Journey into "Raymond Custy's Garden of Worldly Delights"

This is the opening of a story included in "The Weight of a Body," my first story collection. It was first published by Ghost Road Press at its tiny office on Evans Avenue off I-25 in Denver.  I dropped by on a summer day in 2005 to pick up the first copies hot off the press. I was dying to show off the books. I delivered the first copy to my uncle. I owed him a visit. His reading was mostly focused on the Denver dailies sports pages -- he was an athlete and a coach -- but he congratulated me and said he'd read it. I then drove back the 95 miles to Cheyenne to share the news with my family. My favorite story is set in a Florida beach town where I spent some of my youth. It has some basis in fact. I did grow up as the oldest kid in a big Irish-Catholic family. My brother and I walked to the beach to surf. My father was a reclusive sort but who can blame him?

I share this as a teaser to my story collection. I have another one in the works but the first one still has some zing. That's the author speaking. Anyway, to read more click on the cover image in the right sidebar.  The collection goes for $14.99 but if you're as dedicated a Kindle reader as I am, you can get a bargain. Check it out.

Raymond Custy’s Garden of Worldly Delights

            In June of 1967, when I was almost 16, my father checked out for a year. Locked himself in his room. Threw away the key. No messages. No contact of any kind. It was as if he died or decamped to Tahiti, only worse, because I could walk down the hall past that locked door and hear London Philharmonic symphonies blasting from the hi-fi. A cough might erupt from behind closed doors; the whisper of slippered feet. Sometimes a thin blue stream of cigarette smoke escaped from the room and formed a cloud in the hallway. If I was alone, I would stand in the midst of the cloud and inhale, hoping that the smoke might be the bearer of some singular message from my dad, the hermit.

            This hermit lived surrounded by eleven children, one wife, two dogs, a cat and a cage full of hamsters. On the brilliant June day my father bolted the door, the family queued up to coax him out. My mother went first. "Raymond Custy!" she yelled. "You come out of there right this minute!"  She waited, arms crossed, bare feet tapping on the wooden floors. I could hear the cars passing on the street, on their way to the beach. I could even hear the slap of the waves on the sand two blocks away.