This is the third short story from my collection of Tales. More to follow.
I can add numbers real fast in my head, like 2,137,654 plus 7,109,345, and tell someone that that makes 9,246,999, and that makes my Mom smile and laugh every time, and she says I’m real smart with those ol’ numbers, but Dad says he ain’t sure I’ll ever do anyone any good, but that’s a-okay with me cuz I ain’t sure I want to do anything else other than play with numbers all day long though I could sure use another apple juice right now, I can’t figure out how to get the little tiny straw in the tiny little hole at the top, and I don’t want you to bother Dad cuz he might get mad so I just have to wait till Mom gets home from work which means that she left at seven o’clock in the morning and when she gets home at three o’clock she will be gone for 420 minutes from the time she walks out the house and comes back home and that’s also 2,8800 seconds and I can count that in no time but that’s a long time to wait cuz I’m real thirsty right now…
Mom’s a school teacher with the bluest eyes like the color on my wall of a big gray whale swimming in this blue sea that looks like Mom’s eyes and I like her eyes, they make me feel good and I like to stare at other people’s eyes, too, but Mom says that’s not a nice thing to do because some people get uncomfortable when you do that for too long, but anyway I can’t go to class with Mom anymore on account that I’m too old now but I use to go and she use to pack me lunch and put all kinds of good things in my lunch box for me and I never could finish all the stuff but sometimes I’d give it away to the other kids and then I’d maybe trade my second sandwich for a clean piece of paper with lines on it to do my number stuff on and I could look at the paper real fast and tell you that it each piece has twenty seven blue lines on one side going down and one red line on the left side called a margin, that’s what Mom called it, on the front side that is, and on the back side of the paper there are twenty seven blue lines going down and one red line going sideways in the margin and that makes fifty four blue lines and two red lines going sideways and that’s fifty six lines on that kind of paper that we used in my school plus I forgot to mention that that paper has those spirals on the side where there’s the red line and that they have forty two spirals that circle through forty two holes on one side so it makes it real easy to tear it out of your notebook but I can’t ever do it so good cuz I usually end up ripping the paper into too many pieces and it’s supposed to tear out in one piece but there’s other paper from other places and I once got a letter from this other Doctor that wanted to meet me but you not a Doctor and it only had twenty three lines on the front side that had his handwriting and no holes or red lines on either side but I couldn’t read his writing so good so Mom read it to me and he asked me a bunch of questions that I thought were fun cuz they were about all kinds of numbers and I could answer them real good and fast and he smiled and thanked my Mom for bringing me to his attention which I didn’t really understand what he meant by that…
This one kid named Max from school had brown eyes that always looked sad to me and he use to call me “Zenoid” cuz he said I knew all kinds of stuff that nobody else could even dream of and stuff that he thought was too boring for him and his friends to study but him and his friends didn’t bother me cuz I gave them my milk money every day for three years at this school I went to and that added up to two hundred and seventy-one days times twenty-five cents each day which added up to two hundred and three dollars and twenty-five cents but I never told my Mom or Dad on account that I liked doing Max and his friends math homework for them at lunch time and they said they liked me to do it too plus when I gave them my milk money they said they would be my friends forever and I could help them to be as smart with numbers as I was also I liked the name Max gave me, Zenoid, a whole lot cuz it sounded like a robot on a mission to Mars which takes a normal payload from Earth from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, which is in Maryland and that’s near my house in Olney, but any way I was there on September 5th, 1997, which was a Friday, and I asked one of the scientists who was there asking me questions and stuff how far it was from there in his lab to Mars and he said the geo-centric distance was 249,162,000 kilometers and that the radius of the earth is 6378 kilometers and so that means that the distance from his lab in Maryland is almost 249,156,000 kilometers and Mars is closest to Earth every one point six years and it would probably take two hundred and sixty days, but that depends on the rocket velocity and how close Earth was to Mars, but it would probably take ten days with how