The Straw Men Read Online Free PDF Page B

replaced by an expression I couldn’tinterpret. Dad wasn’t the usual kind of guy who spent time in that bar, and I guess Ed was wondering what kind of bizarre map-reading error had brought him there. Dad turned to look at him, and nodded. Ed nodded back.
    I really wanted this over with. “My dad,” I said.
    Ed nodded once more, and another great male social interaction ground to a close.
    I asked for two beers. As I waited I watched my father as he walked over to the pool table. As a kid I’d got used to the fact that people would come up to him in stores and start talking to him, assuming he was the manager and the only person who could sort out whatever trivia they were spiraling up into psychodrama. Being able to look equally at home in a scummy bar was kind of a trick, and I felt a flicker of respect for him. It was a very specific and limited type of regard, the kind you allow someone who displays a quality you think you might one day aspire to, but it was there all the same.
    I joined him at the table, and after that the bonding session went rapidly downhill. I won all three games. They were long, slow games. It wasn’t that he was so terrible, but every shot he played was five percent out, and I had the run of the table. We didn’t talk much. We just leant down, took our shots, endured the misses. After the second game slouched to a conclusion he went and bought himself another beer while I racked up the balls. I’d been kind of hoping he’d stick at one, so I still had most of mine left. Then we played the last game, which was a little better, but still basically excruciating. At the end of it he put his cue back in the rack.
    “That it?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant. I was so relieved I took the risk of holding up another quarter.
    He shook his head. “Not giving you much of a challenge.”
    “So—aren’t you going to say, ‘Hey kid, you’re good,’ or something like that?”
    “No,” he said, mildly. “Because you’re not.”
    I stared at him, stricken as a five-year-old. “Yeah, well,” I eventually managed. “Thanks for the ego boost.”
    “It’s a game.” He shrugged. “What bothers me is not that you’re no good. It’s that it doesn’t bother you.”
    “What?” I said, incredulous. “You read that in some motivational management book? Drop a zinger at the right moment and your kid ends up chairman of the board?”
    Mildly: “Ward, don’t be an asshole.”
    “You’re the asshole,” I snarled. “You assumed I’d be no good and you’d be able to come out here and beat me even though you can’t play at all .”
    He stood for a moment, hands in the pockets of his chinos, and looked at me. It was a strange look, cool and appraising, but not empty of love. Then he smiled.
    “Whatever,” he said. And he left, and I guess he walked home.
    I turned back to the table, grabbed my beer and drank the rest of it in one swallow. Then I tried to smack one of his remaining balls down the end pocket and missed by a mile. At that moment I really, really hated him.
    I stormed over to the bar to find Ed already had a beer waiting for me. I reached for money, but he shook his head. He’d never done that before. I sat down on a stool, didn’t say anything for a few minutes.
    Gradually we started talking about other things: Ed’s views on local politics and feminism—he was somewhat critical of both—and a hide he was thinking of lashing together out in the woods. I didn’t see Ed ever having a huge impact on the first two subjects, or getting it together to build the hide, but I listened anyway. By the time Dave wandered in I could more or less pretend that it was just business as usual.
    It was an okay night. We talked, we drank, we lied. We played pool not very well. At the end I walked out to the car, and stopped when I saw a note had been pushed underone of the wipers. It was in my father’s handwriting, but much smaller than usual.
    “If you can’t read this the first