Read Online Martin Marten (9781466843691) by Brian Doyle - Free Book Online
Authors: Brian Doyle
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Martin loved nothing so much as a fresh steaming chipmunk when he was hungry. Entertaining to chase, just the right size for a substantive meal without having to drag remnants of it back to the burrow, and populous to the point of profligacy—the chipmunk was one of the great glories and beneficences of the mountain, and Martin was ever more curious about new places where even more herds and troops of them might be found. So he explored closer and closer to Zigzag High and Miss Moss’s store and the lodge where Dave’s mom worked and to the resort with nine holes of golf in the summer and to the laundromat that doubled as a used bookstore and chapel on Sunday afternoons for the Church of the Risen Lord, Wy’east Synod, and to the trailer where methamphetamine was made and to the vast cut in the woods through which telephone poles and wires marched for miles, a swath of open land scythed and mown regularly by a trail crew, a long, straight hole in the forest where trees used to be, some of them older than the telephone itself.
13
LIVING ON THE MOUNTAIN, you never get to actually see the mountain, said Dave’s mom that night at dinner. Isn’t that ironic? People come from all over the world to see this mountain, and here we are, and we never see it. If we never see it, does it really exist?
This made Maria laugh so hard she nearly shot milk out her nose.
How’s the running going, Dave? asked his dad.
I was going to start morning and evening runs tomorrow, said Dave, but …
Everyone looked up from their plates.
… I got a job. At Miss Moss’s.
Whoa, said his dad. That is real news. Holy moly. Congrats.
Doing what? asked Maria.
General service. “Dave-of-all-trades” is Miss Moss’s term.
Dave, that’s great, said his mom. That’s just great. Hours?
Four a day to start. Six if things work out.
Wow, said his dad. That was a sudden decision. Admirable ambition, though. Prompt action. Admirable all round, I’d say, wouldn’t you?
Absoluterlishly, said Maria without the hint of a smile, before her mom could get her affirmation out, and everyone cracked up.
Working more hours than his old man, Dave is, said his dad later in the kitchen. Maybe he should work more hours, and I will go to high school. We could do one of those switch things like in the movies.
I worry he thinks he has to take on more responsibility, said Dave’s mom. He’s fourteen. He’s a kid.
Soon to be fifteen, and there’s four players on this team, and you and I were working at that age. Personally, I think Maria needs to get a job. She’s smart. She can run a homework service for kids or something. She’s as useless wagewise as her dad at the moment.
It’s unseemly of you to wallow, Jack.
Unseemly is a lovely word, said Dave’s dad. Also wallow . I believe I’ll check both of those words out of the library tomorrow and take them out for a ramble, put them through their paces. I bet if I harness them together properly, they would pull like hell.
You’ll get work, Jack.
Sure.
You will, you know. Don’t you just stand there and agree with me.
Okay, he said. Or not okay. I disagree, agreefully. Maybe I should have stayed in the service. Steady pay with the prospect of a pension if no one shoots you over twenty years. Did I ever tell you I had a friend in the service who loved calculating possibilities and percentages? He calculated we had a 40 percent chance of surviving our tour without substantive physical damage, which did not include illness, foot rot, psychological and emotional and spiritual trauma, sensory overload, and permanent gastrointestinal distress. He also figured out that anyone’s chances of surviving twenty years in the service without substantive physical damage, given our cultural addiction to violence, was 8 percent. The only way to make it through a whole career undamaged was to get promoted as fast as possible, and the only way to get promoted that fast was to constantly and deliberately
13
LIVING ON THE MOUNTAIN, you never get to actually see the mountain, said Dave’s mom that night at dinner. Isn’t that ironic? People come from all over the world to see this mountain, and here we are, and we never see it. If we never see it, does it really exist?
This made Maria laugh so hard she nearly shot milk out her nose.
How’s the running going, Dave? asked his dad.
I was going to start morning and evening runs tomorrow, said Dave, but …
Everyone looked up from their plates.
… I got a job. At Miss Moss’s.
Whoa, said his dad. That is real news. Holy moly. Congrats.
Doing what? asked Maria.
General service. “Dave-of-all-trades” is Miss Moss’s term.
Dave, that’s great, said his mom. That’s just great. Hours?
Four a day to start. Six if things work out.
Wow, said his dad. That was a sudden decision. Admirable ambition, though. Prompt action. Admirable all round, I’d say, wouldn’t you?
Absoluterlishly, said Maria without the hint of a smile, before her mom could get her affirmation out, and everyone cracked up.
Working more hours than his old man, Dave is, said his dad later in the kitchen. Maybe he should work more hours, and I will go to high school. We could do one of those switch things like in the movies.
I worry he thinks he has to take on more responsibility, said Dave’s mom. He’s fourteen. He’s a kid.
Soon to be fifteen, and there’s four players on this team, and you and I were working at that age. Personally, I think Maria needs to get a job. She’s smart. She can run a homework service for kids or something. She’s as useless wagewise as her dad at the moment.
It’s unseemly of you to wallow, Jack.
Unseemly is a lovely word, said Dave’s dad. Also wallow . I believe I’ll check both of those words out of the library tomorrow and take them out for a ramble, put them through their paces. I bet if I harness them together properly, they would pull like hell.
You’ll get work, Jack.
Sure.
You will, you know. Don’t you just stand there and agree with me.
Okay, he said. Or not okay. I disagree, agreefully. Maybe I should have stayed in the service. Steady pay with the prospect of a pension if no one shoots you over twenty years. Did I ever tell you I had a friend in the service who loved calculating possibilities and percentages? He calculated we had a 40 percent chance of surviving our tour without substantive physical damage, which did not include illness, foot rot, psychological and emotional and spiritual trauma, sensory overload, and permanent gastrointestinal distress. He also figured out that anyone’s chances of surviving twenty years in the service without substantive physical damage, given our cultural addiction to violence, was 8 percent. The only way to make it through a whole career undamaged was to get promoted as fast as possible, and the only way to get promoted that fast was to constantly and deliberately
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