Chameleon (27 page)

Yank!

“Shawn, pay attention!”

Dad yanked me out of the path of a bike that couldn’t avoid me unless I moved, and since I didn’t move, he did it for me.

“What I tell you? Miss Thing had your tongue out like a dog.”

Exhale. Pay attention, Shawn.

We wandered around some more, and Dad took pictures of me acting a fool: me stuffing a hot dog in my mouth, then opening it; me pretending to jump off the pier; me in front of a pack of women with their backs turned and their butt cheeks hanging out of their bathing suits; me running on the sand — stuff like that. He let me do a few of him, and since he brought the tripod, we also did a few of the two of us together. We stayed at the pier long enough to catch the sunset and got a good picture of it behind us. We did a couple of serious ones and a few more silly ones, and when the film ran out, we headed back to the car. The air was still nice and warm, even though the sun was down.

“Where to now?”

“Home.”

“Home?”

Dad looked over at me as we peeled out of the parking lot. “Yeah, home. It’s getting late.”

I glanced down at my watch: 7:45. That’s not late. I felt like hanging outside some more — and seeing more flesh.

“It’s only 7:45. We could catch a movie or something.”

“Shawn, we been here long enough; my feet are tired. I think it’s time we headed home. Besides, ain’t nothing I wanna see anyway.”

Before I even had a chance to run through all the beautiful bodies I had just seen, number 100 on the mailbox was before my eyes. The last girl’s “corners” sashayed into my brain as Dad shut the car off. Dang! She disappeared into thin air when I got out. Maybe I’ll see her tonight in my dreams.

“YOU GOT ANYTHING to eat, Dad?”

“Don’t tell me you’re still hungry? You just ate a bunch of hot dogs not long ago.”

“Yeah but that was a while ago. I’m hungry again.”

“There should be stuff for a sandwich in the fridge.”

Dad disappeared into his room. I stepped into the kitchen and found some ham, cheese, and mustard but no bread. Dad reappeared with his chessboard.

“You up for a game?”

“Yeah, let me just finish making this. Where’s the bread?”

“It should be in the basket near the microwave. If it’s not there, then I’m all out.”

Sandwich fixed, cut, and ready to be eaten, I joined Dad in a game of chess. He taught me when I was little, but I never quite figured out the whole “thinking a couple moves ahead” thing.

“Black or white?”

I took a big bite out of my sandwich and chewed. “Black.”

Dad plucked my pieces off the board one by one with ease, taking my queen before I was even halfway through my sandwich, on his way to swift victory — as usual. By the second game, my sandwich was gone, so I tried to take my time and go slower, but it didn’t matter — new strategy, same result. In one move he handcuffed my knight, bishop, and rook and blocked my queen so she couldn’t get through to help.

“How’d you do that?”

He scratched his goatee.

“I know what you like to do, so I just thought ahead of you. I knew you were gonna move your knight here to try and get my queen, but that was just a setup by me the whole time. When your knight couldn’t do anything, you brought in your bishop to help, and that’s when I went for the kill. Basically . . . I played you.” His hands went behind his head and he said, “Check.”

Dang! I moved my king around a few times, but I knew it was only a matter of time before he would say “checkmate.” And four moves later, he did.

“Let’s play something else. Something a little easier, where I can hold my own.”

He got up to go to the fridge. “You want something?”

“Yeah, I’ll take a soda,” I said, smacking my lips from the sandwich.

I put the chess set away and grabbed the cards. “How ’bout some spades?”

He got up and grabbed two cans from the fridge: a beer for him and a soda for me.

“Sounds good to me.”

We took a seat and popped our cans.

“You wanna shuffle?”

“Of course.”

My eyes bounced back and forth between my shuffling hands and Dad’s beer. He noticed and said, “You wanna taste?”

“Of your beer?”

“Yeah. You keep looking at it.”

“Nahh . . . I took a smell of it yesterday.”

“And?”

“It stinks,” I said, turning up my nose.

“Shawn, you should taste it . . . to see what you’re dealing with.”

Truth is, I did want to taste it. If lots of adults drink it, then it must at least taste good, even though it didn’t smell good. Right?

“All right.”

I pulled the can up to my lips and took a sniff; it smelled like sweaty armpits. I closed my eyes and took a swallow, then gagged. “Ughhh.”

“I was hoping you would say that.” He laughed as I tried to wash it down with my soda.

“How do you drink that?”

“It’s an acquired taste,” he said, taking another sip.

The sight alone put the taste back onto my tongue. I took another sip of soda.

“Dad, I’m confused. You said last night that alcoholics drink to forget their problems, not for the taste. But what about you? That tastes terrible, and you’re still drinking it?”

“You’re right. Like I said, beer is an acquired taste, and I’ve had years to get used to it. The fact is, Shawn, everybody drinks for different reasons. Most people drink because it helps them relax . . . after work, watching a game, playing cards.” He nodded at our hands. “The problem is, if you drink too much, you don’t just get relaxed — you get drunk, and I don’t have to tell you what that looks like.”

POP — Auntie on the couch. POP — Auntie slurring words.

Yeah, I know what that looks like.

“I know my limit, but some people don’t.”

I threw down a five of spades and took his jack of hearts.

“You been playin’ with your mother? ’Cause you finally seem to have gotten the hang of this.”

“A li’l bit.”

Dad got up and returned to his seat with a can of Beer Nuts.

“So how is your mother these days . . . aside from you guys fighting and stuff?”

“She’s fine. Just the other day I asked her about going to school in Carson because of Auntie, and she didn’t even want to think about it.”

I dealt a new hand.

“Well, the offer is on the table now, so . . . the choice is
yours
.” Dad popped some peanuts into his mouth after popping open the can.

