Going Bovine

I vaguely remember this, but honestly, all I can think about is the taste in my mouth. I’ve got the kind of pot hangover where I swear little road crews of pixies have been hard at work all night painting my tongue with dirt-enhanced pitch.

“Right. Do it later,” I mumble.

“He’ll be back from tennis in an hour.”

“So I’ll start then.” I make a swipe for the pillow and miss.

Mom holds it just out of reach. “Honey, you have to go to work at Buddha Burger.”

My joyous part-time fast-food gig, which the ’rents forced me to take. I’ve only worked there four weeks, and already it feels like a soul-sucking spiral of pain.

“I’ll call in sick.”

“Cameron, do you think that’s such a good idea? They might think you’re unreliable.”

It seems a bad time to point out that I am unreliable. Or I’m reliable when it comes to being unreliable.

“’Sokay. Somebody’ll cover me.”

I take possession of the pillow again. Mom’s still standing in my room. I can feel her hovering. Some other mom might get angry, blow up, or drag me from my bed with a purposeful “Young man, it’s time you learned some responsibility!” In the TV movie version, that would be “the big turning point.” And at the end of the movie, when they showed me with a decent haircut and a graduation cap on my head, accepting the special scholarship/presidential seal/call to cure cancer, I’d thank my mom, and there’d be a glossy close-up of her tearstained face while everybody stood to applaud her.

This is so not my mom. She’s like me—driftwood. After a few seconds, I hear her shoes squeaking a retreat.

“All right,” she says, before pulling the door shut. “But at least use the Weedwacker around the front walk.”

“Sure thing,” I promise, and fall right back to sleep.

I wake up at eleven-fifteen, which is fifteen minutes before I’m supposed to be reporting for my six-hour shift at Buddha Burger, a twenty-minute drive across town. Shit. I grab my uniform—black pants, white button-down shirt with a meditating Buddha cow floating atop a hamburger bun, dorky faux Tibetan monk hat—brush my teeth, and look around to see if there’s anything I’m forgetting. That’s when I see the long feather on the floor and last night’s weirdness announces itself in my memory. What the hell was that? Hello. The feather said hello.

But there’s nothing written there now. For all I know, that feather’s been on my floor for a long time, and last night was some random ganja flip-out. I throw it in the trash and run downstairs.

After some minor-league pleading with Mom, she agrees to let me take the Turdmobile, her crap-brown box of a car. It’s ugly but it runs, and it’s better than the bus when you’re late. All down the block, the lawns are alive with men on riding mowers. They gallop across their yards, whipping them into shape, in control of those few square feet of ground. All hail the suburban action heroes! Do not tangle with those men—they have Weedwackers and they know how to use them! I mean, honestly, I’m supposed to get good grades, go to a good college, not screw up, so I can get to do this shit someday? Thanks, I’ll pass.

Dad, still in his tennis whites, pushes the power mower around our already pristine lawn. Our eyes meet for a nanosecond, and then Dad stoops to examine a particularly hearty clump of weeds. As I back the Turdmobile down the driveway, he’s running the mower over the same spot again and again, forcing the rebellious patch to bend to his will.

I’m through the doors of Buddha Burger seven minutes past my shift start time, which, if you ask me, is within the realm of acceptable. But not so for our manager, Mr. Babcock. He’s waiting by the clock, his bushy mustache scrunched into a hairy M above a tight frown. He makes a point of looking at the clock, then at me.

“Hi, Mr. Babcock,” I say, punching in.

“You’re late, Cameron.” Wow. And you, sir, are incredibly observant.

“Yes, sir. Sorry about that. I had to take my mom’s car and it kept stalling out. …”

“Cameron, I’m gonna give you a piece of advice, son. Never explain, never blame.”

He stares meaningfully at me. I think the human interaction manual says that I’m supposed to supply a comeback here, something to show I have “understood the message.”

“Yes, sir. That’s good advice, sir.”

He puts his arm around my shoulder like he’s my life coach. “Son, I don’t know what your home situation is.” In his thick Texas drawl, “situation” has about ten syllables. “Maybe you don’t have a daddy at home. Maybe you do. But here at the Buddha Burger, I like to think of us as family. You know what that means?”