Trafford Publishing: The High Kicking Kung Fu Soccer Playing Bunny Rabbit Tree

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The High Kicking Kung Fu Soccer Playing Bunny Rabbit Tree

by K. Michael Forde

246 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #04-1191; ISBN 1-4120-3364-0; US$22.00, C$25.08, EUR18.00, £13.00

Arth Barrett: No-good Irish layabout that does nothing all day every day or monkey-suited superhero of the sixth Dimension travelling the world and his kitchen, across time and through space, fuelled only by his ability to grasp the importance of noting hot beverage additives?

The time is approaching when his wife, Caroline, must decide once and for all.

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about the book about the author excerpts catalogue info

About the Book

Arth Barrett: No-good Irish layabout that does nothing all day every day or monkey-suited superhero of the sixth Dimension travelling the world and his kitchen, across time and through space, fuelled only by his ability to grasp the importance of noting hot beverage additives?

About the Author

K. Michael Forde has worked in the development of database systems since the early 1990s. Besides that he does nothing.

Excerpts

CHAPTER 1: BEING THERE
Arth was a liar. A cheat. A fraud. He knew it and was not happy. He knew nobody else knew it and this made him feel even more unhappy. He hated himself. His mam had offered him the sugar for his tea and he refused it. Even now she still called him her sweetie because he used to add so much sugar to everything. Seven and a half spoonfuls he put in his regular cup of tea at one time. Nowadays he couldn't bare to even look at an open sugar bowl, but didn't have the heart to tell her this. Instead he just said 'naw' and waved it casually away. Although he only lived a few miles from home he visited there probably less than four times a year. Before the kids were born it was even less than that. His mam and sisters called around to the house every now and again, but he knew they felt threatened whenever they did. The lines of communication with his family had waned since he moved out and this latest sugar incident brought it home to all present, though no one mentioned it of course. It wasn't worth mentioning. It was only a tiny occurrence in an otherwise enjoyable chat, but it was the one thing he would think hard about for the following few days and he knew that this more than anything else in their conversation would spark a similar feeling of unease in his mam and Brenda and Assumpta. Once and for all, he knew, they would know that he had changed. His own mother now barely knew him. In truth it was years since he added any sugar to anything. One of his pet-hates these days was sugar and it hurt him that his mother didn't know this. What hurt him more though was the fact that he had allowed a gap to form between himself and his family across which no day-to-day sugar-communications passed. Because contact was so sparse there simply was no time to note hot-beverage additives. There were a lot more important things to discuss.
Truth was, Arth's unease had nothing to do with sugar -or his family. He did nothing and he knew it. He was worthless. Each day he put off until the next what he could have done the day before. Now that his confidence and belief in another, better life had been somewhat eroded he was almost certain he knew exactly who he was. But this was no comfort to him. He wasn't who he had thought he was. He wasn't the sweet young boy he used to be.

There was no particular reason why he had called to his family home on this day, so for that reason in particular Arth decided to pay a visit. He had given his mam three days notice, not so much that she would be prepared, but because he knew if he hadn't told her in advance, come the day, chances were he wouldn't bother -especially if it was raining or if one of the kids was crying for some reason or if it was cold or if the postman was late in arriving and Arth had to wait longer in case some parcel (which he wasn't expecting) was being delivered to him and by the time of its arrival (or otherwise) it could be too late to go for a spontaneous visit. And by that time also he would know there was a good chance his mam or one or both of his sisters still living at home would be gone out. No. A three-day notice was the best thing all round for everybody. He knew one of his sisters would've made a joke of it- "Oh, he's making appointments to come home now!" -Brenda probably would say this. And Assumpta would answer: "He should book into Jurys for himself." But his mam would've reminded them that Sarah and Jessica were coming too and they were the nicest children you could meet. Everybody knew that.

As it was, Arth and the girls arrived just after noon. Brenda was in bed. Assumpta was on the phone (to her-fiancé-of-twenty-years no doubt) and his mam was out getting the messages. "Just as well I rang first", he noted sadly and sarcastically to himself.
Soon though the mother's head bent around the backdoor, shopping bags tying her to the Earth. Arth was unable to assist as Sarah had just begun to bawl following Jessica's occupation of the very rug she had decided to sit on. A dishevelled Brenda didn't so much enter the room as saunter past. "Oh hello" she sighed to her mam. "Cup of tea?" She smiled at Arth who smiled back. He knew not to bid her good morning in front of the mother at this late hour. And Brenda for her part knew Arth wouldn't reveal to the mother that she was only now arising. Nothing need be said, and her older brother could always be relied upon to say nothing.
The children played together by the fridge. Jessica was the driver. She had a hat. Sarah sat quietly in the back seat waiting to be brought to work. Arth was sitting at the table with his mam and Brenda when his eldest sister, Assumpta, clipped in in her hairy slippers. "You're up" she declared, head held high looking at nobody. All eyes to Brenda. "...Is in the news again?" completed the youngest sibling in an attempt to avoid further reflection on her sleeping habits. The mother stared at the space between the top of the dresser and the ceiling, deep in thought. "What?" she finally exhaled, looking to her youngest daughter after the puzzle proved too much. "Yes, the French Prime Minister won't give in to the strikes this time."
Assumpta kept her distance, standing at the sink behind the mother. She smiled at Brenda who shot back a quick glare through half-shut eyes and half-smiling pursed lips. Brenda had narrowly avoided the mother's chastisement. Further comment from Assumpta would certainly earn the wrath of Brenda. Arth knew they all hated his guts or looked up to him too much and he wanted to cry. All knew if Assumpta sat down at the table, the closed family circle at such close quarters would implode upon itself in no time. Or if not, forever brand its participants as conspirators against the absentees. But Assumpta was not about to sit. Nobody expected her to sit and, if they gave it the slightest thought, everybody knew that she would not. With two empty seats besides her own, they all knew there was no room for her at the table. So she stood and looked on. Self-consciousness placed a glass in her hand. As she filled it and drank deep a silent toast permeated the air: To absent family.

