The Monkeyface Chronicles (13 page)

On the table in front of the degrees, awards, photos and magazine covers, there are several brass-bodied reflector telescopes that he built by hand, grinding and polishing the lenses himself, even the ones in the tiny refractor-style finder scopes mounted on top of each. When Michael and I were four years old, before the Era of Secrecy began, Dad used to take us outside and let us look at far-away things through the telescopes. He also used to let us listen to him talk to people from other countries on his built-from-scratch Ham Radio, its makeshift steel box and archaic analogue gauges now coated in a film of dust.

Atop another table is a collection of my father's propeller-powered radio-controlled airplanes. The bodies of most of them are two to three feet long, each with a single-piston gasoline engine. One looks like a Hawker Hurricane, another like a Fokker Triplane, another like the Avro Arrow. The shattered Ford Tri-Motor, Dad's fastest model, sits in pieces with the others. Dennis was allowed to take the controls on his tenth birthday, and he wasted no time in piloting the miniature Ford on a full-throttle Kamikaze mission into the parking lot of the nearby Tabernacle of God's Will, crashing it through the windshield of Pastor Patrick's Jaguar sedan. Pastor Patrick still gives us the evil eye whenever he sees one of the Skyler family passing the Tabernacle.

Dad's model-aviation
coup de grace
hangs on the wall behind the others — a 747-bodied, four-engined balsa-wood monster with a ten-foot wingspan. Dad chose not to hold Dennis' misdeeds against us, and he promised me and Michael that, on our tenth birthday, we would take it on its inaugural flight. At the time, the telescopes and radio seemed magical, like a wizard's wand and crystal ball, and we couldn't wait to try the plane. Alas, by the time we turned ten, the Era of Secrecy was underway, and the huge model plane still hangs on the wall, unflown. Now thousands of telecommunications satellites orbit the earth. Now there are cell phones and the internet and the Space Channel. Now I am thirteen, and Time and Space are no longer the mysteries they once were, but standing there in the basement, I'm suddenly not sure I want to know my father's dark secrets hidden behind that concrete wall.

“Douchebag!” Dennis hisses. “Get your ass over here. We haven't got all night.” He is standing before my father's Jacob's Ladder. Like the optical telescope Dad helped build for the Royal Astronomical Society, it is probably still the biggest device of its kind in the world. Even the impressive one buzzing and snapping in Frankenstein's lab of the 1950s horror movie is only about two feet tall with an eight-inch gap at the top of the V. My father's is seven feet tall, and it creates a searing electrical arc over two feet wide.

The tall, thick copper wires are connected at the base to a series of huge high-voltage transformers. Electrical transformers with enough power for my father's ambitions couldn't be manufactured legally in North America, so dad procured and wired together several made in Italy, called the
Fabriano
Alto Regani Transformatori
. It used to make Michael and I giggle uncontrollably that each was labeled “F.A.R.T.” And what a fart they produced! We would shriek and laugh as the blue-white arcs of electricity buzzed and crackled upward between the tall copper wires, and we would jump every time an arc broke at the top with a loud snap.

The telescopes and the Ham radio were cool, the model airplanes were cooler, but the Jacob's Ladder confirmed it: when we were little kids, we had the Coolest Father in the World.

“Okay, Douchebag,” Dennis says. “As soon as I fire this baby up, I want you to go upstairs and . . . ”

“Are you out of your mind?” I protest. “Dad will be down here any minute! If he doesn't notice the lights flicker when you plug it in, he'll definitely smell the ionized air from the electrical arc! And what's this got to do with Dad and me?”

“Aw, stop bein' such a pussy, Mister Science. I'm only gonna run it for a moment. The faster you do your job, the less time it will have to be plugged in.”

“Dennis! Get serious! You could burn the house down! We don't even know if it works right anymore. It hasn't been plugged in since . . . ”

“ . . . Since our neighbors started complaining that their television reception was being disrupted,” he says with a cackle.

When our father realized that the Jacob's Ladder was responsible, the device was officially retired. Now I understand what Dennis is up to.

“You want to use the Jacob's Ladder to disrupt people's TVs, so you can sell them a phony fix, just like you did with the Y2K thing.”

“Smart boy,” Dennis says. “But I don't want to sell them a
phony fix
. I want to sell them subscriptions to satellite TV. Profitable
and
legit.”

“What? How?”

“In
Techno Entrepreneur
they tell you how to become a sales agent for this new satellite TV company that covers the whole continent, even hick towns like Faireville.”

“Nobody needs satellite TV here. Faireville's on top of a hill. You can get all the channels you could ever want with a bunny-ear antenna. There's a reason the cable company in Gasberg never bothered to offer service out here.”

“
Ah, Grasshopper
,” Dennis says, with a fake Chinese accent, “but when their bunny ears fail them, I will offer them satellite TV, at a fraction of the cost of cable. And I'll be rich! And when I'm rich, I'll pay to get your face fixed. Promise.”

I sigh. He kept his promise last time. He paid me triple for the computer disks, just like he said he would.

“
SHIT
!” Dennis hollers. “Fucking
HELL
!”

“What?”

In one hand he holds up the power cord connected to the F.A.R.T. transformer, in the other, its severed plug. It was likely cut off by my father, to prevent stunts like the one Dennis is intent on pulling.

“Gimme your jackknife,” Dennis demands.

“Why?”

“To strip back the insulation so I can splice the plug back on.” He holds out his hand.

I reluctantly remove my grandfather's jackknife from my front pocket and hand it to him.

