Tietam Brown by Mick Foley Read Free Book Online Page A

display, and Sugling, who last year didn’t even buy candy for the kids, and then hid in his house with the lights off so no one would knock, decides one day before Halloween that he’s the Great Pumpkin or some damn thing and tries to outdo me again. Well screw them, I’m tired of the Suglings screwing Tietam Brown all the time.”
    I tried not to laugh, but man, it was hard. The veins in my father’s neck were bulging out, and his hands were shaking he was so mad, and I didn’t have the nerve to burst his bubble and tell him that his big speech was about the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard.
    First he’d talked about how he and I had “got back together,” as if we were Simon and Garfunkel planning a reunion concert instead of a father and son who hadn’t seen each other in seventeen years. Then he’d mispronounced a middle name that most ten-year-olds would know, before talking about his “hell of a Halloween display” as if our house was the set for
The Shining
or something. The guy had literally put a pumpkin on each side of the front steps, and a sign that said “Boo” on our front yard. Total time invested . . . maybe three minutes.
    But most ridiculous of all was his contention that the Suglings were always screwing him. Because how I saw it a week earlier, or I guess “how I heard it” might be more accurate, it had been Tietam Brown screwing the Suglings . . . or at least one of them.
    My dad’s face lightened up a little, and his veins disappeared back under his skin, and he shook his head and said, “Not anymore, Andy, not anymore. You know why?” I shrugged my shoulders. “Because this Christmas, Andy, we’ll have a setup that you won’t believe. People will drive by to see
our
house, Andy, and as for Charlie Sugling and that little wife of his, well they’ll just have to live with it.”
    He looked up just slightly, as if picturing this whole scene on our living room wall, and said, “I don’t know how yet, Andy, but we’re going to do it. And they’ll just have to live with it.”
    I looked up at the same spot on the wall, briefly tried to envision this holiday extravaganza, and had to admit to myself that it sounded pretty good. I’d been listening to Nat sing the season’s virtues for years, but had pretty much been void of any Christmas cheer for the last decade or so.
    A nudge from my dad brought me back. “I nailed her, you know,” he said, and when my mind drew a blank, he filled it right in. “Mrs. Sugling, I nailed her.”
    â€œI know, Dad,” I replied, and looked at him looking at me, a big smile on his face, as if he was a child who’d just handed his mom a good report card and was waiting for a pat on the head. “I know you did, Dad.”
    â€œAnd,” Tietam said.
    â€œAnd what, Dad?”
    â€œAnd . . . did she sound like she loved it?”
    â€œYeah, it sounded that way to me, Dad.”
    Satisfied, he adjusted the curtain, patted me on the back, and walked up the stairs. Triumphantly. Then he walked halfway back down, looked down at me, laughed, and said, “You’re damn right she did, Andy, you’re damn right she did.”
    Later over dinner, a microwavable monstrosity that was barely edible, he became the vision of the concerned parent. “So Andy, tell me about this big dance.”
    I told him about the Superdance, an annual all-night affair that the school held to raise money for muscular dystrophy.
    â€œMan,” he said, “that’s a lot of dancing. You ever danced before, Andy?”
    â€œNo, how about you, Dad?”
    â€œOnly between the sheets, kid. Only between the sheets.” Then, while chewing a piece of chicken that looked to be tougher than the Pittsburgh Steelers front line, he said, “When does it start?”
    â€œIn about an hour.”
    â€œNeed a