Kevin Kling's Holiday Inn (15 page)

The bat now sits in the corner of my office, tape on the handle. I await my brother’s call.

SUMMER SOLSTICE  

I consider
The Beverly Hillbillies
to be one of the finest examples of the television art form. Seamless performances, strong in characters and plot, high in entertainment value, and chock-full of sound advice and words to the wise. Its hero, and a personal spiritual guide, was the soft-spoken patriarch Jed Clampett. Lord Clampett (for it was discovered in one episode that he was indeed the Earl of Clampett) once said almost in passing, “If you’re too busy to go fishing, you’re too busy.” Those words struck me. Granted, that’s easy for him to say, with $156 million in Mr. Drysdale’s bank. But still, he has a point. I am ashamed to admit that the last few months I have been too busy to actually
go
fishing, but thank goodness that has not stopped me from flipping on the television and watching one or two of those fishing shows. I feel strongly that a bit of leisure time, although brief and channeled through another, is essential for resting my oft-overworked Muse. My friend Marie calls this “composting,” but it’s basically lying around with a bag of chips watching another guy fish on TV.

These fishing shows used to have celebrities like Bing Crosby battling some respectable palm-sized sunnies, but now they have these experts—taut, tawny, and tanned, with neatly trimmed beards, wearing new flannel shirts just out of the box. They don’t seem the type that reads for pleasure, but with calculated ease, they can deduce, enrage, or confuse a multitude of sizeable trophy fish into life-threatening action, all the while using only the fishing products they personally endorse. And every year they come out with brand new and improved gadgets that use sonar or radar or NASA space shuttle technology. There’s the high-test fishing line that’s not only invisible to the fish, but can also pull your Winnebago out of the ditch.

One day, though, there was this new host on a show, and he’s got a pencil-thin mustache, and he’s wearing a loud suit and tie. Definitely not a guy you’d want frying up your Shore Lunch. But he claims his new “Wonderlure” will not only catch the fish, it will actually change your life. He asks you to give this Wonderlure a try and see if once you’ve caught some fish—and you
will
catch fish—you don’t feel better about yourself. And, when you feel better about yourself, you carry yourself differently. You’re confident, aggressive, and people will naturally sense that and treat you with respect. Then he pulls out the testimonials. He read a letter from a guy in Cleveland who wrote to say he used the lure, and after limiting out went home and gave his wife a hug. She said, “What have you done with my husband?” After a season of unbelievable luck, he put away the bottle and was spending quality time with his kids. His marriage was saved, thanks to the Wonderlure. Another gentleman, with the confidence provided by a nice stringer of fish, went out and made wise investments, and they showed a helicopter landing on the roof of a building, which I guess belonged to the lucky fisherman. Another guy met his future wife at the tackle shop when they both reached down for the exact same Wonderlure. Another guy lost a hundred and sixty pounds. Another guy used the lure to find his long-lost birth parents. Story after story.

Then the announcer came to a letter that was hard for him to read. He took a deep breath and relayed the story of this woman’s husband, a man dying of a terminal illness. This man had led a good life, but knew his time had come. He had but one last wish: to land one more nice one. But the Fates had conspired to see him time and again come back empty or with just a couple of measly perch. In a last-ditch effort, he purchased a Wonderlure, and with his clock winding down, came home with not one, but the limit of nice ones, all keepers. His wife wrote to report he had left this world in peace and had actually lived three weeks longer than the “so-called experts” said he would. Now the announcer is crying, tears streaming down his face. I’m crying too. I yell into the other room to my girlfriend, “Mary, maybe we ought to get one of these lures, honey, you know, just in case?”

She says, “Get two.” She’s going to use hers to save the rain forest.

ANNIVERSARY  

When I was a boy, my parents sometimes sought a night on the town, and they almost always went out on their wedding anniversary. One year, locating a babysitter was left to the final hour. I watched my father, dressed in a tuxedo, frantically leafing through an address book and dialing through the list. When my beautifully adorned mother descended the stairs, my father informed her he had asked his brother to watch over me. He quickly assured her that all other avenues were blocked, and it was either his brother or an evening at home.

My uncle arrived shortly.

My uncle was thought of as a loose cannon, a loner. My dad used to say he had a penny in his fuse box. At family gatherings, his job was to watch the parked cars or tend the barbecue. Something outside. These tasks suited him fine, and his pork ribs were incredible. In confidence, he explained the secret. “There are three things I never wash, and one’s my grill.”

When my uncle arrived, my father told him, “Just put the boy to bed, that’s all. Maybe tell him a story.”

“No,” my mother pleaded.

“All right,” my father said. “Read him a story, he has plenty of books.”

No sooner had the door latched behind them than my uncle turned to me and said, “Put on your shoes, we’re going out.”

Into the night we walked, hand in hand, to the forbidden area of town, where the buildings were boarded shut and weeds grew in the cracks of the sidewalks. We came to an abandoned movie theater.