fast the rockets can fly now and if I got to got to Mars I could help the astronauts figure out numbers like that and all that other number stuff they can’t think real fast and guess what, a day on Mars is twenty-four hours and thirty-seven minutes long and that it takes six hundred and eighty-seven days for Mars to circle our Sun which is three hundred twenty-one more days than it takes Earth cuz February has twenty-nine days this year and Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the seventh largest planet in the Solar System and it is known as the Red Planet and it has two moons and one is called Deimos and it is ten miles long and seven point five miles wide and the other planet is Phobos and it is seventeen miles long and twelve miles wide and I wish I could go and do some number problems on a rocket ship to Mars so I could count all the stars on the way cuz you can see stars real good at night and in space it’s always night…
Do you know Mister Jackson who lives down the street cuz he likes to walk his dog Sam which is a girl Dalmatian with one hundred and thirty-eight spots including one on her nose and the big black one that covers most of her right ear and she gets walked six times a day even if it rains or snows but it only snowed twelve times the past two years but in 1992 it snowed seven times and I count only four times this year and each time it snowed it was a Tuesday but that could change next time and you know what, Mister Jackson wears glasses that hide these red eyes that squint at all kinds of things I say to him but he really likes the things I can do with numbers and he asks me number things about sports and I can answer him real fast about anything even about batting averages and walks and home runs and stuff like that even though I can’t even play baseball and sometimes at night when he’s walking Sam and I see him he might ask me something about Cal Ripken, Junior who was born August 24th in 1960, and that was on a Sunday, and he played for the Baltimore Orioles, and his jersey number was 8 and in 1983 when he played in one hundred and sixty-two games and batted six hundred and sixty-three times his batting average was .304 and I got a baseball signed by him six years ago when Mister Jackson took me to my first Orioles game and Cal Junior had one hundred and forty-four hits and seventeen home runs that year but he didn’t hit a home run the day I say him play but we waited until after the game and it lasted one hundred and ninety-minutes cuz they play nine innings with three outs per team per each inning and three strikes and you out and so I wore my favorite blue-stripped shirt with twenty-two big blue stripes and we waited till after the game to see if we could ask Cal to sign the baseball that Mister Jackson bought me and so we waited for him near the Orioles’ locker room and Mister Jackson called out to Cal when he walked out of the locker room with his blue and orange gym bag and he came over to us and we talked about home runs and batting averages and I told him what his batting average was every year since he was a rookie but then he laughed and said he didn’t even remember them so good and then Cal signed by new baseball and it said “to my friend Andrew from your friend Cal Ripken, Junior…”
One day I woke up and the sun wasn’t up yet so it wasn’t warm yet but I was up and needed something to count so I decided to count all the pennies in Dad’s big glass jar that he keeps next to his tool box down in the basement and so I snuck down the steps after I found my red plaid slippers and put them on account that the floor in the basement gets real cold at night and I was real careful not to make any noise when I opened the basement door and I wasn’t real scared cuz I had my Boy Scout flashlight that Mom gave me for my birthday four years ago on a Monday in April and it takes two “D” batteries and they usually last for seven hours and thirty-seven minutes cuz I stayed up all night once and counted the time trying to see how long they would go on before they would go out or die but they really don’t die like a dog or a turtle or goldfish but instead they just kinda burn down and then the light goes out and so I was trying to make sure that when I got to the top of the basement steps I could see real good in the dark so I found some tape and taped the flashlight to the top of my head real good but I couldn’t open my mouth cuz I had it taped too tight around my chin so the flashlight wouldn’t fall off my head and I finally got it taped pretty good and so I must have looked like a guy in a coal mine and so I got the top of the steps of the basement and it was real dark and scary down there and I got scared cuz my knees were shaking and the flashlight started not to work real good so I hit it with my hand but that hurt my hand and head so I thought maybe I should turn on the lights downstairs even though I