Mom didn’t go ballistic on me when I told her about getting the detention.
Not that she was thrilled about it or anything, but I got through my explanations without being subjected to any grievous bodily harm, or even a restriction.
She even gave me a ride to detention that Saturday morning on her way to work.
“How long are you in for?” she asked as we pulled up to the school.
“Twenty to life, but with good behavior, they’ll let me out at noon.”
As usual she was unimpressed with my wit. “I’m working ‘til six and Lord only knows how long your father will be at his office. You can probably expect your dinner to be delivered in a cardboard box; I know I’m not cooking.”
“Pizza?” I asked. “You can feed me pizza and still qualify as a good mother. I know; I’ve looked it up.”
She laughed. “Thanks, I’m feeling less guilty already.”
Then I saw her looking past me and out the car window. “Oh my,” she sighed, “there goes a sad case.”
I followed her gaze and saw an old car, even more pathetic than our Toyota. It was an ancient Ford station wagon and it would be anyone’s guess what the original color might have been.
Climbing out of it though, was none other than Amy LaBlanc. Probably paying her dues for all of those tardies.
Thankfully, she wasn’t accompanied by her ghost.
“You know her?” I asked.
“Only what I hear at the Shop Rite. She comes in sometimes with her grandmother, then the neighbors fill me in on all the details.”
“Such as?”
She looked at me curiously, wondering, no doubt, why I was so interested. I tried my best to look nonchalant.
She shrugged and went on. “She lives with her grandparents, although I guess her grandfather is pretty ill and doesn’t get out much. She just moved in with them last summer after her mother died. I think it was a car accident. No one seems to know about her father.”
Mom sighed. “I tell you, though, the girl has the saddest eyes. If an artist wanted to paint a portrait of pure tragedy, those are the eyes he’d use.”
No doubt.
As I watched Amy LaBlanc trudge up the steps to the school, I realized that I had a pretty good idea about the identity of that ghost.
Detention wasn’t all that grim.
At first.
I brought all of the homework I’d been assigned for the weekend and ended up getting all of it finished well before noon.
Then I made the mistake of looking at the back of the room.
There it was; the ghost of Amy LaBlanc’s mother.
I had a book to read, but reading was not going to work for me that day. I sat, staring at the pages, but all I could see was that damn ghost.
The last hour dragged by like some kind of Chinese water torture, but finally Mr. Snethen, the guy supervising Saturday detention stood up and said, “The hour of noon is upon us. You are all free to get on with what’s left of your weekend. Now go and sin no more.”
I was out of there like a shot.
As soon as I stepped outside, I summoned Zach. I needed to be with someone.
Even a dead someone.
It probably sounds weird; I’m freaked out by a ghost so my first thought is to hang out with another ghost.
Welcome to my life.
The two of us walked home together. Rather, I walked and Zach floated along with me babbling merrily on about some German philosopher he’d been reading.
“…an’ this here Nietzsche feller says how destiny exercises its influence even when we ain’t learned its nature an’ it’s our future, but ain’t that just old-fashioned predestination?”
I had no idea what he was talking about, but I enjoyed listening to him chatter.
“So where’s your folks?” he asked when we entered the house.
“Mom’s at work and Dad’s at his office. Saturdays he spends working on his book.”
Fact is, lately Dad had been looking about as stressed out as me. He wasn’t singing lame songs in the kitchen. Dark circles were starting to show under his eyes.
When I asked him how the book was coming, he smiled grimly. “Fine, just fine,” he’d say, but he wasn’t very convincing.
Lately, I’d stopped asking.
“What’s the book about?” Zach asked.
I hated that question. “Beats me. Something about Greek philosophy but that’s about all I can tell you. Dad has tried to explain it to me a couple of times, but you know, MEGO.”
Zach looked confused. “Mee-go?”
“M-E-G-O: My eyes glaze over. All it takes is one paragraph and he’s lost me. Safe to say I’m not a very likely candidate to become a philosopher.”
Zach looked interested though. “Say, any chance I could take a gander at his book some time? You done roused my curiosity.”
That wasn’t a problem. I knew there was an old draft of Dad’s book in one of our famous cardboard boxes. In Mom and Dad’s closet, if I was not mistaken.
I rummaged through their closet. Sure enough, I found the battered cardboard box where Dad kept his old manuscripts. I dug out last year’s version, which was the newest one in the box.
“Here it is,” I said, holding up the two heavy binders that contained my father’s life work, “in all it’s glory: A Synergetic Analysis of Pre-Aristotelian Greek Philosophy, soon to be a major motion picture.”
We sat on the couch, and I opened Dad’s book.
It took only two pages to convince me not to attempt to read along.
For one, if I were to actually try to read Dad’s book there would be no way I could stay awake enough to turn the pages for Zach.
