Read Online Time to Go by Stephen Dixon - Free Book Online Page A

He looked at her from about ten feet away, sheepish grin on her face, body still partly hidden by the tree trunk. That was the single happiest moment of his life. Other than that he was in love with her and had looked forward to seeing her that day, he can’t really explain it beyond that. He went over to her, they hugged and kissed, but the most rhapsodic part of the experience was over for him.
    He finished The Idiot , thought it the best book he read and wanted to talk to someone about it. No one he knew had read it, not even his brothers and mother who among them seemed to have read everything. A couple of high school friends said if the book was that great they’d start reading it right away, but he said by the time they finished he’d probably have forgotten most of it. “I need someone to talk about it with now. Maybe someone in your family,” and one friend reported back that his father had started it in college but couldn’t get past the first fifty pages.
    He sent away ten cents and a box top and every Saturday after that waited for the mail in the building’s vestibule or on weekdays rushed home around lunchtime when the mail was often delivered. His mother said “It takes time,” but he said “Maybe this company just wanted to steal my dime.” Two months later the mailman said “I think this is for you. I could’ve left it by your letter box yesterday hut I knew the contents were especially precious to you,” and he gave him the small package. He opened it in his room, put the ring on his finger, adjusted the band, blew the ring’s whistle, peered into its sight, learned where north and south were in the room, held the ring under a light and then went into a dark closet, shut the door and brought the ring up close to his face and was able to make out the ring and the knuckle of his ring finger.
    His mother took his sister and him to see Macy’s Santa Claus.
    Santa’s helper ran the specially decorated elevator, other helpers led them down and around a dark corridor that looked like a funhouse’s and at the end of it gave them each a brown paper bag of Christmas candy. When his turn came, Santa sat him on his lap, called him “a skinny lad” and asked what he wanted for Christmas. “An electric train set and the right to change my name to Toby Tyler.”
    His father was drafted. For a while Don slept in the same bed with his mother because she was afraid to sleep alone. But he kicked too much and occasionally wet himself, so she put him back in the boys’ room. Years later he mentioned this and she denied he’d ever slept in the same bed with her even when he was sick, so he stopped talking about it or even bringing up that time when his father was in the service.
    His parents were on their double bed. He crawled into the room, stood up by holding the bedspread, wondered how they got into the bed. They must use a ladder and he imagined a ladder against the side of the bed and his parents climbing up it. He raised his arms and shook them and his father lifted him up and dropped him between them.
    He was sitting at his favorite bar drinking a beer. A man sat next to him, said “Beer is it? Another beer for this young man and a daiquiri for me,” and then said to Don “So what are your credentials or would you like me to first give mine?” and put his hand on Dan’s knee and rubbed it. Don said “Excuse me, take your hand off, I don’t swing that way,” but must have said it louder than he intended to, for the man saw some other drinkers staring at him, got up, though the drinks he’d ordered were just now set down, and headed for the door. “What am I to do with your drinks, you goddamn fag?” the bartender said, but the man was outside. “You attract the wrong types,” the bartender said to Don. “Gain some weight.”
    It was around 4 p.m., a school day, he went with