The Book of Lies

6

You’re gonna feel a sting,” the nurse says, wheeling my dad into one of the emergency exam rooms. As she’s about to pull the curtain shut, she turns back to me and stops. “Only relatives from here. You related?”

I freeze at the question. She doesn’t have time for indecision.

“Waiting room’s back there,” she says, whipping the curtain shut like a magician’s cape.

Sleepwalking toward the L-shaped hub of pink plastic waiting room chairs, I’m still clutching the mound of my dad’s crumpled belongings—his bloody shirt, pants, and shoes—that the EMTs cut off him. A digital clock on the wall tells me it’s 1:34 a.m. To Roo-sevelt’s credit, as I slump down in the seat next to him, he doesn’t say a word for at least four or five seconds.

“Cal, if he’s really your dad—”

“He’s my dad.”

“Then you should go back there.”

I start to stand up, then again sit back down.

I’ve waited nineteen years to see my dad. Nineteen years being mad he’s gone. But to hop out of my chair and peek behind that curtain and reenter his life . . . “What if he doesn’t want me back?” I whisper.

Smart enough to not answer, Roosevelt quickly shows me why, after he raised his own hell in high school, he was such a great Methodist minister. Sure, he still had his rebellious side—with a few too many Iron Maiden quotes in his sermons—but the way he breathed life into Scripture and related to people, everyone loved that pastor with the ponytail.

The only problem came when church leaders told Roosevelt they didn’t like the fact that he wasn’t married. In the wake of all the church pedophile cases, it didn’t reflect well that even though he was from one of the wealthiest families in town, at nearly forty years old, he was still single. Roosevelt pleaded, explaining that he hadn’t found anyone he loved. His family tried to help by throwing around their financial weight. But in rural Tennessee—where a handsome, unmarried, thirty-eight-year-old man can mean only one thing—his church refused to budge. “If you want to be queer, don’t do it here,” said the message that was spray-painted on the hood of his car. And Roosevelt had his first personal heartbreak.

Which is why he empathizes so well with mine.

“Cal, when you were little, you ever watch The Ten Commandments?”

“This gonna be another sermon?”

“Boy, you think you’re the only one who likes saving people?” he teases, though I know it’s no joke. No matter how happy he is, Roosevelt would kill to have his old parish back. It’s not ego; it’s just his mission. He’ll never say it, but I know that’s the reason he took this job. And though I bet his family could easily buy him a new church, well, it’s the same reason he won’t buy us a new van. Some battles you have to fight by yourself. “Think about the Moses story, Cal: Little baby gets dropped in a basket, then grows up thinking he’s Egyptian royalty—until his past comes kickin’ at the door and reveals to him his true purpose.”

“That mean I’m getting the long beard and the sandals?”

“We all hate something about our past, Cal. That’s why we run from it, or compensate for it, or even fill our van with homeless people. But when something like this happens—when your dad shows up—maybe there is a bigger purpose. ‘What you intended for evil, God intended for good.’ Genesis 50:20.”

Staring down at the pointy tips of my dad’s shoes in my hand, I don’t say a word. When my mom worked in the hospital, she used to lecture us about the importance of good shoes. As a cleaning lady, it was the one personal item she could see in every room. Fancy clothes were replaced by hospital gowns, but under every bed . . . Show me someone’s shoes, and I’ll show you their lives.

Thanks to that ridiculous mantra, my dad used to always have one pair of shiny black lawyer shoes (even though he was a painter) and a pair of tan cordovans (which my mom was convinced meant you were rich).

Today, in my lap, he’s got black loafers. And not the cheap kind with the tough leather and the seams coming undone. These are nice—buffed and narrow at the toes; Italian leather soles.

I read the label inside.

“What’s wrong?” Roosevelt asks.

“These are Franceschettis.”

He cocks an eyebrow and looks for himself. He’s the one from money. He knows what it means.

“Franceschettis are expensive, aren’t they?” I ask.

“Four hundred bucks a pair.”

