Jay Dog Water Free, A Memoir

A coming-of-age story about an improbable journey to find emotional truth
1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-1-62309-464-5
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 228 Seiten

Meet Joe Black visits The Wonder Years in the true story of DOG WATER FREE by debut author Michael Jay. It chronicles the journey of a boy named Mikee, whose coming-of-age search for emotional truth lands an orphan from the unlikely side of Detroit front and center before England's Queen, America's Maestro, and the first non-Italian Pontiff in more than 400 years. A family saga at its core, DOG WATER FREE is an uplifting story of discovery that celebrates a remarkable hero in the person of an ordinary mom who is thrust into an extraordinary situation in a neighborhood of the city she loves. Mikee is eleven when his world turns upside down as his mom shares news from her doctor. She has a year to prepare her family for her death. Her passing will leave the man she loves and the four children she cherishes alone to fend for themselves. 'At least you'll always have your dad,' she tells them. Still on her mission fifteen months later, her focus heightens when her husband drops dead. With that, Mikee's improbable coming-of-age journey begins.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Jay, Michael

Leseproben

FOUR
  FATE
An unflappable muse, motherhood becomes her. As mood maven and mentor to her budding brood of four, everyone who knows Marge loves her for her sparkle. A spirited gamer with a secret, she styles through matters mundane with the passion of a virtuoso readying for Carnegie Hall. But for the size of her heart, the Irish in her bones, and the grace of God, she might never have evolved with such consummate charm. Too bad for me. It complements her all-too-disconcerting intuition, which allows her to predict what her favorite second-grader is going to do before I can even think about doing it. More perplexing still is something I learned during a recent moment of confidence. My very own most faithful, happily married mom has a mysterious schoolgirl crush on Mr. Spooky himself. I don’t get it. Our Magnavox pings before casting its warm glow. That’s when the creepiest man on television hits his mark. Deadpan cool, Rod Serling becomes one with the camera. Prone to the willies, I shudder to think he might be standing in our living room when he speaks about a dimension…not only of sight and sound…but of mind…beyond that which is known to man…as vast as space and as timeless as infinity…in a middle ground…between light and shadow…science and superstition…somewhere between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge…beyond the boundaries of imagination…in a place called…wait for it… Nannah-Nannah—Nannah-Nannah… THE TWILIGHT ZONE! Please give it up already, mister! God, that music creeps me out. As for Marge, she can’t get enough of his confident swagger when he weaves issues of human nature into his freakazoid fables, none of which I am old enough to fathom nor quite young enough to ignore. “Come on, Mikee. Sit with me here. Let’s watch this.” She pats the couch. A master of all manner of maternal prerogative, she loves nothing more than testing my mettle. “Aw, come on Mom. Must we?” I mean it. Bone-chilled after a sweaty walk home following Friday night hockey on the pond, I oblige by burrowing my head into a sofa cushion. A throw finds my shoulders. “Look at you. You’re shivering. Here you go, buddy.” She swaddles me. I thank her though it doesn’t help. Except for Jack Paar, which I’m never awake to see, Mister Creepy Spooky there and Alfred Hitchcock Presents are the only TV shows Marge enjoys. I don’t know which is worse. Best I can tell; they both fuel her delight in crafting beguiling challenges, which tickles her fancy big-time. It makes for a baptism of absolute befuddlement for me, her devoted but clueless third-born middle son. Nannah-Nannah—Nannah-Nannah. That wacked-out music won’t stop playing in my head. Welcome to the MikeeZone. * * * * In a neighborhood of a town brimming as much with peril as promise, all I know is how to ride a two-wheeler and when to genuflect during Mass. Oh yeah, I’ve also reached the Age of Reason. At last. I’m off the bench. At the venerable age of seven, they’ve put me in the game. Absent is that cloud with no hint of silver lining that had been hovering over my head. Now endowed with Free Will, gone is certain destiny that would have me spend eternity in a NeverLand called Purgatory, which the nuns promise is not as horrible as the torment of hell, but dreadful nonetheless, “since it’s not quite Heaven, children.” No wonder we all counted the days until First Holy Communion. Heading home with a spotless soul after making my First Confession, I can’t resist closing my eyes and swinging for the fences. “LORDTAKEMENOW,” I blurt untainted, as I duck into a shrub for mortal cover. Dumbstruck, I still don’t know whether to feel lucky or sad that the hand of God stayed put that day. So I guess I got that going for me. Meanwhile, Marge indulges her ever-loving instinct