The New Magic - The Revelation of Jonah McAllister - Landon Wark (bill gates best books TXT) 📗

pulled it out, praying that it was from the recruitment agency or from one of the hiring managers to whom he had been sending chains of emails. His brow furrowed. It was a request.

"Did you list my address?" he asked across the length of the yard.

"Hermp?"

"My address. You're giving it out to clients?"

"Now why, for all the crazy in Crazy Horse, would I want anyone talking to you on th'internet? The way you're putting commie garbage all over the socials."

Wanting to get back pay for all the overtime he had put in at the lab was apparently 'commie garbage' now.

"Welfare is pretty commie," he replied. "Maybe I should be doing that instead of this."

Clay grimaced at the way he could practically hear the rotting teeth clack together as the old man laughed. "You been home for six months now. You still got students loans to pay off? Eleven damn years of student loans. Your commie shit gonna take care of that?"

"Jesus Christ." Clay pushed down on the safety bar and yanked on the pull cord, desperate to keep that sound and the content that came with it out of his ears.

He manoeuvred the push mower awkwardly around the last of the planters and trees doing a slipshod job at first and then going back over it while the old man rolled his eyes from the cab. Finally he angrily dropped the tailgate of the truck and hoisted the grunge encrusted mower into the rear.

Dropping into the passenger seat Clay wiped his forehead for the sixth time in five minutes. The silence between the two of them faded as the engine started and they pulled away from the freshly painted bungalow. Things had been at least tolerable growing up, mostly because Clay hadn't known any better, but as soon as he had left for college his mom had made her escape and dad had gone on a long downhill slide that Clay had been mostly oblivious to. Now...

"All your pissiness ain't gonna make things any better," the old man said.

It was the closest thing to advice the old man had ever given him, but that didn't make it good advice, just the 'wow, thanks, I'm cured' kind of advice.

"But it feels so good," Clay muttered as he glanced at the email on his phone.

He had been mistaken. It was a notification that there was a reply to one of his posts. He was complaining about mowing lawns and some jackass had replied asking him to come take a look at theirs. He owed the old man an apology, but it would have to wait for things to settle between the two of them. Maybe in a week or two.

"What've you got 'gainst working for a living anyway?"

Clay's brow furrowed. It wasn't the kind of question the old man normally asked. Actually the only questions the old man asked were the rhetorical kind, the kind that said he thought he was right about something, but was just trying to drag the right wording out of you so he could shoot it down.

"Mostly the heat."

The old man pulled a cigarette out of the pack crammed into his pocket and lit it.

"Can you at least roll down a window?"

"You answer me without any of your wise-ass comments."

"Jesus."

"Or blasphemy."

Clay grit his teeth.

"All right, fine. You mow the grass on Monday, by Sunday it needs to get cut again. It's Sisyphean."

"Think of it as keeping the wilderness at bay if it makes you feel any better. And the point is, it keeps a roof over your head. Think about that before you go calling your old man a sissy."

"Yeah, well, there's real problems out there that need solving. And could you stop acting like everything is my fault, for a change."

"I told you. When you went off to that pinko factory."

"Pinko? Just because you wish it was nineteen seventy four doesn't mean you need to talk like it is."

"I said they were gonna take your money, fill your head with all sorts of useless garbage and when it came time to give you a job they were gonna pick the guys who went to Harvard. Or... what'd you say 'All the dinks who failed out of med school'. That is your fault. You and your mom. Never listening."

Clay clenched his fists. "You know what. Stop the truck. I'm getting out."

The truck didn't slow.

"You both think you're so smart. Well, fifteen years after the divorce and who's come begging for cash, huhn?"

"Stop the truck, dad."

Clay's hands shook as they grasped for the door handle. His vision blurred around the peripheries. Even the exhaustion from pushing the mower around did little to calm the fury that was rippling through his arms.

"You settle for a roof over your head and a girl in your bed. Anything else is just asking for disappointment."

"Stop the truck."

"Can't stop. You got a new request? Gotta check it out."

"Just stop the fucking truck! I'll call an Uber or something! Just... go home and sit in front of your TV for a while."

As the old truck slowed down for a light Clay pulled the lock and slipped out of his seat belt. Before the old man could react he was out of the door and standing on the sidewalk. The light flicked to green. The truck paused for a moment with the wrinkled face staring at him in disbelief before one of the cars behind him started honking. With a shake of his head the old man shoved the cigarette into his mouth and drove off.

Clay ran his hand through the thinning edges of his hair and paced down the sidewalk a ways. He clenched and unclenched his fists with every other step, enacting a small play about a madman on the sidewalk for all