Hit the Road, Manny: A Manny Files Novel

by Christian Burch

  The house was quiet. When I walked into the kitchen, the manny and his mother were sitting at the table drinking coffee. The manny was in Uncle Max’s Basquiat T-shirt again and his pajama pants. Clarissa was wearing a terry-cloth robe that was tied so tightly that you couldn’t see her cleavage or her décolletage. She was talking to the manny softly, and I heard her say, “Matthew, we love you dearly, but people around here just wouldn’t understand. Your father is having a hard time…” She stopped when the manny looked up from his coffee and smiled when he saw me.

  “Expelliamus!” he exclaimed like something magical had happened when I walked into the room. “Expelliamus” is what Harry Potter says to get his magic wand to work. The manny also used his napkin to dry his eyes. He wasn’t crying, but his eyes were watery. I hoped it was hay fever.

  Clarissa stood up and kept her back to me. I could tell that she was wiping her own eyes as she walked over to the stove. “Your mother and father went on a walk around the pasture with Rog. Your mom said that you love bagels and cream cheese with jam.” She sliced a bagel in half and put it in the toaster.

  The manny added, “The girls are still sleeping.”

  I ate the bagel with cream cheese and jam. The kitchen was silent, and I could tell the manny and his mother were wrapped up in their own thoughts. That’s what Sarah’s mother calls it when Sarah daydreams. Sarah always daydreams. Last year during a softball game Sarah missed a fly ball because she was daydreaming. The ball almost landed on her head, but she didn’t notice it until the third baseman ran out to pick it up. She told me that she was thinking about how hot the sun was and that it probably would have done more to Icarus than just melt his wax wings. Icarus is a character in Greek mythology whose father made him wax wings to escape prison and told him not to fly too close to the sun because the wings would melt. Icarus was so excited to be flying that he forgot his father’s warning and got too close to the sun, and the wings melted and he fell into the sea. Sarah did a painting called Icarus’s Wings in the after-school art program. She used real feathers and melted wax. I made a macaroni peace sign on construction paper.

  Mom, Dad, and Roger walked in just as I took my last bite of bagel.

  “Morning, babe,” Mom said to me. I love when she calls me babe.

  “Morning,” I said, and cleared my own plate and loaded it into the dishwasher.

  Roger squeezed the manny’s shoulder as he walked by to give Clarissa a kiss on the cheek. It wasn’t really her cheek. It was her neck, and she squished her head and shoulder together and giggled.

  “Ewww!” Lulu squealed from the doorway. “PDA is not acceptable.” She walked over and poured herself a cup of coffee. When she sat down, Dad took it away from her.

  “You’re not allowed coffee. You don’t even like it.”

  “I might,” she said. “I have sophisticated taste.”

  Clarissa and Rog laughed.

  “Do you have any Crunchberries?” Lulu asked, forgetting about her sophisticated taste.

  Once everybody was up and had eaten breakfast, we decided to go into town to walk around and shop and have lunch. Dad, the manny, Roger, and I rode in Roger’s truck. The girls all rode in Clarissa’s convertible Volkswagen Bug. It was one of the old kind and was black and shiny.

  “HEY, BOYS.” Belly flirted through our open window as they drove by us. She looked like she was about to explode or pee her pants she was so excited to be in a convertible. I was glad I was in the truck. Belly gets unbearable when she’s excited. That means that she’s so annoying that bears wouldn’t even eat her.

  The downtown had wooden sidewalks and looked like it was out of an Old West movie. I wished I had a metal detector, because I bet there’s lots of lost change between the sidewalk slats. And jewelry, too. India told me that there was probably also a lot of spit-out gum.

  Everybody waved at Clarissa and Roger like they were the mayors. They kept stopping and reintroducing the manny to their friends.

  “You remember Matthew, don’t you?” Clarissa said to the sheriff, who pulled his squad car over to talk to them.

  “Of course I do,” the sheriff said. “Remember when we had to bring him home that one time because he had sneaked out and was still trick-or-treating at midnight on his bicycle. We got so many calls.”

