Recovering Charles – Chapter 4 Excerpt
It was hard to think of 9 / 11.
The coverage, slick graphics and networking official logos of the storm. The death toll.
The pain.
Maybe watching television both in the days after Katrina, because he could not inside the lens off my photographer. He saw nothing but water and dirt, which saw the eyes of the survivors asking for help. Many shouted with his mouth too, cursing the camera and asking ransom.
Some also cried with cardboard signs:
WHERE IS FEMA?
PAGING Bush and Cheney!
Looters will be shot
KATRINA KILLED MY BABY
Nagin Lied
During a commercial I sat on the futon and relaxing my neck and shoulders. I had not realized what had become of my pain, leaning forward and stretching towards the hour of TV after hours. That discovery made my eyes hurt. And once again pulled me back to memories of September 11 and felt that the figure of constant coverage had made in my mind and soul.
I decided some fresh air and lunch in Little India would serve me well. As was my custom, I brought along my camera. The walk is full of energy.
I was sitting at Pio Pio in Jackson Heights, where my cell phone rang and it shows an unknown number of area code 504.
"Hello?" I replied.
Lower the man smoker voice was familiar. "This Millward Luke?"
"Is".
"Jerome Harris of New Awlins Callin '.
I changed my cell phone from one ear to another. "What can I do for you?"
"Your father is Carlos?"
"Yes. I wondered if this call may come. I never imagined I would be sitting in a Peruvian restaurant.
"Have you heard of 'im?"
"Not lately, no."
"How the time gone?
"Two years, maybe more."
At that moment I remembered a larger than usual package that had received a couple of months of Dad. I had not bothered to open it. It was the latest in a series of packets that arrive every six months or less to some new ZIP code. Usually contains an odd trinket dad had bought occasionally or one of its random personal belongings he wanted me to have.
I always wondered if the shipment of old car keys or a key chain given the fate of Las Vegas was his way of making peace. When asked, he had said they just wanted things in case something happened to him.
Like all the other packages, stacked in a corner storage cabinet of my apartment building.
"What is this about?" I asked the man.
"Your dad is missin ', Lucas. Been livin 'here in New Awlins for about a year. "
Here it comes, I thought, closing her eyes.
"Nobody has seen 'im since a couple Sundays ago. Overnight "
Katrina.
"Right of THA. It's been teachin 'and playing with myself and my guys in a place of Chartres Street in about seven months. Livin 'on a place in the five and four.
"Five and four years?"
"Lower Ninth, son. "
I imagined that her body was one of those rotting in a public restroom or floating face down and bloated under a bridge somewhere.
So this is how it feels to be an orphan. "Sorry to hear that, sir." The words held unexpected upset. My father is dead.
"Do not be sorry, Luke. Get down here and find 'im."
"Pardon?"
"It So I'm callin '. "
"Can not someone just call me when he has found?"
"Are you kidding? Do not got a television. "
Point taken.
"Even the good guys meanin 'here does not have the time to do much that. "He paused." Come find your father, Luke Millward. For alls we know he is alive somewhere. Most of our cell phones are not workin'-that could be hurtin 'somewhere, or San Antonio or in the north. We're hopin it is.
We are praying it. "
"Even if I wanted, I can not just stop my life and go on a wild goose chase. I just can not. "
"Then do it for his girlfriend."
"Come again?" I switched my phone back to the other ear. "My father he do?"
"For a wonderful marriage. Gettin 'to times' as Christmas. "
Who is she? I thought.
"Luke, she is my sister." He let the words have an impact. "His name is Jez."
Jez. I did not know what impressed me more the system: the probable death of my father or a married woman practice of alcoholic who had a problem of foreboding.
"I'll call you back," he said. "This number in my ID call is yours? "
"It's a club cell phones. Call anytime. But the service is hit and miss, you know.
"I'll call back."
Soon?
"Yes, sir. Bye. And thanks." I hung up and left the restaurant and in the noise of the city. I moved through crowded streets in the afternoon to the subway.
I do not remember riding home.
That night I sat in my apartment with Jordan and heard repeated back to me the details of the call for Jerome. I could hear things in history that had not said.
"This guy, Jerome, who was the best friend of your dad."
"Who knows?"
And his father marries sister of this guy is or was anyway … "
She scratched his back. "Sorry.
"No need."
"I wonder, how could he get her number? You should ask that. What if it's some kind of scam? I see this a lot."
"Jordan, not a scam.
"It is probably true, but still, how do I find? Are you sure you do not want money or something? Can think that is fair, because he helped his father when I needed it.
