Читать книгу Flam Grub - Dan Dowhal - Страница 8

Chapter 4

Despite Steve’s attack on his masculinity, Flam had long been suffering the full heterosexual rampages of puberty, a suffering made only worse by his gluttonous diet of classical literary romanticism. At school, his debilitating shyness and pariah’s status among his peers made it impossible to approach female classmates in any attempt to slake his burgeoning libido.

This new dimension to his loneliness, and the even deeper depression it precipitated, induced Flam to momentarily shed his disguise of mediocrity. He seized on an end-of-term poetry-writing exercise assigned by his English Literature teacher, Mrs. Boyle. Flashing the razor sharp blade of his hidden intellect, he poured his aching soul into the assignment.

In the midst of the other juvenile pap that floated in on a sea of depressingly bad grammar, Flam’s submission shone like a beacon. Mrs. Boyle read it three times, and was so startled and moved by the verse submitted by the anonymous non-entity who haunted the rear of her classroom, she arrived at the only plausible conclusion—the work must have been plagiarized. So certain was she of this, even though a search of every anthology and literary journal in three libraries provided no substantiating proof, she summarily rendered judgment to that effect in front of the entire class.

“Did you really think I would believe you wrote this, Mr. Grub?” she growled, waving the double-spaced evidence around to emphasize her words, and accenting Flam’s surname to maximize the mockery. “Plagiarism will not be tolerated. It cheapens the whole educational process, and is a despicable affront to the author whose work you have so callously stolen! Consider yourself lucky I don’t have you suspended.”

Flam fought back tears. “No, Mrs. Boyle, it’s not true. It’s mine! I wrote it. I swear to God I wrote it . . . all by myself. I didn’t steal it.”

His appeal was ignored. Mrs. Boyle brought the entire affair to a climax by ripping the paper into shreds and loudly awarding him an “F.” His classmates, relishing the rare excitement in Mrs. Boyle’s otherwise utterly boring class, tittered and guffawed around him.

Flam had found a rare joy and purpose when writing that poem. He had felt connected on a whole new level to the stories and characters and beautiful words that had sustained him since boyhood—so much so that for the first time in his life he had actually been lifted from his gloom and self-pity. He had felt motivated. He had been inspired. His life suddenly had a purpose. Now, thanks to Mrs. Boyle, the warmth from that fleeting artistic spark dissipated. Flam was plunged back into the darkness of his miserable life.

Not only was Flam’s present filled with despair, but his future seemed to offer no hope either. With graduation from high school looming, the decision about his future as an adult had been weighing on Flam’s mind. Until the humiliation in Mrs. Boyle’s class, Flam had been summoning up the courage to approach his parents with the idea of going on to university, perhaps to study writing and literature. Now his ambitions felt empty and pointless, and the prospect of more years in school, suffering a whole new universe of degradation and scorn from classmates left him empty and utterly depressed.

Thoughts of ending his worthless life in an act of defiant heroism started to creep persistently into Flam’s mind. One day, they finally drove him onto the railing of an overpass high above a local freeway, and there he wavered, picturing himself hurling down onto the traffic that was speeding by below, oblivious to his misery. It was not fear, or some tiny vestige of hope for a better future, or concern for the anguish he might cause others that ultimately pulled Flam back from self-obliteration. It was a novel he had been reading, and which lay in the knapsack on the sidewalk. He was suddenly struck with a strong desire to know the outcome of the story.

He sat down on the rough concrete railing that was to have been his springboard to the next life, and proceeded to finish the book. By the time he had tremblingly turned the last page and wallowed in the story’s stirring ending, he was reading by the streetlight, and some semblance of peace had re-entered his soul. He took a final glance at the rushing stream of opposing red and white lights below, and turned to return home.

Two weeks later, and a hundred-or-so miles along the very same highway, Flam’s life did change. His father, just heading out for a cross-country haul after having waited out the rush hour between the ample thighs of a bleached blonde truckstop waitress named Amber, was fishing around in his jacket for a pack of matches when he was cut off by a minivan. Steve lost control of his rig, jack-knifed, went sliding off down a steep embankment, and was killed instantly when the nineteen tons of galvanized steel rod he was hauling crushed his cab like a pop can.

