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THE SUNDAY PAPER: “The Last Two Honest Men” by Dave Proctor, part 2 of 3

Our house was a bit bigger than Leon’s and our garage could hold two cars. Since dad wasn’t home yet, I pulled into the garage on his side until the tennis ball hit the windshield, something he hung up so he wouldn’t drive into his tool bench again.

Mikey’s peewee hockey equipment had fallen over in front of the back door and I tried my best to pick it up quietly, but my fingers slipped and the bag hit the tile with a thud. Mom called out for dad in the dark.

“Just me,” I whispered into the house.

She was asleep in a chair pointed toward the back door and mumbled “Hi honey,” with the sound of the chair rustling beneath her as she rolled onto her side. Dad had come home real late the past week since the railway laid him off again, and mom was working too-long hours at the Cancer Society, as summer was their busy time. She shot back up in her chair and her voice squeaked with sudden concern, like she was worried that she should be worried about something, but didn’t know what: “Why are you home so late?”

“One of our friends had to go to the hospital, so we stayed out with him, Leon and me.”

“Which friend?” she asked, calmer. She knew we didn’t have any friends. I told her some name and that the guy in question had a bit of a stomach virus, nothing much to worry about. When she stopped asking questions I assumed she was drifting back to sleep. I asked her, quietly, if she was waiting up for dad; if everything was, you know, okay with them.

“No,” came the answer. She let out a sharp half-yawn and sat up to look at my silhouette.

“I’m glad you boys have fun, you know? I’m jealous even. You can’t do that kind of thing forever, go out and do just about anything, come home any hour, no consequences. You’re lucky, you know? It doesn’t last.” She paused. I looked over at the dishes in the sink.

“Are you happy? I don’t want you to feel… lonely. I want you to have fun with your friends and I want you to be happy. We used to do things like that, your father and I. One time… one time we broke into the museum. We just wanted to play in the children’s fossil exhibit. We threw sand at each other and wrote ‘DON’T TOUCH STRANGE BONES’ in the big sandpit there, you remember, where they bury all the bones for the kids to find.” She laughed a soft, little laugh. “I lost a shoe that night when we were stumbling around, trying to find an exit. We snuck out through the window and got chased about 100 yards by the security guard, and the best part is, the security guard was your dad’s godfather. I don’t think he ever found out,” she sighed again. “He’s not home yet, is he?”

“No,” I kissed her forehead and turned around to go to bed.

“I don’t want you to worry about he and I, we’ll be alright. We made a… responsibility to each other, to always try to work it out.” A pause stretched between us in the dark and I think we both expected to see dad’s headlights wash across the walls at that exact moment, but they didn’t. “We love you and your brother. A lot.”

“I understand, mom.”

And I did.

She waited in that chair most of the next day, except to make breakfast and take Mikey to piano. After supper dad still hadn’t come home, and I swung by Leon’s house and picked him up. He was still in his sling. We drove around in the truck for a while. I was excited, looking for a place to hang out, and chat. Leon wanted ice cream and stared out the window.

“It’s not like I’m happy about it,” I was exhilarated, talking fast like Leon always did. “But its honesty, like you always say. I mean, he’s being a jerk to mom but he never grew out of it. He never stopped being a jerk. At least he’s being honest to himself. They used to break into museums, Leon! And it makes me feel good, like I won’t change into something else. Like maybe that’s what’s in my blood. But what if, instead of being a jerk, I stay a good person… It’s just like you say: Honest men.” My chest was heaving, pushing against the weight of months of thoughts, waiting anxiously for Leon’s response. His first few seconds of silence. His ice cream melting on his hand. I started to think that maybe I had gotten it wrong, maybe I sounded like an idiot to him. I changed the subject. “When do you get your arm put in a cast?” I asked, trying to breathe slower.

“Tomorrow,” he didn’t look at me. He hadn’t looked at me once the whole ride. I started wondering if I had done something. I asked him more questions.

“Are you mad at them? The fakes? The ones that broke your arm?”

