They stood on the deck, Charley with his hands deep in his pockets, shivering a little against the cold breeze. Up on the bluff, the lights of Driftwood Shores Resort glowed softly in the darkness. The white luminescence of the breakers marked the edge of the tide, only the white froth visible in the darkness, the distant border between the sea and sky now discernible only where the stars no longer glittered.
“So you guys knew my dad?” Charley asked, pressing his arms tightly against his ribs to keep from shivering. He was intensely curious about these strangers but wasn’t quite comfortable inviting them into the house.
Both fellows nodded their heads vigorously. “Yeah, man. Chuck was a great dude.”
“Chuck?” Charley questioned, shaking his head. “That doesn’t sound like my dad. He never allowed anybody to call him Chuck.” It was a challenge of sorts. Charley still wasn’t totally convinced that these two had actually known his dad.
“Yeah.” The blond snorted. “Every time he’d call us JimBob, we’d call him Chuck. At first it kinda bothered him, I think. He always insisted on Chahhrrles.” He drew out the name in a manner that made Charley smile in recognition. “But we just kept calling him Chuck, and I guess he finally got used to it.”
Charley still struggled to grasp exactly how the father he knew would have ever met these two. “How did you know him?”
“Oh, the dude was cool, man.” Jim picked up the story. “He used to come down to the beach and hang out. You know, talk and stuff.”
They were definitely not describing the Charles Sr. that Charley remembered.
Bob sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Yeah, and he’d bring us a beer and a sandwich.”
“And hot coffee when it was cold,” Jim added, a wistful look in his eye.
Now that was beginning to sound like the dad he knew.
“But then he started bringing hot chocolate instead of coffee or a cream soda or Sprite or something instead of beer,” Bob continued, once again diverging from Charley’s memories.
“But still with a sandwich.”
“Or sometimes a piece of pizza.”
“Remember he brought us burgers and fries sometimes,” Jim reminisced, this time with a nudge of his elbow.
“Yeah, man, and, and, remember he even brought us Chinese takeout that one time.” Bob again snorted at the memory.
“Oh yeah, man. That was so cool.”
“And we’d sit and talk and watch the waves.”
“Wait a minute.” Charley stopped the rambling reminiscing. “He brought you soda pop instead of beer sometimes?” Charley couldn’t imagine his father providing anything for these two, but the beer part was the only credible aspect of the story, and now they were trying to tell him his dad had substituted soft drinks for beer. It was Charley’s turn to shake his head and laugh. “What? He didn’t want to share his beer?”
The two men looked at each other in some confusion, then turned back to Charley. “Oh no, man,” Jim answered. “It was all beer for a while; then after he quit drinking beer, it was all soda pop.”
“After he what?” The incredulity was obvious in Charley’s voice. He was beginning to think these two had created an excellent fabrication just to get on his good side. He expected them to become defensive and maybe begin to backpedal on their story, so he was surprised when their countenances at first registered surprise and then a little bit of offense.
“After he gave up his beer,” Jim responded. “You know, after he started doing that Mormon thing.”
Bob snorted again. “Yeah! When we started calling him Brother Chuck.”
Now it was Charley’s turn to be confused and even more suspicious. “What do you mean ‘after he started doing that Mormon thing’? My mom was Mormon, but Dad was always very anti. Do you mean she told him he couldn’t give you beer anymore?”
Bob actually looked as though Charley had somehow hurt his feelings. “Oh no, man. I mean, she was great when we saw her—which really wasn’t much ’cause we didn’t come to the house much—but when we did, she was really nice. Usually gave us cookies or something.” His brows knit together in concentration, and he pursed his mouth to the side in concentration. “No, your dad would come down to the beach—just him alone—and we’d build a fire and sit and watch the waves and have a beer or two and talk.”
“Mostly your dad would talk,” Jim clarified as he glanced toward the darkened beach as though recalling the memories.
“Or cream soda,” Bob added wistfully, “after the beer stopped.”
Charley struggled to even imagine this version of his dad. In fact, if this did have any truth to it, he was feeling a little resentful that maybe these two fellows had somehow known a version of his dad that he never had—and never would. “What, uh, did he talk about?”
Jim shrugged. “Oh, he used to talk a lot about when he was a kid and all the bad things he done.”
“Did,” Bob corrected him, reminding Charley of his mother.
“Did, and about your mom and how she was so good and he was such a disappointment to her and a lot about you and how much he missed you and admired you.”
“Me?”
“Sure! ’Course, that was when you were in China.”
“Japan,” Charley corrected.
“Huh? Oh yeah, whatever, doing your missionary thing.”
“And that’s when he started talking about the Mormon thing,” Bob chipped in. “And then about how he felt he owed it to both of you to give your church stuff an honest look and then about how he was reading stuff.”
“And then about what he was reading and about people and stuff.”
“What people?” Charley wasn’t sure if he was still skeptical or simply curious. “What stuff?”
They looked at each other and shrugged.
“I don’t know,” Bob replied. “Didn’t really pay much attention.”
Jim screwed his mouth to the side and bit his lip in thought. “I remember it seemed like goofy names like Knee-high and the Lemonades.”
“Eytes?”
“Huh? Oh yeah, Lemon-eytes and Almer.”
“Yeah, and Amazon and Macaroni or something.”
“Moroni?” Charley threw out as a possible consideration.
“Yeah, him too, and Elmer what’s-his-name.”
“Elmer? You mean Emer?” Charley asked, his mind paging through possible scriptural names in an attempt to make sense of what Jim was telling him.
Jim and Bob looked at each other in indecision; then Jim shook his head. “No, I think it was Elmer. Elmer and Elmer, like maybe they were brothers or something.”
“Older,” Bob suggested as though testing the sound.
“Older than Emer?” Charley asked.
“No. The name meant they was older or something.”
“Were,” Jim corrected.
“Huh?”
“They were older, not they was.”
“That’s what I said!”
“Elder?” Charley proposed, struggling to believe what he was hearing yet not sure these two could make anything like that up.
“Yeah. That’s it!” Jim snapped his fingers, glaring at Bob. “They were older, er, elder. Two of ’em. Elder Smith and Elder Wantsomepepsi or something like that. I never could quite get that one—’cept they were real people, not just somebody he was readin’ about.”
“And then there was that Sanderson lady. He talked about her a little bit.”
“’Cept she was somebody’s sister or something. She wasn’t doing the same stuff as Smith and Wantsomepepsi.”
Charley pressed, “What were they doing, this Elder Smith and whatever his name was?”
“Your dad said they were doing that same missionary thing you were doing in Korea.”
“Japan,” Charley corrected again.
“You sure it wasn’t China?” Bob asked.
Charley shook his head. “Japan.”
“You sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
Bob shrugged in defeat. “Whatever, but they were doing it here. Did you know ’em?”
Charley shook his head. “No.”
“Anyway, your dad started talking like he was going to do something about it.”
“About what?”
“The Mormon thing, dude!” Jim pointed his fingers at his temples and glared at Charley. “Try to stay focused here. He was just waiting for you to get home, but then—” He paused, and the two exchanged awkward glances.
“They, uh,” Charley tried to fill in the heavy silence but finally settled for, “the car crash.”
“Yeah, man. Hey, we’re real sorry.”
Bob nodded. “Your dad was a great guy.”