Fight Song A Novel - By Joshua Mohr Page 0,36
office this week since she told him to “poop or get off the pot” regarding the likelihood of a marriage proposal.
“That was how she phrased it to me, dude,” Ace says to the boy. “Your ma talks straight from the heart, and I love that about her. But she caught me off guard.”
Ace relates all this to the lad as they sit at the kitchen table, the very place where Coffen had plunked down and enjoyed Ace’s rum-soaked French toast. Ace has a guitar case across his lap, though he hasn’t opened it. Then he says to the boy, “I mean, I love your ma. You know that. You see us together. You see how I make her laugh, and once you become a man, you’ll realize there’s no greater feeling than making the woman you love laugh like crazy. I needed a few days to sort things out on my own, and now I clearly know what needs to be done.”
“Only a loser would sleep at his work,” the boy says.
“It’s a complex world, my man.”
“My real dad has a condo in Memphis.”
“Now that’s a town that loves its music.”
“My real dad owns his own plumbing business.”
“Can I talk to you honestly, big guy? Mano a mano?” Ace seems unfazed by the boy’s hostile words, which impresses Bob. It’s no easy feat staying calm in the face of being demeaned. Not always easy to turn the other cheek if you know the next smack is coming.
Speaking of the next smack, Ace rubs his bald head, which prompts the kid to say, “Why don’t you have any hair?”
“At your age, I had a coif.”
“Will my hair fall out when I’m old?”
“Did your gramps have a good set of hair?”
“Which one?”
“Your ma’s dad.”
The kid looks petrified. “He was bald!”
“Then you too shall cross this humiliating bridge.”
Coffen cracks the seal on the rum, holds it up to offer a commiserating cheers to the humiliating bridge of baldness, and has a slug.
Calm as can be, Ace opens the guitar case, pulls out the instrument, and lays it across his lap, loosening a string. He keeps talking, “I need to put some fresh strings on for the gig tonight. And on our way to the show, I’ll take you for some Korean barbecue before we meet up with your ma. Who knew effin’ Koreans could barbecue like kings, huh?”
The boy says, “I hate barbecue.”
Ace nods and keeps winding a new guitar string tight. “Dude,” Ace says, “this is an oddball world. Look around you, look outside—it’s only getting weirder. I firmly believe that we should all boogie to our own beat. I’m a firm believer in fulfilling whatever destinies we want. I don’t believe in God or any make-believe shit—sorry, I meant to say ‘feces.’ I don’t believe in any of that. Do you forgive my swearing? Your ma hates my swearing and I’m working on it because I want to be a good partner and also a father figure. What I’m trying to say is that in life we should all make up our own rules. Make a world that’s going to make us happy. I’m making up mine. I hope you’re making up yours. I bring this up for a specific reason … ”
Ace winds the next guitar string tight, the pitch of the string getting higher as he plucks it and tightens the tuning peg.
“My real dad thinks guitars are fucking stupid.”
“You shouldn’t swear either, dude. Your ma doesn’t like it.”
Plucking, tightening.
“Fucking stupid,” the kid says.
“Anyway, here’s the message I’m trying to send to you: I love your ma. She’s the woman for me. I never thought I’d say that, never imagined myself settled down into the calm ballad of monogamy. But we change.”
Plucking and the note bends higher …
Coffen has another slug of rum.
“Let me get down to brass tacks,” says Ace. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we’re here together right now.”
The boy interrupts him. “You brought me here.”
“Of course. I meant that more metaphysically.”
“You picked me up from soccer and dragged me here.”
“Yes, I did. I called your ma and said I had to talk with you man to man. See, dude, I’ve been wanting to ask your ma to marry me. But only if her son approves of our union. So your ma says, ‘Poop or get off the pot.’ That’s what she’s telling me, and I know the answer clear as day.”
Ace is smiling at the boy.
The boy is not saying anything.
“The answer is that