Oliver's Travels by Clifford Garstang

Author:Clifford Garstang
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
Published: 2012-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

21

Silly’s baby is born: Suzanne Quentin Reynolds, to be known as Suzy Q. Silly emails pictures. Mom oohs and aahs and bugs me to drive her back to Indiana for a quick visit. So here we are, just weeks after Q’s funeral.

Mom’s upstairs with the baby and the twins, who are quiet for a change. Jacob is at work, I suppose. With nothing better to do, I head over to Dad’s because Silly says he’s having a hard time dealing with Q’s death. She thinks it will do him good to be reminded that he has another son.

I phoned from Silly’s, so I know he’s expecting me. I let myself in.

“Pop?” I call.

He’s sitting in his recliner, eyes open, staring straight ahead. No mistaking me for Q’s ghost, at least, but he doesn’t seem to recognize me at all.

“Are you okay, Pop?”

Now he looks at me, lifts just his fingers in a sort of wave. I sit and we stare at each other for a minute, then I get up and go to the kitchen.

“You want something?” I ask. There’s beer in the fridge so I grab one for each of us. I open the cans, stall, then head back into the living room.

We sip our beers. I know he’s still suffering over Q’s death. I am too. But drinking beer and keeping my father company is not the real reason I’m here. No time like the present, so I take a deep breath and start.

“Pop, why won’t anyone talk about Uncle Scotty?” I pull that old album out from under the coffee table and turn to the page where his picture used to be. I point to the blank spot. “Not Mom, not Silly, not you. What’s the deal?”

“Dead,” he says.

“So you said. But I don’t believe you. If it were that simple, I’d know about it. You’ve all erased him from memory, and I want to know why.”

“No.”

“Tell me about him.”

“My little brother. You were named after him.”

“My real name is Scott?”

“His real name was Oliver. Oliver Scott Tucker.” My father’s eyes close, and he appears to have fallen asleep.

“Dad?”

He begins to snore, and the interrogation is over.

I had his name wrong all this time. No wonder I couldn’t find him.

***

With everything that’s been going on in my life—teaching and Mary and especially Q’s death, trips back and forth to Indiana—my writing has fallen by the wayside. I’ve missed it, missed escaping into Oliver’s world.

What’s he been up to?

We’re back in Virginia now, and I pull out the notebook.

Oliver has long suspected that the reason his Uncle Sandy disappeared is that he was involved with drugs, using or selling. But no one in his family talks about him, and so he can’t be sure. What else could it be?

Oliver wonders, what happened to Uncle Sandy?

***

Coffee-shop Jennifer comes up with the bright idea that the cafe should host an open mic night for local writers, and she urges me to sign up.

I don’t know what to expect, having never done anything like this before.

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