Inflating a Dog (The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy) by Eric Kraft (novels to read for beginners .txt) 📗

my order carefully and precisely: four hamburgers, two of them rare, two medium-rare, all with fried onions; two large orders of french fries; a medium order of cole slaw; and three strawberry shortcakes. Leon shoveled some chopped onions from the pile that was always ready in a rear corner of the griddle, partially cooked, glistening, sizzling, guaranteeing that the pungent aroma of the Night-and-Day would accompany the diners when they departed, lodged in their coats and sweaters and hair.

“You want anything else on those burgers, Sport?” he asked, and then swung right into the list he liked to rattle off, “Cheese? Lettuce? Tomato? Fried peppers? Relish? Ketchup? Pickles? Chow-chow? Sprinkles? Chopped nuts? Whipped cream? A cherry?” Usually, he continued through a list of pizza toppings, from anchovies to pepperoni, but this time he raised a hand to stop himself, and me if I had intended to join in, and said, “Uh-oh, now we have got to hush up and listen, because that’s my man Rolly Dunham coming on the radio.” It was the Rolly Dunham Quartet: piano, bass, drums, and Dunham on the tenor sax. He was playing a solo, and its effect was immediate. It lifted me. It transported me. I could feel myself growing larger and lighter. He was playing a version of a tune that I didn’t recognize, but one that I would never forget, and even now, whenever I hear it on a recording, the sound of Dunham’s saxophone seems to hold within it the thick, earthy aroma of hot fat and fried onions. When the song ended, I was still floating. Dunham was a master of inflation.

Leon went back to his work at the griddle, but he kept shaking his head as if what we had heard could not have been real. “Oh, man,” he said, “did you hear that cat blow?”

“I did,” I said.

“I tell you,” said Leon with another incredulous shake of the head, “that cat could inflate a dog.”

He probably could have. He was a gas tank, a dispenser of lifting gas, a madman of the very first rank. His music was a gas, and he was a gasser, and I was a convert. Doo-wop might have had the power to float bright iridescent bubbles on a summer breeze, but jazz could do some heavy lifting; like hydrogen and hot air combined, it was magical and strong and dangerous, and it blew me up.

WE ATE OUR HAMBURGERS in the living room, at the folding tables, “TV tables,” that we used when we ate in front of television. My mother picked at her hamburger, took it apart, put it back together, and passed it from hand to hand, but ate hardly any of it. When my father and I had finished, she gave me a look, and I followed her to the kitchen. She lit a cigarette and puffed at it nervously. Together, we read again and again the list of things to be done the next day and the supplies that we had to be sure to have with us, planning the work and our assignments, and when we had done everything that we could do without being down on the Bolotomy, on board Arcinella, she said, “We’ve got to get a really early start.”

“I know,” I said.

“Do you think Patti will be ready?”

“Sure she will.”

“I hope so.”

A moment of silence. In that moment, an idea occurred to me; perhaps it would be better, more honest, to say that a desire overcame me.

“I wonder,” I said, attempting an attitude of cool indifference to the reception that my mother might accord the proposal I was about to make, “if Patti should spend the night here — you know — so that we could all get up and get going as early as possible.”

Another moment of silence. My mother was considering the idea. For this moment, this brief exhilarating moment, I was able to believe that Patti Fiorenza might actually spend the night in my house.

Perhaps my mother was able to hear my heart pumping hot blood at a rapid rate, because she looked at me and rolled her eyes and almost laughed.

“Just an idea,” I said, though we both knew that it had been more than that. With a sheepish grin I said, “Well, I’d better get some sleep,” and I went up to bed.

Chapter 28

“No Harm Done, Most Likely”

VERY EARLY the next morning we drove to Patti’s, picked her up, and went on to Captain Mac’s. He was going to make his last trip aboard Arcinella, piloting her from the canal at the end of the street where he lived to the berth along the quay on Bolotomy Road where she would reside as my mother’s boat, and he had invited us to be on board for the voyage.

What a great pleasure it was to ride in my mother’s old car through Babbington that morning. The town was calm and quiet, but it was waking up, experiencing the moment of pause before great effort, the moment of inhalation and expectation, like the moment before the weight-lifter grunts and lifts, and all the people we couldn’t see as we rolled past their houses were pulling themselves together, taking a deep breath, and preparing to go about their business. The air was fresh and light, cool and clear, but it held the promise of heat, and the thrill of possibility. The memory of that early hour and its potential has made me prefer the early morning to all other times of day. A time comes in life, unless we are very lucky, when one day is likely to be much the same as any other, and I have lived through too many days like that, days defined by what must be done and what goes wrong and nothing else, but morning, particularly the early morning, when most people haven’t begun the day, still holds all of the promise that it did on that morning when we stepped aboard Arcinella, a morning that