Father of the Man: A Novel - Hardcover

Mooney, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375422048 ISBN 13: 9780375422041

Publisher: Pantheon, 2002

Synopsis

A stunning literary debut: a powerful love story informed by ghostly
demarcations between World War II and the Vietnam War.

It's just after dawn, June 6, 1982: "Dutch" Potter, an upstate New York bus
driver and father of a soldier who's been missing in action in Vietnam for twelve
years, snaps and dons his World War II army uniform, collects passengers aboard his BC Transit bus, then veers off route, careening into the woods of northern Pennsylvania, where he holds seven hostages to his one demand: return my son.

This wild ride, taking us from New York to Normandy to Southeast Asia by way of Dutch's memories, hopes, and despair, is rendered in mesmerizingly lyrical prose-ranging in tone from bardic to barfly-and forms a brilliantly layered and nuanced narrative. As FBI helicopters whir and command centers are jerry-built, Dutch readies himself for an armed confrontation with federalauthorities, while his family and close-knit community are thrown into sudden and dramatic action. Father of the Man reveals itself to be a love story: not only between father and son, but between husband and wife, mother and child, the living and the dead.

Dutch Potter takes us, along with his hapless passengers, beyond the safe, the ordinary, to a heart of darkness.

About this title

About the Author

Robert Mooney was born in Rochester, New York, and educated at Boston College and Binghamton University. He currently teaches literature and writing at Washington College, where he is the director of the O'Neill Literary House. His short fiction has appeared in many journals and magazines. He and his wife, Maureen, and their two children divide their time between Chestertown, Maryland, and Binghamton, New York.

From the Inside Flap

A stunning literary debut: a powerful love story informed by ghostly <br>demarcations between World War II and the Vietnam War.<br><br>It's just after dawn, June 6, 1982: "Dutch" Potter, an upstate New York bus <br>driver and father of a soldier who's been missing in action in Vietnam for twelve <br>years, snaps and dons his World War II army uniform, collects passengers aboard his BC Transit bus, then veers off route, careening into the woods of northern Pennsylvania, where he holds seven hostages to his one demand: return my son.<br><br>This wild ride, taking us from New York to Normandy to Southeast Asia by way of Dutch's memories, hopes, and despair, is rendered in mesmerizingly lyrical prose-ranging in tone from bardic to barfly-and forms a brilliantly layered and nuanced narrative. As FBI helicopters whir and command centers are jerry-built, Dutch readies himself for an armed confrontation with federalauthorities, while his family and close-knit community are thrown into sudden and dramatic action. Father of the Man reveals itself to be a love story: not only between father and son, but between husband and wife, mother and child, the living and the dead.<br><br>Dutch Potter takes us, along with his hapless passengers, beyond the safe, the ordinary, to a heart of darkness.

Reviews

Mooney adds an unusual twist to the usual hostage standoff plot in his debut novel, a solid effort in which a dispirited, deranged bus driver from Binghamton, N.Y., hijacks his vehicle and demands to see his son, a Vietnam vet who has been MIA for a dozen years, in return for the release of the seven passengers on board. The novel starts off with a series of WWII flashbacks that establish the patriotism of Dutch Potter, who struggles to find rewarding work after the war and ends up as a bus driver whose unhappy marriage offers little solace. Potter turns his attention to trying to find his MIA son, Jom, but as the years pass Potter becomes increasingly disaffected and his behavior grows erratic. The passenger hijacking represents a quantum leap in his criminal resume, bringing in not only the local police but also the FBI and finally a Marine officer who specializes in tracking down MIA veterans from the Vietnam era. The plot takes an unlikely positive turn when the officer turns out to have information about Jom's postwar fate, cooling down the standoff in a series of events stretching the credibility of the story line. Mooney's writing gets carried away in several of the background scenes establishing Potter's various quirks and foibles, but as a character study the novel is otherwise consistent and quietly effective. The author doesn't quite pull off his high-concept suspense plot, but his acute (and timely) take on the psychology of the disgruntled military vet and the well-observed family dynamics establish him as a promising newcomer.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Prologue

