were toddlers, and whatever memories they had were long forgotten; the unspoken thought amongst us, as they turned off the DVD player and started drinking in the foreign scenery, was that we’d all be looking at things in new and/or different ways.
“So what’s the population here now?” Eric asked as we passed a Capital Region sign. “Are we going to be able to find things to do?”
“Around three-quarters of a million,” I answered, although I wasn’t sure if that was the metro population or part of the vast sprawl of rural hamlets we’d just entered. “And yes, we’ll find things to do; in fact, we’ll have too much to do for one long weekend.”
“Then why are we only going for three days?” Rachel asked.
“Because…” And then I found myself at a loss for words.
“Because it’s not really a vacation,” Eric offered. “It’s more Dad’s punishment for punching Matt Templer in the head.”
He was succinct, I’d give him that. But as much as the kids could look at things in different ways now, they still lacked the extra decades of abuse and disappointment that supplied those countless shades of grey to schmoes like me.
His expert wheedling, though, had helped me find my tongue. “It is too a vacation,” I said. “A working vacation … but just so’s not to warp you too much, the vacation part is definitely about being with you guys.”
“What’s the working part, then?” Rachel asked. “Aunt Anita and Aunt Jenny?”
Sort of … part of … I guessed. Christ, I didn’t know. This was just one of my seven labors. And as much as I loved the kids, I wished Maddy were here with us now, laughing, adding to the banter, keeping that balance I’d become so accustomed to, and that all of us were going to check into the hotel, tour the city, and see some sights.
Finally, I said, “The working part, I think, is supposed to be about me getting out there and finding myself, seeing where I stand in the larger scheme of things, and … and … crap like that.”
“Oooh, deep,” Eric said.
With the plasma placebo turned off and the end of our trip in sight, the chatter stayed constant as we planned and replanned hypothetical agendas, wondered what “Mom” was up to, and followed the growing number of highway signs until, eventually, a squat, downtown skyline came into view.
I’d already made reservations, so we parked and checked in to our hotel without incident. By four-thirty, we’d settled into our room, with the kids looking out over the city from our twenty-fourth-floor window, eyeing the bustling streets below, and, in the hazy distance, miles beyond the river, a long crest of grayish-purple hills; I sat in an easy chair, fighting off the sudden onset of long-drive letdown, eyeing one of the queen-size beds beside me.
“Hey guys,” I said. “Why don’t you hook yourselves up with a movie while your decrepit old man finds some earplugs and grabs a quick snooze?”
“Four hours behind the wheel and you have to go beddy-bye,” Rachel said. “Don’t you find that embarrassing?”
“Hey, get used to it; life’s a cycle of embarrassment. Ten years ago, I changed your diaper after feeding you your Gerber’s; in thirty, you’ll be sitting at my bedside in a nursing home, buzzing an orderly to change my diaper after you’ve fed me my pureed prunes.”
Eric knelt over by the television. He’d already turned it on and was in the process of skimming the channels. “Hey, Rach,” he called out. “Leave him be. They’ve got Gamecube and Resident Evil Four online here.”
Five minutes in and already we’d come to our first compromise: forty winks and video games. But despite my chagrin (or earplugs), I passed out instantly for two solid hours.
A nondescript hotel-restaurant meal followed, and afterwards we wandered the city streets in a most banal fashion, slinking past franchise storefronts, surreptitiously catching our own reflections in endless links of plate glass as we looked at nothing new.
Considering the hype surrounding this supposed high-octane adventure, we’d driven a long way to do exactly what we could have done at home; then, just as we rounded a corner onto the city’s downtown outdoor market, the streetlights snapped on, cutting the dusk.
We found ourselves standing on the threshold of a vast plaza. A happy, chattering throng milled about, coursing over the cobblestoned promenade, streaming in and out of stately historical buildings, lining up in front of kiosks, settling in for the evening on an upscale bar’s awninged patio. The square radiated an old-world glow.
“Cool,” Rachel said, looking around.
“Yeah, I like this,” Eric said, nodding in agreement.
For centuries, markets the world over, from San Miguel de Allende to Marrakesh, must have struck the same initial spark we all felt the moment we’d stepped into this meeting place, with its sounds and sights and smells and unspoken promise.
Then, in the distance, I spotted it.
“Whoa, guys. Are you in luck.”
“Why?” Eric asked.
“Over there.” I nodded to the west. “A beavertail kiosk.”
“What,” Rachel asked, “are beavertails?”
“Deep-fried strips of dough covered in … forget it. They’re regional things. Let’s just go and try some.”
Saying it was regional wasn’t exactly true; I’d seen a stand back home once at an event somewhere. But here they were standard, like chuckwagon booths on the frozen canal surface in winter and the chip wagons that cluttered the roadsides of secondary highways year-round. The whole Valley was a hotbed for greasy snacks served from booths and wagons, as if the area’s gypsy vendors liked the idea of being able to fold up and flee in the middle of the night.
We joined the crowd in front of the stall and studied the back-wall menu as we inched our way forward. A half-dozen varieties had been added to the standard maple and chocolate, and teenaged girls in Beavertails T-shirts and visors had replaced the mom-and-pop owners of years past as the dough punchers, but the product, served straight up on a napkin, looked as sloppy and delicious as ever. People sported hazelnut lip-gloss, cinnamon soul patches, and glazed expressions as they drifted away from the counter.