  “I got a whole lot of candy, though, and some money, too. They give better stuff after bedtime,” the manny turned and told me.

  They all laughed, and then Lulu pointed out a jaywalker to the sheriff and he had to leave.

  The first place that we went into was an old-time photo shop where people get dressed up like characters out of the Old West and have their pictures taken. There was a group of high school girls getting their picture taken like they were saloon tramps. That’s what India said before Mom raised her eyebrows at her.

  “HER WANTS TO DRESS UP,” Belly said, jumping up and down and up and down like she was on a pogo stick.

  “I don’t know—,” said Mom, but Dad interrupted her.

  “It might be fun to have one of the kids for my desk at the office.”

  Mom looked annoyed. “Okay, but nobody dresses up like a saloon tramp.”

  “Mom! RUDE!” India jokingly reprimanded.

  Nobody did dress up like a saloon tramp. Lulu dressed up like a schoolmarm, with a bun in her hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and a wooden ruler like she was going to swat us. India, Belly, and I were old-time students. India wore a gingham dress and had two braids, one on each side of her head. Belly wore a dress that matched India’s, and got to hold an old, raggedy doll. She wanted braids, but her hair was too short. She cried, which made the picture even better because nobody smiles in old photos. They just look sad. I got to wear knickers, which are short pants that have buttons around the calves; a plain white shirt; and a newsboy cap.

  The manny thought I looked like Oliver from the musical. He started to sing, “‘Consider yourself at home. Consider yourself one of the family….’”

  The picture turned out really funny because Lulu was really swatting the ruler in her hand, threatening the manny. Belly looked like she really hated school, and India was rolling her eyes, so she looked like the troublemaker. I just looked like myself. Really cute and nice, like I was the teacher’s pet.

  Dad paid for two copies, one for us and one for Roger and Clarissa to put on their picture table. Dad wouldn’t let Belly look at the picture while we were walking along the sidewalk. He told her to wait until we were inside the restaurant across the street. The restaurant had one of my favorite things as a dessert special, rice pudding with caramel sauce. It was written on a chalkboard with pink chalk. Belly licked her finger and erased the R, so it looked like “ice pudding.” I saw her do it, but Mom didn’t.

  The booths were red vinyl and made funny noises when we scooted across them. I was in shorts, so I kept sticking to them. I don’t think the waitress wiped off the seats between breakfast and lunch, because I stuck in syrup and it was gross.

  “The usual?” the waitress asked Roger and Clarissa. They nodded.

  “I’ll have the usual too,” I said, and closed my menu. The waitress looked at Mom.

  “Grilled cheese with tomato and bacon,” Mom said to her. Then she ordered for herself and Belly, a Cobb salad to share. India and Lulu ordered Cobb salads too. Dad ordered Frito chili pie. The manny ordered a Frito chili pie too.

  “Can I change my order from the usual to a Frito chili pie?” I asked the waitress. I always change my order if I order first; it’s part of what makes me “me.” Sarah says that all the time. Things that make her “her” are eating raw spaghetti, sleeping with her teddy bear, and loving tragic movies like Edward Scissorhands.

  “Sure thing, hon,” the waitress said, before she collected the menus and screamed the orders to the line cooks.

  A man with a beard and a woman the same age as Roger and Clarissa came up to the table. The man said, “Stayin’ out of trouble?” and then he laughed like he’d never said it bef
ore, but I had heard him say it to another table a few minutes earlier.

  “Yep,” said Roger. “Do you remember our son, Matthew?” Roger smiled and pointed at the manny, across the table. He looked really proud to be the manny’s dad.

  “Yessss!” the woman excitedly said, like she had lost her memory but now it was all coming back to her. “How are you? I haven’t seen you since you graduated from high school.”

  “I’m fine,” the manny said. “You look wonderful.”

  The woman smiled and then covered it with her hand.

  She said, “Thank you. I walk two miles every evening. I started exercising when I started having grandchildren. I have five.” She emphasized “five” and then nodded her head yes to confirm that she really did have five grandchildren.

