Stay At Home Dad 03-Father Knows Death

by Jeffrey Allen

  I wasn’t exactly sure how the leases worked, either. Texas laws were weird. When you bought a home, you either retained the rights to your land or you signed them away. In the development that we lived in, we had to sign them over as a condition of purchase. I had no doubt that my parents had retained every right to their property, given that they had lived there for so long.

  I knew that oil and gas companies would “lease” the land from you, meaning that they could come in and drill and dig and do whatever they needed to do in order to get to what they wanted. The homeowners were paid—handsomely, in some cases—for the use of their land. They didn’t receive a share of what was taken, but they were paid a sum for the companies to come in and do their work.

  Or something like that.

  “How much?” I asked.

  “A lot.”

  “Like, buy-a-football-team a lot or send-your-grandkids-to-college a lot?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “It’s somewhere in between. And your wife has a good job, so your children will be able to attend college and you can continue to lay around the house eating bonbons and spending her money.”

  He never got tired of needling me about staying home and I never was able to stop it from irritating me.

  “So do it, then,” I said.

  “But I don’t trust them.”

  “So don’t do it, then.”

  “You are absolutely no help.”

  “Probably not.”

  Carly finished the ice cream sandwich and jumped down out of her grandfather’s lap, vanilla and chocolate smeared around her mouth. “Gramma, I think I need a napkin.”

  “I would say so,” my mom said, smiling at her. She glanced at me. “They call it fracking.”

  “Fracking?” Somewhere, I’d heard the word. On a commercial, on the news. I’d always tuned it out because I didn’t think it was going to affect me.

  My father snapped his fingers. “That’s right. Fracking. I couldn’t remember the word.”

  “How they drill,” my mother said. “Something with water and I don’t know what else. And it’s not supposed to be safe.”

  “It isn’t,” Julianne said without opening her eyes.

  “Mommy’s awake!” Carly said.

  “She was never asleep,” I mumbled.

  “It isn’t safe,” Julianne said, opening one eye. “Pollutes the water table. Don’t do it, Eldrick. I don’t care how much they offer you. Won’t be worth it.”

  “At least she knows something,” my dad said, frowning at me.

  “She knows everything,” I said. I leaned down and kissed her stomach. “That’s why I love her.”

  “Yeah, but there’s no explanation for why she tolerates you,” my dad said.

  Julianne looked up at me, both eyes open, a huge smile on her face. “There really isn’t.”

  10

  After my parents left, I threw some chicken on the grill, tossed a salad into a bowl, and chopped up half a watermelon. The girls seemed reasonably pleased with my meal choice, devouring everything I put on the table and topping it off with ice cream from the freezer.

  There was a certain satisfaction that came with having learned how to cook meals for my family. I’d always been able to grill, but I’d never had an appreciation for how hard it is to put together a complete meal every night until I actually had to do it when I started staying home. My initial efforts were poor, especially when I was sleep deprived during Carly’s infancy. But I’d slowly improved and now I was at the point where I could open the fridge and put together something that would make both Julianne and Carly happy.

  I liked that.

  Julianne went upstairs to take a shower and Carly and I went outside to throw the football. She’d started to show an interest in throwing and catching things and I didn’t want to do anything to stunt that. So I’d bought her a little Cowboys football, much to my dad’s delight. Throwing it out in the front yard after dinner was becoming a nightly routine, heat indexes be damned.

  “It’s still hot,” Carly said, stepping with her left foot and throwing the ball at me with her right hand, just like I’d shown her.

  I caught it. “News said it was going to be hot all week.”

  “I get sweat on my bottom,” she said. “It feels icky.”

  I threw the ball back to her and laughed. “Yeah, it does.”

  She caught it with both hands and fired it back to me. “Is it the same sweat I get on my head?”

  “Yep.”

  “That’s really gross, Daddy. I don’t want to sweat anymore.”

