PabloQ
09-10-2008, 06:36 PM
This is my entry to the August '08 Short Story Competition. I'm interested in any or all comments. This story was formed out of an idea I had for a novel with this as the first chapter/prolog. Just another dead dream in the bucket at this point.
Father’s Day
Fourteen-year old Henry McCall sat at the kitchen table factoring polynomial equations. He enjoyed this type of homework. Each problem was like a small puzzle to be solved, to be celebrated when the correct answer discovered and plugged into the variable. There was also the wonderful balance involved – what you do on the left must be undone on the right and vice versa. He was on the seventeenth of twenty assigned homework problems when his mother walked in with a single sack of groceries.
Henry’s mother was somewhat unique for a woman of the twenty-first century. She stopped at the market to purchase fresh ingredients for a meal she had carefully planned out the day before. Each day when she left her job as a nurse for the town pediatrician, she stopped at the local market, carefully selected meats, vegetables, fruits, grains, and other foods, and paid for them with an intricate combination of store coupons and cash. She sacked the purchases herself into the one paper bag which she would continue to use throughout the week.
As she placed the bag of groceries on the kitchen counter, she greeted her son, “What’s your father doing at home?”
Henry gave her what he hoped she had come to recognize as “the look.” He had practiced the look many times and sincerely hoped that he had perfected it. The look was meant to communicate his complete inability to answer the question put before him and in particular his refusal to speculate on the intentions or motivations of his father while at the same time clearly stating his unwillingness to participate in the conversation at all.
As perfect as the look might be, his mother went on undaunted, “Were you here when he came home?” She had already begun to worry the knuckle of her right middle finger against the back of her two front teeth, a nasty habit that over fifteen years had worn the edges of her two front teeth to paper thinness while raising a disturbing knot of a callous on the knuckle. “What time did he come in?”
Henry started to complement “the look” with a shrug at each question, but his mother was not accepting any of it.
“Stop that, Henry. These are simple questions. When did your father get home?”
“About 30 minutes after I did, about 25 minutes before you.”
Henry’s mother took a glance toward the door that led to the cellar. She snapped her knuckle against the inside of her teeth. “Do you think he lost another job?”
“I couldn’t say, Ma,” Henry said. He had stopped trying to get back to his homework problems.
“Help me out here, Henry,” she pleaded, “What did he have with him? Did he say anything? Has the music started?”
“He had some beer and he grunted a hello I think. I was trying to concentrate on my homework. He went straight downstairs. Why don’t you just leave him alone? We’ve been through this before and you know how it ends. Why don’t you start dinner and maybe the smell will draw him out of his hole.”
His mother continued to work the knuckle and look toward the cellar door. She was lost in some line of deep thinking, distracted by the multi-faceted potential of the situation. “Maybe I’ll go see how he’s doing.”
“Ma,” Henry raised his voice to snap her attention back to him, “Leave him alone. You know that’s what he wants.”
“Yeah, honey, I know, but maybe I can help…”
“And maybe I’ll call 911. Should I order an ambulance with the police cruiser.”
“That’s harsh, Henry. That won’t be necessary.”
The local police department knew their way to Bill McCall’s house. They had been there more times than Henry could count. He especially remembered the time when they hauled his father out in hand cuffs. Bill McCall had a drinking problem and when he drank he got violent. That one autumn day, his father had stopped at a bar for social hour to drink a couple beers and shoot some pool. He started talking to some stranger and before you knew it, Bill had snapped a cue stick across the man’s head with such violence that the broken cue tore through the man’s face gouging out his right eye. That one was the worst because Bill spent nine months in jail for it. But there were plenty of other visits for loud music, other assorted disturbances, and the ones Henry dreaded most, the domestic calls.
“Ma, leave him alone. He’ll come out from down there when he’s ready.”
“Yeah, maybe.” She sounded distant. She moved toward the bag of groceries and started to place her purchases on the counter. Suddenly, music erupted from the cellar. “What is it, Henry?”
She depended on Henry to know the songs selected by her husband when he went into one of his funks. Song selection was important to the course of events to follow.
“Powderfinger.” Henry sighed. He knew it was one of the bad ones. His mother shrugged and shook her head. “Neil Young? ‘Hey, hey, mama, there’s a white boat coming down the river.’”
The knuckle returned to his mother’s teeth. It didn’t need to be said, they both knew, but she whispered it anyway, “Drugs.”
“An even better reason for you to stay out of there.”
His mother nodded and moved toward the cellar.
“Ma, stop!”
“Maybe I can stop him before he…” Her voice trailed off. She knew the sequence of events as well as Henry did. Better. Whatever drugs her husband had managed to obtain, he’d already taken them, washing them down with beer. It was just a matter of time until the shooting started.
