This short story (2,500 words) is under consideration in a local fiction contest
I killed my
father. But it wasn’t what you might
think. It just happened.
Our final moments together
were like an Irish wake with one of those delirious throw-back-your-head
laughs, almost inapt, as at a wake.
When Oedipus killed his
father, he didn’t know it was his father.
I did know, however, that this was my father. No madness or guilt compromised my sanity for
what I did. The fates did not take away
my sight - as they did with Oedipus. Instead
they made me see in ways I never had before and that’s why I’m at peace.
The final fatal odyssey
began on May Day in my Dad Charlie’s two-story house near Charlottesville,
Virginia.
* * *
Charlie opened
his eyes in a room darker than his dreamless sleep. He brushed aside the window curtain to see an
indigo sky, no longer lit by the moon, the stars all gone.
The phone woke him and now
it was quiet.
He slid his thin
freckled legs over the edge of the narrow bed, sat up, rested his palms on his
bare knees and squinted toward the night stand where he’d left his gold
watch.
“Can’t see a damn thing,”
he said aloud. Bending his elbows and
leaning forward, he made out the radium dial:
5:45 a.m. He shook his head.
Resting his left
hand on the waistband of his boxer shorts, he groped with his right for the
small china bowl from the night before.
He lightly touched the single raspberry, felt its soft red bumps, placed
it on his tongue, and squeezed its sweet juices into the stale dryness of his
mouth.
“I’m dying alone
here,” he said aloud.
There was no one else
present.
Charlie was talking to his
wife long gone, to Gerry, to her spirit whose presence he felt more palpably
these days than when she was alive.
“Those damn tests
...," he said, trailing off, waving his right hand as if to bat some pesky
fly or to shush Gerry’s past remembered manner of assuring him.
“I remember how,
when I’d sit in the kitchen by the oak table,” Charlie thought, “coffee in
hand, Gerry’d sneak up from behind, grab, and ask me, ‘So, How’s my boy?’”
“I could use that today.”
Her memory faded
as an image from a dream takes flight with waking consciousness.
“Now Jack,” he shifted uncomfortably, “my son,
seed of my loins, how did you ever come from my Gerry?” He knew I wasn’t there.
He shifted his
hands to his thighs and pitched his weight forward over his legs to stand
up. His once powerful legs, though
they’d held him fine the day before, wobbled.
He reached forward with his right hand for balance, for the nightstand,
and found only air to hold him.
He swore he’d
seen me in the shadows of the room, standing before him. It wasn’t so.
“What you doing
here?,” Charlie asked.
“Want me to carry
you?”
Charlie heard my voice
unspoken – and remained alone.
Charlie straightened
his left leg, like when he was a right halfback breaking away for a pass. His right leg failed him on this play. He spun to the right, bumped his hip against
the nightstand, and fell to the floor.
“At least when I
was drinking,” he thought, “I couldn’t feel it so much.”
The phone rang a
second time. He wasn’t going to
try. But, at eight rings, Charlie thought,
“Maybe I can.” But no – he missed it
again.
He listened to
his breath, and painted the color red from his raspberries on the inside of his
closed eyes. He then somewhat
frantically searched the floor for the butt that had been in the ash tray. When he found it, he lit it, inhaling deeply
-- until he coughed, and coughed again – tasting his poison.
* * *
I thought he let
the phone ring that morning, rather than answer it, “the stubborn bastard.” That’s what I told myself.
* * *
Charlie scratched
himself where men do, walked down the short hallway to the bathroom. On the way, he spit the small tobacco fragment
that stuck to his tongue. When his eyes
adjusted, when he could see himself in the mirror, he saw his soft Irish skin, his
blue eyes drowning in waves of wrinkles, his hair riding full and high on the
forehead.
His strong thick
chest was gone. He could see his ribs. He’d
lost a pound a day the last week.
“I’m stuck in a
ditch, Gerry, my wheels are turning, grinding in the wet muddy earth. I’m not getting out of this one I’m afraid.”
The phone rang
for the third time. He was determined to
get this call, could get to the phone, snatch it off its cradle, and shout,
“Who the hell is this?”
There was only
breathing in response.
“You some damn
pervert calling? Say something. Perhaps I’ll find it amusing. I’d like that.”