  “We’d probably need to move from Texas, then,” I explained, tossing the ball back. “Because living in Texas involves a lot of sweat.”

  She lunged for the ball, but it got away from her and fell in the grass. She picked it up and thought for a moment, her small facial features scrunching up. “Grandma and Grandpa would miss me if I moved.”

  The fact that she did not mention that they might miss me demonstrated that she perfectly understood the dynamic with her grandparents. “Yes, they would.”

  She shrugged and tossed the ball back. “Guess I’ll just have to live with sweat on my bottom.”

  I was still laughing when I saw the Miata motoring down our street. I threw the ball back to her. “Here comes trouble.”

  She turned just as the car pulled up to the curb. “It’s Mr. Doolittle!” She tucked the ball under her arm like a running back and sprinted to the curb.

  Victor Anthony Doolittle hopped out of his convertible, wearing shorts and a Hawaiian print button-down shirt. Tiny flip-flops cradled his tiny feet and a straw Panama Jack hat sat on his bald dome.

  He swept the hat off his head and bowed in a grand gesture. “Good evening, Miss Carly.”

  “Hi, Mr. Doolittle!” she said, giggling. “I like your shirt.”

  He straightened, and he was just barely taller than she was. He glanced down at his shirt. “It’s one of a kind.”

  “A one-of-a-kind what?” I asked as I sat down on the front steps. “Wrapping paper for a pineapple?”

  He ignored me. “How are you and your beautiful mother tonight?”

  “I’m sweaty,” Carly said. “She’s upstairs taking a shower because she was sweaty, too.”

  He reached into his pocket and produced a tiny plastic animal. “I thought you might like this.”

  Her mouth dropped open and the football fell to the ground as she held out her hands. “It’s a kitty!”

  He placed it in her hands. “I saw all of those animals in your playroom last time I was here . . .”

  “Littlest Pet Shop,” Carly said, entranced by the plastic cat in her hands.

  “. . . and I thought you might like another one.”

  “I’m gonna go put it with the others right now!” she said, turning on her heels and sprinting for the house. “Thank you!”

  She whizzed past me up the front steps and I heard the screen door slam shut behind me.

  “How are you so nice to her and so rude to me?” I asked, holding up my hands.

  “She’s small and cute,” Victor Anthony Doolittle said, walking across my lawn. “You’re big and ugly. Duh.”

  “I thought it was because she’s the only one around here you can actually look in the eyes without climbing a ladder.”

  He sat down next to me on the steps. “Your jokes are so tired at this point. At least try to be creative.”

  Victor and I liked each other. I think. We’d spent too much time together to not like one another. He’d roped me in as a reluctant partner in his investigating business and the reluctance had mostly disappeared. I worked part-time for him and it kept me busy during the downtime I had watching Carly. But our like for one another was almost always displayed in trying to embarrass and irritate each other.

  “I’ll try to be a little more creative,” I said.

  “Not subtle and not funny,” Victor said, adjusting his hat. “So instead of working on your crappy stand-up routine, maybe you
could explain to me why some battle-ax named Mama Biggs was calling me this afternoon looking for an update on her case.”

  “An update?”

  “That’s what she said you promised her.”

  I sighed. “I didn’t promise her anything, Victor. She’s somewhat insane.”

  “Yeah, the crazy sorta spilled through the phone.”

  I told him about George Spellman, the Biggs family, and the general nut-jobbiness that had surrounded the opening day of the fair.

  “So I didn’t tell her anything or promise her anything,” I said. “She just assumed we’d investigate.”

  “Why does she care, anyway?” Victor asked, scratching at a mosquito bite that had just blossomed on his knee.

  “I guess because of how it might affect the fair.” I answered. “I’m not really sure. Like I said, she just showed up and assumed we’d investigate.”

  “Has to be another reason.”

  “I offer up the insane thing again.”

  He shook his head. “Nah. Something else. Why would she care? If it was just about the fair, she’d let the police handle it and issue a statement. Distance the fair from it. You know?”

