Chapter Four

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Thirty-Five Years Earlier

“You certainly haven’t been fishing,” Janelle Desmond’s voice cut through the quiet morning, waking Scotty from a deep, restful sleep. “So where in the hell have you been?”

Scotty’s eyes snapped open and he flipped over onto his back, rubbing his eyes.  The sheets and blanket were warm and snug and cocoon-like around him. His parents rarely ever fought or argued, so hearing his mother’s voice in such a loud pitch was particularly startling.  The ten-year old looked over at the square bright red numerals on the bedside clock radio. It was 9:43 AM. Sunday morning.

Scotty’s father had left Friday after work on a solo fishing trip up north. He usually returned from his weekend fishing ventures early on Sunday. And he was usually home just about an hour after the sun got up. He would normally stick his head into Scotty’s room and say something like: “Up and at ‘em, Chip!” (his fond fatherly nickname for Scotty) and “Time to take on the day” or “The day isn’t getting any younger!”

But this morning, he must have arrived a bit later, and there was none of the regular “annoying” fatherly intrusion into his pre-teen desire to sleep most of the morning away. Sundays had always been for sleeping in because Saturday was all about getting up early – yes, even earlier than during the school week – in order to absorb the plethora of cartoons that played.

Scotty often relished in getting up before the channel even came live.

On Saturdays he would wake without benefit of any alarm, toss the sheets aside and race to the living room in order to turn the television on, to see the rainbow strips of the test pattern surrounded by a frame of black and with the quiet, persistent single note pitch whining in the background.

He would sit there, transfixed by the screen, proud of the fact that here he was, pre-station go live time, waiting for the magical “world” of Saturday morning television to begin.

The ritual of being there, each Saturday morning to see the test-pattern revert from the static sound and colored screen to the slide-show of Canadian landscapes and cityscapes accompanied by the National Anthem was a special moment in Scotty’s weekend.

It was like he was there for the dawn of time, the beginning of everything, and he felt a special part of the universe to go from the “nothing-ness” of the overnight test pattern screen to the beginning of the day.

It wasn’t until a decade or so later that he would wonder if that was part of the special feeling his father embraced when he sat out on a lake while fishing and watched the Sunday sun come up over the trees.

But that was Scotty’s Saturday morning – it was all about being awake to see the day’s world begin, through the National Anthem and then the stream of cartoons; from The Flintstones and The Bugs Bunny and Road Runner Looney Tunes, Captain Kangaroo, Scooby-Doo, enjoying having the morning to himself before his mother stirred.

Saturday was a special ritual where, for a certain time, he was the only person in the universe, just waiting for everything to turn on and begin. It was – and this was something he wouldn’t consider for at least a decade, not until he was fully entrenched in computer programming – his weekly “reboot.”

But Sunday – now that was his day to sleep in, to catch up on the rest missed from the morning before.  Sunday was usually when he would try to suck as much rest and sleep from the morning as he could before his father woke him – in the same way that, on Saturdays, he would suck as much of the joy of animated television programs that seemed to only play on Saturday morning (with the exception, of course, of The Flintstones and Spider-Man which did play during the week at noon for half an hour and also just around the time he was having his after school snack).

Except, not this Sunday.

This Sunday was something new. Something he’d never experienced before.

It was strange hearing his mother’s high pitched voice cutting through the morning.

Decidedly more disturbing than his father’s typical cheesy morning ritual of waking him.

“Fishing!” Lionel Desmond stated in response in a loud, firm, and deep-toned voice, quite remarkably different than the high-toned shriek.

“No, you weren’t fishing!” she said.

“Of course I was. Where the hell else would I be?”

“You tell me, Lionel Edward Desmond. You tell me.”  There was a pause for at least a couple of beats. “Sure, you have your tackle box, you have your rod, you have your overnight bad and you’re wearing your fishing gear. But you don’t smell like fish...”

“I don’t smell like fish because I didn’t have any luck! I didn’t catch anything.”

“Bullshit!” Scotty heard the front door open and then slam shut.  “Look at your truck!” She yelled. “It rained most of the weekend. But look at your truck; look at the wheel wells, look at the tires. There’s not even the faintest trace of mud anywhere on the truck.”

“You’re serious?” Lionel replied. “There’s no mud?”

“And I said it before, Lionel.” There was another pause, as Scotty imagined his mother leaning in, pursuing her lips together and performing a series of sniffs – the same gesture she would often do when trying to determine if Scotty had brushed his teeth. “But you don’t smell like fish.”

“I told you…”

“No!  You don’t smell like fish! But you do smell like cologne. Why do you smell like cologne, Desmond? Tell me that, huh. Why do you smell like cologne?”

“Seriously?” Lionel said. “There’s cologne on my collar because this is the shirt I originally put on Friday after work.

“Tell me, Lionel!”

“Tell you what?”

“Where have you been?”

“Fishing!”

“No, you haven’t. You don’t smell like fish. Your truck has no mud on it. I want to know where you’ve been, Lionel!”

“Fishing!” he repeated. A second later the door slammed so hard that there was the sound of glass breaking. Then, half a minute later, the truck door slammed and Lionel heard the truck starting up then pull out of the driveway.

He laid in bed wishing he could just fall asleep and make it go away as he listened to his mother’s quiet sobs.

After a minute, the bathroom door closed and locked and his mother’s muffled crying seemed louder.

Sighing, Scotty got out of bed and figured he could be useful by going and cleaning up the broken glass.

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