  She went on, “You remember Melanie? She was about your age. She got married a few years ago to a doctor in Denver and they have three girls, and then my son, J.D., has twin boys who are adorable.” She reached into her purse for pictures. The twins were adorable. They had milk cheeks. Babies who are breast-fed have milk cheeks. They’re really fat and full. I learned that on the Learning Channel, which is the perfect name for that channel.

  “They are cute!” the manny agreed.

  The woman asked, “Do you have children? Are you married?”

  Roger answered before the manny did. “He’s not married, yet. He hasn’t found the right person. He’s very special, you know…holding out for the perfect wife.”

  “Too late. I got her,” the man with the beard said, and he squeezed his wife in a sideways hug while she put away the pictures of her cheeky grandchildren. They told the manny how nice it was to see him again, and the manny told them to tell Melanie hello, and then they walked away.

  The manny held up his hands like people do when they ask questions, and quietly said, “Dad?! I have found somebody.”

  Roger didn’t answer because the waitress brought two plates of usuals and our salads and Frito chili pies to the table. I’m glad I didn’t get the usual, because it was cottage cheese and a ham steak. Blah!

  I stared at the manny while we ate. He didn’t notice. It was like he was in another world. He didn’t even make a comment when Lulu sent her Cobb salad back because there were more cubes of cheese than there was ham and she thought there should be an equal amount. He did notice me staring at him when the waitress came to take our dessert order.

  He smiled and asked the waitress for an order of ice pudding.

  “You mean rice pudding?” the waitress asked back.

  “It says ‘ice pudding’ on the sign, and ice pudding sounds good!”

  “Somebody must have erased the R,” said the waitress, obviously tired from her day and tired of customer humor.

  Belly covered her mouth with both hands, pulled her knees up into the booth, and laughed her fake laugh, which sounds like a donkey. I ordered rice pudding too and shared it with Roger.

  That night I looked at old yearbooks of the manny’s. He was voted Class Clown, Best Dressed, and Most Likely to Succeed. In every photo he had his hands on his hips. I’m going to pose like that in next year’s class photo. The manny was in his parents’ room talking to them. He’d told me that they needed some alone time. I didn’t even ask him what they were going to talk about. It was none of my business.

  He was still gone when I fell asleep.

  Captain Fantastic21

  The manny’s dad woke us up really early the next morning, even before the sun had risen. He poked his head in the bedroom door and sang, “Schoolboy! Time to wake up and go to school and learn something so you can grow up and be somebody!” It was the same song the manny sings to us to wake us up! Then he said in a normal voice, “Son, I need your help, the old cow is having her calf.”

  “We better go help him…schoolboy,” I said to the manny.

  The manny hopped out of bed and pulled on his jeans over his pajama pants. I did the same thing. They were all bunched up and uncomfortable, but I guess that’s just how things are on a ranch. Bunched up and uncomfortable.

  Clarissa was in the kitchen making coffee. The manny grabbed a cup, and I grabbed a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. Roger was already running up to the barn, so we gulped down our drinks the same way guys do in the movies when they get drunk in bars and talk about their ex-wives, who have all their money.

  In the garage the manny put on a pair of his dad’s cowboy boots. I put on a pair of cowboy boots that had belonged to the manny when he was little. They were red with black stitching. The two dogs were shut in the garage so that they wouldn’t bother the old cow. Daisy gave me a pitiful look, and I said to her, “Awww, give me your sad face, Daisy!” I caught myself saying it out loud and stopped to see if the manny had heard me talking to a dog. You’re not supposed to be sensitive on a farm. I don’t think he heard me, because he was already heading out the door. We were careful not to let the dogs out.

  The fat cow was lying on her side, breathing heavily and making noises that sounded like a mix between a moo and a Yoko Ono album. Sarah’s mom listens to Yoko Ono sometimes when she’s meditating. Yoko Ono was married to John Lennon, but her music is way different from the Beatles’. Her songs have a lot of weird noises and screams in them. They sort of sound like the Halloween CD that Mom bought at Target.