Flam was reading in his lair beneath the dining room table, while Mary darned a priest’s cassock, when the policeman rang the doorbell with the news. Flam was astounded by the ensuing display of his mother’s grief. In the nineteen years of his life, he had never once known his parents to exchange a tender word or an intimate embrace. On those rare occasions when Steve had been at home, he and Mary had fought constantly, usually over Steve’s drinking, and the meagre wages finding their way home.

Now Mary grasped her son to her bosom like a life preserver and wailed uncontrollably. At first Flam just stood there in shock, arms dangling limply by his side, but then the warmth of this mother’s embrace spread through him. A lifetime of deprived closeness washed over him like a tsunami, and he put his arms around Mary, and squeezed her tight.

Eventually she looked up, like she was seeing her son for the first time. He had grown to be tall, and had his father’s dark hair and eyes, along with her fair complexion, although unfortunately, he had neither parent’s striking looks. “Oh, Flam, Flam. We’re all alone now. We only have each other,” she sobbed.

He soothed her, stroking her hair, supporting her as she leaned against him. “It’s okay, Mother, it’ll be alright . . . we’ll survive.” She looked at him again, and nodded bravely.

“Of course we will, son. We’re Flams, after all. Misfortune is nothing new.”

Flam spent the next three days almost entirely at the funeral home, acting as a silent sentry to his father’s remains, and witness to his mother’s periodic wailings of grief to her Lord and saints. It was there, in that place and time, that Flam Grub found a calling in life.

He absorbed the immaculate surroundings, revelling in the polished wood and plush velvet, all of it looking like it had manifested itself straight out of one of his Victorian novels. Flam watched the staff perform their solemn duties with quiet reverence, and he thought, I can belong here. This was a world where adolescent horseplay and sadistic pranks didn’t exist. Here, a serious, sombre soul was not out of place. Dignity and a sensitive nature were in fact valued.

The funeral was attended mostly by Steve’s cronies in hopes of a free piss-up afterwards, and once his father’s corpse had been delivered to the earth, Flam approached Mary with the idea of joining the funerary profession.

“Mother, I’ve been thinking. I really want to become a funeral director,” he announced, and tensed up to await the fireworks. Based on a lifetime of disapproval and criticism, he fully expected her vehement opposition.

Mary blinked hard, and her surprise was blatant. Before Flam had a chance to even flinch, she grabbed her son and wrapped him up in her arms. A whole new generation of tears sprung to her swollen eyes. “Oh, Flam! Praise God! I’m so happy to hear you say that. It’s a good profession . . . a revered profession. I was so afraid you’d end up like all the other Flams . . . working for pennies at some menial backbreaking job that’ll put you in an early grave. The parish has sent me to a lot of viewings and funeral services, believe you me, and I can tell you those from the home get respect. Why, I’d say they’re almost above the priests themselves when it comes to the dead, yes I would. Oh my son, you’ll be a proper holy worker.” For the first time in his life that Flam could recall, his mother actually smiled at him.

Buoyed by his mother’s blessing, Flam enrolled in the Funeral Services course at Prentice College, a vocational school on the outskirts of the city. He was helped in the matter by some insurance money, a posthumous windfall from his father, who had otherwise failed miserably to provide for his son.

With the teen purgatory of high school behind him, and a shiny destiny looming ahead, Flam felt like he was reborn. The newfound closeness with his mother was like rain coming to the desert, and his heart bloomed in the belated love and acceptance. Still, Flam was eager to plunge wholeheartedly into his new adult life, so he decided he would move away from home, and take a small apartment near the campus.

Mary voiced some displeasure, but largely took the news like a seasoned martyr. “First my husband, now my son. I don’t know why the Good Lord is punishing me like this,” she sighed, after Flam had meekly declared his intention to leave.

“I’m not a child anymore, Mother. Didn’t you tell me once that Grandpa Flam already had a child and a fulltime job driving a cab when he was my age?”

“It seems like a waste of money, when this apartment is just sitting here empty most of the day anyway, what with my work and all.”

“There’s enough money to get me through school alright . . . and then, after that, I’ll have a good job. Don’t worry, Mother, I’ll come and visit you every week. And, if you need me, I’m only a phone call away.”

Flam also inherited his father’s old but functional Ford Fairlane, and spent the summer acquiring his driving license. His mother, reasoning he would be called upon in his chosen profession to drive a hearse, made him gain extra practice by chauffeuring her to and from church and related social functions. In payment, the parish’s thrift store supplied the sparse second-hand furnishings for Flam’s new student apartment.