leckert
New Member
What My Father Said - I
1.
My father always said that I should think before I act. Not that anyone cared what my father said. Words are meaningless when they come slurred through a muck of sour sweat and Jim Beam.
I guess I should tell you my story. I never thought I would have a story to tell, and maybe I still don’t, but what I do have is time - some, anyway – and a pressure behind my breast bone that needs to be relieved. I’ll be turning in soon, and, after tomorrow, my voice will become a blipping tone in the murmur of rumor and urban legend, if it even makes it that far. More likely it will be talked about in the Logan Daily, and whispered about at the Church of the Nazarene for a week or two, and then forgotten. But, for the next few hours, my voice is all there is.
2.
My Story
I stayed with my Aunt, mostly. My mom died giving birth to me. That’s a booster shot for a young ego, especially when your father screams it at you over the supper table - the words sting the face with the spittle of over-cooked pot roast from the rotten-gray teeth of a scrawny, bitter man. At ten, I discovered hatred when I saw it in the quivering, tear-welled face across the scars of the square wooden table in the dark light of a floor lamp – red in his eyes and greasy on his chin. His remaining strands of thin, long hair stuck gray to his sweat, and his mouth twitched with bits of meat and potato clinging to his bottom lip and unshaven face. As he cramped his gut and squeezed the fork in his hand and screamed at me, a strand of his hair fell into his eyes.
“YOU KILLED ‘ER! YOU KILLED ‘ER! YOU USELESS PIECE OF SHIT!” His exertion brought on a coughing fit.
As my father choked and wheezed for air, all I knew was crying. All I knew was my mother died, my father was dying, and it was my fault. I wished he would quit coughing. My face burned and my stomach hurt and I wanted to be somewhere else. I wanted to be some one else. If he didn’t quit coughing, the ambulance would come and I wouldn’t get to see him any more.
“STOPIT!” I screamed through a mouthful of food that had gone rotten, and snotty tears.
“STOPIT, DADDY! STOPIT!” I screamed at him.
He stopped. He bounced his fork off of the table, and upset his chair as he stood. The square bottle with the white and black label didn’t upset though, until it was in his mouth. He drank, and cried, and smoked, and watched Baretta. I wiped from my face the food he had spit at me and I went to bed. I hugged my knees to my chest wishing sleep would come hold me; wishing mama would come hold me; wishing I could hug my father; and wishing I could bash his balding head in with the square corner of the Jim Beam bottle he caressed.
I lay there for a few hours, smelling Pall Mall’s and bourbon, until I heard his unconscious snoring. I dressed, packed some clothes, and left the three-room, government subsidized apartment with our uneaten dinner still on the table, hardening and crusty in the dark. The roaches would eat well tonight. The door ca-lunked closed behind me. I stood in the foyer with tears stinging my nose again. I stood there and loved my father. I locked the door with the key from around my neck, and walked the four miles to Aunt Maybe’s house. I don’t remember what time it was, but all the lights were out. I slept in the green aluminum glider on the front porch in the cooling night of September Ohio.
That was when I started living with my Aunt, mostly. She was my mother’s sister, and everyone told me she looked just like her.
Aunt Mabeline. I had called her Aunt Maybe since I started learning to talk, or so she told me. She lived with us for a while after her sister died, and before my father kicked her out.
I realize now that my father had always been a homeless man, just looking for a refrigerator box and a bridge to live under. Once I left, he found his niche. By the time I turned twelve his visits had stopped, and I had begun to hear the stories about him: He started showing up at work late and drunk and lost his job at the “Bent Bolt” plant; He had started spending his days sitting in the alleyway behind Risch’s drugstore, drunk and foul, begging for money, and shouting advice at whomever had the misfortune of making eye contact with him.
