Read Online The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy by David Handler - Free Book Online Page B

then he started back, his stroke strong and steady.
    “I’m getting there!” he cried triumphantly when he’d reached shallow water.
    “Getting where, Thor?”
    He shook himself like a bear, toweling himself with his socks. “I’m in training, boy,” he informed me, hanging them over the fire to dry. “Got to improve my stamina. I’m sailing solo around the world soon as spring hits. Journal should make for one helluva book.”
    I handed him the bottle of Laphroaig I’d brought along. It’s a rather peaty single malt. Not to everyone’s liking. “And what will Clethra do?”
    He took a gulp, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Whatever she wants. I don’t own her. Although it’s my hope she’ll resume her education.”
    I watched him climb back into his clothes, thinking how so utterly typical this was of him. He was always stirring things up and then taking off, leaving nothing but roiling upheaval in his wake. Turmoil was the man’s oxygen. Sure, this was vintage Thor Gibbs, all right. So I wasn’t surprised. I just wondered if little Clethra knew the slightest damned thing about it.
    He made himself comfortable next to the fire, grinning at me with boyish mischief. “Want to drop some acid?”
    “Why, did you bring some?”
    “Hell, no. Makes me too sane.” He scratched his beard, studying me. “Just trying to figure out where your head’s at.”
    “On top of my neck, last time I looked.”
    “See? That’s your problem right there, boy. It should be bobbing along the surface of the River Ganges, or soaring high atop a Tibetan mountain with the holy men, or buried deep, deep inside the fertile, unknowable delta of some dark vixen who can tango until dawn with a knife between her teeth.”
    “Done it. Did that. Been there—except for the knife part.” I crouched over the chili, stirring it. “Who says I’ve got a problem?”
    “Let’s talk man to man, Hoagy,” Thor said gravely.
    “Sounds good. Who’s going to hold up my end?”
    “You’ve gone soft, boy.”
    “No, I haven’t. I was always soft.”
    “Like hell you were. You were one of the bravest wild men I’ve ever known.”
    “You must be thinking of someone else.”
    “I’m thinking of Stewart Stafford Hoag, who took the heroic journey. Stared your deepest fears in the face, even though it meant turning your whole being into one raw, gaping wound. That’s where it all came from, boy. The good work. You bled for it, day in and day out. But now … now you’ve turned into the king of the mild frontier, all snug and contented. We got to get you out of here. We’ll hit the road together, you and me. Revive the old Coast to Coast Bruise Band. Ride the rails, sleep out under the stars, hit every seedy barroom between here and Mendocino. What do you say?”
    “I’ll think about it.”
    He was silent a moment. I could feel his blue eyes boring through my head. “I’m disappointed in you.”
    “I said I’d think about it.”
    The chili was hot. I spooned it into tin bowls and gave him one with a hunk of bread. He took it, shaking his bald head at me. “And you wonder why your work has turned to shit.”
    “I don’t wonder at all. I’m written out, that’s all. Happens to everyone.”
    “Bullshit!” he thundered, startling Lulu, who’d been snoring before the fire. “They stop pushing themselves. They stop asking why. Just go off in a corner somewhere and quietly form mold. I don’t want that to happen to you. You’re too damned talented.”
    “I was,” I said, stroking Lulu. “I’m not anymore.”
    “Dangerous words, Hoagy,” he warned, stabbing his spoon at me. “Damned dangerous. This is a horrifying age we live in, this post-modern age. We’ve become small and mean. We believe in nothing, quest for nothing, care for nothing. Our intellectuals are out of touch with reality. Our press revels in public executions. Yet we do nothing to stem the tide. Because that involves risk, and risk terrifies