This Might Hurt a Bit - Softcover

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Doogie Horner is the author of This Might Hurt a Bit, Some Very Interesting Cats Perhaps You Weren’t Aware of, Everything Explained Through Flowcharts, A Die Hard Christmas, and other books. His comedy album A Delicate Man was an AV Club staff pick. He won over a hostile NYC audience on America’s Got Talent and is a frequent guest on Doug Loves Movies. You can follow him online @DoogieHorner or learn more at DoogieHorner.com.

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This Might Hurt a Bit

CHAPTER 1

THE THING THAT BOTHERS ME most about Upper Shuckburgh—and it’s hard to pick only one—is that there’s no Lower Shuckburgh. Why didn’t the founders simply name this rustic rolling valley Shuckburgh? Of course, a better question is why didn’t they give it a name that wasn’t so close to Sucksburgh or Upchuck or so many other delightful variations, but maybe curse words were different in the 1700s.

Dad said our town is named after a city in England. I looked it up on a map, to see if there’s a Lower Shuckburgh in England, and there is indeed—north of Upper Shuckburgh.

Madness.

The laws of logic hold no sway here in Upshuck County. Our mountain is blue, our dogs are the size of horses, and right now it’s colder inside Dad’s hangar than outside. We haven’t spent a winter here yet, but I’m sure that when we do, hot snow will rise from the ground and fall up into the sky.

My phone says it’s forty-eight degrees outside, but the big thermometer on the wall—a glass tube in a rusted frame that says VIN FIZ over an engraved biplane—says it’s forty-three degrees in here, and even though that’s impossible, I believe it, because all things are possible in Sucksburgh.

I pull my arms inside my sweatshirt like a turtle and nudge the useless propane heater a little closer with my shoe. The hangar smells like gasoline and oil, a rich aroma that reminds me of all the times Dad and I used to go flying together.

Dad’s white sneakers and clean blue jeans stick out from under the Phantom like the Wicked Witch of Walmart, the ultralight’s sleek black cockpit and aluminum landing gear jacked up so he can work on the wheels. The left wing waggles over my head as Dad struggles with a stubborn bolt.

“Can you hand me a wrench?” Dad extends a greasy hand from under the plane and flaps it expectantly, a surgeon waiting for his scalpel. “Three-sixteen—no, uh . . . I guess three-sixteenth.”

My knees crack like icicles as I stand up off the stack of spare tires and examine the twenty identical wrenches lined up in Dad’s toolbox.

“How am I supposed to know which one is the—”

“Or a half inch,” Dad corrects.

“Okay, well, which one is the—”

“I guess gimme both.” The soft clink of a bolt falling onto the gravel under the plane. “Ah shoot,” Dad says, and I hear him searching through the gravel for the lost bolt. “And gimme a bolt, too.” Another clink. “Make that two.”

I realize the sizes are engraved on the wrench handles, hand him the right ones, and retake my chilly seat beside the space heater, giver of life.

Dad built the hangar himself when we moved in over the summer, pronouncing it complete after falling off the roof twice but before putting in any insulation. The inside looks like an aviation-themed Applebee’s, every inch of wall covered in tools, spare parts, old tin signs, propellers, and tacked-up photos of Dad’s ultralights over the years. Blurry snapshots of small, bright planes swooping low over farmers’ fields, of Dad standing proud with his arm up on the exposed engine, smiling behind aviator glasses.

Ultralights are small planes that seat one or two people, and they’re very light because they’re made of hollow aluminum tubing with fabric stretched over them. You don’t need a pilot’s license to fly them, and you can even fly them out of your own backyard, assuming you’ve got enough backyard to do it, which—now that we live in Sucksburgh—we do. Our “backyard” is nine acres of grassy field that stretches back to a horse farm. The horses hate the ultralight and run back into their stable every time Dad takes off or lands, the Phantom buzzing low over our house like a giant dragonfly.

It’s a beautiful little plane, and flying in it is a real kick. Takeoffs are especially thrilling. Dad pushes the throttle wide open and the prop becomes a blur, the engine so loud we have to wear earmuffs under our helmets. My teeth clack together as the Phantom bumps over the field until suddenly the ride gets totally smooth, like we’ve hit a patch of ice—but really the wheels are floating just an inch above the ground. Then the plane floats up and backward a little bit, weightless as a leaf, and we’re flying.

Everything looks small from up there. We climb past cotton-ball clouds, soar over patchwork farm fields and model-railroad towns. Every now and then an eagle or a goose will fly along with us for a little while, and Dad wags the wings at them before they peel off. He gets a big kick out of it. “Did you see that, bud?” he asks over the intercom built into the earmuffs. “Roger,” I reply, trying to sound all business, like pilots do in the movies.

Dad’s bummed that I haven’t gone flying with him since we moved. I told him it’s because it’s been so cold, but he must know that’s not true. I mean, we were here all summer, too, and I didn’t fly with him then, either. I told him it was too hot. I’m like an antisocial Goldilocks.

Dad’s still always trying to drag me out to this dirty freezer. I swear he asks every night after dinner, “Hey, bud, wanna come out to the hangar with me? I could sure use an extra set of hands.” I said yes tonight only because Mom whispered to me as I was putting my plate in the sink, “Do you hate your father?”

The question shocked me. “What? No.”

“Well, he thinks you do.”

I don’t care what Dad or Mom thinks, but I didn’t feel like getting in a fight in the kitchen with my arms in the suds and Mom glaring at me with those lion eyes she gets when she’s determined, so I just said, “No, of course I don’t hate Dad,” to which she replied, “Great. Have fun helping him in the hangar.” I know she’s upset because tomorrow is Melanie’s anniversary—she found a way to bring it up twice during dinner—and from the look on her face, it seemed like she might be going for the hat trick, so I was more than happy to retreat out here.

Is this heater even on? The coils are glowing red, but my hands are turning blue.

Dad is so happy I’m hanging out with him that it’s getting on my nerves. He’s humming “Poor Boy Blues” as he wrenches and screws and clangs. He hasn’t said much to me since I came out here, but I realize now that Mom wanted me to visit the hangar so Dad could talk to me about Melanie. He begins his attack while he’s still under the plane, a boxer throwing soft jabs to test his opponent’s defenses.

“So, bud,” he says, the small gear of his ratchet wrench methodically turning, “how’s it going?”

I take a deep breath. “Good. It’s going good.”

“Good,” he says. “Good, good.” He says nothing else, waiting for me to say more, the steady small wrench, wrench, wrench of his ratchet tightening the silence until I’m ready to scream.

“Do you have to keep making that noise?” I ask.

The wrenching suddenly stops. Dad pauses. “Well, only if I don’t want the wheels to fall off...