Brock Clarke - Exley

“Oh,” Mother said to the TV. She put her hands over her face and then mumbled something else. I couldn’t hear what it was, but it didn’t sound happy, and I wondered if she was going to start crying again. It’s OK , I wanted to tell her. Those guys are dead, but my dad isn’t. My dad is in the VA hospital, and he’s in bad shape, and I know you know that because you were crying this morning. Even though you didn’t believe it when the VA hospital called two weeks ago, and even though the hospital didn’t call you this morning, you must have found out this morning somehow that my dad really is in the hospital because you were crying in the bathroom. But you don’t have to cry, because at least he’s not dead. At least he’s alive, and he’s going to get better and then he’s going to come home to us. But I need you to help me get him better, get him home. If you don’t help me, then I still have this plan, but it involves finding Exley, and I don’t know if I can do it. Honestly, the plan scares me a little. Please help me get my dad home; please save me from my plan . But I knew I couldn’t say any of those things until Mother admitted she knew that my dad was in the VA hospital, and if she admitted that, then she’d also have to admit that she’d been wrong about my dad going to Iraq and that I was right. And I knew she wouldn’t admit any of that. We were like an old married couple: neither of us would admit we were wrong unless we were presented with proof that we were wrong. That meant I’d have to bring my dad to Mother; I wouldn’t be able to get Mother to come to him.

Mother took her hands away from her face, and I could see that her eyes were dry, even though they were still red. “I’m sorry, Miller,” Mother said, “but I’m going to bed. I had a long, rough day.” She smiled like she really was sorry, but then she picked up the remote control and — click ! — turned off the TV and also ended whatever conversation we were about to have. This was one of the reasons I called her Mother in my head. I went to the kitchen, put two pieces of bread in the toaster, waited until they popped, then peanut-buttered them. Then I brought them back into the living room. Mother was gone, and so was the bottle of Early Times. I ate my toast, walked upstairs. My parents’ door was closed; there was no light coming from underneath the door. I thought maybe she was already asleep. But then I could hear Mother in there, talking very softly. But to whom? And what was she saying? I moved closer to the door and stepped on the loose board in the hall floor, the one that always creaked when you stepped on it. It creaked, and Mother stopped talking. I stood there and listened for a long time, but I heard nothing else. Finally, I went downstairs to my dad’s study. I took a pen and a pad of paper out of my dad’s desk and wrote all about what had happened to me that day, just like Dr. Pahnee told me to do. And while I was at it, I also wrote down another thing that my dad had taught me, just like the first doctor had told me to do. When I was done, I put the pen and paper back in the drawer, closed the drawer, got a copy of A Fan’s Notes out of the window seat (my dad kept a bunch of spare copies stashed there, the way some people store spare batteries or hide bottles of booze, in case of an emergency), and took it with me to my room.

THIS TIME I didn’t stop. I got into bed, sat upright with the help of one of those big corduroy reading pillows with the arms, opened A Fan’s Notes to the first page. I read the whole first sentence: “On Sunday, the eleventh of November, 196–, while sitting at the bar of the New Parrot Restaurant in my home town, Watertown, New York, awaiting the telecast of the New York Giants — Dallas Cowboys football game, I had what, at the time, I took to be a heart attack.” And then I just kept reading. I learned so much: I learned that you never wrote the whole year out, but instead used a — for the last digit. I learned that with some people you could use their whole name, but others you just used their first initial. I learned that Exley’s favorite football team was the New York Giants and that every Sunday he’d have breakfast at the Crystal and read all the New York and Syracuse newspapers, and then, later that day, he’d watch the Giants on the TV at the New Parrot with the bartender, Freddy. I learned that when Exley watched the Giants game at the New Parrot, it really meant he acted the game out, like he was doing charades. I learned that Exley was, or had been, an English teacher in Glacial Falls, a town I’d never heard of. I learned that Exley had a best friend, a guy he called the Counselor. I learned Exley drank, and he drank, and he drank, and he drank so much he thought he’d had a heart attack, although he hadn’t. I learned that he’d been married and that he had twin sons. I learned that sometimes he talked like a guy who didn’t know he wasn’t onstage, and sometimes he talked like a guy who’d learned to speak at a bowling alley. I learned that he sounded a little like my dad, or that my dad sounded a little like him. I learned that Exley’s dad, Earl Exley, was a great athlete and that he was tough, tougher than Exley. I learned that even though his dad had been dead for a long time, Exley hadn’t gotten over it yet. And that was just the first chapter! Anyway, I read and read until I got to the end of the second-to-last page, and then I stopped. Because now that I’d read the book, for the first time, after more than a year of not reading it because I promised my dad I wouldn’t, I didn’t want the book to end. I was like Exley, who never wanted the Giants games to end. I felt the same way about his book. As far as I’d known up until that point, the most important thing about reading a book was to say you’d finished it faster than anyone thought you could. But I did not want to finish this book. Some of the books I’d read had told me that love is fleeting; some of the other books I’d read had told me that love is eternal. But they were wrong. Love isn’t either of those things. Love is not wanting the thing you love to ever end. I was in love with A Fan’s Notes , just like my dad was. And I was in love with my dad, just like I was in love with A Fan’s Notes . I wanted both of them to last forever.

I switched off my lamp, flung my reading pillow onto the floor, then tucked A Fan’s Notes under my sleeping pillow, the way you’d do with one of your teeth, except mine hadn’t even started falling out yet: I was nine years old and still had all the originals.

Things I Learned from My Dad, Who Learned Them from Exley (Lesson 2: The Protestant Work Ethic)

Iwas in the car with my dad and Mother. My dad was driving; Mother was in the passenger seat; I was in the back. It was winter, and it had been winter for a while. The snowbanks on either side of the road were higher than our car, and the snow on the road came up to the middle of our tires, and it was still snowing. We passed a guy shoveling his driveway and my dad said, “Shovel, you fucking dummy.” He said this under his breath, not loud enough for the shoveler to hear it. My dad said things like this all the time. If we passed a guy mowing his lawn, my dad would say, “Mow, you fucking dummy.” If we passed a kayaker on the Black River, my dad would say, “Paddle, you fucking dummy.” I never understood this, and so one day, when Mother wasn’t in the car and we passed a guy working on the outside of his house and my dad said, “Paint, you fucking dummy,” I asked my dad why he was telling the dummy to paint when he was already painting. This was after I knew about A Fan’s Notes but before I’d read it myself. Anyway, my dad explained to me that in A Fan’s Notes , Exley had told guys who were shoveling in Watertown in another winter, “Shovel, you fucking dummies,” and my dad also explained what Exley really meant when he said that and what my dad really meant when he said stuff like that, too. “Get it?” my dad had asked. “Kind of,” I’d said, but he could tell I didn’t, and I could tell this disappointed him. That was a terrible feeling, much worse than not understanding why Exley and my dad had said what they’d said to all the dummies. And so I said to my dad __________ weeks later in the car: