The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston Page A

entire in that blow job, Web, the whole damn shooting match.
Never would have taken the undergrad to wife that week. Never would have brought her back to Los Angeles with him. And certainly never would have gotten stone fucked up with her twelve years later, on one of the rare occasions they had sex anymore, and forgotten to make sure she had in her diaphragm and impregnated her with a child she would refuse to abort, all of it ending with me as his son. Or that's how he tells the story.
    The old man rubbed a hand over his round belly.
    —Would you have preferred that? If I'd just plopped you in front of the boob tube for your education? It could have prepared you for a menial life, it would have been no trouble at all. It would have been much easier than teaching you how to read when you were two. It would have been much easier than showing you the constellations or taking you to the Getty to see Rembrandts or the Hollywood Bowl to see Bernstein. It would have been much easier than giving you an education that you were able to use, something to share with your students. There's no nobler profession, no better use of a life than to teach, but I could have saved us both the trouble and given you a TV and that would have made you happy, it seems.
    I looked at the old man.
    —I'm not teaching anymore.
    He blinked.
    —Oh, and what kind of job have you turned your energies to?
    —I'm. Cleaning stuff.
    He picked at the tuft of gray hair sprouting from his right ear.
    —A janitor.
    —No.
    —You're cleaning for a living?
    —Well, for the last couple days.
    —Then you are, my son, either a janitor or a housekeeper. Are you a housekeeper?
    —No.
    He swiveled on his stool and signaled the bartender.
    —Do you have, by any chance, an application? My son, I think, might be looking to improve his employment situation.
    The bartender blinked.
    —We're not hiring.
    My dad shrugged.
    —Alas. Another beer then. He can use it to drown his useless dreams and sorrows.
    I drained my glass and set it down.
    —Thanks, Dad. But I think you're mistaking me for you.
    He grinned, showing me the gap where his two upper front teeth used to be before he lost them in an Ensenada bar fight.
    —Ah, now there's the little son of a bitch I raised.
    Lincoln Lake Crows loves teachers and teaching. In theory. Which is to say he loves the idea of teachers and of teaching.
    The Noblest Profession, Web. No greater calling than the passing of knowledge from one generation to the next. A thankless task it is, to the outsider. The teacher, the true teacher, knows that the rewards of his calling are not properly measured in silver. They are measured in the achievements of the teacher's students. Respect, yes. Admiration, yes. A word of thanks, yes. All these are well deserved and appreciated. But the true and absolute payment comes in seeing a student learn and apply that learning. No matter how modest their accomplishments may be, that is the reward. That is coin of the realm for a true teacher.
    And he should know. Old L.L. put his years in as a high school teacher. Toiling in the mines of public education for well over a decade.
    He'd still be there now.
    Except that he wrote a novel. And he lived in Los Angeles. And someone he knew knew someone who knew someone who passed the novel around to someone. And that someone turned out to be Dennis Hopper. And he showed it to Bob Rafelson. And
Bob
, as he was known around our house, took out an option.
    And L.L.'s opinions about remuneration changed very rapidly thereafter.
    At least that's how my mom tells the story.
    —And what brings the fruit of my loins to the western precipice of this, our waning civilization?
    I forked up the last of the sand dabs he'd ordered for me and wiped my mouth.
    —Nothing.
    I put the fork down and pushed the plate away. Dad hadn't bothered to eat, food inhibiting, as it does, the absorption of alcohol.
    He flicked his eyes across a page of the book he had reopened while I