George Conklin had been the kind of kid who ate baby toads whole for nickels on Catholic school playgrounds, and he didn't change much when he got to adulthood, where all antes are raised. He was the guy who put itching powder in your T-shirt, wintergreen in your jockstrap, garter snakes in your kip. A real pain in the ass. He loved to gamble and had a bad case of what he called Luck o' the Irish, but we knew he cheated. He bet the farm nearly every time and died with enough happy cabbage in his pockets to feed the First Army. Who could mess with him? He threw out punches like he threw down beers, and even though he only came up to my shoulder standing at attention, what he had was enough. It was a body he treated like a jalopy he didn't care what happened to so long as it got him where he wanted to go. It'd been torn up from altercations in South Boston taverns-scars, welts, badly set bone-breaks, the whole nine yards. Most of his knuckles were jammed swollen for good. His nose had been flattened and his front tooth chipped in a way that made him look fifteen years older than he was.

If he'd been stupid we might have liked him right away, but there was a mind in there that rankled us-and I don't mean the prickly smarts of the bookworm, though he'd memorized a lot of Irish poetry and had the vocabulary of an archbishop, if he needed it. It was the screwy moral code he lived by. Take our favorite subject. You could be really vile, like he was, with high-society British quiffs, but couldn't bad-mouth a prostitute. It was OK to say "cunt" in front of him, but not "vagina." He'd show a wallet photo of his wife like it was a holy card, but he went out on skirt patrol pretty regular while we were stationed at Stover. Just couldn't resist the light chassis. What made it tough socializing with him was that nobody told a better dirty joke, and he had a line of limericks from Dover to Bristol. But somebody joining in always ended up violating one of his personal Commandments and got the shit beat out of him if he wouldn't back down.

We figured it had something to do with religion, but who knew? He hated authority but loved God without question. He'd take communion after bothering the padre with confession, then go out after Mass and paint a penis with a face sniffing buttocks on the outside wall of the officers' club. Stuff like that. If you covered for him he'd get sore. There was just no reading the guy except finding out the hard way and trying to make heads and tails of it.

After a month of maneuvers in England we'd all had it up to here with him. Stewart owed him two weeks' pay on a poker game he said wasn't on the up-and-up. Goddamn Rokos, who'd won some middleweight title in Philly, had his face rearranged for no reason at all, and Rizzo's wrist hung in a sling for two weeks for asking Conklin how he did it with his wife. Klein was pissed at his own fear of him. Me? I thought the cocky little bastard needed to be taken down a few pegs.

It was through this scapular I really got to know him. He used to wear it around his neck with his dog tag and sometimes we'd catch him talking to it. Not crazy kind of talk-the man at least had pretty good control over himself that way. Just a whisper here and there, holding it up to his lips like you'd nibble on the collar of your T-shirt. You'd only catch him if you were real close, at a shoulder-to-shoulder crapshoot, say, or if you had the bottom bunk next to his, like I did. We knew enough to keep our mouths shut; it was just another Conklin thing. I'd always associated these scapulars with Catholic women. On my honeymoon just a few months before, I found one in the cup of my wife's bra, but I was too shy to ask questions. And I liked the mystery of this ribbony thing rubbing against her nipple all day long, like some sort of ecclesiastical lingerie.

Conklin would take his off only when he went to the showers. He'd place the squares of cloth together like a card shark lining up a pair of aces, loop the brown ribbon around them, and tuck it all under the folded dress uniform in his footlocker. When he returned, the first thing he did was dig the scapular out and put it back on.

One afternoon after maneuvers we were sitting around the barracks fucking the dog. We'd started practicing for the invasion with live ammunition and were a little on edge. Mail was in, and a group of us sat on our bunks reading letters out loud. I had one from Sarah tucked away in my front right pocket. Rizzo had a letter from his brother in the Pacific theater who planned to give Hirohito a taste from his hip flask, and Rizzo took up right away on how he was going to settle things on this end-you know, march right into the Führer's bunker and slice off Hitler's balls with the hunting knife the old man gave him for the job. Conklin laughed like a flock of geese and said Rizzo couldn't beat his own wop grandmother at arm wrestling.

"Fuck you," Rizzo told him.

"What are you going to do, Rizzo, cut my balls off?"

"If I could ever find them."