“You gonna play any sports when you go to school?” He tossed down a five of hearts and added, “Whichever school that may be?”

I sorted my hand between soda sips.

“I don’t know. My friend Andre wants me to try out for the basketball team with him. We play well together, and I never even thought about it until he told me that I’m the only one that locks him up on D — and he’s the best of the four of us!”

“So your D’s gotten even tighter, huh?”

“Yeah . . . you know . . . I don’t want anybody scoring on me. I may not score much, but they won’t score much on me either.”

“All right now.”

Dad sorted more cards.

“So what do you think you’re gonna do?”

He tipped his can back until it was empty and got up to get another one.

“I don’t know. Right now I’m leaning toward Marshall, of course, because my friends will be there. But the other day me and the fellas were talking about how many people go to Marshall.”

“How many go there?”

“Something like two thousand!”

“
Two
thousand? Wow! That’s a lot.”

“Tell me about it. We were wondering how much we’ll see each other with so many people. We thought we’d at least get to see each other at lunch, but there’s, like, three lunch periods, so that might not even happen.”

I tipped my can back to empty it and started choking.

“You OK?”

I caught my breath. “Just went down the wrong way.” Then I cleared my throat and said, “And of course there’s Marisol.”

“Of course! Girls always figure into the equation somehow. You run any game on her?”

Game? The only game I have is in basketball.

“I wouldn’t even know what to say. Most of the time I can’t even look her in the eye . . . I get all tongue-tied.”

Dad dug out a handful of peanuts and fed them into his mouth one at a time.

“You telling me my boy ain’t got no game? I know you’re not telling me that. Right?”

I shrugged. “What can I say? I’m only fourteen. You got any suggestions?”

I got up and grabbed another soda.

“Shoot, age ain’t nothin’ but a number. Game is all about confidence. Now, let me ask you this: When you play ball, you believe you can lock anybody up on D, right?”

“Yeah, usually.”

“Usually?”

“OK, yeah.”

“Yeah. So when you see her, just bring that thinking to her.”

I plucked individual peanuts from the can.

“I don’t understand. You want me to pretend like . . . I’m playing D on her?”

Dad laughed.

“No, no, no. I’m saying you gotta believe in yourself that you can do it — that you can talk to her. Try it next time you see her. Your friends are probably right when they say she wants to talk to you.”

“What you mean?”

“I mean . . . your friends can usually see what you can’t — they can see how she smiles at you, but you can’t because you’re too busy trying not to look at her. Right?”

“Right.”

“See, what you gotta do is talk about
her;
girls love that. A lot of bruthas think they gotta use corny pickup lines and stuff, but listen, all girls really want . . . is to be treated nice — and with respect. Compliment her. Flirt with her a little bit. Get in close and tell her how nice she smells. Stuff like that.”

I nodded and remembered Marisol spinning her back to me to show me her hair; I did say something to her about it.

“So does Carson have any chance?”

“Of course. Otherwise my mind would be made up already. Having some privacy after school would be nice. Not having to deal with Auntie or the Crips and Pirus would be nice too . . . real nice.”

I pointed to my eye as I plucked more peanuts. Dad inspected it a little closer.

“It looks much better. Swelling’s gone down, but it’s still a little purple. It should be gone by next week.”

Cool. I didn’t want Marisol to see me with my eye like this, because she might get the wrong idea; she might think I like to fight or something. Maybe I won’t see her again until it’s gone.

“I saw your last report card by the way — great job. Especially in English.”

I popped more peanuts into my mouth and crunched a “Thanks.”

“You keep that up and you can go to any college you want. You know what you wanna do after high school?”

I scratched my head and took a sip of soda.

“I don’t know. I was thinking about a couple of things: college, the navy . . .”

“The navy? What made you think about that?”

“You always have good things to say about it, and my friend Andre has a brother who’s in the navy now as a firefighter. He travels the world, meets lots of girls,
and
he gets paid for it. That’s what I wanna do. I wanna travel, see the world . . . do something I wouldn’t normally do, ya know?” I grabbed a few peanuts, then added, “I haven’t thought about it a whole lot, but the thought did cross my mind. How did you like being in the navy?”

Dad leaned back in his chair and looked to the ceiling. A smile came across his face as he lowered his eyes back toward me.

“I wanted to see the world too, but I didn’t have any money. That’s why I joined the navy. I was a supply clerk on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific near the Philippines. If you needed something, you saw me,” he said, pointing to his chest with pride. “When I finished basic, I wanted to be assigned as a photographer, but a friend of mine told me it’d be easier to take pictures of whatever I wanted if I did something else.”

Dad filled his hand with more peanuts, then continued: “I made some great friends and traveled to places I probably would have never seen otherwise. But for you . . .”— he crossed his arms —“for you . . . I see more.”

He took a sip of beer before he looked me in the eye.

“It’d be better if you went to college first. Then you could at least be an officer and have more options. I can see you doing that.” He tipped his beer upside down before adding, “Trust me, it’s better to give orders than take ’em, and you’re a natural leader — smart, courageous . . .” He pointed at my eye.

I reached my hand in for more peanuts but came up with dust, so I sat back in my chair and finished off my soda. Dad got up to clear the table, and I gave him a hand.

“Did I mention I photographed plenty of girls?” he asked, then answered his own question with “Oh, yeah. High school, the navy, and ever since. And you know what?”

I grabbed the cards off the table. “What?”

“They all loved having their picture taken. Every last one of them.”

Kitchen cleaned and the clock past eleven, we headed off to bed. As I stepped into my room, Dad came out of his and said: “Matter of fact, that’s how I met your mother.”