You Don't Know About Me by Brian Meehl Read Free Book Online

she’d say it was written by the devil and destroy it. If I could, I’d bring it to you myself. I can’t. You have to fetch it, by yourself. And because I fear Tilda might be watching this, finding the book won’t be easy. It will be a treasure hunt.” He swallowed and went on. “Your first clue is a riddle. Here it is: Where do you find the book of Genesis and human conception?”
    I listened to a breath rattle through him.
    â€œIf and when you begin your hunt, here’s my advice. Be like Huck Finn. Huck said, ‘I don’t take no stock in dead people.’ In other words, Billy, don’t take no stock in invisible fathers. Only take stock in what fathers leave behind.”
    He blinked in slow motion. His eyes were wet and shiny. “Before I fade to black—I have no right to say this, but I will because I never had the chance. I love you. Then, now, forevermore.”
    He lifted his other arm from under the covers. There was a tube sticking out of it, snaking offscreen. His hand with the remote reached for a knob on the tube. I suddenly realized what he was about to do.
    â€œDon’t!” I heard my voice shout outside the headphones.
    His quavering fingers turned the knob. He looked at me; his voice scratched in my ears. “I pray to all the gods, let his adventure begin with my end.” His finger moved onto the remote. The picture went black.
    What I remember after that was like a foggy dream. The info man was at my side, acting like something was wrong. He pushed the box of tissues toward me. I knocked it out of his hand, or maybe he dropped it. I shouted that I wanted my DVD back. He must’ve given it to me. Running out of the library, I felt it burning in my hand.

10
Wicked Hearts
    As I ran I couldn’t tell where my tears left off and my sweat began. All I felt was rage. I hated my father for dying, hated my mother for living, and hated God for letting me be born. How could they all be so cruel? How could my father rise from the river Mom drowned him in, wave a map in my face, and end his life a few minutes after his resurrection? Why didn’t he try harder to find us? Why didn’t he try harder to find me? Was I that worthless? The answers were now entombed in silence. My rage kept punching the tearsout of me: a total tear-ectomy. And there was no taking it out on “invisible fathers,” my earthly one or heavenly one. The only one I could rage against was Mom.
    I burst into the house, grabbed the leather Bible from my room, and shoved it in her face. I shouted that the book was no sign from God. It was no miracle. I screamed it was from Richard Allbright and threw it on the floor.
    She stood there, dead still. Dust swirled up from the floor, darting in the sunlight like angry gnats. She reached down. I beat her to it, snatching the book up. “It’s mine! It’s the only thing I’ll ever have that he touched!” I wanted to keep yelling but a sob grabbed my throat.
    â€œThat’s not true,” she said, moving toward me. “He touched me. You have me.”
    I stepped back. “I don’t want
you
!”
    The words struck us both. They hit her harder than hearing his name. And they knocked out whatever tears I had left. I was done crying over a man who’d always been alive, hiding behind the mirror. A man who was now dead and gone before anyone gave me the chance to know him. To weep over him was as dumb as crying over a great-great-grandfather you’d never met. Whoever said “I don’t take no stock in dead people” was right.
    I asked her if it was true about them never marrying and her ditching him before I was born. When she asked me how I’d heard such things, I slammed her with the best scripture on lying she’d taught me.
“Liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone
.
”
There’s nothing like a little Revelation to put the fear