KEVIN RICHARD WHITE - PRINT SHOP

Kevin Richard White is the author of the novels The Face Of A Monster and Patch Of Sunlight. His short fiction appears in Grub Street, Hypertext, The Hunger, Crack The Spine, Dime Show Review, The Molotov Cocktail, Lunch Ticket and Ghost Parachute among others. He reads fiction and nonfiction for Quarterly West and The Common. He lives in Pennsylvania.

---

print shop
​

​Once a week I drive Dad to Kinko's so he can print and send his novel out.
We got the ritual down pat: I wake and help him get dressed and into his wheelchair. After he tells me that he doesn't need my help and that he's a man and he brought me into this world and he can take me out of it as quickly as he pleases, I leave him struggle for a few minutes. I get dressed myself and have a cup of coffee until I hear him half-laugh, half-shout from his bedroom, "Derek, I was JOKING". This is when Puffy, our chocolate lab, runs in and charges at Dad's wheelchair. They engage in a bit of scuffle until I take a toy and shove it in Puffy's face, to distract him. Then I push Dad out to the the van and off we go.
            Then we make the trek down the highway and I go to play my music but he bellows "Derek, Jesus, you know how much I ADORE Blood, Sweat and Tears" and so I play their first CD. He just dances around until I say, "DAD, I am driving here, can you please keep it still?" and then I realize that's all he CAN do is keep it still, because from the waist down he's got nothing, and I feel bad, until he reads my mind and says, "Well, it's not like I'm going to go tap dancing or anything" and we both laugh.
            About halfway through the third song, he gets sentimental and he says, "This was the last song your mother and I danced to at our wedding.”
I don’t say anything.
Your mother," Dad says.
"What about Mother?" I say.
"Your mother left me because she wanted a man with legs."
"But Dad, you got more than legs. You got heart. And you got hands. You can write wonderfully for a man with no legs."
He pauses. I can tell he’s debating what to say next. “Ahh, we're better off without her, aren't we, Derek?"
"Yes, Dad, of course. We are. Wait until the novel gets published."
“Yes, the novel,” he says, nodding.
            We park at Kinko's finally and I get him out of the van, I stand there and wait until the employee sees us standing there and opens the door. They all know us and they greet us by name and Dad throws some sort of literary quip in there, and I say, "Dad, these guys are going to college, they're going to get all your references" and he grumbles and I push him over to the printer.
"Dad, where's your thumbdrive?"
He pats his pockets and he says, "Derek, did we lose it in the war?"
I take it out of my pocket and say, "Soldier, were this your rations, you'd STARVE."
I put it in the little computer and he feeds his credit card and his novel, The Stars Are Strangers, comes up and he smiles and I pat him on the shoulder. "I'm proud of you, Dad," I whisper. He tells me to print it. So I do. We wait and count the pages print (417 of them), he tells me about Mom again, how she was so against him writing this thing.
"She didn't think I could do it. She thought it would ruin me. She wanted me to concentrate on my therapy. She thought my legs were more important. But Derek, this IS how I learn to walk again. By taking this step." And I nod. Because he's one hundred percent right. Once it's printed, I stack it as neat as I can and I take it over to the table.
            I wheel Dad over to look at it and he reads the first few pages as if they've magically changed overnight and they never do. He says, "We're good to go."
After we pay, I push him out and put him back into the van. He wants to go to lunch. No lunch, I tell him. It's too much of a hassle. He tells me that I'm a hassle so I leave him in the van for a few minutes and go into the used bookstore next to Kinko's. After a few minutes, he calls me on my cell phone and bellows "Derek, I was JOKING" and then I leave and I get back into the van. He's sweating and red-faced. "Are you ready to go home?" And he says yes, he'd like to sit in the backyard for a while.
            On the way home, he gets serious again. He starts talking non-stop and I just listen. There's no other part I have to do. He talks about pain and not being able to walk. He talks about Mom leaving us all, just to fight this world ourselves, how she did not love him, how she did not leave just me but everything, how she did not respect anything we ever did for her. He talks about Puffy. He talks about his novel and how he hopes that it will touch someone, somewhere, for the good of literature is a good that is able to heal. How it helped him think he could possibly walk again when he knows in the back of his mind he may never be able to. He talks about how I've been more than just a son - I've been a gift. I've been someone who he could depend on for anything, how I've been able to completely save him from doing something stupid. How he wrote the novel for me. I want to interrupt and say that the novel is for him, but it's enough for now. Like I said, it's a ritual. We have to follow it.
            I ask him when he's going to write the next one. He says he isn't. Those are his only chance at making his words count. He wants people to read THOSE words. And he wants people to read them now.
            "Dad, we have to wait," I say.
            "I know."
            “And we’re going to do it together.”
            “Yes, we will,” he says. He nods and acts as if he’ll talk some more, but watches the passing road instead with silence.
            And then I take him out of the van and I push him to the backyard and I make him a drink and I sit with him, watching the trees. There is no more talk. There’s nothing left to say.
            *