But now.
“I drove it for ages,” Da squawks.
“If by ages you mean the time between when you committed grand theft auto and the time the police caught you, then yes, you drove it for ages.”
We are just about to exit the cemetery, and Da does what would have been unthinkable before everything became thinkable. He goes for the wheel.
“Pop!” my father screams, and tries to outmuscle the still wiry Da.
“Da!” I shout, trying to get out of my seat belt but not quick enough.
We swerve hard left, over the oldest part of the cemetery, the place with all the famous pre-Civil War graves and even pre-Revolution ones, where all the stones are famously soapstone and ring-fenced and do-not-touch.
Before Dad gets us to a stop, we have touched-up quite a few of them, as well as laying smushed-up waste to their protective fences. I jump out and run to the front to see what the damage is, but the rugged, heavy old frame of the Rambler has done most of the damage, while the dead soldiers are just as dead as before, only now unidentified.
“Pop!” my dad says again, pushing his father away from him and holding him firmly by the arms. The way he would sometimes do to me when he was furious and I needed a shake as well as a talking-to.
No longer full of fight, Da just says, sadly, “My car.”
Zeke is now standing lordly over the mess of us. “Cripes,” he says. “This just got a whole lot more expensive, didn’t it?”
We all slump in embarrassed silence.
He’s an embarrassment. My mighty, almighty Da has become an embarrassment.
“This was when an automobile dealer treated a man correctly,” Da says in the passenger seat, stroking the green, leatherish dashboard. “They had respect. There was respect all over the damn place, and nobody ever talked about it. Not like today. Not like today. The word is everywhere, but that’s it. Just the word, “respect” with a whole lot of nothing behind it.”
“Okay, no more screwing around,” Zeke says, opening the door and helping Da out. The old man puts up no fight. “Gentlemen, it is a good thing this man here is so loved by so many people in so many places. We will sort this out, don’t you worry. But I’m going to take Darius to the station myself. Follow right behind, carefully, before we call any more attention to all the havoc.”
“Thank you, Zeke, thank you so much. Sure. We will,” Dad says, a little weaselly. “Right behind you.”
“They would do anything for you,” Da says, leaning back over the side of the car, rubbing his hand down the back of the chair, along the top of the half-down passenger window. The window even has its own chrome strip across the top. “They would make buying a new car almost as much fun as driving it,” he says, and suddenly snaps the latch on the glove compartment, giggling like a toddler making mischief, before Zeke impatiently tugs him over to his own big, expensive, charmless, boring machine.
I take my seat riding shotgun.
“Dad,” I say as he starts weaving around the rubble.
“What, son, I am trying to-”
“Look,” I say, gesturing at the open metal flap of the glove compartment.
The compartment door serves as an ancient cup holder, two circles stamped deeply into the metal. Must have passed for fancy a world and a half ago. In between the cups, written in a stylish script, are raised, silver-plated initials: D.C.
“So what?” Dad says. “Daniel, we have to get-”
“Those are Da’s initials. Dad? Those are Da’s initials. This was Da’s car after all.”
He growls his low and small growl of concentration, fear, anxiety as he concentrates on maneuvering a car that is no sports car, trying pathetically to hang with a car that is a whatever-it-wants-to-be car.
“Don’t be so dumb and adventurous, Daniel. It doesn’t mean anything. Those are your initials, too, and I don’t think this is your car. Is it?”
I look at the side of his face. He has his father’s profile, and almost nothing else at all. There is a weird, almost completely new expression there that I am trying to read, can almost read, cannot read.
“It was his car, Dad.”
“No it wasn’t, Daniel.”
Now I can read the expression. It is willful, fearful denial, and I realize I have seen it before.
Hundreds of times.
I shut up.
4
Tests, they said. Observation, they said.
Why? I said. We already know. We know who he is and what he is and why.
Like hell you do, Da said. He laughed.
Pop, will you please shut up, Dad said.
Don’t ever talk to him like that, I said. That was violent. For us. Then. That was violence then.
Understand, son, the man said.
I do not, and I am not, I said. He has been all through this before. You have no test he has not taken.
And failed, Da said. And laughed.
He needs a period of observation, clearly.
He is in the middle of one. Clearly. I observe him. Every day.
It is for the best.
It is for him.
It is for everyone.
It is for the best.
Why are you being so contrary, Daniel?
Contrary Mary, Da said. He laughed.
Why are you being so obstructive, Daniel?
Your acquiescence is not required anyway, son. This is a courtesy.
I am not your son.
No, that is right. You are mine. And I say-
And you’re his son, Dad. So why let him go through more unnecessary and unexplained testing when we already know where it all ends up?
Where does it all end up? Da asked. He laughed.
Simple equation, fellas. A brief period of observation on the one hand, a buttload of fines and damages and charges on the other.
Zeke owns the mansion, Da said.
I am a friend of the owner, nothing more.
Observation, Dad said.
Acquiescence, I said. Observation, acquiescence, observation. Acquiescence.
Do not look at me like that, my father said.
That was violence. That was it right there.
Acquiescence, I said.
Observation, said Da. So long, said Da.
5
“Wake up.”
“What? No. And tell those birds to shut the hell up too.”
“Time for our walk, Da.”
He rolls over, just his head, toward his digital alarm clock. He does this amazingly, in my opinion, like his head is a separate entity entirely, or like an owl or a beacon on a lighthouse. Always did that, turning his head that way. He looks at the clock, squints even though the numbers are about seven inches high. Then he shields his eyes with his hands as if he is being blinded by the sun at the same time.
“What time is it, Da?” I ask, standing over him. It is good to keep asking them questions, keeping them as sharp with the basics as possible for as long as possible.
He turns away from the clock, gives me the squinty quizzical look now.
“The numbers are seven inches high for goodness’ sake. Are you blind already, Young Man?”
I am never Daniel or Dan or Danny or D.C. or Danny Boy or even District of Columbia, which I loved, not first thing in the morning. That would be too much to ask, and so I don’t ask for it. Young Man suits me just fine, as does the attitude. Feisty. We’ll actually be needing some feisty.
“What time is it, Old Boy?”
“XL,” he says, curling back under the covers like a high school sophomore. At some point, and for no discernible reason, XL became his abbreviation for extremely early. He’s rewriting the language by bits now.
“It’s time for our walk, Da? Remember, Doc said you were supposed to keep up with it, religious-like. The walking.”
He sighs, growls, sits up.
“Doc also says I am supposed to report for observation this morning. Quack-ass doctor schmuck.”
I splut a laugh out loud at the spit-perfect bratty-boy way he says the word “observation.” This is the Da I want.