“This sure is a sweet knife,” Dennis says. “It must be worth a few bucks. Nice that
Grandpa
cares about
you
.”

“He must have given you
something
for your thirteenth birthday.”

“Right. You got this antique knife, and Michael got a gold-plated watch. You know what I got? A fucking
dollar
.”

“A dollar?”

“A silver dollar with the year 1983 on it. The year I was born.
Grandpa
made such a big friggin' deal out of it,” Dennis grumbles, as he peels the plastic insulation from the thick copper cable. “They quit making ‘em out of actual silver in 1967, so it isn't even really a silver dollar. It's a
nickel
dollar. How goddamned
cheap
.”

“Maybe it was supposed to be symbolic,” I offer. “Michael's watch represents the value of time. My knife represents strength, or courage, I think. Maybe your silver dollar is about the value of money.”

“
Nickel
dollar,” Dennis corrects. “I don't think he gave it that much thought. It was only
me
, after all.” He twists the bare wire ends together. “But, believe me, I
do
understand the value of a dollar. And I appreciate even more the value of having
lots
of ‘em. Thousands of ‘em. Millions. And you know what you can do to help?”

I shrug.

“Go to the tool box and find me some electrical tape. We don't want my little repair shorting out. That would be bad.”

I find a roll of the black tape, and hand it to him. He slices off two strips with my knife.

“What about Dad?” I ask. “The truth about … why I'm…”

“Not yet. Your most important job is coming up. Dickhead's over at his buddy Toby's place tonight, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And Toby lives in Cardboard Acres, all the way over on the other side of town, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And Dickhead and his bum-chums are watching a hockey game on the TV there, correct?”

“Yes.”

“
Sooooooo
. . . when I activate the Jacob's Ladder, all you have to do is go upstairs, call Dickhead on the phone, and ask him how the game's going, so we can test the radius of our TV-disrupting device here.”

“Why don't you call him yourself?”

“Gimme a break,” Dennis laughs. “Dickhead will suspect something right away if
I
call him. It has to be you.”

“I don't want to get Michael involved in this.”

“Philip,” Dennis says, dropping the power cord and stepping closer to me. He called me Philip again. Twice in one day. “You ever wonder why your twin brother got everything — the looks, the body, the talent, the brains — while you got shafted? After you see what I'm gonna to show you, you're not gonna give a shit about Michael any more.”

“Why don't you tell me
now
. And then I'll decide if I want to help you.”

“Business first,” Dennis says. He grabs the reattached plug and rams it into the wall socket. The fluorescent lights flicker, then white-hot arcs of electricity rise crackling and buzzing between the copper wires. The arcs break just inches from the ceiling, cracking like pistol shots, and the adrenaline surges through me just like when I was a little kid.

In the flickering glare of the snapping arcs Dennis seems to have a deranged expression on his face as he points at the door to the stairs and barks,
“Go! Go make the call! Now, Douchebag!
Now!”

I run up the stairs.

The nearest phone is in the kitchen. When I get there, my father is still sitting at the table, deep in thought. He doesn't seem to notice the humming sounds emanating at regular intervals from under the kitchen floor any more than he notices me dialing the phone.

“Hey, Michael,” I say into the receiver, “how's the game going?”

“Awesome game!”
Michael says.
“Tied three-three at the end
of the second. Should be a pretty hot third period. Hopefully we'll
get to see it.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, knowing exactly what he means.

“Toby's TV is acting up. He's trying to fix it right now.”

“Well, hey, if he can't fix it, why don't you bring the guys over here to watch the third period?”

I'm only suggesting this in the interest of self-preservation. With witnesses in the house, our father will be less likely to murder me and Dennis for entering the forbidden basement.

Dennis jumps up and down and pumps his fist in the air when I inform him that the TV reception disruption radius of the Jacob's Ladder extends all the way to Cardboard Acres. He uplugs the device and chants, “I'm gonna be rich! I'm gonna be rich!”

We both freeze when we hear voices at the top of the stairs. Our father's Mystery Associate has arrived.

“Quick, Douchebag,” Dennis hisses, “shut off the lights and hide behind the cistern!”

I do as I'm told. Dennis folds himself into the dark crevice between the water heater and the boiler. Seconds later, Dad pushes the basement door open and flicks the switch back on again.

I can't see anything from where I'm hiding, but I hear Dad's companion say, “Jeez, Lanny, is there something burning down here?”

This guy must work with Dad a lot to be so familiar with him. Nobody calls him
Lanny
. Even Mom and our grandfather call him Landon.

There is a pause, then Dad says, “I'm sure it's nothing. Probably just the furnace. Don't worry, there's a separate ventilation system in the studio. It's relatively soundproof, too — we can talk in there.”

“The Centurion,” the other voice says, “is he one of yours?”

“From a long time ago,” Dad says. “I'm on to bigger and better things now.”

“Well, let's go talk about those bigger and better things, Lanny,” the other voice says.

There is the clank of shackles being undone, the creak of the metal door opening and closing, then the faint sound of locks closing on the inside of the laboratory.

“That was close,” Dennis whispers. “We can come out now. They'll be in there for a while.”

I step from behind the cistern, and Dennis wriggles out from his hiding place. He brushes himself off, then stands in front of our father's degrees and awards. “You know what kinds of science
Father
does?” he asks.

I shrug. “He's worked on all sorts of stuff — stellar physics, biochemistry, genetics . . . ”

“Stop right there!” Dennis says. He points to the framed cover of
Biochemistry Quarterly
, the one with the picture of my father and a colleague.
Pioneers of the Double Helix.
“
Genetics
is the science
Father
currently practices.”