Free Orphan Pirates of the Spanish Main by Dennis Danvers Page B

under a billion stars, the secrets of which he intended to share with me once we got the roast out of the oven and scraped the pan.
    I figure he worked in the kitchen where he lived, cooking for all the kids in the orphanage, the priests and nuns and whatever. He always cooked too much, stored it away in a massive freezer. That’s often what we ate when he traveled, which he did a lot. Mom didn’t always feel like cooking.
    She liked his stories too, and I was often aware of her as an amused and loving audience to the wild tales he told me and my brother. Before we came along I imagine his stories were a little different. She loved him. You could see it. She wasn’t always happy about it—with good reason—but she loved him. We all did. He needed that. He never had anybody before the three of us.
    He was a terrible disciplinarian. A kid would have to be brain-dead not to get around Dad, and me and Ollie were far from brain-dead. Mom would say no but Dad never did, and they never overruled the other. “Ask Dad” was like open sesame. Ollie used to use his time on the phone when Dad called home from the road to get around Mom, and it drove her crazy.
    I only took serious advantage once, when I malingered through six weeks of eighth grade because I loathed it—with good reason. Today, I would have the sadistic shop teacher arrested, the rabidly racist history teacher fired, but these were the good old days, and they were duly appointed by the state to build my character deep in the heart of Texas. My only option was deceit. I did a pretty good cough, gave myself a sporadic fever by touching the thermometer to my reading lamp, timing my performances for when Dad was home. I enjoyed my reclusive freedom with Clarke and Asimov and Bradbury and Heinlein, somewhere out there among the stars where shamans make gravy for galley slaves, gathering enough inner strength to eventually return to school and prosper. I built my own character. Several.
    I think Dad knew I was faking but understood I needed to hide out for a while and feel safe. I could navigate the bullies. I had mastered the art of invisibility, but brainwashers and torturers ran the place, and they had their eyes on me.
    Ollie, older by four years, led a wilder youth, which resulted in his joining the military at the suggestion of a judge who said he might overlook the reckless mistakes of a patriot willing to serve his country. Ancient history. Now he’s settled down and out in suburbia with his dogs and his kitchen and his last wife.
    I’m no different, except I prefer the city and one dog at a time. My current situation’s somewhat complicated. Technically, I’m married to Katyana, a woman half my age, but that’s mostly a means to get her on my health insurance and give them some financial stability, her and her son Dylan, legally my son as well, though biologically not. They don’t make you prove it at the hospital, turns out. All you have to do is step up and take credit. Nothing’s cross-referenced, or they might’ve noticed I had a vasectomy a few decades back and a sex-ending prostatectomy five years ago. Katyana comes with a dog as well, Avatar, a stunning blue-gray standard poodle my intense little border collie Myrna adores with embarrassing intensity. They were both already too damn smart for dogs individually. Now they collude.
    My brother doesn’t approve of my recent marriage. Par for the course. My brother and I don’t talk much these days, so I know it’s important when he calls me. He’s seventy-one.
    Not a lot of good news peaks then, unless you want to talk religion, which I probably shouldn’t, but I will. You can’t expect an old man to stay on the subject—or, rather, the subject is larger than it might first appear. Aliens have a hard time with religion. Earthbound religions seem puny in the face of the cosmos. Dad again. The orphanage was Catholic. We most