Murphy’s Luck Read online

  Murphy's Luck

  Benjamin Laskin

  Arete Books

  Copyright © [2015] [Benjamin Laskin]

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Published by [Arete Books]

  ISBN: [978-1-5076-0793-0]

  Cover design by Brian Volkhausen

  e-book formatting by bookow.com

  Dedication

  For that bud of a smile held hostage in the corner of every frown.

  Table of Contents

  Charm School

  Catcher in the Wry

  Pastimes

  Club Murphy

  Highway to Hell

  Parcae

  Surfing the Gauntlet

  Major, Minor

  Collisions

  Fool’s Errand

  Barbaric Yawp

  Horsefeathers

  Hexed

  Cutting Mustard

  Badgers

  Fatal Attraction

  Cups Runneth Over

  Double Whammy

  Parker PI

  Moon Tune

  Dunkin’ Donuts with Gomez

  Cuckoo

  Jailbird

  Noodle

  Eureka!

  A Different Drummer

  Time Jugglers

  For Art’s Sake

  Escort Service

  Marching Orders

  Accidentally on Purpose

  Art of Love

  Zyzzyva!

  Pennies from Heaven

  A Message from Benjamin Laskin

  Other Novels by Benjamin Laskin

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Charm School

  St. Christopher Elementary

  Eureka, Kansas

  November, 1989

  Expecting the unexpected, eight-year-old Murphy Drummer shambled across the playground towards the entrance of the red-bricked school building. A small and timid boy, Murphy was leery as always.

  He stopped in his tracks, turned warily, and then frowned in deep concern. On the ground, midway between himself and a schoolmate on a bicycle peddling full bore in his direction, Murphy spotted a long, rusty screw.

  Murphy opened his mouth to alert the boy, but he only pointed lamely towards the hazard. Distracted by three girls skipping rope just ahead, and so oblivious to Murphy’s warning, the boy raced on.

  Pop!

  The bicycle’s front tire blew and the hapless boy went spilling to the ground. He picked himself up, checked his scrapes and ripped blue jeans, and looked around for the source of his misfortune. Spotting the culprit, the boy flipped Murphy the bird and cursed him.

  Murphy sighed, turned, and continued walking.

  As he neared the three schoolgirls, two of whom were turning a rope for the third, he overheard the girls singing the school’s most popular playground ditty.

  “Murphy, Murphy, tutti-fruttis;

  He’s a boy who carries cooties.

  Drummer, Drummer, he’s a bummer;

  Winter, spring, fall, and summer!”

  Murphy Drummer paused in alarm. He noticed that the shoelaces of the jumping girl were undone and flopping to and fro. Self-conscious, he approached the girls to point out the threat. But again he balked, deterred by the deluge of put-downs and giggles that experience and his good intentions had taught him to expect. The jumping girl tripped and crashed onto her fanny. Murphy flinched, hung his head in regret, and walked off. Behind him the girls shook their fists and hollered insults at him.

  He continued shuffling across the school grounds and came upon a basketball court where six youths were playing a game of three-on-three. Murphy paused and looked on wistfully, undetected by the other kids.

  He watched one of the boys dribble the basketball around his opponent and launch it arching towards the hoop. The ball floated through the air, and then lodged between the rim and backboard. The boys stared dumbly up at the stuck basketball. Hitting upon an idea, they threw their daypacks at the ball in an attempt to knock it free. When that failed, one boy climbed upon the shoulders of the tallest youth. He stood to reach for the ball as the bigger boy held onto the smaller boy’s ankles.

  Murphy groaned and started away. He halted, contemplated calling out to the ballplayers, but once again decided to mind his own business. A moment later he heard a commotion, followed by yelps of pain. Behind Murphy, six downed boys squirmed in a heap on the ground.

  Heaving another sigh, Murphy trudged up the thirteen steps leading to the school entrance. Before he opened the door he pulled a lucky rabbit’s foot from his pocket. He rubbed its soft blue fur with his thumb, put it back into his pocket, and then with fingers crossed, he entered the building.

  Chin lowered, avoiding all eyes and trying his best to be invisible, Murphy headed through the locker-lined hallway and its bustle of mingling students.

  Quickly spotted, a student shouted, “Look out! It’s Drummer the Bummer!”

  Half the students scrambled for cover as the rest clutched their books and daypacks to their chests and stood motionless in dread.

  Nothing happened. Whew, the students thought.

  A classroom door marked ‘Science Lab’ swung open wide, and the science teacher, Mr. Muridae, stepped into the doorway holding a caged rat. He saw Murphy, raised the cage vigilantly above his head, and froze. Murphy, head down, passed before him. The coast clear, Mr. Muridae blew a sigh of relief. The door slammed closed behind him and knocked the cage crashing to the floor. Students screamed, and the rodent scurried down the hall to freedom, mayhem in its wake.

  Murphy whimpered and continued his trek through the corridor. He entered his classroom and noted with despair its state of decay: broken windows, hole-riddled walls, and long, spindly cracks in the white board. The fluorescent lights stuttered, and the clock’s minute and hour hands raced after one another in an endless chase.

