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Instant Car, Ma "We have some great news for you, Evan Walks. You are not just the number one contributor to weirdworldtravel.com, you were in the top ten for all bloggers last week. Getting that picture of the tribal chief with his feather hat and a Pepsi can both covered with a jumbo jet load of, um, brown gold—that’s made our site hotter than global warming! I’ve just got one question,” the voice seven thousand miles away in San Francisco wondered. “I won’t tell anybody and it doesn’t matter now, but I’m curious, Walks. Did you stage the, uh…?” “The shit shot? Yeah, of course I did.” Evan could hear the sigh over his cell phone like his boss was breathing next to him. “My part was easy. It was a lot tougher for the pilot to aim his load from thirty thousand feet.” “Very funny, Walks. I just want you to know that the whole crew over here are happy geeks either way. We’ve Fed-Ex’ed you an old fashioned film camera to so there won’t be any more problems with the jungle rain. “That leaves only one problem. How do I top this?” As the sun set over his abandoned sloop in San Francisco Bay, it rose in front of Evan’s eyes in Papua like a rapidly ascending orange rubber ball thrown by a toddler. He walked to the ATM machine in town to check his bank balance again. A thousand dollars. This was the bonus for his making number one contributor. He could afford another phone call home. “Hi dad.” “Well, hello Evinrude!” His father’s voice sounded clear, and victorious. “I knew you could do it, son. We heard about your adventures, and we’re so proud of you.” “It was only a…” There was a sigh from the phone, then another. “Sorry, just a second,” Evan’s father interrupted. “That’s my breather still on.” “What’s a breather?” “Y’know, for my sleep apnea—a tube up each nostril pumping pure oxygen into my lungs when I go to bed. Now I can sleep like a baby that’s just sucked on mama’s tit, son.” “How are you feeling, dad?” “Y’know getting old isn’t for pussies. I feel like an old car that needs daily maintenance and a quart of oil even if you don’t drive it.” “It’s better not to drive cars anyway.” Evan felt the words coming out of his mouth before he knew it was happening. “You should at least stop selling those horrible Hummers at your dealership that get the same gas mileage as a tank.” |
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The sighing at the other end stopped, replaced by a much louder silence. “I’m only a Motown boy and don’t know any better. I must have made a mistake sending you and your sister to the best schools, feeding and clothing you with the blood money I make giving people what they want.” “What they want?!” Evan could feel his money, time and self-respect vanish into the air between their distant continents. “You and people like you are the ones who tell us what we want, and then make a killing giving it to ‘em—and you’re not going to stop until there’s no more oxygen to breath unless we pay for it through the nose, and inhale it back the other way through plastic tubes.” For a moment, Evan’s head was dizzy with the power of his angry words. Since the oil spill on his beloved San Francisco Bay, he felt there had no more unpolluted sailboat home. “O.K. Ev.” The pain from those words would keep Evan awake that night. “You got a call from Global News Service yesterday. I think they want to give you a job. Congratulations.” “What do you care about that, dad? It only gives you something to brag about to your car salesman buddies. You don’t care about whether I’m doing good work or not. You’ve never looked at any of the pictures I’ve taken before this shit shot anyway!” “If you feel that way about it, then you don’t need me anymore.” The orange sun hid behind the clouds, and the morning became electric as he switched on the light in his room to illuminate the gloom. “Good luck, son.” Evan looked at his bank balance. “I don’t need the thousand you’ve been sending me for the last six months either, dad. Good luck to you.” Evan ended the call and tried to sleep without success. He could finally make it on his own, he thought, as he looked at his balance again. His angels—or for the more scientific of our readers, the uncountable number of unconscious brain connections developed through his ancestral DNA and family history—knew better. They were aware, when he saw reflected in the mirror an exact replica of his father at the same age, that Evan Walks would never be alone even across the widest oceans.` |
| Rocky Times |
| December 29, 2007 |
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