“What about his shirt?” I ask, showing him the label on my dad’s bloody silk shirt. Michael Kors. “Is Michael Kors good?”

“Plenty good. As in three-hundred-bucks-a-pop good.”

“On a guy we found on a homeless call,” I point out.

“Maybe they were donated. We get designer clothes all the time.”

I look at the bottom of the shoes. The leather soles barely have a scuff on them. Brand new. Confused, I once again start to stand up, then quickly sit back down.

When I was little and we had company coming over, my father would buy cheap Scotch at the neighborhood liquor store and pour it into a Johnnie Walker Black Label bottle. He did the same when he first started painting signs at restaurants, pouring discount remainder paint into the Benjamin Moore cans he’d have me fish from the hardware store’s trash. My mother used to tease him, calling it his little CIA trick. He never laughed at the joke. For him, appearances mattered.

“Did he say anything in the ambulance?” Roosevelt asks, eyeing the other people in the waiting area. A teenager on crutches stares our way.

“Not much,” I say, lowering my voice. “He told the medics he was coming out of that dump bar on Third Street when some Hispanic kid with big ears pulled a gun and asked for his wallet. When he refused, the kid took the wallet, pulled the trigger, shoved him into a red Jeep Cherokee, and dumped him in the park where we found him.”

“Okay, so that’s a story. He’s not homeless. He just got robbed.”

I shake my head, still staring at the shirt’s snazzy black label. “People with three-hundred-dollar shirts and four-hundred-dollar shoes don’t go into low-life bars on Third.”

“What’re you talking about? This is Florida. We got stupid rich people everywhere. Besides, even if he’s out of place, doesn’t mean he’s out to—” Roosevelt cuts himself off, watching me carefully. “Oh, you think this is like Miss Deirdre, don’t you? No, no, boy. This is not Miss Deirdre.”

I’ve known Roosevelt for nearly six years. I first met him back when I was an ICE agent (which is just the cooler-sounding acronym for the U.S. government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement). I guarded the ports, stopped terrorist and drug shipments from coming in, and, at least during my first two years, confiscated shipments of fake Sony TVs and counterfeit Levi’s jeans. Until I opened myself up, helped someone I shouldn’t have, and in one horrible moment got fired from my job and plummeted through the second trapdoor in my life.

“Cal, what happened with Miss Deirdre—”

“Can we please go back to my father’s shoes?”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing. I know you, Cal. And I know it’s easier to drive around with a van full of strangers where there’s no risk of any emotional investment, but just because you got burned once by letting your guard down doesn’t mean it’ll be the same here. Not everyone you care about will eventually screw you.”

Back during my leap from grace, every newspaper reporter, community leader, and government colleague took me out of their Rolodex. Roosevelt, when he heard the story, invited me in. For that alone, I love him like a brother. And while he knows what it’s like to be excommunicated from your kingdom, unlike Roosevelt, I’m no longer waiting for someone to bring me back inside.

Within a minute, I’ve combed through my dad’s shirt and pants pockets. All it gives me is some spare change and a few tabs of nicotine gum. No secrets. Nothing revealing. That is, until I toss the shirt and pants into the plastic chair on my left and get my first good look inside his other shoe. I notice a tiny yellow triangle peeking out from inside. It’s no bigger than the corner of a stamp, but the way it’s tucked in there catches my eye, as if it’s hidden under the leather.

I yank the insole. It comes right out, revealing what’s tucked underneath—

“What? Is it bad?” Roosevelt asks as I pull out a folded-up yellow sheet of paper. As I go to unfold it, a small laminated card drops and clicks against the floor. He hid this here instead of in his missing wallet. It’s got a photo of my dad on it. A commercial driver’s license.

“Says here he’s a truck driver—double and triple trailers, plus hazardous materials,” I say, reading from the back of the license.

Clumsily, rushing, I unfold the yellow sheet. At first, it looks like an invoice, but when I spot the familiar letterhead up top— Aw, crap.

He’s lucky they took away my gun.