Read Online The Brothers K by David James Duncan - Free Book Online

and Mama was reading an adventure book about Tibet that Uncle Marv had loaned her. Being a good Adventist, Mama was against books about things such as Tibet unless a missionary wrote them. But she’s the opposite of practically everybody on earth in that she has to read in a car to keep from getting carsick, and the Tibet book was the only one her skunk of a brother would loan her. So anyhow, at some point in the book the author-adventurer got himself invited into this smoky little Tibetan house, sat down to dinner with the whole Tibetan family, and started eating stuff with names like
Zahpahhayabrugmancharya
and drinking stuff with names like
Padmaywhang
. And as she was reading about this, Mama started squirming all over the front seat, giggling and muttering to herself and acting all delighted, till every last one of us was gaping at her. And when Papa finally asked what on earth was going on, Mama just turned to him with this wonderful, dazed smile on her face, smacked her lips, and said,
“Yum! Yak butter!”
And we almost died laughing—literally—since Papa gawked at her so long he nearly drove off the road.
    But Peter—who is so soft-spoken most of the time—didn’t laugh at all. Instead he got red in the face and shrill in the voice and started drilling Mama with pointed questions, trying to get her to cross her heart and hope to die admitting she remembered a past life as a Tibetan. It was strange. I mean, there he was trying to prove some mysterious point about Buddhism or rebirth or some damn thing, but all he reminded me of was ol’ Mrs. Babcock at Sabbath School bullyragging us about how we must praise Jesus and hate sin all the time, whether we feel like praising and hating or not. I don’t know yet, between Pete and Mama, whose beliefs are better or truer. All I know is that by the time he finished grilling her, nobody felt like laughing about her yak butter anymore.
    When she got over being stunned, Mama got good and mad and started firing pointed questions back. That’s when she found out about the Bog of Vod Geeta, and about Peter believing in past lives and Hindu Christs and the world being a kind of gigantic delusion and everybody really being a Drip of God and I don’t remember what all. Then Pete started this big stupid fight with her, arguing about how Krishna and Buddha and several other guys were actually Jesus in different human disguises, and vice versa, which any fool could see was a wacko thing tofight about even if they were, since they also obviously weren’t. By the time it was over Mama had strictly forbidden him to read any more of Mr. Delaney’s heathen religious books. So of course now he reads
tons
, every night, under the covers by flashlight. Mr. Delaney even gives him batteries. And Mama was right: Peter’s head
is
getting filled with heathen beliefs and stories—and they’re really great! Pete’s just a kid, but already he has more interesting ideas and tells better tales than anybody I know, even Everett, though Everett makes better pissed-off speeches and tells funnier jokes. I think I might even agree with Mr. Delaney about Pete being a genius, though it’s an odd thing to think about your own brother. And in his feisty way sometimes I think maybe Everett’s one too. Irwin, though, is practically a dunce from a schoolteacherly point of view, yet sometimes just watching him laugh and eat his dinner and grow new muscles and tickle Bet and Freddy and misunderstand Pete and Everett’s discussions and stories and punchlines is more fun than the discussions and stories themselves.
    When you get right down to it, it’s a great family I got. But then it’s easy to love everybody the same amount when they’re your family. It’s not nearly so easy when they’re weird Yankees like Roger Maris or total bideeps like Meredith Starr. At times it seems to me like it might have been more practical of God to make everybody in the world blood relatives with the same last name.