2 Fake Intelligents Takin' the boys fishin' tomorrow, Dick? Nope. Rit's gotta cold. Won't be going. He cut it short. John Moran, retail rep for Yankee Jewelers, was nosy, lonely and overweight (the lethal combination) Drove Dick crazy every Friday afternoon with his rueful inquiries about the weekend, intercepting a trip to the water cooler just to make conversation. You could hear him a mile off, lumbering down the hall, corpulent breath tone choked off and stuttered like an encrusted lawnmower. Take 'em fishin'? To Dick it seemed like John rehearsed his sentences in advance. He imagined him muttering in the bathroom, dropping the 'g's', then adding them. Taking them fishing, tomorrow, Kinscherf? The last straw. Dick detested being called Kinscherf. He thought it condescending and stuck up, using last names like that, like some phony English schoolboy. He blamed it on The Inheritance. John was left a mountain of money by his Mama, Old Lady Moran, who died young, a widower, and left the whole potato to her sad son who kept on at Yankee because without that job he'd have no life, no friends, just a big empty house. Can't mend a lonelyheart unless you love him, Ann intoned. Well there's nothing lovable about Old Moron Moran. They'd argue about it. Teddy taking John's side. You're a curmudgeon, Dick. Prematurely set in your ways. Watch out... Do you want him coming over here, my dear? My dearest darling? Do you really want to pretend to show interest in those worn out, half baked, windy anecdotes of his? The ones he works up and repeats ad infinitum? You wanna be the one to coax him out the door when he's hinting for a sleep-over? For another slice of your 'wonderful pie'? He's fat and he's disgusting and he's tiresome and you know it. He can't help it. It's a condition. A condition? I'll say it is. He's got a beckoning condition, that's what he's got. He beckons, in case you hadn't noticed. He sinks into the couch and curls those sweaty sausage fingers of his, curls them back and beckons at you to get you to do this that and the other thing for him hand and foot! A pillow, Ann? A glass of beer? I'll give him a glass of beer. Leave him alone. Got the Ford all shined up, Kinscherf, Moran would mince. Hit all them faraway ponds yew talk about, but nevah git to. Can't drive. I'll take my car. Not interested. Hey, you suddenly from Georgia, John? 'Nevah git to'? Is that what I heard? Moran was an easy target. Every Saturday, Dick took his boys fishing. He preferred having them to himself. To Hell with the car; to Hell with Moran. They'd walk. If it took an hour to 'git to' where they were going, fine. Loudest person I've even met. Loves to hear himself talk. Scares the fish. Boonton was a small town. One main street, a single park, couple of banks, a diner, a five and dime, a public school. In ten minutes you'd hit farmland; in a half hour, the woods. There you could escape the likes of John Moran. Early morning sunlight filtered down, dusting the pine needle floor and the boys with ghostly blades of shimmering light. Rit would watch Karl spring from rock to rock, even when it was unnecessary, inventing the more daunting traverse. Sometimes he'd follow, stone for stone. Mostly he sleepwalked, lost in it - the snap of branches, an obscure tune his Dad hummed, the determined look on his brother's face as he charted their course. Rit surrendered the scout prerogative, preferring the irresponsibility of being led, of construing anthropomorphic shapes in the panes of light cut clear in the upper branches, supposing language in birdcalls, intelligence in the angle of trees. Karl knew the good spots, could talk the fish to bait. Dick was lazy, propped his pole, lay back, arms folded, fantasizing he was a writer. Envied their way of putting things on paper. Things that counted for something more than a dollar earned. Read Mark Twain aloud to the boys at night. They'd lean against him, pajamas and slippers, Karl drifting off; Rit, bug-eyed. Fishing made Rit impatient. Couldn't sit still. Three casts, move on, over and out. This afternoon, as usual, wherever he was or whatever he was doing, he lived in his head. Thought about his Mom, about being 'in the embrace of family' as she put it. She was big on that. Thought The Kinscherfs were the cat's meow. Circled the wagons. Few could stand up to her brood, regardless of status, wealth or fake intelligence. Those fake intelligents, marching out their Saturday Evening Post opinions like it meant they had something going on in their head. Fake intelligence covers up a dry heart, she'd say. Covers it up with judgment. The mind is a snake, Rit. An insidious, poisonous snake. Will question your emotions, scare your self half to death with fear and worry. Your mother's a type-A romantic, Dick chimed in. Should have been born in the 18th Century. Suspicious of rational thought. The heart tells the truth. The mind is a liar. See what I mean? Rit wasn't sure what she was talking about, or what his Dad's position was on all this, but he figured if she was this romantic type-A person, he figured he must be a romantic type-A person as well. He knew she loved the Old Man, he knew she loved him and Karl, but she was also strangely covert. Fiercely proud, she rarely boasted. Pride crept into her behavior when she was 'in society' as she laughingly referred to the cocktail parties she and Dick slipped off to on Saturday nights. She'd listen impatiently to the claims mothers made about their kids, encouraging their stories, appreciating their successes, but the underlying, rock solid faith she had in her two boys and the intractable devotion she had for her husband sat on a throne inside her. Nobody else's good son or faithful husband could touch that. Why that sounds wonderful, she'd remark. I can imagine how you must be feeling about all this, Judy dear. You've all done so much and so well and so early in life - enjoying the inversion, the backhanded compliment, giving away nothing. You're stuck up, Ann. You yell at me for being inconsiderate about dumb dumb Moran, and you're all pink in the face with your high minded gloating. I do not gloat. It's glaringly obvious to me, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who sees it. I do not gloat. Yes you do-o. You know you do-o. Her 'humility', he maintained, was her greatest achievement, because she was such a proud woman it took all her resolve to hide it.v Congratulations, Karl, you made the football team. I knew you would. Now, can you help me move the kitchen table? It's too heavy for your old Ma. A linebacker like yourself I'm sure could carry the whole team on his back. And that was it. Later on Rit complained that her restraint, her lack of praise for his good work, earned him a debilitating inferiority, especially in the face of those whiteshoe stuffed shirts who presided over the world of his early manhood. Much as he'd be overtaken at dinner, weeping at the early loss of his dear Mama, much as he'd lay claim to her sense of humor as it correlated to his own, more often he'd make her the scapegoat, an easy out, rationalizing why he became such a loser in life. Today, however, a distinction like insecurity was something he could only pretend to fathom. He appreciated big words. Liked words period. Teddy and Dick threw them out all the time. He was quickly developing his very own personal fake intelligence. He guessed out the meanings to half of them contextually, make up the other half. Never bothered to use a dictionary. He was like her that way, carrying on as if he knew, half okay with being half right half the time. Dad! I gotta strike!, he shrieked. The sound of his voice bounced off a flat slab of granite that banked Dick's side of the water. Lookit! Reel him in slow, Rit! Don't go off half-cocked! His heels slipped, fell on his back, rod cartwheeling, arms way out. Karl pouted. Silent Karl. He knew his brother was useless in these situations. Rit gripped the line, digging in, holding it from above like a kerosene lamp. This went on for five straight minutes until he got the big idea that all he had to do was jump in and sort of hug the fish out of water. It was over Rit nearly had him. Shivering green and gold slapped at his toothpick arms for one stop action moment, wild-eyed, incredulous and then shook free, pole, line, bait like a collapsed parachute chasing after. Rit stood there, soaking wet, staring at the hole in the water where it all went down. 3 - Book of Girls