“Think before you act!” was one of his favorites. His welfare check paid the rent for a while, but he sat in the dark most nights. I think Aunt Maybe was giving him money, and paying some of his bills for him, but she wouldn’t talk to me about it. My aunt sewed and played the accordion instead of talking. Sometimes, while Aunt Maybe stroked “Tennessee Waltz” into the antique wood of her two-story house, I would sit at the window, breathing in the slight must of age, and crying the acrid tears of alone. Her playing, and my crying, were the closest we came to a meaningful conversation, Aunt Maybe and I, but she loved me. At least she loved on me; stroking my arm as I passed, hugging me to her if we met in the hallway. I think “pitied” was more accurate than loved: a pity that I grew to resent.
I was too ashamed to talk to her. It ached in my bowels to think of my father, a man I loved, a man I idolized, a man I loathed, sitting hunkered in his reek; a bony, yellow-nailed hand held up to a stranger, hoping for enough to buy a bottle of Boone’s Farm and a pack of Pall Malls, telling these strangers how they should live. I was too ashamed to talk.
“Bum-boy” and “Food Stamp” were what the kids at school called me. I discovered how to fight in my second year of fifth grade. I was always bigger than most of the kids my age, and being now a year older than the rest of my class underlined my size. I moved to the sixth-grade trailers about the same time my father moved to the dumpster behind the drug store. I was nearly thirteen; nearly grown by elementary school standards, and didn’t have to fight much anymore.
3.
Ronnie lived near the train tracks that went past the fairgrounds. He had a mini-bike and his mother was divorced, so we spent the summers together, sleeping on a tarp in his backyard when the stars were out. That summer, after sixth grade, he showed me the hunting knife his father had given him for his birthday. He wasn’t allowed to tell his mother about it, so he kept it in a shoebox inside the tire swing in their back yard.
“WHOA!” and “Wicked!” Were the only words I could think of.
Saplings and dead branches had dulled the blade, but the point was sharp, and the blade locked out so it wouldn’t fold up on your fingers.
My father started showing up at Aunt Maybe’s house that summer, waiting for me to come home. I don’t know how often he was there, but once or twice a week, when I actually did go home, he would be on the glider, resting his elbows on his knees, rubbing his hands together, waiting.
“Where ya’ been, boy?”
“Out.”
The key on the string around my neck had been replaced two or three years ago with one that fit Aunt Maybe’s door. I dug it out, concentrating on the glass panes in the oak.
“She trusts me” I told him.
“It ain’t right for a boy your age to be out running the streets at night!” He wasn’t scolding. He was hissing.
For an old drunkard, he was still pretty nimble on his feet, and before I could unlock the door, the glider was rocking a memory of him, and he was in my face. The stench of age and the cologne of bourbon made me miss my father. I could feel my tears pulling themselves out of me. I wanted to grab him around the neck and hug him – or choke him. This feeling left when his crooked finger hovered near the end of my nose. He whisper-yelled in my ear, clandestine, and a quiver clenched my back as the hairs danced on my neck. He stood the heel of his boot on the end of my toes, and used the painful pressure to punctuate his speech.
“Don’t you go thinking you’re too good for your old man, boy. You ain’t no better’n me. I throw’d this bitch outta our house ‘cause she kept a-lookin’ down on us. Don’t you go makin’ up to her like she was your mama or somethin’, boy. You better think before ye act.”
The back of his knuckled hand struck my eye. I could feel a fight swelling in my chest and I leaned forward. The old man’s eyes grew, almost imperceptibly, at this. He expected me to cower, or recoil, and was nervous that I didn’t. In his fear, he struck.
He grabbed my throat and squeezed until I could feel my pulse in my temples, pounding behind my eyes. I almost fell backwards with my foot under his, but he held me up. Blackness threatened my mind.
“DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME, BOY?” In my ear and cheek now, pressing his foot into mine.
Unable to speak, I nodded and averted my eyes from his. He tossed my neck out of his hand.
“Get out of my face.” He spat these words at me over his shoulder as he poked a cigarette in his mouth and left.
The rasping flick of his lighter and his face was orange in his cupped hands. I turned the key in the knob and left him in the darkness. I found my room upstairs and slept in my clothes. My breath hitched nervous as adrenaline kept me awake, reliving the last three minutes. Sometimes I would slap his finger out of my face, sometimes I would catch his hand as he tried to grab my throat. Best though, was he wasn’t there waiting for me. Ever.
