Hey, Liberal! by Shawn Shiflett

Author:Shawn Shiflett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2016-08-29T04:00:00+00:00

22

Passive Resistance

THE NEXT EVENING, Simon asked, “Dad, did you know a minister named Collins?”

Adam poked his head out from behind the Sports section of the Chicago Daily News. “Huh?” Too tall to fit stretched out on the couch, he’d made do by dangling his huge feet off a cushion. Then, noticing that Simon was tipped far back in the director’s chair, he said, “How many times have I told you, you’re going to break that—”

“Sorry.” Simon landed forward with a heavy thud, lowered the funnies page to his lap, and repeated, “Collins. His son goes to Dexter.”

Adam’s expression changed from that of one stumped to that of one so deeply reflective, it bordered on weary.

“Strange, almost forgot. Terrence Collins. His family moved here from Pittsburg four or five years ago after . . . I met his wife and son once when I was filling in for a pastor on vacation at the Fullerton Avenue Church. Margaret was it? Skinny as a scarecrow and about as undone, too, like she’d tried out three different hairstyles that morning and ended up using parts of all three. Poor woman.”

“And Louis.”

The Sports slipped from Adam’s hands, and a front-page photo of Bobby Hull winding up with a hockey stick to blast a 120-mile-an-hour slap shot toppled face down onto the minister’s rumpled white shirt. “Yeah, Louis, I believe that was his name. A real pistol and couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven at the time. Kind of rangy and with a big head that didn’t quite fit the rest of him. Had this way of meeting your eye that seemed to say, Here I am. When he and his mom came through the receiving line at the back of the sanctuary, he kept shaking my hand, telling me how much he liked my sermon, especially the part where I acted out Goliath getting ‘bonked.’ I said, ‘Yep, David bonked that bully good.’ Louis just laughed and laughed. The kind of kid you instantly like. I haven’t crossed paths with either him or his mother since. Must keep a low profile.”

“Maybe she does,” Simon said. Out of habit, he had slowly begun to tilt back in his chair again. “But I wouldn’t exactly call Louis a low-profile type of guy.”

“Why’s that?” Adam asked. “And will you please stop ruining—”

“Oops.” Simon landed forward again, the loud creaking from his chair’s stressed joints warning him that he was indeed flirting with disaster. “For starters, Louis cuts class, takes drugs, and steals cars—you know, your run-of-the-mill juvenile delinquent.” Then it occurred to Simon that he had flippantly just given his father reason to declare Louis off limits, so he quickly added, “Just kidding. Louis is reeeeeally smart. I hear that colleges are already lining up to kiss his butt. Not that he ever brags about what an Einstein he is. His attitude is Big whoop. Do you know how his father died?”

“Yep. The way the national media—what was it, the spring of ’62?”

The funnies slid to Simon’s knees, teetered, and then swooped—Charlie Brown, Dick Tracy, Dotty, Pogo, B.

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