“They did what they did, but I’m not mad at them. I’m feeling pretty beat, though, can you take me home?” He said it all in one breath, like he’d been waiting to leave since I picked him up. I drove him home in silence, and tried calling him a couple times the next day, each time no answer. The next day they found my dad, in his car, upturned in a ditch below McKellar Road. I called Leon, sobbing, and asked if he could go out. He said he was sorry, but he just couldn’t. Sorry again, he repeated. Then he hung up.

Montel Williams Recives The Word Of “God.”

It wont surprise many of our readers to learn that ousted television monarch, the formerly sir, Montel Williams has spent the bulk of his now fifty-two year retirement wandering the boardwalks in Calcutta rehearsing his Oscar speech. Nor will it come as a great shock – at least to those who purchased copies of the limited print Early Writings of an Urban Wizard – to learn Mr Williams’ recitation, which more or less constitutes a  half century of intense mantra practiced, finally had the effect of setting his chakras into perfect alignment. Mr. Williams was bless with this brief, but intense spiritual experience earlier this week.  The noteworthy part of this story, is the profoundly unusual nature of Mr. Williams’ particular religious vision.  While most saints who under go this transformation report hearing the voices of Marry, or the Archangel Gabriel, Mr. Williams appears to have contacted the wandering spirit of the late Senator Ted Stevens, and channelled an exact, word for word recitation of the departed mans reasoned argument against the Net Neutrality Bill.

From the cell phone recording of a passer by, and for those who may not recall the exact wording of the text in question, here is a transcript of the incantation Mr. Williams’ recited while in his alleged trance.  The punctuation is my own, as derived from the cadence, and the words belong to Mr. Stevens, but the voice is on the recording undoubtedly belongs to Mr. Williams:

What the senator is talking about is allowing all of these entities that support this to provide streaming stuff going – going on the  Internet.  Now the Internet – let’s you know.  Let’s go back, the Internet started with with the concept of local to local.  Connections across the country and, you could go for Alaska but you. . .  you had to go through local connections to get there.  The industry wisely provided for streaming of, in affect a new kind of long distance, and that’s what we’ve got.  We’ve got a service that’s immune to distance.  And it’s there for the consumer.  But but when we take, and really indicate that.  Anyone that wants to use it, this system, for massive, massive communi-commercial purposes.
There’s one company now you can.  You, you sign up and you get a movie delivered to your house!  daily!  By subscription, by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it put in the mail box and you get home. . . and in your muscle you can change your order.  But you pay for that, right? This service is now going to go through the Internet and what you do is,m you just go to a place on Internet and you order your movie and guess what? you can order ten of them!  At deliver to you, and the delivery charge is free right? Ten movies streaming across that in Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet?
I just the other day got – internet  was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday. I got it yesterday!
Why?
Because you got tangled up with all these things that going on the Internet commercially.
So you want to talk about the consumer? Let’s talk about you and me. We use this Internet to communicate and we aren’t using it for commercial purposes. We aren’t earning anything by going on that Internet. Now I’m not saying you have to discriminate or you want to discriminate against those people.  I’m just saying that we haven’t seen anything yet, that indicates there is discrimination! And until you can define it, I’m opposed to the concepts that are implied by your recommendation. 
We have, if it. We have already had unfair competition. And here we have this one situation where enormous entities want to use the Internet for their purpose, to save money, for doing what they’re doing now!  They use FedEx, they use the. . . delivery services, they use the mail! They deliver in other ways. But they want to deliver fast amounts of information, over the Internet.
And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on, it’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes! And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled – and if they are filled — when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material! Enormous amounts of material.
The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says “No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the Internet.”
No, I’m not finished. I want people to understand my position, I’m not going to take a lot of time.

Om Shanti Om.

Michael Scott

10 minutes to close, and I just broke a shot glass at work.

Two of my favourite emotions are:
Surprise and Irritation.
Right now, I feel glad,
because I am both surprised, and Irritated.
I find that levity is frustrating,
because it is contradictory to my feeling of irritation.
The frustration is a irritating emotion,
which makes me feel glad again.

You can see from this example,
why I’m never going to be okay.