2007-03-27
brian
Thayer calls his dad by his first name. He never calls him, "Dad." Instead, he calls him Brian.
Thayer spies Brian across the street and we walk down the road to say hello. Brian is a tall, wiry man with a boxy face. He’s messing around with the truck beside his shed...though what he's doing, I haven't a clue. The truck bed is carpeted with roofing supplies, tar paper, and shingles.
"I just got back from a Homestead run," says Brian in a thick Cuban accent. Words like "you," develop extra letters like, "chu." I peek inside the shed and the light spears down from cracks.
"Don't mind the beer cans," Brian calls out. I count at least 25 cans scattered on work benches. There's a model plane mounted to a ceiling beam. Brian says his dad used to drag him down "near the prison yard" on weekends to fly planes and he'd pray that they'd crash so he could go home and play with the neighborhood kids.
Today Brian was blasting a "mix tape" of classic rock that he had recorded off the radio, complete with commercials bleeding into the edges of half-finished songs. Brian had a few beers in him and he was rocking out, punching his fists in the air. Thayer says that Brian was in a sour mood because his mentor died.
I never know what to believe. Did Brian really call the cops on himself after punching a hole in the window? Did he make bets with the Russian mafia on South Beach? Did he learn how to grow orchids by watching the Miccosukee in the Glades?
"You believe me, right?" Thayer asks.
"I want to," I tell him. And that's the truth.
f-i-n at 9:44 a.m.