If Rock and Roll Were a Machine by Terry Davis

Author:Terry Davis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

Chapter 19

He Hath Borne Me on His Back a Thousand Times

It has not been a good day for Bert. He turned in his Camille Shepard profile and Darby held it in her hand as though she were weighing it, looked at him with sad astonishment, and said, “Bowden, you are such an egg. You are such an incredible, inedible egg. Did The Explorer get into book publishing while I was at lunch?”

“I liked it,” the Hmongster said. He walked over from the darkroom and tossed a fat file folder on the table. “And we’ve got mass photos.”

“I’ll read it when I can,” Darb Varder said, “and maybe by spring I’ll have cut it down to a length we can use.”

The piece was a little long—forty-eight pages. Bert knew he’d gotten carried away. He’d tried to keep it short. But the more he learned about Camille and Scotty and Rita and Steve and Camille’s mom and both his grandfathers and even his stepdad, the more fascinated he became. And if it was fascinating to him, why wouldn’t it be fascinating to other people? Bert knew he was a little off-center, but he didn’t think he was that different from everybody else.

Maybe he could break it into separate articles. Like the stuff about French schools. The French school system was an academic Marine Corps compared to the American system. A contributing cause of Camille’s breakdown in the shower was probably delayed stress. Who wouldn’t be interested in that?

Bert’s problem was that he was interested in everything. That was one of his problems, anyway.

The profile was one thing that went wrong. Then at work Bert put his coffee cup on the stove to keep it warm, and it melted. It was plastic. And it was the second plastic cup he’d done that to.

Steve, who’d walked in the back door, noticed it right away. “What’s that ugly shit on the stove?” he said.

It had been a Sinclair gas station cup. Mostly white, red lettering, green handle, green dinosaur. What remained was still mostly white, but that was the only resemblance. It looked like a mutant marshmallow that had melted off the roasting stick. But the green and the little swirl of red added a vomitous quality.

Before Scotty or Dave could expose Bert as the dufus responsible, Steve spoke again. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “The last two remaining California condors flew in here and took a tandem dump?”

Scotty walked back into the showroom and Dave returned to grinding valves. Bert remained at the computer, where he was logging parts. “No, huh?” Steve said. “Well, I guess Bootsie was keepin’ his coffee hot in a plastic cup again?”

Bert rose from his chair, grabbed some welding gloves and a chisel, and scraped the malodorous goo off the stove. “I get all these parts numbers in my head, and I just forget,” he said.

On his way out Steve stopped behind Bert’s chair. “Make sure you stay off your head goin’ home, Bootsie,” he said. “It might be about time to put that H-D away for the year.

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