Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Getting to the good part, then my kid starts crying
I’m writing from the Ron Robinson Theater stage.
Fellow author Marcie Rendon sits to my right, along with our moderator, Marianne Tettlebaum. I can’t see them; they’re just blurs in my peripherals. I see only lines in a book, my book, all the words that got me here.
My palms are sweaty, my armpits damp. I’m nervous because this is the Six Bridges Book Festival, the biggest literary event in Arkansas, and for some reason, they asked me to come talk about my book.
They even asked me to read my book, which is what I’m doing, making my way through the opening scene — the same scene I’ve read at least a hundred times by now — but this time is different because my people are in the audience.
My friends and family. My former teachers and current co-workers. This is Little Rock, and for an Arkansas boy, it doesn’t get any bigger.
I make it through the first page, and everything seems to be going well. I haven’t flubbed any words or had to start over. The crowd is into it too.
I feed off their energy as I go deeper into the story, deeper into my protagonist’s pain, and his voice becomes my voice.
There’s a line in this scene that hits like a home run every time I read it. I’m nearing that point now, the most heart-wrenching moment in the 400 words I’ve chosen to share. All goes quiet in the theater. The next words are on the tip of my tongue, that home-run line that everybody loves — I’m just about to say it — when some kid starts crying. Wailing.
Screaming bloody murder. My first thought is that my story did this to him. It is a brutal scene. Then I wonder why a kid is attending a literary event at all.
I trudge on, fumbling my way through my favorite line, but that kid doesn’t stop crying. If anything he gets louder and louder, each decibel driving a dagger deeper into my
heart, twisting it the way my own kids’ cries do when they wake up at midnight and yell for “Mommy!”
It’s always “Mommy.” Never “Daddy!”
Not until now.
The kid in the back row currently being escorted out of the Ron Robinson Theater by his mother is my son. And although it isn’t midnight, and he isn’t screaming my name, he is yelling for me.
Or at least that’s what I tell myself when I finally look up and watch my wife drag him through the rear exit.
The crowd is quieter now than before. A shocked kind of silence. I tell them the little hellion is my son. I make a joke of it, and they laugh.
When I finish the reading the crowd claps, just like it always does, but I can’t stop thinking about my boy. Thinking how I was the one who wanted him there. I wanted him and his sister to see their dad up on stage.
My wife didn’t think it was a good idea. Maybe she was right.
I don’t know.
I don’t know what my kids thought when they saw me in the spotlight. I don’t know if it was something I said that made my son go ballistic, but I am glad he was in attendance. I’m glad he and his sister got to see me doing something other than sitting in my office, crouched over a notepad, or typing words into a glowing screen.
They got to see their dad chasing his dream. Scratch that. They got to see me living my dream, and even if they don’t remember it, even if they thought it was boring, I still think it matters.
The Six Bridges Literary festival was a dream come true for me. I’m beyond thankful to Brad Mooy and the other great folks at the Central Arkansas Library System for putting it all together. But more than anything, I hope my kids will look back on that crazy day and know their dreams are within reach, no matter how loudly the world (or some snot-nosed peer) tries to tell them otherwise.