  Murphy sighed and took his seat at the back of the room, alone and ostracized, three desks away from any other student.

  The teacher, Ms. Lincoln, a blimpy, kind-looking woman of fifty wearing a floral Hawaiian muumuu, noted the boy’s sadness and cautiously approached.

  “Murphy,” she asked, “how did your meeting with the school counselor go yesterday?”

  “Not so good, ma’am. He had to leave early…in an ambulance.”

  Ms. Lincoln gasped. “My goodness, Murphy. What happened?”

  Murphy shrugged, sorry. “I dunno, ma’am. When I walked into his office he was practicing his golf swing and froze in a funny position.”

  “Well, Murphy, accidents do happen.”

  “They happen around me a lot,” Murphy muttered.

  Ms. Lincoln panned the ravaged room as if in confirmation. She nodded regretfully, and then rested her big bottom on the school desk beside Murphy’s. She leaned towards him in a friendly, sympathetic manner. “You know what I think you need, Murphy?”

  Distracted, he shook his head. “Um, Ms. Lincoln…”

  Ms. Lincoln did not pick up on Murphy’s anxiety. She felt that she had hit upon a brilliant idea and was intent on Murphy hearing it.

  “A hobby!” Ms. Lincoln proclaimed. “With a hobby you won’t be so lonely, and maybe you could even make a few
friends.” She beamed, very pleased by her suggestion.

  “Ma’am, I think…”

  Kaboom!

  Ms. Lincoln’s desk collapsed and she crashed to the ground, the hem of her muumuu flying up and landing across her chest.

  The class cried, “Bummer!”

  Frazzled, Ms. Lincoln gazed up at Murphy. “A lot of hobbies, Murphy,” she croaked. “A lot of hobbies.”

  The recently liberated rat scampered across the floor of the classroom and hopped onto Ms. Lincoln’s bosom. The teacher’s eyes bugged, and she fainted.

  ···

  The following day, Murphy sat at the kitchen table absorbed in a book. His grandpa, Hank Drummer, a feisty, one-armed, and scruffy-looking man of sixty-five, shouted into the telephone in the next room.

  “Say what? … You can’t be blaming that on the boy! … Now you listen to me…!”

  Like Murphy’s demolished classroom, the Drummer kitchen also appeared to have been at the receiving end of Murphy’s curious luck. Strips of duct tape crisscrossed furniture and appliances as temporary fixes to perpetual havoc, and the walls showed the application of years of re-plastering and mismatching paint jobs. The refrigerator groaned, the kitchen faucet dripped, and the window to the big, dusty, weed-infested lot that was the Drummer’s backyard had a large, web-like crack in the center.

  Absorbed in his book and accustomed to his grandfather’s rantings, Murphy ignored the fury emanating from the next room. A boy on a mission, he was on his fourth book of the day. The first book he read that morning was a book on speed-reading.

  Before Murphy was sent home from school the previous day—something that happened nearly every week since he first began attending school—he paid a visit to the school’s library. With Ms. Lincoln’s advice fresh in his mind, Murphy spent an hour searching the shelves for books on every hobby he could find. He left with his arms and backpack full, and to the librarian’s horror, a library that looked as if a Visigoth horde had passed through it on its way to sacking Rome.

  Stacked on the kitchen table were three pillars of books. Each book covered a hobby of one kind or another: coin and stamp collecting, origami, magic tricks, juggling, needlepoint and macramé, whittling, chess, and a dozen other hobby-related books. Also on the table was a plate of cookies, a milk carton, one glass of milk, and in front of Murphy, a glass of orange juice.

  In the next room Murphy’s grandpa continued to argue with the school principal.

  “But Principal Martin, there are no other schools in town. He’s been booted out of every damn one. … Huh? Are you joking? I never finished the tenth grade, you idiot. Listen, he’s a good boy, just a little … Fine! And I want my tax money back!”

  Hank Drummer slammed down the phone and marched into the kitchen. He took a seat at the table across from Murphy and picked up a peanut butter cookie. He ate it in contemplation and sipped his milk. Turning his attention to Murphy, Hank arched an eyebrow. He marveled not only at the boy’s power of concentration, but at how his fingers raced zigzagging down each page, flipping to the next at an incredible pace. Hank glanced at the stacks of books and palmed his unshaven chin.

  “Murph…?”

  Murphy looked up.

  “I got some bad news. Seems you’re a little too special to go to St. Christopher’s anymore. And, well, an unusual boy requires an unusual education. So, from tomorrow this here kitchen is your new classroom, and this here grandpa is your new teacher.”

  Murphy’s face lit up. What a relief! He smiled a smile that Hank Drummer had not seen Murphy display since the boy first entered kindergarten.

  “You ain’t disappointed?”

  “No, Grandpa. I think you’ll be an excellent teacher. And I promise, I’ll be the best student you ever had!”

  “I’m sure you will, boy,” Grandpa said with a clipped, ironic grin. “I’m sure you will.”

  Smiling like it was Christmas morning, Murphy returned to his reading.