1.
My father always said that I should think before I act. Not that anyone cared what my father said. Words are meaningless when they come slurred through a muck of sour sweat and Jim Beam.
I guess I should tell you my story. I never thought I would have a story to tell, and maybe I still don’t, but what I do have is time - some, anyway – and a pressure behind my breast bone that needs to be relieved. I’ll be turning in soon, and, after tomorrow, my voice will become a blipping tone in the murmur of rumor and urban legend, if it even makes it that far. More likely it will be talked about in the Logan Daily, and whispered about at the Church of the Nazarene for a week or two, and then forgotten. But, for the next few hours, my voice is all there is.
2.
My Story
I stayed with my Aunt, mostly. My mom died giving birth to me. That’s a booster shot for a young ego, especially when your father screams it at you over the supper table - the words sting the face with the spittle of over-cooked pot roast from the rotten-gray teeth of a scrawny, bitter man. At ten, I discovered hatred when I saw it in the quivering, tear-welled face across the scars of the square wooden table in the dark light of a floor lamp – red in his eyes and greasy on his chin. His remaining strands of thin, long hair stuck gray to his sweat, and his mouth twitched with bits of meat and potato clinging to his bottom lip and unshaven face. As he cramped his gut and squeezed the fork in his hand and screamed at me, a strand of his hair fell into his eyes.
“YOU KILLED ‘ER! YOU KILLED ‘ER! YOU USELESS PIECE OF SHIT!” His exertion brought on a coughing fit.
As my father choked and wheezed for air, all I knew was crying. All I knew was my mother died, my father was dying, and it was my fault. I wished he would quit coughing. My face burned and my stomach hurt and I wanted to be somewhere else. I wanted to be some one else. If he didn’t quit coughing, the ambulance would come and I wouldn’t get to see him any more.
“STOPIT!” I screamed through a mouthful of food that had gone rotten, and snotty tears.
“STOPIT, DADDY! STOPIT!” I screamed at him.
He stopped. He bounced his fork off of the table, and upset his chair as he stood. The square bottle with the white and black label didn’t upset though, until it was in his mouth. He drank, and cried, and smoked, and watched Baretta. I wiped from my face the food he had spit at me and I went to bed. I hugged my knees to my chest wishing sleep would come hold me; wishing mama would come hold me; wishing I could hug my father; and wishing I could bash his balding head in with the square corner of the Jim Beam bottle he caressed.
I lay there for a few hours, smelling Pall Mall’s and bourbon, until I heard his unconscious snoring. I dressed, packed some clothes, and left the three-room, government subsidized apartment with our uneaten dinner still on the table, hardening and crusty in the dark. The roaches would eat well tonight. The door ca-lunked closed behind me. I stood in the foyer with tears stinging my nose again. I stood there and loved my father. I locked the door with the key from around my neck, and walked the four miles to Aunt Maybe’s house. I don’t remember what time it was, but all the lights were out. I slept in the green aluminum glider on the front porch in the cooling night of September Ohio.
That was when I started living with my Aunt, mostly. She was my mother’s sister, and everyone told me she looked just like her.
Aunt Mabeline. I had called her Aunt Maybe since I started learning to talk, or so she told me. She lived with us for a while after her sister died, and before my father kicked her out.
I realize now that my father had always been a homeless man, just looking for a refrigerator box and a bridge to live under. Once I left, he found his niche. By the time I turned twelve his visits had stopped, and I had begun to hear the stories about him: He started showing up at work late and drunk and lost his job at the “Bent Bolt” plant; He had started spending his days sitting in the alleyway behind Risch’s drugstore, drunk and foul, begging for money, and shouting advice at whomever had the misfortune of making eye contact with him.
“Think before you act!” was one of his favorites. His welfare check paid the rent for a while, but he sat in the dark most nights. I think Aunt Maybe was giving him money, and paying some of his bills for him, but she wouldn’t talk to me about it. My aunt sewed and played the accordion instead of talking. Sometimes, while Aunt Maybe stroked “Tennessee Waltz” into the antique wood of her two-story house, I would sit at the window, breathing in the slight must of age, and crying the acrid tears of alone. Her playing, and my crying, were the closest we came to a meaningful conversation, Aunt Maybe and I, but she loved me. At least she loved on me; stroking my arm as I passed, hugging me to her if we met in the hallway. I think “pitied” was more accurate than loved: a pity that I grew to resent.