“Before it was a movie theater,” my uncle told me, “it was a vaudeville house, then a church, a pawn shop, and a bordello. They say it’s haunted by a magician who was stiffed by the management. Now hurry up,” he whispered. “We’re late.”

We went around back and entered an auditorium. The seats were already full of people, smoking, laughing, and talking. Odd people, like my uncle, people who belonged in a house of memories.

The lights dimmed. “Hang on,” my uncle said. The lights came up on an empty stage. Silence. Then off the stage to the right there was a
clump
. The audience tittered.

Then,
clump, clump, clump … clump, clump.

Clump, clump.

Clump, clump, scratch.

Clump, clump, scratch.

People were looking at one another. What is this? My uncle shrugged. I don’t know. Eyes back to the stage.

Clump, clump, scratch.
And then something appeared coming from behind the curtain.
Clump, clump, scratch.

“A boat,” someone shouted. “It’s a boat.”

It was the prow of a boat. The audience laughed. The boat kept coming forward until a man appeared, rowing with all of his might, rowing a wooden boat across the stage.

“Hooray,” shouted the audience. “There’s our man.”

The man continued to row, already perspiring heavily and breathing hard with every pull of the oars. The audience cheered him on.

Clump, clump, scratch. Clump, clump, scratch.

Every once in a while, one of the oars slipped. This was met with a groan from the audience. But the man persisted.
Clump, clump, scratch. Clump, clump, scratch.

The work was enormous, the progress minimal. In time the crowd began to get restless. Some people started talking among themselves. Some started smoking. My uncle strained his neck. Surely there must be more. What are we missing? But there was nothing. The man continued to row.

Clump, clump, scratch. Clump, clump, scratch.

Finally someone in the crowd yelled, “Get off the stage.”

“That’s enough,” yelled another.

People whistled. A wad of paper flew at the boat.

“Stop it.”

“Boooo, boooo.”

“It’s all right, uncle, I’m having fun.”

He let the air out through his nose and looked back at the stage. By now the audience seemed to have forgotten they were at a performance. They laughed, chatted, drank from flasks. The man continued.
Clump, clump, scratch. Clump, clump, scratch.

Suddenly, my uncle turned to me, “Beautiful,” he said. Now there was a smile on his face. I looked at the stage. Nothing was different. The man continued to row.
Clump, clump, scratch. Clump, clump, scratch.

Then suddenly, someone yelled, “Look,” and the whole audience looked up at the stage.

“He’s going to make it!”

Sure enough, the boat was approaching the other side of the stage.
Clump, clump, scratch.

The man now was completely exhausted, pale, with sweat pouring from him. Every stroke looked to be his last. Someone yelled, “You can do it. We know you can. Come on.”

But as the boat approached, it seemed all his strength was leaving.
Clump, clump, scratch
.

Now the audience was roaring. “Come on, come on, you have to make it.”

Clump, clump, scratch.

Now the man was weeping from exhaustion.

“Help him. What kind of people are you?” shouted someone.

“Someone help the man.”

“No, he has to do it alone.”

People clawed to get to the stage. Others held them back. The nose of the boat was now inches from the curtain.

Clump, clump, scratch.

And then the man stopped and set the oars in the locks. No one moved for a long time. Then the man took the oars, and with one more
clump, clump,
pulled the bow past the edge of the curtain.

The place exploded, people screaming, “Bravo! Bravo!” as the boat disappeared behind the left side of the curtain. My uncle turned to me, tears streaming down his cheeks. “Don’t ever tell your mother I took you here.”

We walked home hand in hand, and he put me in bed.

“Want to hear a story?”

“Yes,” I said.

And we talked and talked until we heard my parents’ car pull into the driveway.

FATHER’S DAY  

There’s a genetic marker in most Americans that separates us from the rest of the world. It’s the “long gene,” an anomaly that is found in people who broke away from their society. Explorers and adventures. Leapers before lookers. The
whatever-happened-to
’s missing from high school reunions, whose last words were, “Watch this!” or “What’s this do?”

I used to go flying with my dad in his little two-seater planes. He always had a small, single-engine aircraft. Sometimes, when I was away at college, he’d fly down to my school, about an hour from home. As he approached the campus, he pulled back the flaps, let out some prop, and buzzed the school with this dish-rattling noise. I’d hear it in my history or psych class and whisper to the kid next to me, “That’s my dad.” And after class I’d run to the tiny airport a mile from campus where he was waiting. Then we’d go for a spin.

One time Dad picks me up from school and we’re flying along the Minnesota River, enjoying the changing leaves on a fall day. Suddenly, in a blink, we’re in the middle of a cloud bank. I can’t see a thing. I look over at Dad, and as usual, he’s shelling peanuts, looking at a map, drinking hot coffee, wrestling with his glasses, and tapping one of his gauges on the instrument panel.