I had forgotten he had ever said that. "I have not sent money from Dad in a long time. Not since the last time we spoke. "
"But Luke, I would ask. How'd you find yourself? "
I agree that it was an intelligent question and undertook to ask when I called back Jerome.
"Huh. Your dad lived in New Orleans. "He looked at his diet Dr. Pepper." He has hardly said a thing about him. "
Not much to tell. I have not talked much about my mother either.
We picked up our sesame chicken and brown rice.
"So you're leaving," he said. "Right?
"I do not know yet."
"You have to go, Lucas. Just to know, of course, have to".
"No I know. "
Took my two hands. "I will go with you."
"You can not leave now, Jordan. Not the end of the quarter. You closing push.
"Yes I do, but I would go with you if you ask."
We returned to our Chinese food while The Killers' Hot Fuss played on the stereo in the room.
An hour later, Jordan hugged me goodbye in the elevator of my building and I prepared for bed. The bathroom mirror reminded me of the dark circles under the eyes that I inherited from my father. When I was particularly tired or stressed looked at me as if I had appeared in both eyes. The rest of the time I looked like a raccoon. When I was young, Mom said they were so dark because I was an only child. If I had more the effect children have spread throughout the other children.
I triggered a playlist on my iPod classic. Topics of the Boston Pops, some Mozart, just adding songs from a CD of Jenny Oaks Baker that Jordan had given me for my birthday. I killed the lights, put on my headphones, and a majestic violin time Jenny turned my room into a concert hall, drowning out the steady stream of horns and sirens below.
My mind falling leaves in the images of Katrina anger.
***
Mom was not always unhappy.
Dad was not always a drunk.
Just before my second year of school school year before the grandmother died, the three of us took a road trip the Yankees' spring training at Legends Field in Tampa Bay. Mom let me go to the front most of the trip while reading or sleeping in the backseat of our white Saab. Dad took us east through Shreveport, Jackson, Mobile, and across the Florida peninsula. Each stop brought a bit of history of AAA dad guide, a key to the collection of mom, and sandwiches.
Bet Mom ate eight kilos of licorice on that trip. It's funny, I used to tease Mom about his addiction to bags Nibs.
Dad's Journal treatment of travel was Tab cola and Planters salted peanuts. I remember him dropping a peanut slowly to the bottom of each as mom jokingly quipped, "You're gross. Yuck. Who put the peanuts in the soda?" Even Dad could not explain the appeal, but can not remember a single mile that trip, or any other for that matter, when the father was not a can in your hand or on-the-ready in the cup holder. I always threatened to tell when mom and dad stole sips gas pump or check the tires.
But all he had to do was slip me a handful of licorice and pledge to secrecy for another leg of the trip. Not even like licorice.
My staples are Twinkies, Ho-Os, and Big League Chew gum only worthy of a bit player. That is, boy, Unless you're crazy Ms. Armstrong. He made a great show one day at practice that Big League Chew was a "gateway candy" to counterfeit cigarettes, then real cigarettes, then real snuff. So Mrs. Armstrong banned from the dugout and told his son, Mikey Magic, our only pitcher southpaw, who had let him chew a hundred packages at once if he ever took the field again. Dad said that some things not worth fighting.
A Sometimes when he and another trainer was working with the infielders, I would take a couple of guys behind the dugout and give them a piece of gum pink grated its foil pouch. Few things are more stimulating for a child of thirteen years, to give a fellow banned chewing gum. Not long after the Ms. Armstrong ban took effect, Dad stopped at a Circle K on the way to practice and came out with three packs of Big League Chew. "Only in the case." He winked. "You never know when you run out.
My dad told me that Mrs. Armstrong is a sweet woman who had only a few "problems". I guess he thought I should know what it meant. Not me. I was only a right fielder.
In the spring vacation training, Mom read in the stands for hours while dad and I jostled for autographs and sports memorabilia pro wrestling dogs and children equally to small firms and foul balls. She smiled warmly when I arrived at our place over the third-base line with a ball that had splintered bat caught a rookie. I can not even remember his name anymore.
"That's spectacular!" Mom took the ball from me and pretended examination. "I bet this is a special place in your room, do not you, dear?"
"Of course!
Dad We bought a game, old school Yankee baseball caps cotton. I lost mine a couple of months later and never found again.
(Excerpt from Charles and Recovery reprinted with permission of the author, Jason F. Wright)
(Originally published in goarticles and reprinted with permission of author Jason F. Wright).
About the Author
Jason F. Wright is a regular contributor on Fox News and is founder and managing director of the political destination, PoliticalDerby.com. Jason is the New York Times Bestselling Author of Christmas Jars and The Wednesday Letters. To Learn more about Jason and his most recent novel, Recovering Charles, visit:
Recovering Charles
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