Liquid Imagination

Excerpt from Paperboy: A Dysfunctional Novel by Bob Thurber

Bob Thurber's debut novel is an unsettling though easy read. Dysfunctional in form as well as content, the book's 262 pages consists of 157 chapters, most of them rather short, yet intensely powerful, poignant, disturbing, and a few that are absurdly comical. Many of them could stand alone as very short fictions.

The following excerpt comes from Chapter 98 in its entirety. Enjoy!

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Friday, June 20, 1969—It's after supper and Mom is gone. I don't know where she went; probably downstairs to smoke Turkish cigarettes with Mrs. K and complain about her life. Kelly and I are doing the dishes. There aren't many. Mom made grilled cheese sandwiches and Mrs. Grass' Chicken Noodle Soup for supper. Kelly's washing and I'm drying. She hands me a cup and tells me she is running away again, just not today.

"Maybe tomorrow," she says. "Depends on how I feel."

When Grandma was alive, Kelly would sometimes pack a bag and go live there for a while, which in my book wasn't really running away.

"When are you leaving," I ask and she says, "Soon."

"Where will you go," I ask, and I expect her to say Sacramento, which is where our Aunt Sally lives. She hands me another cup. "Not sure. I haven't made up my mind. I might just pick a direction and start walking."

I work the towel on the inside of the cup, then the outside. "Not much of a plan," I say.

"Don't need a plan. I'll just keep walking until I get some place."

"Where will you sleep?"

"Different places."

"Outside?"

"Maybe."

"You won't have any blankets."

"So.

"Suppose it rains?"

"I'll camp under a tree."

She hands me a dinner plate but there are suds on the rim so I slide it back into the rinse water. "What if it pours buckets and there aren't any good trees to sleep under."

She fishes a butter knife out of the water and hands it to me, handle first. "It won't kill me to get wet."

"It might. You could catch pneumonia and die."

She watches me dry the knife. "Beats living here."

"You won't get far walking."

"Maybe I'll hitchhike."

"If you run away Mom will send the police to look for you."

She shrugs and hands me a spoon. "We'll see."

"They'll put you in handcuffs."

"They'll have to find me first."

"They'll bring you back in a straightjacket."

She hands me another dinner plate. In the center is a small blob of melted cheese. It looks like a big yellow teardrop.

"If you run away Mom will lock you up again."

"No," my sister says, wagging her head, showing me her pink tongue. "That won't ever happen again."

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A special thanks to Mr. Thurber for this wonderful excerpt.