The Secret to Happiness
Posted Under: fiction
When Earnest was a young boy, his father said, “Son, I wanna tell you the secret to happiness, but it’s in here.” The rapidly aging, already grizzled- at 35 - man raised a red-white-and-blue can with fancy lettering to his lips for a long moment then returned it to his knee. “Aahh! That’s it, son. Now go help your mother cook dinner.” The child stared at his father like a true believer looks at god-incarnate until the already-old man shouted “Go!”
The man had become the source of all earthly wisdom for Earnest until that time in every child’s life when they realize their father’s have to act as the infallible answer machine. His father, who smiled increasingly less over the years, became an example of folly and falsehood. Earnest Sr. saddened and disgusted teenage Earnie with his drunken, maudlin ramblings for “the good old days.” But even when the young man’s opinion of the once great patriarch sank to a pitiful level, he knew that at some point, the old man must have spoken a word of truth. Young Earnest still remembered “the secret” that made his father seem like a living deity.
Like many other young people, Earnest lied and deceived his parents at every opportunity to drink beer. It took him only one hellish experience with hard liquor to swear it off like a new convert does the devil. Beer would do for him. After more than a dozen nights of guzzling, he reached a point when he knew he had never been that drunk in his life while keeping control of his guts. New sensibilities, ones he couldn’t have imagined even as a child, felt like magical powers; at last he could talk to random strangers and impress women with his uncommon wit. The following morning, he awoke in the valley of the previous night’s peak of transcendent cognition. This grief, he discover, was as equally inexplicable as the elation he had felt.
From tenth grade to his senior year, the peaks and low valleys counteracted each other to make a well-adjusted young man, full of original ideas and hope for future successes. The old man, who usually grumbled in doubt of his word, actually cracked a smile and raised a toast to his son. Earnie fought the compulsion to cry for his father’s failing health by working as much as he could before the moving-in day.
That day came as fast as the morning after a sound, dreamless sleep. Earnest Sr. finished a mini-cooler of beers before their arrival at the picture of serene academic discipline: the older man’s opposite. Young Earnie felt a strange mixture of pride and embarrassment as his soused father carried the heaviest items up four flights of stairs. Passing each other in the stairwell, father and son exchanged a series of looks that conveyed hours of conversation.
At last, the time came when the bird leaves the nest. Mother cried, of course. Father watched the tearful good-bye with a look of assurance that the young image of himself would fully comprehend the wisdom he would soon bestow. He motioned for his son to follow him out of earshot of the mother.
“Listen to me, son,” he said in his best sober voice, “You know I’m full of shit and a miserable asshole, but I’m still right about the secret to happiness.” The look of rapture in the newly inducted freshman’s eyes told the tired man that he didn’t understand so, he pulled his son’s ear close to his mouth and released a deafening belch. Earnie Jr. furrowed his brow and gave him a look that asked Why? What the fuck? Is that supposed to mean something? The wiser old man understood this expression perfectly.
“Nothing, of course,” he said. They smiled at each other and shook hands before parting for the semester.
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