"Oh, well, see balls," Conklin explained, "sometimes referred to as nuts, gonads, stones, rocks, cods, cullions, bollocks, family jewels, or-for the learned among us-testicles or testes, manufacture and store spermatozoa used during the reproductive process-what you call 'fucking'-to fertilize the female ovum. They're located in a sac at the crotch of the normal male. Here, I'll show you."

Conklin had been standing beside his bunk undressing to take a shower, and he pushed his briefs down to his knees.

"Most everyone in this room has a pair," he said, jiggling his in his hand. "If you don't believe me, ask around."

Rizzo's face burned red. "Asshole," he said.

"No," said Conklin, "that's over this way."

He turned and mooned the group of us, finished undressing, took a towel, and headed for the shower. When they could hear the water running Rokos said, "Goddamn Conklin."

"Smartass," said Lopez.

"Thinks he's hot shit," said Stewart.

Weaver, the peacemaker of the group, said he was just bustin', and we knew that was true too, but Rizzo was sort of a man's man-a braggart, sure, but the fiction did no harm. He sat there fuming while the boys shouted down Weaver and I went over to Conklin's footlocker, opened it, felt around for a minute, and held up the scapular for the boys' inspection.

"He'll goddamn shit his pants, man," said Rokos.

"Then beat the shit out of the guy who took it," said Klein.

"What's he going to do?" I said, stuffing the thing in the pocket of my fatigues. "Beat up the whole platoon?"

One by one they nodded. Rizzo saw everyone else smiling, and he showed his yellow horse teeth and nodded with them. We waited, and when Conklin strutted back into the room singing his war song, his towel around him like a kilt, he joined the silence for a moment before saying, "Remember, Riz: the balls are located at the intersection of the thighs of the male."

He turned to dress, and the boys elbowed one another while he foraged through his footlocker. He patted his hand over his collarbone and stood with his arms at his sides.

"Something wrong, Mr. Balls?" Rizzo said.

Conklin looked back at us with his top lip moving like shivering Liz.

"Yeah," Stewart piped in. "Lose your rubbers or something?"

Rokos snorted like a stallion and Conklin turned and aimed himself at Weaver, a scrawny kid from Rhode Island, weakest guy in the platoon, last in everything, a bit lacy-if you know what I mean. We called him Wimpy, but we liked him so far.

"Hand it over," Conklin said, and Wimp said, "Me?" and started to say something else, but Conklin was already grinding his forehead into Wimp's and twisting the poor bastard's wrist behind his back. Stewart told him to back off and Rokos said yeah, back off, but no one moved. Conklin knew about pressure points; one touch in the right place and he could bring Goliath himself to his knees. He got Weaver just behind his neck and Weaver's legs gave out, but Conklin wouldn't let him fall. I dug into my pocket and held the scapular out like a ticket to the fair. He let go of Weaver and snapped his fingers and I laid the thing over his open hand with Wimp gasping like a radiator on the floor between us. He put it on without taking his eyes off me, returned to his footlocker, and got dressed. He took his time. When he finished lacing up his groundhogs, he turned and said, "Potter, outside." I looked at the boys looking at me and followed Conklin out of the barracks.

My fatigues hadn't dried from maneuvers so the rain didn't much matter to me, but by the time we reached the end of the long row of Quonsets and were heading along the road into town, Conklin was drenched again. His shoulders were hunched and he looked like he was about to dive on a loose football. All the way into town and he didn't so much as look over his shoulder at me.

Paignton was a seaside village of the type you see in paintings except the preparation for war intruded everywhere you looked. Half the people were in uniform. Planes tore up the sky. There were billboards that said things like "Be like Dad, keep Mum," and just like a poem gathering in my head a boy stepped out of a doorway and said, "Got any gum, chum?" We walked right past him, but then Conklin stopped so suddenly that we nearly collided. He dug into his trousers pocket, pulled out a pack of Juicy Fruit, and tossed the whole thing. The kid bent down to pick it up and yelled "Bloody 'ell, chum!" but putting on the humanitarian thing wasn't going to take the white out of my knuckles.

Down on the beach waves grabbed at the land as if water itself could drown. The wet sand was loose under my feet and we kept going until Conklin hefted himse...

Edition details

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0375422048
• ISBN 13: 9780375422041
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240