We ordered three traditionals with Cokes, and as I accepted chump change back from my twenty, a familiar looking man stepped out from a curtained-off area behind the fryer. In my effort to place him, our gazes met, and he stopped and locked on me.
“Jim? Jim Kearns?”
“Hey, Ken . . .”
I’d done well to make it sound as if that’s all I’d meant to say; I’d done well to remember as much as I had in that split second you get to meet and greet. His name was Ken Something and we’d shared the same homeroom in high school; any extra familiarity came from our taking Grade 11 summer-school class together and occasionally grabbing a smoke during morning break with a couple of other guys that I could no longer pick out of a police lineup. But Ken wasn’t going to let a few decades of nothing in common stop him from chewing the fat.
“So, what are you up to these days?”
“Me? Not much. Just spending a couple of days with my kids before school starts up again.” I nodded to Eric and Rachel.
“They yours?” He looked them up and down then clicked his tongue. “Good work, Jimmy boy.”
“So how about you?” I asked.
He motioned around himself. “What you see is what you get. Well, not quite. I own two other franchises, one in Orleans and another out in Bells Corners. Then there’s the Christmas tree lot at Brennan’s Gas ’n’ Lube in Arnprior — ’course, that’s seasonal — an’ a flyer delivery service. Got a wife and two kids of my own, too.”
He paused for an instant, giving a sidelong glance to the pert and ponytailed Beavertails girl handing our orders to us from a tray she’d placed on the counter. Then: “Overall, I’m doin’ good, real good.”
I’d thought about Ken three or four times over the years — for no specific purpose, really. He’d just pop into my head, high school lean, a Bay City Rollers haircut framing his face and a row of zits gracing his chin, then he’d fade away until he resurfaced in his next round of random/remote memory. I could still imagine that yearbook version of him, trapped and withered within the thick and ageing specimen presently standing before me.
But we had our beavertails in hand now, and I sensed the kids’ anxiousness — they wanted out of there as much as I did. So I took a step back to lead the escape, not realizing that Ken had more to say.
Then, as I said, “Well, it’s been good seeing you ag—” he squeezed it in.
“Just so you know, if you’re looking for excitement, this is the place. Only last night, Bobby Vintioli himself dropped by for a beavertail.”
Trying to stay subtle even in flight, I continued to inch backwards in an incremental moonwalk as I asked, “Bobby who?” Had I forgotten another old classmate?
“Bobby Vintioli . . . better known as Bobby Vinson, lead singer for the Four Corners is who. Remember them? Big in the sixties. Bobby’s a local boy, in town as the opening bandstand show at the Ex tonight. I knew him right off the bat, being a big fan and all.”
With Eric and Rachel now at my flanks and two steps behind, we formed a flying inverse V, a textbook retreat, but Ken wanted no part in our leaving — not yet, anyway.
“So I asked him outright,” he continued. “‘Wouldn’t being four corners make you guys square,’ and he says, ‘Nah, we could be a rectangle, though.’ We had a good laugh over that one, I’ll tell ya. And then he walks back to his limo, a stretch, which I could see parked out on Dalhousie, and pulls away. But before I know it, ten minutes later, he comes back and buys a dozen more. Must have been a lot of people stuffed into that limo, eh?”
I had no idea how to respond, so I just kept inching, moving the kids with me. And then he dropped the bomb.
“Anyway, speaking of celebrities, it’s a downright shame about you, huh?”
“Excuse me? What’s a shame?”
“You know. About the beating you took when you went after that Templer fella a couple of weeks back. Sounds like you went down hard.”
Of course. The incident. Obviously, its memory hadn’t left me. I just hadn’t (in a moment of profound weakness, I suppose) let it dominate my thoughts in this brief pocket of time; I truly hadn’t expected it to be thrown in my face by some long-forgotten hayseed in a flapjack booth. Did everyone carry the same hidden agenda these days, elevating their mundane lives through the belittlement of others? And if not, what the fuck had happened to simple decorum? With the kids and me being ten feet from the booth, good old Ken had to belt out his statement to be heard; suddenly, all eyes in the region were upon me, from passersby to beavertail aficionados and right on down to the suddenly tittering serving girls.
“Well, no,” I said, still backing away. “The real shame is in how many people believe every word they read and every picture they see in this day and age. You’d think the fucking idiots would have caught on by now.”
Ken stood, palms on counter, now looking at me now as if I’d offended him. I raised my Coke cup to him.
“Catch you later, Ken . . . much.”
I wheeled and walked, directionless, with the kids hustling at my side.
“Why didn’t you tell the guy, Dad?” Eric said, his legs pumping. “Why didn’t you tell him you kicked that Hollywood clown’s stupid butt?”
How the hell was I supposed to do that? Even in my own mind, my defenses were beginning to come across as lame excuses, as so much sniveling, and if I could find my voice, what could a guy like me (and, through example, lineage, opportunity, and sheer osmosis, the children by my side, I feared), possibly do to get it heard?
I just didn’t know . . . so I answered Eric in that most encompassing of manners: with the heartfelt vow.
“Now’s not the time, and now’s not the place, Eric. But I promise you this: I will tell him.”
And if I were to follow the script correctly, I should have dropped to my knees right then and there, scattering my victuals helter-skelter as I raised a fist skyward, and bellowed: As God is my witness, I’ll tell them all!
Another chapter done. Hope you enjoyed. Have a great week.