* * *
He was a son of a
bitch when I got him on the line.
* * *
I said, “This is
Jack.”
“So why didn’t
you say something?”
“I thought for a
moment I’d dialed the nut house.”
“Are you the
asshole who’s been calling me all morning?”
“Are you the
asshole who can’t pick up a phone?”
“Can’t you be civil?”
“You’re my teacher.”
“Forget it, what
can I do for you, Jack?”
“I got your
message that you were having tests today?”
“So?”
“I’ll drive you
over ...”
“Forget it. I don’t need a lift. I can drive there myself.”
“I want to ...”
“Mike Herzog, the
next house over, can drive me.”
“I want to take
you, you stubborn donkey. Do we have to
argue about this?”
“Okay, fine, then
take me. I’ll go whenever you get your
lazy ass down here.”
“Don’t you have
an appointment?”
“I’m being
admitted to a hospital for the tests. So
just get over here before I change my mind.”
Charlie hung up
the phone. .
Charlie fell asleep and
dreamed the face of a gold watch was being erased.
* * *
How I hated doing
what I thought I must. In the best of
times, after I left home, I looked forward to being with him, with my Dad, Charlie,
until I was. Then I couldn’t wait to
leave him, the air thick with noxious spirits.
* * *
"Huh, here
already Jack?”
I said, “What are
you saying, 'already'? You’ve been
sleeping.”
“No, I
haven't.” Charlie was now awake and
realized he had been asleep. He just wouldn’t
admit it.
“I just walked
into the house. Watsa matter, don’t you
lock up?,” I said.
Smiling broadly,
he said, “People around here, Jack, mind their own business.”
I studied him,
saw how thin he’d become, and said, “Yeah, maybe you’re right.”
“It’s not like
you to be so agreeable Jack.”
“Don’t
worry. It won’t last.”
As he studied
Jack’s smiling face, he saw Gerry’s smile.
He wanted to run his hand through Jack’s curly red hair -- like he had
when Jack was a boy.
Charlie tried to
make conversation instead. “How’s my
grandson?”
“He's at camp.”
“I’d like to see
him...”
They had to speak
but not about this. Charlie didn’t want
this conversation to be like all the others: each man in a separate cell with
bars made of an alloy of pride and past differences.
* * *
When did it all
go wrong? Charlie was a fighter, first
and foremost as a young man, in the war, for his family, at work, and then he
stopped.
The solace of spirited
liquids, the drink, dulled his conscious in delightful delirium. He lost that fight. But whose hand do you hold up when someone
takes the ten count in such a fight?
* * *
“Jack, where’s
your Dad?,” my Mom asked years ago. She
said it seeming casual as if she were unconcerned.
“He’s down at the
‘Rock,” I said.
Where?
“The Shamrock Bar and
Grill.”
Mom walked back
into the kitchen from the hallway. I
heard her move the coffee pot on the stove, and then I heard a faint sob.
I walked into the
kitchen like I was going to get a loaf of bread. I said matter of factly, “I’ll go get him.”
She nodded. It was what she wanted but couldn’t ask.
I walked the few
blocks and passed through the doors of the saloon from day light into a stale darkness,
the air thick with the smell of stale beer and sweat. The barkeep, name of Kelly, walked over,
towel in hand, and asked, “What are you doing here?”
“I’m here for
Charlie McKay.”
I saw him at a
corner table and made my way across the sticky floor without paying Kelly any
mind.
When I got to my
father’s table, he rose to his full height of 6 feet.
Kelly walked up,
and said, “I tried to stop the boy.”
I said, “Let’s
get out of here.”
“I’m gonna stay a
little longer,” Charlie said slowly and with some difficulty.
His breath was a
mix of beer and whiskey, like the bar itself, and I said, “We’re leaving now.”
“No I’m not,” he
said.
With that, I
grabbed him hard pinning his arms to the chest, lifting him off the ground, I felt
the short brush of his unshaven face against mine, his breath mixed with mine, and
turned holding him to walk out the bar.
Mom’s look was
somewhere between a cry and scream when we arrived home but she made not a
sound.
* * *
I touched
Charlie’s shoulder, “Come on get dressed.”
“But -”
“Get dressed.”