promised Mom last year that I wouldn’t get up in the middle of the night anymore and turn on all seven downstairs lights on so she could see when she woke up early every morning before work and since she wouldn’t have to do it herself I could save her time in the morning and it would be about seventeen minutes each day and that would be times five days each week and she’d save five thousand and one-hundred extra seconds to be with me every week but I wanted to help Dad too so I hit the flashlight again and it worked good but it made me get a little dizzy on account I hit the flashlight harder the second time and so I went downstairs in the basement and took the big jar of pennies and poured them out all over the floor and started to count them and I knew Dad would be happy cuz he had twelve thousand four hundred and eighty-three pennies in that big ol’ jar and who knows, maybe all that money would him real happy with me and then we could all take a vacation to some place like Disney World where people would leave me alone and I wouldn’t have to answer yours or any more questions about numbers or what day of the week somebody was born on and if they were born on the same day as someone famous but I never got to tell him on account that Mom heard me and came downstairs and made me put all those pennies back in that big ol’ jar and made me promise I wouldn’t tell him I went downstairs and was messin’ around in his tool room with his stuff even though I was just counting pennies on account he might get mad at me and Mom for being down there so early in the morning in the first place…
We use to have this lady named Roberta who had this real pretty long red hair and almond-shaped green eyes that looked like the color of moss in our backyard near this huge pine tree behind the garage and she was born in June on the fifth day, a Thursday, and the year was 1945 and that was the year of the Rooster for the Chinese people but she wasn’t Chinese cuz I asked her but she said she was Irish-American and she would watch me from time to time when Mom was at work and Dad had to go out of town and she could talk on the phone for about one thousand one hundred and ninety seconds each time she came to watch me but I didn’t care cuz she let me watch Yogi Bear and Speed Racer and other funny cartoons and she was really nice and she would help me take baths and I told her that there were three hundred and eighty-six gold fish on our shower curtain in our bathroom and one time she said she didn’t believe me so I showed her the shower curtain myself and she made me count them all over again while she helped me take a bath and it made me feel really funny cuz my head got all light and dizzy like the time I spun around on the playground on the tilt-a-whirl five hundred and sixty-three times before I fell off and nearly got sick and I remember that when she washin’ me she was also doin’ stuff to my pee-pee so I startin’ counting all the small brown tiles on the wall next to me, the ones that Dad said were “the color of a baby shittin’ cream of wheat,” but I don’t remember seeing my poo when I was a baby and don’t even know if it was ever that color but I remember that when Roberta pulled on me I started counting faster and faster until I lost count at eight hundred and ninety-three tiles and then I had to wait until next time I took a bath to remember to count them all over again and every time I saw that shower curtain I would smile some more cuz I would remember Roberta and how when she was doing stuff to my pee-pee it made me feel happy but then I would get sad cuz one time she cried and told me she missed her husband Gary who got killed in Vietnam and how she missed layin’ next to him at night and how warm and full he made her feel and she said it made her so sad and angry she just didn’t know why God was so mean to good people and how I made her feel special and happy again and how that helped her not to cry anymore but then she up and stopped watchin’ me after the last time together and I wondered why she didn’t want to come and wash me no more…
One time I got to camp out in our backyard in the summer and it was real hot, the hottest day in July since 1918, and I had a green tent that Dad had from the Army Reserves and it smelled all funny like the basement after too much rain and it was held up by two wooden poles that made the whole thing seem kinda wobbly and it sagged in the middle like it might fall on me so I decided to pull my sleeping bag out of it and lay down next to the tent but I had to wait until Mom and Dad went to sleep so I kept peeking out of the tent towards the house to see when they might go to sleep so I could “get out of harm’s way,” that’s want Dad would say to me all the time, and not have the tent crash down on me but that ol’ tent was right next to their bedroom window and when the lights finally went out in their room I counted to one