Undertown

Undertown — page 5 — needs and desires of young people To some extent that was correct correct since Tom’s Tees the business that kept him working late five or six or seven nights a week allegedly so that he could afford to purchase whatever Timothy wanted relied upon a mystical connection connection with his ten to twenty-year-old customers Expensive leisure wear provided a comfortable lifestyle for the duo that Tom liked to refer to as the Murphy Men as if he and Timothy had chosen to embark on a grand adventure after Timothy's Timothy's mother died That hadn’t been much of a blessing Yet there were other things in life besides death Timothy reminded himself of this as a cloud in the shape of a cauliflower drifted across the spar from which the sail hung To start with there was school Timothy was a good student perhaps too good for his own benefit He wasn’t smart enough to frighten anyone but he was smart enough to irritate Thus the atmosphere at Montclair Junior High was for him a toxic mix of social and physical torture Often Timothy spent class silently debating whom he’d most enjoy throwing into a pit full of starving starving hyenas moronic dictatorial history teacher Mr Tasman or handsome loathsome popular Brian Pfeiffer who’d mastered the art of twisting his gym towel into a lethal locker room weapon frequently aimed at Timothy’s butt Only one thing Timothy had to admit about school It wasn’t as bad as cancer Lots of things were better than cancer Sunshine was and so was rain Actually Timothy rather preferred damp soggy days at least until the X-tra Large arrived During precipitation he wasn’t expected to join a neighborhood version of whatever professional sport was in season at the moment Nor was he expected to bike aimlessly seeking adventures on the dull suburban streets of northern New Jersey Whenever it was raining he could lie back on the wicker couch on the sunporch with a black-and-white milkshake 4

Undertown — page 6 — milkshake another thing that was better than cancer and lose himself in a book which was not only better than cancer but better than a milkshake Reading on a sunporch in the rain might very well have been Timothy Murphy’s favorite activity in the world At least until the X-tra Large arrived Since then reading on the deck as the boat rolled over the currents by the Jersey Shore was his absolutely favorite activity Still gazing at the clouds that had shifted from vegetable to animal now resembling a whale a weasel a camel with one no two humps or Brian Pfeiffer in a guillotine he groped blindly on the deck for the novel he’d been immersed in over the last few days It was Philip K Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep infinitely superior to the Hollywood movie Sometimes Timothy would lose himself so completely in a book that he’d miss the dinner prepared by Loreen the Murphy Men’s housekeeper and wake up on the couch the next morning unsure whether he was in Montclair or Orbis Tertius Fortunately his favorite author was Isaac Asimov who had written over five hundred books so he wasn’t afraid of running out of titles Even if he read every one of the millions of words Asimov had written he suspected that he could start over again without it spoiling any of the plots Another blessing was money Well not money itself Timothy considered himself a socialist or maybe an anarchist if someone someone could explain the difference but the goods and services that it brought into his life Timothy knew that he was fortunate to have enough money to purchase however many books Asimov or the other science fiction gods he worshipped wrote Vaguely he remembered a time before the family had real money enough to purchase all the nifty stuff a half-orphan could want except for a mother or time with his dad 5

Undertown — page 7 — After his mom noticed a strange mole on her shoulder the nightmare nightmare as ferocious as it was rapid began Doctors diagnosed the mole as a symptom of stage 3 breast cancer and gave her three months to live and sure enough she sickened and died sixty-two days later That was two years ago and Timothy hated that verb ever since life was more than what doctors gave their patients He couldn’t help but think that if his mother had never gone to the doctor she never would have gotten sick No his dad insisted It’s not anyone’s fault Which helped exactly nothing Having someone to blame might have been a blessing but all Timothy could do was retreat Gradually the Murphy Men grew further apart until late one Wednesday night when Timothy having fallen asleep on the sunporch couch a hardcover tome splayed out on his chest was shaken awake What are you reading It was a question his dad had never asked before Timothy held up the volume he’d borrowed from the school library The book wasn’t his usual science fiction fare The title was Two Years Before the Mast Hey the shirtmaker said struck by inspiration you want to go to the shore When How about now The roads’ll be empty so there won’t be any traffic We’ll find a motel get some sleep and then have a whole day together tomorrow But it’s a school day I dunno Looks like a shore day to me Play hooky Tom shook his head Not play This is serious He grinned 6

Undertown — page 8 — You mean it Last one packed is a broken egg What the heck did that mean How could a person be a broken broken egg Another one of the worst things about being Timothy Murphy was that there was so much to ponder But he hustled to avoid broken-eggness or was it eggitude and fell asleep in the car before they reached the shore All he remembered of their arrival at the oddly named Snowcrest Motel was his father practically practically carrying him to their room The next day however after a leisurely breakfast of waffles with enough syrup to drown Britney Spears he had blessing after blessing Father and son started on the boardwalk but all they could see out in the ocean beyond the roller coasters and skee-ball booths and candy apple stands were two paunchy cabin cruisers and a few distant container ships bound for Port Elizabeth Not much quaint sailing on the Atlantic that day Refusing to give up they gravitated to the bay side of the spit of land that separated a score of resort communities from the Jersey mainland There in the protected enclosure half a dozen small sailboats glided across the surface of the water Look Timothy pointed to a tall two-master Nice Tom nodded then said But hey what about that one by the bridge Yikes And hey is that a boat or an iceberg What about her Too big Ostentatious A little broad in the beam I think Yeah but Oh Oh Eventually they found the marina that housed these boats when they weren’t out on the bay They walked onto the gently 7

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