I was too ashamed to talk to her. It ached in my bowels to think of my father, a man I loved, a man I idolized, a man I loathed, sitting hunkered in his reek; a bony, yellow-nailed hand held up to a stranger, hoping for enough to buy a bottle of Boone’s Farm and a pack of Pall Malls, telling these strangers how they should live. I was too ashamed to talk.
“Bum-boy” and “Food Stamp” were what the kids at school called me. I discovered how to fight in my second year of fifth grade. I was always bigger than most of the kids my age, and being now a year older than the rest of my class underlined my size. I moved to the sixth-grade trailers about the same time my father moved to the dumpster behind the drug store. I was nearly thirteen; nearly grown by elementary school standards, and didn’t have to fight much anymore.
3.
Ronnie lived near the train tracks that went past the fairgrounds. He had a mini-bike and his mother was divorced, so we spent the summers together, sleeping on a tarp in his backyard when the stars were out. That summer, after sixth grade, he showed me the hunting knife his father had given him for his birthday. He wasn’t allowed to tell his mother about it, so he kept it in a shoebox inside the tire swing in their back yard.
“WHOA!” and “Wicked!” Were the only words I could think of.
Saplings and dead branches had dulled the blade, but the point was sharp, and the blade locked out so it wouldn’t fold up on your fingers.
My father started showing up at Aunt Maybe’s house that summer, waiting for me to come home. I don’t know how often he was there, but once or twice a week, when I actually did go home, he would be on the glider, resting his elbows on his knees, rubbing his hands together, waiting.
“Where ya’ been, boy?”
“Out.”
The key on the string around my neck had been replaced two or three years ago with one that fit Aunt Maybe’s door. I dug it out, concentrating on the glass panes in the oak.
“She trusts me” I told him.
“It ain’t right for a boy your age to be out running the streets at night!” He wasn’t scolding. He was hissing.
For an old drunkard, he was still pretty nimble on his feet, and before I could unlock the door, the glider was rocking a memory of him, and he was in my face. The stench of age and the cologne of bourbon made me miss my father. I could feel my tears pulling themselves out of me. I wanted to grab him around the neck and hug him – or choke him. This feeling left when his crooked finger hovered near the end of my nose. He whisper-yelled in my ear, clandestine, and a quiver clenched my back as the hairs danced on my neck. He stood the heel of his boot on the end of my toes, and used the painful pressure to punctuate his speech.
“Don’t you go thinking you’re too good for your old man, boy. You ain’t no better’n me. I throw’d this bitch outta our house ‘cause she kept a-lookin’ down on us. Don’t you go makin’ up to her like she was your mama or somethin’, boy. You better think before ye act.”
The back of his knuckled hand struck my eye. I could feel a fight swelling in my chest and I leaned forward. The old man’s eyes grew, almost imperceptibly, at this. He expected me to cower, or recoil, and was nervous that I didn’t. In his fear, he struck.
He grabbed my throat and squeezed until I could feel my pulse in my temples, pounding behind my eyes. I almost fell backwards with my foot under his, but he held me up. Blackness threatened my mind.
“DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME, BOY?” In my ear and cheek now, pressing his foot into mine.
Unable to speak, I nodded and averted my eyes from his. He tossed my neck out of his hand.
“Get out of my face.” He spat these words at me over his shoulder as he poked a cigarette in his mouth and left.
The rasping flick of his lighter and his face was orange in his cupped hands. I turned the key in the knob and left him in the darkness. I found my room upstairs and slept in my clothes. My breath hitched nervous as adrenaline kept me awake, reliving the last three minutes. Sometimes I would slap his finger out of my face, sometimes I would catch his hand as he tried to grab my throat. Best though, was he wasn’t there waiting for me. Ever.
