Centennial
By Dick Cummins
This is the second of a three-part series of excerpts from a work in progress.
Because of the great centennial compromise I did get a lever-action, Daisy Red Ryder model air rifle for my sixth birthday. My father bought it at Holman’s in Pacific Grove, a department store with a room for parties on the top floor and for kids’ birthdays the store even provided their own clown.
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY LITTLE COWBOY!” Holman’s Bozo brayed, my ribboned air rifle in one hand, squeezing the little horn on his belt with the other. Bwak – bwaking at me he looked like a florid seal on his springboard shoes, red hair spitting out above his ears and grinning like a cannibal.
“Mommy!” I shrieked and peeking out from behind a veil of her skirt I watched my father hold out his hand for the Daisy, mercilessly staring with that expression of non-commissioned contempt he reserved for incompetent fools.
“Stop crying,” he ordered, handing me my air rifle and when we looked up, Holman’s Bozo was leaning against the cake table, a rivulet of red and white makeup dripping off of his chin.
“Oh for chrissakes,” my father hissed, my mother giving him one of her a little consideration please looks, then putting a hand on his shoulder she stood ready for the sad story, no matter if it took all afternoon.
*
Crawling into the back seat of our tiny Crosley, I sat caressing the barrel of my new Daisy, desperate to get home and begin working on my marksmanship. Behind the wheel my father tapped tobacco from his bag of Bull Durham into a rolling paper and pulled the string tab closed with his teeth.
“That poor man is just not cut out to be a clown,” my mother began. “He obviously scares children.”
My father poked the cigarette into the corner of his mouth, thumbed his Army Zippo and snapped the lid closed with a clack.
“Why would anyone want to be a goddamned clown?” he muttered, his cigarette bobbing up and down.
“I think he needs the money dear. His day job is working at Del Monte Packing, but with the sardine catch running down, it’s only part time.”
“Del Monte is probably where he should be working, not scaring kids.”
“Boy, he WAS scary!” I added, sniffing the leather lacing tied to a decorative ring on my Daisy.
“He thinks he’ll be fired now—because of today. I can’t help feeling sorry for him Russell. Don’t you pity him just a little?”
Gradually my father pulled over along the curb and stopped, lowering his forehead until it touched the top of the steering wheel.
“It’s your heart again isn’t it dear?”
“Not exactly,” he said, pinching into his shirt pocket for a nitroglycerin tablet.
“What then?”
“It’s that if there’s one in a hundred miles of us he’ll find you Elizabeth—that’s what. Or you’ll find him.”
“Well that’s completely unfair! And if our baby shoots his eye out with that dangerous air rifle it will be your responsibility!”
“He’s not a baby,” my father said and wishing they would change the subject, I held my Daisy by the barrel and got it cocked, then pointing at the floor, I pulled the trigger—“pffft.”
“NEVER ASSUME YOUR WEAPON IS UNLOADED!” my father roared from the front seat. “You pull a stunt like that again and I’ll take it away until you’re sixteen!”
“Please don’t yell Russell,” my mother said quietly. “He’s not in the Army you know—and could we please just go home now?”
Without responding he looked back over his shoulder for traffic, took a long drag of his cigarette and ground the Crosley into gear, merging us back onto Lighthouse Avenue, jaws working silently with smoke jetting from his nose—an aging dragon in decline.
*
That winter a ferocious Pacific storm battered Monterey, blowing a fat purse seiner off its mooring and onto the beach. We could see it on its side from our yard and watched the tug down from San Francisco pull it back into the water like a swollen white whale, harpooned with a mast. Then we watched it getting lower and lower in the water and it finally slipped away, a total loss the Herald said.
It was not long after this that my mother decided that I had talent, acting talent—an inspiration that made it feel like my life was taking on water too. Within a week I was enrolled in Mrs. Prepondera’s School of Drama and Elocution—never mind the added expense. A month or two later I could project my voice like a fog horn, recite humorous dramatic readings and speed through “Peter Piper picked” and “seashells and seashores” without a stumble or stutter. The trouble was that due to our financial situation, and his attitude about Mrs. Prepondera, a woman he suspected of having been a man, my father declared war on acting lessons.
“I think this Prepondera stuff is more than we can afford,” he announced one day. “And Little League tryouts are the first week in June, so we’ll be practicing a lot.”
“She says his acting is quite good now dear so we can let it drop. Just keep in mind he’ll be starting tap lessons next week.”
“Tap lessons?”
“Dancing helps develop coordination and rhythm doesn’t it? Should be good for his Little League—don’t you agree?”
If he was in a talkative mood his answer would have been an unambiguous “humph,” but after several months of taking me to tap classes, I think he decided it wasn’t so bad. This was because I was actually pretty good at it and one of the prettiest girls in my class at Bay View School was going to be my co-star for the big recital. Until I brought home my costume.
“Our son Elizabeth—my son—a woodpecker?”
“The choreography involves forest creatures Russell. It’s just for fun, and he’s not even seven yet, just a boy.”
“Amy’s my partner,” I chimed in. “She’s the most beautiful blue bird in the show. And us woodpeckers get to dance the loudest too,” and to make my point, I tried to tap a little riff on the living room floor that came out a “baddah-thup, baddah-thup” because I was wearing sneakers.
“Fine then. Hope your mother enjoys the show,” he said, and opening the closet he grabbed our ball gloves, his big one and my little one as everything could still be smoothed over then with a little pitch and catch.
*
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