Excerpt of Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
(Page 2 of 3)
Printer Friendly Excerpt
It was, he knew, irrationally, because his father had given him the
nickname, and when his father gave things names, they stuck.
There was a dog who had lived in the house across the way, in the
Florida street on which Fat Charlie had grown up. It was a
chestnut-colored boxer, long-legged and pointy-eared with a face that
looked like the beast had, as a puppy, run face-first into a wall. Its
head was raised, its tail nub erect. It was, unmistakably, an
aristocrat amongst canines. It had entered dog shows. It had rosettes
for Best of Breed and for Best in Class and even one rosette marked
Best in Show. This dog rejoiced in the name of Campbell's Macinrory
Arbuthnot the Seventh, and its owners, when they were feeling
familiar, called it Kai. This lasted until the day that Fat Charlie's
father, sitting out on their dilapidated porch swing, sipping his
beer, noticed the dog as it ambled back and forth across the
neighbor's yard, on a leash that ran from a palm tree to a fence post.
"Hell of a goofy dog," said Fat Charlie's father. "Like that friend
of Donald Duck's. Hey Goofy."
And what once had been Best in Show suddenly slipped and shifted.
For Fat Charlie, it was as if he saw the dog through his father's
eyes, and darned if he wasn't a pretty goofy dog, all things
considered. Almost rubbery.
It didn't take long for the name to spread up and down the street.
Campbell's Macinrory Arbuthnot the Seventh's owners struggled with it,
but they might as well have stood their ground and argued with a
hurricane. Total strangers would pat the once proud boxer's head, and
say, "Hello, Goofy. How's a boy?" The dog's owners stopped entering
him in dog shows soon after that. They didn't have the heart.
"Goofy-looking dog," said the judges.
Fat Charlie's father's names for things stuck. That was just how it
was.
That was far from the worst thing about Fat Charlie's father.
There had been, during the years that Fat Charlie was growing up, a
number of candidates for the worst thing about his father: his roving
eye and equally as adventurous fingers, at least according to the
young ladies of the area, who would complain to Fat Charlie's mother,
and then there would be trouble; the little black cigarillos, which he
called cheroots, which he smoked, the smell of which clung to
everything he touched; his fondness for a peculiar shuffling form of
tap dancing only ever fashionable, Fat Charlie suspected, for half an
hour in Harlem in the 1920s; his total and invincible ignorance about
current world affairs, combined with his apparent conviction that
sitcoms were half-hour-long insights into the lives and struggles of
real people. These, individually, as far as Fat Charlie was concerned,
were none of them the worst thing about Fat Charlie's father, although
each of them had contributed to the worst thing.
The worst thing about Fat Charlie's father was simply this: He was
embarrassing.
Of course, everyone's parents are embarrassing. It goes with the
territory. The nature of parents is to embarrass merely by existing,
just as it is the nature of children of a certain age to cringe with
embarrassment, shame, and mortification should their parents so much
as speak to them on the street.
The foregoing is excerpted from Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. All
rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced
without written permission from HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd
Street, New York, NY 10022.
