Chapter 73

I’m up on the ladder today, rhyming away. A clown is a noun. Use a noun or sound like a clown. Ruby stands below me. The ash on her cigarette droops towards the ground. She finally climbs up the ladder with a thermos of coffee. “What gives?” she says.

“I’m trying to write a children’s book about grammar.”

“When did you decide that?”

“Frank got the idea watching me on air.”

“You told everybody they’re illiterate.”

“Frank wants me to do something about it.”

“It’ll never fly.”

“Why not?”

“How did you learn grammar, Sam?”

“By getting my knuckles rapped every two minutes.”

“Exactly.”

“Frank’s thinking something along the lines of Dr. Seuss. I’m still trying to figure out green eggs. Judy gets it, or I think she does.”

“Want me to take over scraping?”

“Yeah, I should get going. I’ve got a tight deadline.” I climb down and hand Ruby my scraper. She takes the rungs two at a time. Paint chips fall, the ladder shakes. She has six feet of eaves scraped by the time I reach my car.

The phone’s ringing when I come through the door. It’s Frank saying he’s got two investors on board. “We’re waiting on you now, Sam,” he says.

I go downstairs and start typing again. I ignore the bird tweets, the washer going. By ten o’clock, I’ve got three poems. I take the first one upstairs along with the last load of laundry. Judy and Muller are back playing Scrabble. Mary’s drawing red and green lines on a chart she’s made up for Muller’s catering jobs. The red ones indicate jobs done, the green, jobs coming up. “What do you think of this?” I say to them.

Nouns can be proper

As proper as can be

They mean something special

So they’re proper, you see

They could be a person, a place or a thing

They could be a song

Or a person who sings

It’s really quite simple

Just learn from the start

A noun becomes proper

When art becomes Art.

“I don’t get the last part,” Mary says.

“That’s because I’m reading it.”

“Oh.”

“The A in Art is capitalized.”

“So you turned Art into a proper name.”

“Exactly.”

“That’s clever, Sam,” Muller says.

“I like it, too, Daddy.”

“I thought names are pronouns?”

“Nope. Proper nouns.”

“What’s a pronoun?”

“It supports a proper noun when they’re in the same sentence.”

“Now I’m confused, Sam.”

“A pronoun is a word like ‘he’. It’s in the same sentence supporting the person’s name.”

“What if the sentence only has ‘he’?”

“It’s still supporting a person’s name.”

“Even if it’s not there?”

“Yes, Muller.”

“I’m still confused, Sam.”

“Read the book, for chrissake.”