Homesick Read Online Free PDF Page A

to the elbows and collar turned up to the ears. To provoke me.
    “You explain to me the percentage in looking like a hoodlum,” was what I said to him.
    To think his father had operated a men’s wear store; wore a suit and tie every working day of his life. Put a briefcase in his hand, walking down the street he could’ve been mistaken for a lawyer. I told Daniel, “People draw conclusions about you according to how you dress.”
    Looking at him you’ve got to conclude he’s another Lyle Gardiner. The sort of brat who lives with his mother in a one-bedroom apartment and sleeps on a fold-out in the living room with his socks and underwear lying on the floor. A kid who thrives on wieners and canned pork and beans, who drinks Coke with his breakfast toast, who reads nothing but comic books and falls asleep in front of the television watching the late movie on a school night. That’s what my kid looks like.
    And how to make sure that he becomes the other? Like that medical student up front with his short hair, clean shirt, tie, purpose in life? Appearances do matter. From the look of him the medical student is the only person on this bus I’d risk a pleasantry on. With a young man of that type you could have a sensible, intelligent conversation. That’s because people like him are taught reserve and tact and courtesy in their homes from knee-high on up. Not like the majority of people on a bus who no sooner drop in a seat beside you than they light into a description of their latest bladder repair operation, or some equally gruesome and edifying topic. It causes my head to hammer all the harder just to think about it.
    Exactly the kind of people Pooch and Lyle are. And when I’m at my worst, I don’t deny it, people like me. The difference being I know better and Pooch doesn’t. As I told Daniel a thousand times, “We may have to live with these people but we don’t have to act like them.” Although I have difficulty remembering that, what with a bad mouth, swearing and all. An Army habit that’s hard to break.But as I said to Daniel, “Me, I’m a lost cause. It isn’t me we’re preparing to succeed. It’s you. So as the old saying goes, ‘Don’t do as I do. Do as I say.’ ”
    When I look at him over there I’ve got to trust it’ll all come right. It has to, with so much of Stanley in him. Not just the intelligence either, but the rest too. That funny shade of strawberry red hair; the tall man’s stoop to his shoulders even though he isn’t tall yet. The spitting, walking, talking image of his old man.
    Other people, Pooch for one, can say he takes after me, but I don’t see it. Unless it’s the eyes, which are blue like mine, only brighter. Set against that pale skin they shine like all get out. When he was small I’d call them his stars. “The stars are out and shining,” is what I’d say when he woke up from his nap, just like he has now. I wonder what his reaction would be if I tried that on him again? Say it good and loud so everyone on the bus can hear.
    They come out and shine at what they oughtn’t to come out and shine at, those eyes. By Christ, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back when I stumbled on that peekaboo. Sunday, I was cleaning the apartment. No rest for the wicked. Of course, as soon as I got ready to wash and wax the floors who turns up like a bad penny but Lyle Gardiner? Nothing for it but to send both boys upstairs to watch television at Pooch’s until I got my floors done. Let Pooch entertain them and then when I was finished we could send them downstairs to amuse themselves at my place and Pooch and me could have fifteen minutes of peace to put our feet up and have a coffee. Or a coffee and a bit, as Pooch puts it. The bit being liqueur. Courtesy of Pooch’s boyfriends. So she was well-supplied and most Sundays got into her stock. I never took more than a sprinkle of Tia Maria in my instant to make it drinkable, but some Sunday afternoons didn’t Pooch