  There was a string of syrupy-looking slime coming out of the cow’s back end. Roger called the cow’s back end “the birth canal.” He was rubbing her stomach, which looked like a big, stretched-out balloon. Mom and Dad had come out to see what was going on. Mom had an afghan around her shoulders and a steaming coffee mug between her two hands like she was starring in a Folgers coffee commercial. “‘The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup,’” I sang to myself when I saw her.

  The old cow stood up, and Roger stood up with her. She made a big noise into the air with her mouth as her ribs moved in and out, and I could see her fat belly contracting. The manny told me to watch her birth canal carefully because pretty soon there would be two hooves poking out, and then a nose and head. I watched closely, and with the cow’s next exhaled breath, out popped a hoof. I waited for the other hoof and the nose and head, but nothing happened. We just stood there for a minute, until Roger yelled for the manny to get a bucket of soapy water and some towels. I followed the manny as he ran toward the house.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  The manny answered breathlessly, “I think the calf is breech. The cow needs help giving birth, or she and the calf might not survive.” I didn’t know what breech was, but it sounded serious and made me wonder if we’d have to give the cow a C-section. Mom had to get a C-section with Belly. Maybe Belly was breech. That would explain a lot.

  Clarissa gave me a bunch of old towels while the manny filled a bucket with warm, soapy water.

  When we got back to the barn, Roger was searching for chains. He said, “Matty, see if you can find the other leg. We’re going to have to pull this calf.” I’d never heard anyone call the manny Matty before. It made him smile, and he looked like his dad had just hugged him.

  The manny looked at me with raised eyebrows and said, “Are you ready for this?”

  I didn’t know what he meant, but I said, “Sure am, Matty.”

  He smiled, rolled his eyes, and said, “GOY!” The manny can joke through anything.

  The manny rolled up his right sleeve all the way to his shoulder and rubbed soapy water all over his arm. He stood at the back of the cow and slowly slid his arm into the birth canal. Mom ran inside to get her camera.

  Roger came into the pen carrying chains and asked, “Can you find it?”

  The manny pushed his arm farther into the birth canal. His entire arm, almost up to his shoulder, was in the back of the cow. Roger held a bucket of grain in front of her to distract her. I couldn’t imagine that that would keep the cow from noticing what was going on at the other end, but she actually started eating. Mom had returned and was snapping pictures. She said she
was going to sell them to Us magazine for the “Stars: They’re Just Like Us” section.

  “Got it!” yelled the manny with a scrunched-up look of concentration on his face. He slowly removed his arm from the cow, pulling a second hoof out of the birth canal. Roger quickly tied the chains around the calf’s legs, and he and the manny began to pull them down toward the ground.

  You could see their arms flexing. The manny’s arm was still covered in slime and whatever else might be in a birth canal of a cow. It didn’t seem to bother him. The back legs and hips of the calf slid out of the cow, and then the front end and then the head. Roger held on to the calf, and the manny took his hand and cleaned the calf’s mouth out to make sure that it could breathe. Then he wiped the calf off with a towel.

  I hosed the manny’s arms and hands off. He dried them and then took a clean towel and wiped his face. When he smiled at me, there was still something dark and gross on his right cheek, so I licked a clean washcloth and then blotted his face just like Mom does.

  Lulu, India, and Belly came running up to the barn, with Daisy and Dipper. Clarissa walked behind them with a group of cats following her like she was Snow White.

  Roger yelled, “Who let the dogs out?”

  And the manny went, “Woof, woof, woof, woof,” like in the song.

  Lulu grabbed Daisy, and India grabbed Dipper, and they sat down with them and hugged them around their necks and petted them. Dad lifted Belly up on his shoulders, and she made a loop with her arms around his chin. Roger and the manny had cow poop and blood all over their clothes, but Lulu didn’t seem disgusted by it. She made an “Awwww” sound and covered her mouth with both of her hands when she saw the calf. She does the same thing when she sees the “New Babies” page in the weekly newspaper that shows the new babies that have been born and still look like aliens.