  Hank yawned. “Well, if I’m gonna be teachin’ tomorrow I ‘spose I’d better get me a good night’s sleep…”

  He stood and walked over to Murphy. As he reached to rub the boy’s head, his hand accidentally knocked the milk carton. The carton tipped, wobbled briefly, and began its descent to the floor. Hank’s face registered panic, but engrossed in his reading, Murphy seemed unaware of the impending disaster.

  Then, without lifting his eyes from his page, Murphy’s hand darted out and snatched the carton in midair. Murphy and Grandpa looked at one another in surprise. That never happened before!

  Catcher in the Wry

  The next morning, Murphy was already at the kitchen table ingesting another stack of books when his grandpa, dressed in blue pajamas and slippers, shuffled into the room to fix some toast and coffee.

  “Murph, school doesn’t start until…um, what time do you think is good?”

  “Whenever you like, Grandpa.”

  “How long have you been sitting here?”

  “Since six o’clock.”

  Hank glanced towards a cuckoo clock on the wall, but the hands had been stuck on 11:07 for years. He kept the pretty, mechanical clock because it reminded him of his deceased son, Lyle, who had received it as a wedding present. He checked the digital clock on the oven. The numbers cycled madly; something they had been doing ever since Hank replaced the previous oven after it mysteriously exploded. He walked over to the kitchen window, located a part of the glass that wasn’t shattered, and peered outside. He guessed that it was around eight in the morning, give or take.

  Hank put some toast in the toaster and set to brewing his coffee. Both appliances had seen better days, and in fact were only a month old, but thankfully, he thought, they still worked…for now, anyway.

  A few minutes later he took a seat across from Murphy. He cocked his head while he munched his buttered toast, examining the spines on the books in front of him.

  “What’s with the sudden interest in hobbies, Murph?”

  “Ms. Lincoln suggested that I learn a hobby. She said that if I had a hobby I might make some friends.” He paused, and then added, “Actually, she said lots of hobbies, so maybe that would mean lots of friends?”

  “I see.” Hank observed Murphy turn one page after another. “Murph,” he said, “why are you turning the pages so fast?”

  “I’m speed reading, Grandpa.”

  “You don’t say? Since when?”

  “Since yesterday.” He pointed to the book on speed reading.

  “For real?”

  Murphy nodded. “It was hard at first, but I’m getting better.”

  “And you remember what you’re reading?”

  “I think so.”

  “Huh,” Hank said, intrigued. He had never known Murphy to tell a single lie, not even a fib, so he had no reason to suspect him of being untruthful. “That’s a dandy little talent, Murph.”

  “Except…”

  “Except what?”

  “Well, I think I’m going to run out of books soon.”

  Hank chuckled. “There are plenty of books in the world, Murphy.”

  “That’s not what I mean. Yesterday the school librarian banned me again. And the Eureka public library, they banned me for life last year, remember? And the bookstore in town told us that if I ever showed my face in their store again they’d call the police.”

  “Right,” Hank said, recalling well the shouting matches he had had with all of them. He drummed his fingers on the table in thought. After a minute he announced, “I got an idea.” He rose from the table and disappeared into the next room to make a phone call.

  An hour later, Hank Drummer opened the front door and put out his hand to a tall, lean, elderly man with sloping shoulders and kind, dusty gray eyes. Lucas Cloverman was an old friend of Hank’s. The two men served in Korea together in the same platoon. Hank saved Lucas’s life during the battle of Pork Chop Hill, losing his left arm in the process. Lucas Cloverman was the only person in town who dared to set foot in
the Drummer home.

  Lucas stepped into the living room and gave it the once over, curious what changes might have manifested since the last time he was there. “New sofa,” he remarked.

  “Salvation Army new, anyway. No legs to snap.”

  “Good thinking. I see you replaced the glass coffee table with something a little more, er, shatterproof.”

  “Solid oak.”

  Lucas pointed to one of the walls. “Your plastering technique has improved.”

  “Plenty of practice.”

  Lucas raised his eyes towards the chandelier hanging above. “The electrical rewiring we did a few months back seems to be holding,” he said.

  “Yep, but don’t walk under it. We don’t want to press our luck.”

  “Gotcha. So, what can I do ya, Hank? Plumbing again?”

  “Nah, some drips, but Murph and I can handle that. We’re all fixed up…for now.” He knocked wood on the oak coffee table. “It’s the boy.”

  “Murphy?” Lucas said, concern in his voice. “What’s wrong with him? I mean, besides,” he gestured to the surroundings, “the whammy business? Murph is always okay. The boy is indestructible. Hell, I can’t remember him even catching so much as a sniffle. It’s like the kid walks around in an impenetrable bubble.”

  “He’s fine, thank God. But we ran out of schools. Seems I’ll be doing what they call homeschoolin’ for a while.”

  “Aw, well, that ain’t so bad, Hank. Public schools today, they suck anyway. Just a bunch of propaganda factories anymore, if you ask me.”

  “I hear ya, but what do I know about learnin’ people? Considerin’ my, er…” He flapped his stub. “…Pared-down situation. I’m decent with cars and mechanical crap that I learned back in the Army, but, hell, you know I ain’t never even finished high school.”

  “So, you want me to help you? Is that it?”

  “Help me come up with a plan or somethin’, what they call a care-rik-ulam.”