by entangling me in a perfectly exigent web. Believing a well-timed challenge can make a good boy a better man, she concocts a summertime doozy of a notion in honor of my upcoming eighth year. She calls it disappearing. I call it unbelievable. Within reason, she tells me, I will never again have to ask her permission to go anywhere or do anything. Huh? As long as I promise to obey the law, to steer clear of a nearby public housing project, and to return home by an appointed late afternoon hour, I can disappear whenever I darn well please. Imagine. With that, rather than feeling like somebody wants me out of her hair, my buttons are popping for having earned her trust, which I swear never to squander. Planting my face deep in the screen as I blast through the door, I’m out before she can change her mind. Free at last. Inside the garage, I imagine hearing my grandfather’s hurried brogue as I push off atop my Schwinn with no fenders. Moykee. Look at ya. Ya little shite. Ya got yourself a fookin’ hall pass, don’t ya? I laugh. I am well into my crooked roll down the driveway when Marge steps onto our front porch to launch her parting salvo. It hovers in the air…like a slow belch from a cold-morning smokestack downriver. “Hey. Have fun out there, buddy, but do me a favor. Promise me you will never tempt fate, especially on a dare. I’m serious.” Huh? There’s not a soul in our neighborhood old enough to ride a bike who doesn’t know about dares. That much I get. It’s the other part of her caution that puts me in a tailspin as I pedal toward the high school on our corner. I’m about to step into the cove for an afternoon of three-wall rubber-ball fast-pitch when it hits me. Who the heck is this guy Fate anyhow and what is his flipping problem anyway? I’m serious. Time tempers my innocence. Within a handful of years, one thing has become clear. In our little corner of America, slim is the difference between survival and disaster. That’s why you do not crawl under a car sitting up on a spindle of a jack to retrieve a thirty-nine cent rubber ball. You do not accept a dare to jump a freight train moving a hair faster than you can run. You do not swim during polio season. You do not crouch behind the plate if you are not wearing a cup. And needless to say, you do not ride on a wooden roller coaster called “The Wild Beast” after a disturbing mishap had it condemned by city officials, even when invited to do so by your fifth-grade sweetheart’s father at the annual DPOA Family Day Outing, hosted by the Detroit Police Officers’ Association over at Edgewater Park. Perhaps most obvious to an altar boy like me in the 1960s, you never accept a dare to touch a communion wafer with your hands unless you want God to throw a lightning bolt down upon you. “God made ‘em flunk me,” shouted one fallen acolyte. Although not quite a bolt of lightning, that boy heard a serious thunderclap when the nuns held him back a grade for munching on hosts while scarfing sips of Manischewitz from the cupboard in the sacristy. That was around the time something happened that affected everyone who knew us. It led to that late morning shuffle up the center aisle behind my dad’s casket. It was a week into my eighth-grade year when I learned the real truth about the perils of tempting fate. In get-it-done style, I heard my dad give an order. He was talking to someone he called an associate, on whom I had never before laid eyes. With unmistakable clarity, he instructed that cologne-laden wise guy to direct a stonecutter to prepare a grave marker before its time. “Gimme a break. Are you saying he won’t do it because he needs more information? I gave him all I got for now. You just tell that little mook that I need him to get started,” I heard my dad tell him. Done and done. Sure enough, in a matter of weeks, that was that. Now, the convergence of recent events would make you think I had accepted a dare to crowbar the poorbox from the vestibule of our church. God help me. It hasn’t even been a full day since we said our good-byes, my mom and me. I miss her already. Ignoring the consequences, I flip off fate when I tell myself my situation cannot get worse. Aw, Mikee…Mikee…. Big mistake. I knew it as soon as I said it. Would I ever fookin’ learn? How could I have forgotten the anguish on the face of that diminutive stonemason whose reluctant desire to do a favor for a small-fry goombah sent events into a spiral two years before? Flush against the funeral parlor wall, he sat with a cadre of men that I never before had seen. All dressed to the nines, they joined in quiet prayer. Short-brimmed hats in hand, they looked like brothers of Green Bay’s coach Lombardi in their long tweed topcoats. Beads dangled from their chins as they pressed small crucifixes against their lips. Murmuring in unison, their plea sounded like something I learned as a Mass server, but different. “O come molto triste… O come molto sbadato… O come molto stupido… Antonio…Antonio…Antonio.” Other than clergy, no one in that dim lit room appeared more comfortable with their surroundings than that well-tailored group of men on the night of my...