Lost Between Houses by David Gilmour Page A

the balls.
    “Particularly the physics,” Harper came in with. “Talk about clearing the centrefield fence.”
    “I passed,” I said. “That’s all that counts.”
    “A squeaker, if you ask me.”
    “Well nobody’s asking you.”
    “Harper,” Mom said.
    “I’m just saying like maybe we shouldn’t plan on sending him to MIT.”
    “We couldn’t afford to, anyway,” said the old man.
    “All right boys,” my mother said, “I want to talk to your father for a bit.”
    I followed Harper onto the driveway.
    “What the fuck gives?” he whispered.
    “I dunno.”
    “They didn’t let him out, did they?”
    “Well he’s here.”
    “Fuck,” he said. “Did he bring a whole lot of stuff with him?”
    We went over to the Morris, and looked in the back window. There was just a small overnight bag there.
    “What do you think?” I looked at Harper.
    “Looking pretty good,” he said. “If they’d sprung him, he’d have more shit with him.”
    “Keep your fingers crossed.”
    So I went back to creaming deer flies, slapping them down off the glass with the fly swatter, giving them the
coup de grâce
with my foot. Crunch. A highly satisfying activity.
    After awhile I heard the screen door open behind me. I had a feeling it was the old man but I didn’t turn around. I wanted him to watch me for awhile, showing off, I suppose, although come to think of it, it’s a pretty weird thing to want to be good at. Killing deer flies. Anyway, finally I turned around.
    “Those flies can give you a hell of a bite,” he said. “You should put on a shirt. And for God’s sake, make sure you don’t bust the window.”
    “I won’t,” I said. “I’m very careful.”
    “Does your mother pay you to do that?”
    “No. I do it for the sheer pleasure. It’s very satisfying.”
    “Well, as long as you don’t break the damn glass.”
    He looked around the garage, not seeing anything, then put his hands on his hips.
    “I think I’m going to go for a bit of a troll.”
    I sort of sank.
    “It’s a good day for it,” I said.
    “Not too windy?”
    “Nope.” Like I was the expert. Trolling being for me about as excruciating an activity as a human being ever devised. But he was waiting for something, I could tell. “Where you planning on going?”
    “Over by the portage, I think.”
    “That’s the deepest part of the lake.”
    “That a fact?”
    “That’s what I heard.”
    “Thought I might gas her up too. Get an ice cream cone.”
    “I think there’s plenty of gas in her right now.”
    He nodded like that didn’t matter. “Listen,” he said, “there’s something I want to talk to you about. Why don’t you come along? Get some fresh air.”
    Last time he took me somewhere, it was for a little chat about the birds and the bees, this after I’d been dry-docking girls for at least a year. I had to sit there thinking up questions about lesbians so he wouldn’t be embarrassed. It just wasn’t natural for the old man and me to talk about anything important, my mom did all that stuff, and I didn’t like the sound of this. I had a feeling the Clinic shrink had put him up to it. The new improved Dad. It was like a brand new pair of pants he was wearing that didn’t go with the rest of him.
    The weird thing is that even though he made me nervous (I was scared of him, I admit it), sometimes I also felt protective, like I was the only one in the house who understood him. Knewwhat he wanted in spite of what he was saying. It was like he was trapped in this old-fashioned sort of British personality—he’d gone to school in England when he was a kid—and sometimes he struck me like an animal stuck in a box, going over and over the same actions to try and get out, even though they didn’t work the first time or the hundredth time. So, sometimes, I bent over backwards not to make him feel bad.
    Anyway, we set off down through the yellow fields. We found the old road at the bottom and worked our way along it, the