That was another series of events prompting visits from the police. Bill McCall had his very own shooting range in the basement of his home. During a brief stint as a construction worker, he had found a six foot length of galvanized aluminum ducting. The ducting was four feet square and some buddy of his helped McCall load it into the bed of his pick up truck, haul it home and wrestle it into the basement. After doing some research (mostly bar talk with other construction folk), Bill found the right filling material that could slow a bullet fired from a handgun sufficiently to stop it before it bounced off the cinder block wall behind it.
The first time he tested it out the neighbors reported the gun shots. The police responded and, after hours of civil and at times uncivil discussion, determined that they had no reason to detain McCall for discharging his weapon in his own firing range. Since that time, Bill McCall incorporated target practice in his depressive times of self-loathing and self-pity. The extent of the depression was indicated by the music selection. Neil Young was one of the worst signs.
“Ma, whatever happens now is out of your hands. Just fix dinner and maybe he’ll be distracted. Otherwise, you need to wait until he passes out. He’s dangerous right now.”
His mother scraped the knuckle against her teeth once, twice, again. “I can help him. He just doesn’t know how to ask.”
“He doesn’t want it, Ma. Please.” Henry knew he was pleading. He also knew he was losing the battle, no matter how logical and truthful his argument might be, his mother was going to choose to make a mistake – one in a long line of mistakes that most likely started when she went on her first date with Billy McCall in their senior year of high school.
“I can’t just leave him alone with himself. I still love him.”
“I know you do, Ma, but maybe that’s why staying up here is the best thing you can do for him right now.” But Henry could see the cause was lost.
His mother, with a look of absolute determination on her face, crossed the kitchen floor, opened the door to the cellar, and descended the stairs, pulling the door closed behind her. Henry closed his eyes and waited. Within moments he heard his father shouting, his mother pleading. The song on the stereo changed to “I Walk the Line” by Johnny Cash. Henry completely abandoned his math homework. He got up and picked up the portable telephone receiver. He was shaking from head to toe, waiting for the sound that would tell him to dial 911.
The voices in the cellar elevated. Henry could catch words, but mostly his father’s voice was a roar and his mother’s voice a shriek. Finally, Henry caught the words “shoot that thing” from his mother and Henry knew his father was going to rip off a clip. That’s what he called it. Nine shots fired rapidly in succession usually at a picture of some well-known personality like Elton John, Tom Cruise, or the queen of England. Henry took a deep breath and closed his eyes. A roar. A shriek. Seven quick shots. Henry’s eyes flew open, startled. He started to dial.
One more shot.
Henry started to inch toward the cellar door, stunned.
One more roar.
One more shot.
He slowly slipped to the floor as the emergency operator answered the phone.
“Ah, Ma, why’d you have to go?”
Father’s Day
Fourteen-year old Henry McCall sat at the kitchen table factoring polynomial equations. He enjoyed this type of homework. Each problem was like a small puzzle to be solved, to be celebrated when the correct answer discovered and plugged into the variable. There was also the wonderful balance involved – what you do on the left must be undone on the right and vice versa. He was on the seventeenth of twenty assigned homework problems when his mother walked in with a single sack of groceries.
Henry’s mother was somewhat unique for a woman of the twenty-first century. She stopped at the market to purchase fresh ingredients for a meal she had carefully planned out the day before. Each day when she left her job as a nurse for the town pediatrician, she stopped at the local market, carefully selected meats, vegetables, fruits, grains, and other foods, and paid for them with an intricate combination of store coupons and cash. She sacked the purchases herself into the one paper bag which she would continue to use throughout the week.
As she placed the bag of groceries on the kitchen counter, she greeted her son, “What’s your father doing at home?”
Henry gave her what he hoped she had come to recognize as “the look.” He had practiced the look many times and sincerely hoped that he had perfected it. The look was meant to communicate his complete inability to answer the question put before him and in particular his refusal to speculate on the intentions or motivations of his father while at the same time clearly stating his unwillingness to participate in the conversation at all.
As perfect as the look might be, his mother went on undaunted, “Were you here when he came home?” She had already begun to worry the knuckle of her right middle finger against the back of her two front teeth, a nasty habit that over fifteen years had worn the edges of her two front teeth to paper thinness while raising a disturbing knot of a callous on the knuckle. “What time did he come in?”
Henry started to complement “the look” with a shrug at each question, but his mother was not accepting any of it.
“Stop that, Henry. These are simple questions. When did your father get home?”
“About 30 minutes after I did, about 25 minutes before you.”
Henry’s mother took a glance toward the door that led to the cellar. She snapped her knuckle against the inside of her teeth. “Do you think he lost another job?”
“I couldn’t say, Ma,” Henry said. He had stopped trying to get back to his homework problems.
“Help me out here, Henry,” she pleaded, “What did he have with him? Did he say anything? Has the music started?”
“He had some beer and he grunted a hello I think. I was trying to concentrate on my homework. He went straight downstairs. Why don’t you just leave him alone? We’ve been through this before and you know how it ends. Why don’t you start dinner and maybe the smell will draw him out of his hole.”