“Don’t you think
it’s time we talked some.”
“Get dressed
first.”
I left him for
the kitchen to get some coffee.
Charlie went to
the closet, slid a white shirt off the hanger onto his thinning shoulders. It was smooth soft against his skin like a
caress.
John began humming “my
wild Irish Rose,” thinking of Gerry, singing the words to himself, “the
sweetest flower that grows.”
Then Charlie fell against
the shoe rack, swung his arm widely and knocked down a dozen shoe boxes.
I came running.
“Damn.” Charlie opened his eyes, tears streaming down
his face, half laughing, half crying, choking down a scream. He was crying not from any physical pain but because
he couldn’t talk to his son.
“Let me help
you,” I said.
“No.” Charlie couldn’t fathom why he said no when
he wanted Jack to help.
Charlie set his right hand
on the closet’s carpet, grabbed at my dress shirt with his fist, and pulled me close,
a breath away, to say, “I want your help.”
I reached for a
fallen shoebox to put it away.
“Leave that
alone.”
"What-"
“I want you to
forgive me for what I did with my life, what I did to you.”
“I don’t know
what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do.”
“Everything went
wrong that day at the Rock.”
“Why was that day
any different than all those other days before?”
“I don’t know
Jack. Maybe because I hit you?”
“No.”
“I was sure I
did.”
“Sorry to
disappoint you.”
“Why did you
carry me out of the place?”
“Because you were
stinking drunk.”
“Why did you
carry me through the streets, past our neighbors.”
“It was the way
home.”
“Gerry saw you
carry me home.”
“She wanted you home."
“Gerry told me
this was all your idea.”
“Well perhaps it
was.”
“Jack, I want to
know the truth.”
“The truth is she
didn’t want to hurt your donkey pride.”
“You left home.”
“It was all I
could think to do.”
“Why.”
“So it would
stop. You wanted me to get you
booze. Mom wanted me to stop you. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Every man for
himself.”
“I was 18.”
“I stopped drinking
after you left.”
“Would you have
stopped if I'd stayed?”
“I got the shakes
you know. I don’t remember a lot but when I got out of the hospital, I never
had another drink. Not one. I just never realized it until now. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what
I lost instead of what I recovered.”
I sat next to him
in the closet and neither of us spoke.
Charlie listened to his own breath, now calm.
Charlie tried to
stand but he had some difficulty.
"My hip hurts. Could you
help?”
“How do you want
to do this?”
“Help get these
pants on and, well, carry me out to the kitchen.”
“What?”
“So I can drink
that poison you said you’d brew.”
“I’m not as
strong as I was."
I squatted down,
pulled up Charlie’s slacks, belted them, and picked him up in my arms.
Charlie wrapped
his right arm around my neck and with his left hand ran his fingers through my hair.
* * *
I hate those
hospital rooms in their unnatural light with their odor of antisepsis, supposed
to be killing what kills life.
The leg of his
life was caught in a cancerous quicksand that was slowly sucking him into an
abyss from whence he’d never return.
He spoke
twice.
First, he gave me
a gold ring he never wore and didn’t like that my Mom Gerry gave him: “I think
you should have this.”
Next, he told me
with a hiss and a rattle in his voice:
“I feel the tide going out, but it won’t be hours, it’ll be weeks or
months, and all this stuff, all these wires and tubes restraining the tide,
only delay what can not be stopped. So
my pain is great.”
“What are you
saying?”
“Jack, I gotta
draw a picture for you ...”
“But how ...”
“However you wish
... just be quick.”
So I grabbed him
in the same bear hug of those many years before and this time he held me as
strongly as his ebbing strength allowed and I pulled him up from the bed with
strength I didn’t know I had, tearing loose at the wires and tubes, triggering
the alarms that sounded, and we spun sideways and backwards out of the bed onto
the floor where we lay still laughing.
He died that
night in his sleep.
* * *
There were
questions how we ended up on the floor with wires and equipment strewn across
the room, and why we were laughing.
Our mist lifted
when we rolled on that hospital floor in an embrace of life and death and saw as
clearly as we ever could what we had missed, and so we laughed, an hysterical
laugh, at the grand opportunity we had wasted and yet somehow salvaged at the
last possible moment of his life.
- 30 –
