Coming of Age,
Historical Fiction
Date Published: July 27, 2016
In 1941,
when thirteen-year-old Ricky Parker’s family is uprooted from their home in
Arkansas and relocated to Venezuela, Ricky thinks his life is over. But what he
finds in a rough and tumble oil camp on the banks of Lake Maracaibo is the
adventure of a lifetime. An adventure filled with Nazi spies, treachery,
betrayal, true love, and even murder.
While
touching on issues that remain relevant today, such as racism and America’s
reliance on foreign oil, this coming-of-age novel is a page turning,
high-octane suspense tale of star-crossed young lovers set in exotic wartime
Venezuela.
Excerpt
One Friday evening right before the Fourth of July in the summer of 1941, I answered the front door and my whole life changed.
Two
men in suits stood on the porch. One of them was an older fellow,
wearing a cheap brown suit and a high starched collar that was wilting
from the summer heat. The band in his rumpled fedora was stained with
sweat. He had a droopy mustache that was part black and part white and
an Adam’s apple that looked about the size of a baseball.
The
other man was younger and had on a nicer suit. He removed his hat and
showed off a thick head of blond hair. His face was pasty white, and I
knew right off that he’d never done a lick of farmwork in his life.
“Is
Mr. Chester Parker at home? We’d like a word with him if it would be
convenient.” The younger man sounded like Mr. Hunter who taught English
over at El Dorado Junior High, where I had just finished the seventh
grade. They both talked real educated and proper-like.
“I
reckon he’s out back,” I said. “Y’all come on in and I’ll get him.” I
looked past the two men on the porch and saw some angry-looking dark
clouds gathering off to the east, promising a summer rain.
The two men stepped into the living room. The older man removed his hat and scratched his bald head.
Before
I could fetch Daddy, Mama stepped into the living room from the
kitchen. She was wearing her big red apron that was dusty with flour
from making the biscuits for supper. She had a dot of flour on her nose.
“Who is it, Ricky? Did you . . .” She pulled up short in the doorway
and drew in a quick breath.
“Howdy, Dixie,” the older man said. “How you been?”
Mama
eyed the man like a dead garden snake she’d found on the back porch.
“Evening, Mr. Taggert. I reckon I’m fine.” Mama’s tone filled the living
room with a chilling frost.
The
older man ignored Mama’s coldness. “This here is Mr. George Quinn. He’s
from Washington. We need to have a word with Mr. Ches if we might.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Washington? What on earth would some stranger from Washington, DC, want with my father?
Mama wiped her hands on her apron. “Ricky, run on out to the shed and fetch your daddy. Be quick now.”
I
scampered back through the kitchen and out the screen door and sprinted
across the yard to the shed. I found Daddy hunched over his worktable
lost in thought, staring at the parts of a radio he had spread out in
front of him.
Daddy
could fix anything as long as it was mechanical. Big machines, little
machines. It didn’t make any difference. My father could fix all of
them.
His pipe was clinched tight in his teeth and the sticky sweet smell of his burning tobacco filled the tiny shed.
“There’s a pair of fellows in suits here to see you,” I said, a little breathless from the ru
n across the yard. “I don’t think they want you to fix anything. I think they just want to talk.”
Daddy smiled and stood up from the worktable. “Then I guess we better go in the house and see what’s going on.”
My
father was a tall man, skinny as a rail as the saying went. He had
black hair slicked back with Brylcreem. Some folks said he looked
Italian, but that was mainly because he’d spent so much time out in the
sun that his skin was all brown and leathery looking. He always wore a
blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled up past his elbows even in the
summer.
Daddy
had been a drilling supervisor at Murphy Oil and a real good one from
what everybody said, but one day back in ’39 something happened out on
one of the rigs and Daddy came home, put his lunch pail on the high
shelf up in the pantry and announced that he’d never work for Murphy or
any oil company again. And that was that.
My
father didn’t do much but hang around the house for a few weeks. He’d
sit at the kitchen table and take old radios apart and put them back
together. Finally other folks started bringing him their busted radios
and percolators and mix masters and stuff to fix and Daddy cleared out a
space in the old shed out near the chicken coop and went into the small
appliance repair business.
Daddy
never hurried anywhere. Even after I told him about the two visitors,
he ambled across the yard as if he were just heading up to the house for
a drink of water.
Back
in the living room, Mama had served ice tea to the two men, who were
sitting on the blue sofa when Daddy and I came in. They stood up and
shook hands all around. Mama brought Daddy a glass of tea. He drained
half of it in one gulp.
“It’s good to see you again, Mr. Ches,” Taggert said.
Daddy
nodded. “What can I do for you?” He sounded unfriendly and I could tell
my father didn’t have much truck with the Taggert fellow.
The first plunks of the summer rain hit the roof. The smell of Daddy’s tobacco overpowered the living room.
Taggert
and Quinn sat back down, balancing their hats in their laps. Mama
leaned on the doorsill, wiping flour off her hands with her apron.
“Mr. Ches,” Taggert said. “We need to talk some business if you have a few minutes.” Daddy shrugged.
Taggert turned and looked at me. “Son, why don’t you run outside and play for a while. This won’t take long.”
“It’s raining,” I said, indicated the front window where the summer storm was pelting the glass.
Taggert gnawed on his lower lip.
“Come
on, Ricky.” Mama came to Taggert’s rescue. “Let’s you and me run out to
the henhouse and fix up those stalls like we been promising to do since
school let out.”
I
didn’t want to leave the living room. Something was going on. Something
big. You could just feel it in the air. You could see it on Daddy’s
face, hear it in Mama's voice. This was important. And I had to go out
and fix up the stalls in the henhouse. I was not happy.
But I went.
By
the time Mama and I hammered all the loose boards back into the chicken
stalls, replaced the straw, swept out the walkway, and went back to the
house, Taggert and Quinn were gone.
Daddy
sat in the chair in the living room, staring out the window at the
rain. The drops pounded the glass and ran down the panes in fast flowing
rivulets.
It
was getting dark, but Daddy hadn’t turned on any lights. He just sat
there in the chair, smoking his pipe and staring out the window. He
didn’t even turn around when Mama and I came back into the house. He
just sat and stared and smoked. I’d never seen him look like that.
“Daddy?
Are you all right?” I stood in the doorway to the kitchen, fighting
back that awful sense that something was bad wrong.
My
father didn’t say anything. Blue smoke drifted out of his pipe and
floated toward the ceiling. The room got darker and darker.
Two weeks later, he and Mama and I took a train down to New Orleans, got on a big ship, and headed for Venezuela.
Contact Links
Website: http://www.jimlesterbooks.com
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