  That made sense. Susan Blamunski’s rumor-spreading came to mind.

  “What?” Victor asked, looking at me. “You know something else?”

  I shifted on the steps, my back tying up a bit. “I’m not sure what I know, but I heard another crazy story that might somehow matter.”

  “Nothing is ever too crazy for this asylum you call a town,” Victor said. “Spill it.”

  I told him what Susan had told me about Matilda Biggs and Spellman.

  A smirk emerged on Victor’s face. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  I smashed a mosquito lurking by my ankle, ready to strike. “Hey, I’m telling you, this Susan woman might be just as nuts as the rest of them. She could’ve made it up on the spot, for all I know,” I said.

  “Easy enough to find out,” he said, pushing himself off the steps and adjusting his hat. “I’ll talk to Mama Biggs and work out the financials. She wants to ante up, we can visit this little meeting tomorrow night and see what shakes out.”

  I glanced up at the window, then back at him. “I promised Julianne I’d stay out of this one.”

  “You mean like every other case we take?”

  I paused. “Yes.”

  He grinned as his little legs took him to his car. “So figure out a way to start apologizing to her.”

  11

  “All of the food is rotten,” Pete Boodle said with a frown.

  The next morning, we were at the fairgrounds early. Carly wanted to walk through some of the exhibits before we had to work another food shift. But that now looked in doubt, as she and Julianne had headed to the open class building, and I’d stopped by the food stand to grab some coffee when Pete delivered the bad news.

  “The new freezer they brought in didn’t work,” he said, hands on his hips, frustration all over his face. “Everything went bad overnight with the heat.”

  Several people were unloading the now foul-smelling freezer, stuffing garbage bags with hot dogs, pies, and hamburgers.

  “What happens now?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Got me. Waiting on someone from the fair board to get here.”

  On cue, a caravan of golf carts buzzed up the dirt trail, headed in our direction, with Mama Biggs leading the charge.

  She slid to a halt and was out of the cart before it stopped sliding. “What the heck is going on here?”

  Pete repeated to her what he’d just explained to me.

  She whipped her head around to Bruce. “Bruce! You plug that freezer in when you set it up here yesterday?”

  Bruce and Matilda were now standing just behind Mama. Bruce was once again wearing his red wig.

  “Yeah, Mama,” he said, nodding. “I made sure it was plugged in.”

  “Well, then why isn’t it working?”

  “I don’t know, Mama.”

  “Well, then, get your rear end over there and start looking at the compressor and tell me why it ain’t working!”

  Bruce hustled over to the freezer.

  Mama muttered something about incompetence, then shifted her attention to Woody Norvold and the woman standing next to the golf cart they’d pulled up in. “Woody! How soon before we can restock?”

  Woody scratched his massive head as doubt spread across his face. “Gee, I’m not sure. I can make some calls. But shouldn’t we make sure we’ve got a working freezer first?”

  “You let me worry about the freezer,” she said, waving a hand in the air, dismissing him. “You just get on your phone and get food here. We aren’t going the entire day without food!” She glanced at the woman next to Woody. “And, Wendy, maybe you ought to get to making some pies or something. Don’t just stand around being useless like usual.”

  Wendy rolled her eyes and settled her plump frame back in the golf cart. I wondered why Woody would let Mama get away with talking to his wife like that.

  Mama turned her attention to me. “And what do you have for me?”

  “Excuse me?” The coffee had been a bad decision. The cup burned my hands and the lack of creamer solidified its tarlike consistency.

  “I’m not just paying you to stand around and look pretty.”

  I attempted to take a sip. “I wasn’t aware you were paying me at all.”

  “Hello? We spoke about this yesterday. You report to me and only me. You’ve had twenty-four hours. That’s plenty of time to come up with something.”