Sorry Dad, but there it is.
But then even if I did want to read along, there was no way I was going to keep up with Zach. He was devouring whole pages of sentences like, “In Anaximander’s cosmological exegesis, are extant, though primitive in their construct, all of the lineaments of the Hellenic concept of logos.” in less than fifteen seconds.
It was incredible.
I would barely have a page turned before Zach would give me the impatient little grunt that meant he was ready for me to flip to the next one.
“Are you even reading this?” I asked.
“Oh yeah, I’m readin’ it,” he answered. “Though it ain’t really readin’ as you know it. Somehow, I can just look a page over and I pretty much got it.”
I was impressed. “That’s so cool. A trick like that would do wonders for my grade point average.”
Zach shrugged. “I don’t know about that, but it seems to me that you’d find that old nervous system of yours a bit of a handicap.”
“Say what? My nervous system?”
“I’ve thought about it. You know how you got eyes, nerves, brain cells, all that stuff. I figure that’s what slows you down so.”
He continued. “Me on the other hand, bein’ as how I’m pure spirit, or…whatever, I don’t have all them limitations. I just look at a page, and there it is. I know it.”
I was jealous. I imagined reading all those twenty page American history assignments in just fifteen minutes and sighed.
It gave a whole new meaning to the phrase, “I wish I was dead.”
But I didn’t want to go too far down that train of thought.
Instead I reached for the TV remote.
I surfed through channels until I found an old black and white movie. I never did get what it was called. It was set in some exotic foreign country where all the Americans wore white suits and sweated a lot.
The movie wasn’t even over when Zach finished Dad’s book. All two-thousand and seventeen pages of it.
“Well…?” I asked.
“Well what?”
“Is it any good?”
Zach looked uncomfortable. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s just a draft. Maybe in a few more drafts. A couple years, he might be able to make somethin’ out of it.”
I shot to my feet. “A couple years? Dad doesn’t have a couple years! We’re talking months here! He has to have something to publish this spring!”
“What’s all the fired hurry?” Zach asked.
I took a deep breath and explained the whole sad story. About how Mom and I had had it with the endless temporary jobs, the constant moving, changing schools. How we gave him until spring to finish the book or start seeking another line of work.
“Come on,” I said, “he’s been working on this thing for over eight years, and you’re telling me he isn’t even close? What’s the deal here? Is it that bad?”
Zach took a minute. Then he said, “No, it ain’t bad. In fact, it’s brilliant. Parts of it anyway. He’s got it all: Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, most everybody there is. He’s aimin’ t’tie ‘em all together into one unifyin’ theory of thought that goes right back to the Minoan mystery cults and Dorian shamanism.”
I shook my head. “You realize, don’t you, that I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Zach laughed. “Your Dad’s got some right fine ideas in that book.”
I looked at him. “There’s a ‘but’ in there, I can hear it in your voice. ‘He’s got some right fine ideas, but…”
Zach sighed. “Well, fact is, that’s all they is, ideas. There’s enough ideas in there for ten books. But that theory that ties it all together? It ain’t there.”
He shrugged. “He keeps hintin’ at how he’s fixin’ to stitch everything into one unified thesis, but danged if I can see how he can do it. Near as I can tell, he may as well be sewin’ clouds together.”
This was not good.
Zach went on. “It’s the sort of book that maybe some feller what’s got himself an established reputation might get away with. You know, ‘After fifty years of study and reflection on the meaning of it all, the Great Professor says…blah, blah, blah.’
“But for a first book…I hate t’say it, but it’s just too disorganized for anybody t’publish.”
I stood up suddenly. “Not publish? What are you talking about?”
Zach sighed. “Marcus, I been listenin’ to prefessors gossip about the publishin’ game for a hundred years. I got a pretty good idea how it works. It’s a sad thing, but I’m certain as sunrise; a book like this one here don’t stand a chance of ever gettin’ into print.”
I felt a kind of panic rising in me. “Then that’s it, isn’t it. It’s all over. Everything Dad’s been working for his whole life was just a waste of time! He spends eight years working on a book and now you tell me it’s just going to sit in an old box and rot!”
I shook my head hopelessly. That was it then. Dad was screwed.
But then suddenly Zach jerked to attention. “Rot in a box? Of course! Left to rot in a box! That's it! That's perfect!”
Now he was bouncing around the room like a lunatic. “Rot in a box! Dang! Right in front of me! Ain't that just the thing!"
“Zach,” I said, “you’re scaring me. Do you think you could find the time to stop bouncing around and tell me just what the heck you’re talking about?”
Instantly Zach stopped, stood up at attention, pointed his finger at the ceiling and exclaimed, “Eugnosis of Alexandria!”
“Who?” I stammered, “Never heard of him.”
Zach grinned. “Exactly!”