The second-born, Doreen, had escaped to England some twelve years previous, got a job and married TJ -a farmer's son from West-Cork. TJ dumped Doreen within a few years. He said he wanted to move back home, but he knew Doreen was tied to the mortgage she had before she married and at that time it was impossible to sell anything in London. Besides, he also knew there was no way Doreen would ever be a farmer's wife in West Cork. Doreen was destined for greater than that. So they split amicably-enough with a final shag which left Doreen with a bulge to feed as well as a mortgage to pay. She was stubborn, was Doreen, and refused to budge from her London home. She never told TJ he had a son, but a friend of theirs' met her one day as she carried young Zach in her baby-sling. The friend hadn't even mentioned the baby -or made googly-coos to it, but she saw the way he looked at Zach and she knew the cat was out of the bag. Arth fancied that this friend possibly thought that Doreen had gotten pregnant by somebody else and that was why TJ had left her and that was why the friend had said nothing of the baby to her and that was why he might not say it to TJ, but Doreen never hinted to Arth at this being a possibility so he never knew for sure. Still, it was several months after she met this friend that TJ rang for her to confirm what he had finally heard. He sounded more surprised that it was his than it was there at all. They had been separated nearly two years by then and TJ was seeing an old-ex of his. How could he possibly break this news to her (his ex)? He didn't want Doreen back. Doreen didn't want to go and live with him in West Cork (or live with anyone else in any other part of Cork). It was a dilemma they agreed to think about for the time being.
It turned out that Arth and Caroline had just arrived for a visit to Doreen's on that Friday evening when TJ rang. Doreen spent the rest of the evening in tears. Arth escaped for most of the following day to attend a computer exhibition in Earl's Court. Caroline was to go with him, but she couldn't leave Doreen alone while she was still so depressed. Instead, the two girls and the baby went shopping in Oxford Street for the day. The Sunday was quiet enough. They all went to a nearby pub with a beer-garden for lunch and by the end of the meal (and a few pints) it was time for the two visitors to pack their bags and begin their journey home. Following that weekend Arth no longer had any doubts: Doreen was as much a fuck-up as the rest of his family.

Just after TJ left Doreen in London, Arth's dad left his mam -in Cork. Arth was in his late-twenties at the time. His dad -like TJ- didn't leave his wife for anyone else. Instead, he said he was just fed-up. He wanted to be alone. He said he wanted to play golf, but got nothing but grief when he came home. He preferred to eat in the club-house though there was trouble every time he wouldn't eat at home. All his friends these days were golf-friends. None of his family knew any of them. He had an enthusiasm for nothing but the game of golf. It wasn't the game itself of course. It was the pleasure of having something to be enthusiastic about. None of his family had it. It was his alone. He had begun his adult life with a drive and an enthusiasm that lead him to buy a number of properties across the city of Cork. The first was a tenement house that was going for a song in the locality. Before long he had acquired both its next-doors, an abandoned warehouse or two, a few old flats, several city-centre wastelands, a used-car lot (complete with scrapped vehicles), a derelict church with graveyard and a small street between two buildings that went nowhere and was too narrow to fit anything into except rubbish. Income from the rent just about sustained the family and also his own obsession, as it was described to him time and again, for collecting rubble. He rarely did anything with these acquisitions, but would frequently visit them "to assess their progress."
In more recent times, once these properties came to actually be worth anything, he seemed to lose all interest in them. One by one they were sold and no further investments made. Only a few flats now remained to sustain income on an ongoing basis for the family. People congratulated him on his shrewd business sense. Nobody outside his family knew of (though not even they entirely comprehended) his disappointment in these purchases. It was as though his rough and ready children had become very successful, taken to wearing sweaters thrown over their shoulders and hanging out in trendy wine bars. He could rejoice in their worth and popularity, but didn't quite approve of their new values or social circles.
It was around this time that Arth's father discovered golf. He soon abandoned whatever ambition, if any, he previously had and wanted only to be at peace with himself and those around him. Still, every day he arrived home he was greeted with a frosty reception if he was lucky, a hot frying-pan one if he was not. Maybe seeing how TJ could get away with it encouraged Arth's dad to bite the bullet and leave. He knew there was nothing holding him there, since his children had grown up and his wife and himself barely communicated with each other outside arguing. The only thing keeping him there really was the neighbours and what they would think. So he moved far enough away not to be bothered by them. He moved to Fermoy, north County Cork where he bought a nice bungalow within view of his favourite golf-course, on which he played daily. The last time Arth had seen him was at his (Arth's) wedding ...that was what? Five years earlier? He looked healthier at that time than Arth had ever seen him in his life. He hadn't lost any weight, but had fine red rosy cheeks. He had a constant smile on his face and a spring in his step.