thousand just to make sure they were asleep and then I heard Dad make this funny honking noise like a goose makes when it gets mad cuz one chased me at the petting zoo one time and it made the same noise and Mom said it sounded just like Dad when he was fast asleep so I knew it was safe to drag my sleeping bag outside and put it next to the tent and that way I could finally count all the stars in the sky which I could never do if I was inside the tent and it crashed down on me but I couldn’t count too many stars standing up on account that it hurt my neck and so when I got to one hundred and fifty-seven I stopped counting and I smoothed out my sleeping bag and laid down on it and my neck felt better and I started to count all over again but it wasn’t all that easy cuz now some clouds got in the way and I had to keep startin’ over and over again twenty-seven different times that night but then I fell asleep and couldn’t remember how many stars I counted up to but wondered if I was honking like a goose like Dad and when I was asleep I went to this place where I was the king of eight hundred and ninety trillion people with purple eyes like the color of grapes that Mom buys Dad and they all gave me anything I wanted but I only wanted to be free to fly around like a big silver bird and I wouldn’t have to count no more and that scared me cuz nobody noticed me in this big white room full of all these people who just sat starin’ at computers all day and didn’t say anything to anyone next to them and when work was over went home to their houses and lived all alone and didn’t have a Mom or Dad to make nice talk with and show them numbers and tell them what day they were born on and then I woke up all sweaty and screaming and then I remembered that I had counted to two hundred and twelve stars before I fell asleep but then I heard Mister Jackson’s dog Sam, which is the Dalmatian girl dog with one hundred and thirty-eight spots including the one on her nose and the big black one that covers most of her right ear, and she started barking real loud and then I heard other dogs from far away and I counted five different kind of barks and forty-two barks in all and then I barked back to see if they were counting stars too and then our next door neighbor Miss Keltner came out and started yellin’ and that woke up Mom cuz I watched her turn on the night light next to her bed and then Mom came out of the house and Miss Keltner started yellin’ something to Mom about me barking and making noise and some other stuff that I couldn’t hear cuz then I ran into the house cuz I made a mess in my shorts on account that when Sam started barkin’ and I decided to count her barks first and when she got to twenty-three barks I farted in my shorts on account we had cabbage for dinner that night and that makes me fart real bad but when I got to twenty-three barks I messed myself cuz it happens sometimes but I didn’t mean it to and I didn’t want Dad to wake up and get mad at me or Mom so I snuck back in the house to clean myself and that way no one would find out that I messed myself…
Mom promised me that when she comes home from work on Thursday I’m gonna have a birthday cake made with chocolate and vanilla frosting and fifty-three candles which I can never blow out cuz I never figured out how to do it on my own but maybe Mom will help cuz she helps me every year and then I get to eat the frosting off the candles and that makes me smile and Mom laughs and Dad won’t say anything but I know he’ real proud of me cuz he won’t hit me in front of Mom and not on my birthday cuz he can never forget how happy he was that day I was born fifty-three years ago and it was August and it was a Sunday and it was the seventh day of that month and I guess I cried when I was born that day cuz Mom told me I cried when I came out of her belly and that it hurt her real bad too when I came out but I don’t remember crying or her crying on account that a baby don’t always remember that kinda stuff but none of it makes much sense when you’re that small and you can’t feed yourself or get dressed or other stuff like that but it don’t hurt as much as when my Dad hits me though when his eyes look all crazy red like this picture I seen in a book of the devil but I don’t cry anymore cuz I’m all growed up now and you ain’t suppose to cry when you’re a man, that’s what Dad told me, so I just add it all up in my head and so far it’ll make about two hundred and eighty-two days a year times about four times a day times forty-eight years, cuz I don’t remember much before then, less two days till my birthday on Thursday which makes it about fifty-four thousand one hundred and forty-two times Dad had to hit me to make me think and do better but you gotta promise me you won’t tell anyone I told you cuz I don’t want Dad to think I can’t keep a secret…
Damn good piece of writing there, Dusty.
Powerful. Thanks for posting.