  I knew she was an elderly woman, but her demeanor and behavior were just flat-out offensive. She treated everyone with the same condescending, belittling attitude and I didn’t care for it. Everyone around her seemed to take what she was dishing out.

  I wasn’t going to be in that group.

  “Here’s what I know,” I said, tossing the coffee in the trash. “You spoke to me yesterday but never asked me anything. You just assumed I’d do something because you wanted me to. That was your first mistake.”

  The small crowd of people around us began murmuring and several stepped away from us. Even Pete seemed to create some distance from me.

  “Your second mistake was calling my partner before I had a chance to talk to him,” I continued. “I’m going to make sure we charge you double at this point, if we decide to help you. And that’s a massive if at this point.”

  Mama’s eyes narrowed and I was pretty sure I heard Bruce whisper, “Dude.”

  “And your third mistake was just being rude. I don’t like rude people. And you, lady, are unbelievably rude. If you think I’m gonna work for someone who treats everyone around her like servants, you are sorely mistaken.” I smiled at her. “That’s what I have for you. Ma’am.”

  Mama shuffled her feet in the dirt and fixed me with a steely gaze. The people around us were whispering, shaking their heads in disbelief at what they had just seen and heard. Apparently, no one was supposed to talk back to Mama Biggs.

  Oops.

  Mama set her hands on her hips. “You know what happened to the last fella who spoke to me like that?”

  I shrugged, not caring.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Because no one’s ever spoke to me like that.” She glanced around at the crowd. “About time someone showed up with some guts.”

  No one seemed to know what to make of her proclamation. I was pretty sure they’d been waiting for us to grab each other and wrestle until someone gave up.

  “Your partner did call me and leave a message,” she said. “I haven’t called him back. I will do so in the next half an hour.” She hitched up her pants. “Perhaps after we’ve made those arrangements, we could discuss what you’ve learned.”

  The eyes in the crowd widened, shocked at what they were seeing. Mama’s civility had stunned them all.

  She walked toward her cart and slid in behind the wheel. “And you ever mouth off to me like that again, I’ll shove my walkie-talki
e in that big mouth of yours.”

  She winked and drove off in a cloud of dust.

  12

  “Word around the fair is that you and Mama Biggs had a little skirmish,” Julianne said, her tongue lapping away at a massive vanilla ice cream cone.

  We were sitting near the dairy building, the heat having returned once again, settling over us like one big sticky blanket. It was nearly lunch, but there was still no real food on the fairgrounds and ice cream was the best we could do to satisfy her hunger.

  “I wouldn’t call it a skirmish.”

  She eyed me over the quickly melting ice cream. “Fracas? Squabble? Scuffle?”

  “Conversation.”

  “Not what I heard,” she said. “I heard my husband told an old woman off.”

  I leaned in and licked the side of the cone, stemming a drip. “That old woman needed to be told off a long time ago.”

  “You big meanie.”

  “Where is our daughter, by the way?”

  She studied the cone for a moment. “Who?”

  “Our daughter.”

  “We have a daughter?”

  “The pregnancy has finally eaten into your brain.”

  “If I wasn’t so hungry, I’d smash this ice cream into your face,” she said. “Relax. Your parents are here. They’re spending ridiculous amounts of money on her at the games.”

  “My dad hates the fair.”

  “No, he doesn’t. He pretends to hate the fair. But he truly loves his granddaughter. Some things trump other things.”

  That Julianne-ism about my father could not have been more true. He loved Carly more than just about anything else. It was going to be interesting to see how nuts he went over the new baby.

  “So did you really yell at some old lady?”

  I explained to her what occurred with Mama Biggs.

  “I love how you promised to stay out of this,” Julianne noted, arching an eyebrow over what was left of the cone.

  “I’m not officially in it yet,” I said weakly.

  “Right,” she said. She polished off the ice cream and began working on the waffle cone itself. “I’m sure Victor was over last night just to share recipes.”

  “Yes. For clam chowder. He loves clam chowder.”