In contrast, Arth's mam bore the brunt of what she felt was the neighbours' scorn. She bore it in her heart and wore it on her sleeve. You only had to look at the woman, as he did now, to know she had been abandoned. If the neighbours were to judge, she must be beyond reproach. She had a look that said "woe is me. I prayed to Saint Jude he wouldn't leave. I prayed to Saint Anthony he would return. I prayed and prayed but the bastard never came home."

"Sugar?" offered Arth's mam. It was more of a plea than a proposal. But he shot her down nonetheless.

On the drive home he was a little lighter of spirits. He was glad he had called, but still regretted not doing so more often. "Why don't I call more often?", he wondered. He liked meeting his family, but because he was there so infrequently it seemed like a big event any time he visited at all. "Country Barrett" Brenda had christened him, emphasising the distance that had grown between him and his city family. He didn't know their sugar-preferences, he knew. He wanted to know the mundane day-to-day things about them like he used to. Instead he only knew what they told him about their lives in general or what he would observe for himself (as an outsider): "Brenda's in bed at noon at thirty. Assumpta's on the phone to her boyfriend waiting for him to pop the question, nearing forty." His mam was going through the motions.
The family was a mess, but (as he re-discovered upon each visit) they were more like him than anyone else was. This was important to him because he at least knew there was a place where he did fit. What bothered him though was he felt that they felt that he was not as bad as them. So even though he felt he fitted there, he believed that they believed he didn't. He thought -he knew- that for some reason, they all thought of him as the one success among the lot of them. He lived in a lovely house with a successful, beautiful wife. He had two wonderful children, the ideal quiet lifestyle and not a trouble in the world. Arth, the liar. Arth, the cheat. Arth, the fraud. He knew enough about everyone to know that everyone in their own way were fuck-ups, but never allowed anyone close enough to discover that it was he who was the biggest fuck-up of all. He projected an image of peacefulness and contentment even as he secretly loathed these very traits. He saw to it that everything he did appeared to be done his own way and to his satisfaction, but in fact he knew he did nothing. Always.
The Virgin of Lourdes had told him he was doing alright. "Hang tough" she said from her favourite vantage-point over the mantelpiece. "You will show your wife and family and all the others you knew exactly what you were doing all along. Nothing? You call what you''ve achieved nothing? Get a grip", she said, "you have far more going for you than anyone around you has. You'll show them!" The Virgin of Fatima never said anything to him. Instead she would smile from outside the window and give him a little wave every now and again. She never even set foot in the house. Of course he couldn't blame her. If he had the courage he wouldn't set foot in his house either. But he knew this courage would be seen as abandonment. This brought a new fear. He would be branded a coward. "Sometimes", he thought to himself "the bravest and best thing to do is the opposite to what everybody else thinks should be done." He would be John Wayne against the world: Misunderstood and at odds with everyone, until the end when they saw what he had achieved. But the fear was more real than the ideal. And what exactly did he want to achieve anyway? What he really wanted was to get away. To be away. There was no place in particular he wanted to be, but he wanted most of all to be away from himself and who this person had become. He didn't want to be married to his beautiful wife. He didn't want to have two gorgeous twin daughters whom he adored. The absence of any neighbours to speak of didn't ease Arth's apprehensions concerning abandonment. He had several reasons for staying, not least of which was that he didn't want to be seen as copying his dad: There were enough reasons to laugh at the men in his family without his following a trend set by others. Also, he didn't feel like there was anything else for him -he didn't have an obsession or a purpose, such as golf or a farm in West Cork, that he could escape to. Arth was sick of being the strong/ dependable member of his family. He wanted everyone to know that he wasn't. He wanted to come clean and run naked in the streets, but was afraid this final straw would break the family-camel's back.
Possibly the most important reason he didn't run out was that he didn't want to not want to have all he had either. In truth he did want these things as much as (if not more than) he didn't.. He loved his wife and he adored his children. He felt he was being pulled one way and then the other continuously so he could never choose one clear, definite path to follow. He was an ass between two bales of equally-juicy-looking hay, refusing to choose between them until they presented him with a clearer option -one which was mutually beneficial (and acceptable) to himself and each bale. "Why can't we all be happy and get along?", he pondered. So as he waited he ate carrots (which he preferred anyway).

This visit to his family home was much like any other where nothing is started and nothing happens. Its existence would otherwise have been unrecorded and not noted even by its participants, save for one inconsequential non-event when a son declined the sweet offerings of his mother.

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