His mother continued to work the knuckle and look toward the cellar door. She was lost in some line of deep thinking, distracted by the multi-faceted potential of the situation. “Maybe I’ll go see how he’s doing.”
“Ma,” Henry raised his voice to snap her attention back to him, “Leave him alone. You know that’s what he wants.”
“Yeah, honey, I know, but maybe I can help…”
“And maybe I’ll call 911. Should I order an ambulance with the police cruiser.”
“That’s harsh, Henry. That won’t be necessary.”
The local police department knew their way to Bill McCall’s house. They had been there more times than Henry could count. He especially remembered the time when they hauled his father out in hand cuffs. Bill McCall had a drinking problem and when he drank he got violent. That one autumn day, his father had stopped at a bar for social hour to drink a couple beers and shoot some pool. He started talking to some stranger and before you knew it, Bill had snapped a cue stick across the man’s head with such violence that the broken cue tore through the man’s face gouging out his right eye. That one was the worst because Bill spent nine months in jail for it. But there were plenty of other visits for loud music, other assorted disturbances, and the ones Henry dreaded most, the domestic calls.
“Ma, leave him alone. He’ll come out from down there when he’s ready.”
“Yeah, maybe.” She sounded distant. She moved toward the bag of groceries and started to place her purchases on the counter. Suddenly, music erupted from the cellar. “What is it, Henry?”
She depended on Henry to know the songs selected by her husband when he went into one of his funks. Song selection was important to the course of events to follow.
“Powderfinger.” Henry sighed. He knew it was one of the bad ones. His mother shrugged and shook her head. “Neil Young? ‘Hey, hey, mama, there’s a white boat coming down the river.’”
The knuckle returned to his mother’s teeth. It didn’t need to be said, they both knew, but she whispered it anyway, “Drugs.”
“An even better reason for you to stay out of there.”
His mother nodded and moved toward the cellar.
“Ma, stop!”
“Maybe I can stop him before he…” Her voice trailed off. She knew the sequence of events as well as Henry did. Better. Whatever drugs her husband had managed to obtain, he’d already taken them, washing them down with beer. It was just a matter of time until the shooting started.
That was another series of events prompting visits from the police. Bill McCall had his very own shooting range in the basement of his home. During a brief stint as a construction worker, he had found a six foot length of galvanized aluminum ducting. The ducting was four feet square and some buddy of his helped McCall load it into the bed of his pick up truck, haul it home and wrestle it into the basement. After doing some research (mostly bar talk with other construction folk), Bill found the right filling material that could slow a bullet fired from a handgun sufficiently to stop it before it bounced off the cinder block wall behind it.
The first time he tested it out the neighbors reported the gun shots. The police responded and, after hours of civil and at times uncivil discussion, determined that they had no reason to detain McCall for discharging his weapon in his own firing range. Since that time, Bill McCall incorporated target practice in his depressive times of self-loathing and self-pity. The extent of the depression was indicated by the music selection. Neil Young was one of the worst signs.
“Ma, whatever happens now is out of your hands. Just fix dinner and maybe he’ll be distracted. Otherwise, you need to wait until he passes out. He’s dangerous right now.”
His mother scraped the knuckle against her teeth once, twice, again. “I can help him. He just doesn’t know how to ask.”
“He doesn’t want it, Ma. Please.” Henry knew he was pleading. He also knew he was losing the battle, no matter how logical and truthful his argument might be, his mother was going to choose to make a mistake – one in a long line of mistakes that most likely started when she went on her first date with Billy McCall in their senior year of high school.
“I can’t just leave him alone with himself. I still love him.”
“I know you do, Ma, but maybe that’s why staying up here is the best thing you can do for him right now.” But Henry could see the cause was lost.
His mother, with a look of absolute determination on her face, crossed the kitchen floor, opened the door to the cellar, and descended the stairs, pulling the door closed behind her. Henry closed his eyes and waited. Within moments he heard his father shouting, his mother pleading. The song on the stereo changed to “I Walk the Line” by Johnny Cash. Henry completely abandoned his math homework. He got up and picked up the portable telephone receiver. He was shaking from head to toe, waiting for the sound that would tell him to dial 911.
The voices in the cellar elevated. Henry could catch words, but mostly his father’s voice was a roar and his mother’s voice a shriek. Finally, Henry caught the words “shoot that thing” from his mother and Henry knew his father was going to rip off a clip. That’s what he called it. Nine shots fired rapidly in succession usually at a picture of some well-known personality like Elton John, Tom Cruise, or the queen of England. Henry took a deep breath and closed his eyes. A roar. A shriek. Seven quick shots. Henry’s eyes flew open, startled. He started to dial.
One more shot.
Henry started to inch toward the cellar door, stunned.
One more roar.
One more shot.
He slowly slipped to the floor as the emergency operator answered the phone.
“Ah, Ma, why’d you have to go?”