“The Wake”: from the Autobiography of Mike Keegan (Written Posthumously by the Author) Part I

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By: Will
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Devilish and delightful.
Recording removed.
By: Corrie
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I like this. It is typical of pford001. So is this a piece to a longer story? Or is it a stand alone? It doesn't kinda just peter out. I also think this is a little bit autobiographical to pford001...staring at ceilings for an hour in the middle of the night, bizarre dreams, wanting to stick an ice pick in the eye... Can't really thing of anything else to add. Is this something from awhile ago or is it something new?

T T T

“The Wake”: from the Autobiography of Mike Keegan (Written Posthumously by the Author) Part I

By: pford001

It started with the phone call.

When he thought about it later, he decided it was the phone

call that broke the camel’s back. And not to mix

metaphors, but the phone call from his mother was like that

last dirty tee shirt tossed onto a pile of laundry that sent

the whole heap spilling to the floor. There were other

possibilities, sure. But if he’d had to make a bet, he

would have said the phone call did it.

His telephone rang in the middle of the night and, when he

picked it up, his mother told him they had found the big

German shepherd, Roughage, hanging from the fence by her

collar. His father had not been sure, but he thought the dog

had committed suicide.

Mike Keegan had just fallen back to sleep after staring at

the ceiling for an hour and wondering what the hell was wrong

with his life. He had first dreamed he was standing in the

bushes outside the Dunkin Donuts near his home. He was naked

except for his glasses, and he’d been nagged by the

feeling that he ought to go inside the store because people

who worked there might think him rude for watching through the

window. When a loud, insistent buzz forced its way into the

dream, he thought that it God signaling him to get out of the

bushes and go home. When he realized it was the phone, he

groaned and reached for the receiver.

His mother’s befuddlement foamed out of the

earpiece.

“Do you think she was depressed?” the woman

asked after telling him what had happened.

Only a woman whose coffee looked and tasted like gravy

would call a man in the middle of the night to ask if a German

shepherd could be depressed, Mike thought, and he continued to

groan while she talked about his father’s phlebitis and

the liver spots on the backs of her own hands.

    It was three o’clock in the morning.

“Ma, please. I gotta get up for work in a few of

hours.”

“Michael Evander Keegan, are you so put upon by work

that you don’t have a few minutes to talk to your own

mother?”

“What the hell is he bellyaching about now?”

Mike heard his father in the background.

“You see,” said his mother.

“That’s all it takes to upset your father. As if

he weren’t distraught already. Now you’ve gone

and made it worse.”

    “I didn’t DO anything!” Mike insisted.

“Why are you raising your voice? Is it too much to

ask that you show some concern for your father, and for the

family pet?”

    “I’m sorry,” he said.

“I’ll bet you are. You always think about

yourself, but never your father and me. And poor

Roughage…”

His mother began to weep, and Keegan thought about putting

an ice pick through his eye.

“Ma, I have to go. I’m sorry about the dog.

Tell Dad—”

    The phone clicked in his ear.

He threw the handset across the room and draped a forearm

over his eyes.

By day, he was an accountant, one of an infinite number

who haunted the business district and roamed the innards of

the city government. But in his heart, he was a writer,

plying his trade at night and on weekends. He had completed

only one book thus far, and thus far he had had no luck

finding an agent or a publisher. He had thought that his

title, Cooking with Hitler, would be a sure-fire attention

getter.

    It was not so, however.

Of the three publishers who bothered to answer his

inquiry, two had mistaken the book for a humorous take on der

Fuhrer, and the third had told him his idea showed such poor

taste that he need never contact them again.

Two little known facts about Hitler were that he was a

superb baker, and that he often served strudel made with his

very own recipe to members of the Nazi high command when they

gathered at Berteschgarten. In the months between the Battle

of Britain and Operation Barbarossa, he had combated the

mounting stress by focusing on his lemon wedges. As

preparations for the invasion of Russia moved into high gear,

he had become so frazzled that he put aside desserts

altogether and threw himself into roasts and poultry with a

gusto that no one had seen since the burning of the Reichstag.

Michael was no Nazi sympathizer. Oh no. He simply

appreciated the cosmic irony of the world’s greatest

murderer longing in his heart of hearts to win the Dusseldorf

Bake Off. If that wasn’t material for a book, what was?

Michael had labored two and a half years to document the

German leader’s endeavors, and when he was done, when

the completed manuscript was in hand, he’d presented it

triumphantly to Candace, his girlfriend, and she had given him

a stricken look and then gone to bed without speaking to him.

Candace was gone now, of course. She had moved out two

weeks ago, but not because of the book. She had packed her

things and left two days after Michael came home with a letter

from the Human Resources department at his firm. The letter

said simply that his position (along with twenty-three others)

was being eliminated. There were details about his severance

package and a promise to help him locate and transition into a

new blah blah blah blah. He had not yet told his parents

because, well…because they were his parents. His

mother, who cared more about the dog than she did him, would

blather on for days about how she had told him to at least try

to get into medical school because no one ever heard of a

doctor being out of work. And his father, who had the

dangerous habit of drinking beer while he fed the wood chipper

in the backyard, would grumble in agreement to whatever she

said because it was easier than thinking about the thing for

himself...

Comments

WQAdmin

pford001, you have a way, here, of capturing the human condition through character speech and behavior. We all know these characters because they are us. And certainly we can laugh and identify with any adult child of these two parents.

That being said, now that "we" are in the story, our sympath...

October 7, 2014
·

Corrie

I like this. It is typical of pford001.

So is this a piece to a longer story? Or is it a stand alone? It doesn't kinda just peter out.

I also think this is a little bit autobiographical to pford001...staring at ceilings for an hour in the middle of the night, bizarre dreams, wanting to stick an ice pi...

October 10, 2014
·

Will

Devilish and delightful.

October 20, 2014
·

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“The Wake”: from the Autobiography of Mike Keegan (Written Posthumously by the Author) Part I

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