Simon A. Smith
Father Figure
The day of the fish Mom drove us seventy miles to a place called Merle Hay Mall. There were others closer, but they were crummy substitutes, and mom was tired of all the whispers and stares we got at the local stores. Also, Mom was a big shopper and Merle Hay was the largest mall in Iowa. We thought that might cheer her up. Plus, you didn’t have to push too hard to get me and Hazel onboard for an adventure like that.
The mall was enormous. It reminded me of an airport – all the wide parking lanes, the long flat blacktop and the big spiral tower at the entrance. I remember as soon as we got inside I found a video arcade and settled in. Mom and Hazel knew I’d stay there for hours and so they set off on their own and told me they’d be back in a while.
They came back almost right away. Hazel was pulling Mom by the coat sleeve and hollering something about dogs.
“Puppy dogs, Scottie,” she said, “puppy dogs. I could eat ‘em. I want to eat ‘em, Mom. With a big spoon. Scottie!”
I had a plastic gun pointed at some ducks on the screen and I wasn’t taking my attention off their fluttering bellies. “What is it?” I said. I had one eye winked and pointed down the barrel like dad had taught me with his hunting rifle.
“She wants to show you a pile of fluffy puppies at the pet store, a dog pile,” Mom said. She was acting like a kid, mom was. I smiled at the ducks and pulled the trigger. It was nice to see Mom having fun again. Hazel and I hadn’t seen her like that for a long time. “Good Time Mom,” we called it. We hadn’t seen her for years. There had been a lot of hard living leading up to Dad’s arrest. There had been “Sad Mom,” a prolonged stretch marked by messy unwashed hair, her puffy cheeks, droopy eyes and limp shoulders. There had been exhaustion. But she was finally getting used to Dad being gone. It was a relief to her.
For the mall trip she put her hair up in a swirl and stuck a chopstick through it. She slicked lipstick on that made her smile look realer and eye shadow that made her squinty green eyes pop. She looked younger. I wondered what would happen when Dad came back the following weekend.
“They are really, really fluffy. Hazel’s been squeezing them like she’s popping balloons, haven’t you honey?” Mom said.
“No,” Hazel said, and then she burst out laughing, “yes!”
I made them wait until I was done, and then I followed them down the escalator to the pet store. Hazel ran ahead of us and disappeared inside. We found her kneeling by a glass box filled with jittery puppies. She was shoveling them up in her arms, stacking them in under her chin and balancing them like boxes. One would fall and she would scoop up another, and then another one would fall.
“Take it easy,” Mom said. “They’re looking at us like we’re about to put a brick through the window.”
“Which one do you like?” Hazel asked me.
“I’m not sure,” I said. I bent down to take a closer look, but before I could answer Hazel yelled out:
“I want the yellow one!” She was the most excitable, exuberant ten-year-old you’d ever want to meet.
“Not want dear,” Mom said. “You promised we’re not going past like. So we’re clear, I can’t have this on my conscience.”
“It’s the simplest one,” Hazel said. “It’s the most ordinary. I love it. It’s just like Susan and Kimmy’s dog. They have the nicest, normalest dog around.”
I thought I knew what she was saying.
In January, before the drug bust, Dad took us sledding down Briar Street with his pickup truck. Hazel and I had been begging him to buy us sleds and drive us up to a place all the neighborhood kids called Hell’s Hill for weeks. One day he showed up unannounced, dressed like someone back from the arctic and dragging a clunky wooden toboggan through the door.
“Ready for the ride of your lives?” he asked.
He was standing in the kitchen hugging the sled against his chest, leaning his chin on top. He looked doughy and menacing with all that clothing on. I don’t know where he found the getup but from the looks of things it was puffy enough and stiff enough to be two snowsuits in one. He had a huge pair of foggy ski goggles sucked to his face. He wouldn’t take them off. And his hair was longer than usual. His beard grew wild, covering his entire neck with scratchy bramble. With the goggles pressed down and the hair covering his ears, he looked like a werewolf. Hazel and I looked at Mom, hoping she might help us out, but she didn’t.
“Go ahead,” she said, “get your suits on.”
“Is that for Scottie?” Hazel asked. “Where’s my sled?”
“This sled is big enough for everyone,” Dad said.
Hazel and I got dressed and came back to the kitchen. Dad was sitting with mom at the table. He had propped the sled against the door and pushed the goggles up on his head. Mom had her nose inside a steaming mug of tea, and Dad was sitting at the other end smoking a cigarette. A couple nights before they had been up screaming about how Dad hadn’t been home for three straight days. They looked beat, like they’d considered starting back up again but didn’t have the strength. I think they’d been sitting there like that the whole time.
Outside I asked Dad if he was taking us to Hell’s Hill.
“No,” he said, “I’ve got a better plan.”
Hazel and I watched as he pulled some rope out from the back of his truck and crawled underneath. He was down there for quite sometime, grunting and cursing, ringing his hands against metal. He pulled the sled under and tied it to the end of the rope. It was freezing.
When he finally stood up and turned around Hazel and I were huddled together, shivering. The oddest thing happened then. He looked at us like he had no idea we’d been standing there. There was a moment of quiet bewilderment and shock and he shook his head. He stared at us and then he looked back down at the toboggan and he seemed confused about what he’d just done.
“Hop on,” he said. He turned and shuffled through the snow. He got to the front of the truck and opened the door. He slid in behind the wheel and started the engine. Hazel and I ran for the sled.
I got on first and Hazel sat in back. I turned around and locked eyes with Hazel. I tried giving her a smile but it didn’t come out right. The truck lurched forward and we were towed out of the driveway and onto Briar Street. The initial jolt and whisk of air was exhilarating. The sled hopped forward and glided across the icy snow. In a few seconds Dad picked up speed and we were zooming down our street like a motorboat. I heard Hazel giggling and I turned around. She let her palms slide across the snow like wings. We were having much more fun than we expected.
Seconds later we climbed the small hill toward the Ludwig’s house where Kimmy and Susan lived. We could see that they were in their yard playing with their dog, Sunshine. Hazel yelled to them and they came running down their lawn in a frenzy, anxious to see if they could join us. Sunshine was right behind them and he came bolting out onto the street. Dad slammed on the brakes and in an instant Hazel and I went whipping forward under the truck. The dog was hit, but just barely. It made a noise like a loud bird chirp and ran away.
In the middle of being slung under the truck I managed to lay back and save my head from the bumper but I did bang my knee on a pipe somewhere and got
my hat clipped off by something else. I screamed for Hazel to get down and when I leaned back I took her body down with mine in a hurry.
Kimmy and Susan were already in the middle of the road, crying. Mr. and Mrs. Ludwig came barreling out of the house and galloped for the truck. I could hear Mrs. Ludwig. She was making noises like a turkey gobbling.
“He ran over Hazel and Scottie,” Kimmy yelled.
“Oh my God!” Mrs. Ludwig said.
“He hit Sunshine!” Susan screamed.
Hazel and I weren’t moving. It was too tight. I was too scared to move. Hazel was smashed beneath me and I could feel her breathing against my neck. Inches from my nose, disks and screws and rods wound their way like sharp metal guts around my flattened body.
In a few seconds I heard Dad open the door and step out onto the snow. By now all four of the Ludwigs were circled around him, frantic for an explanation. He didn’t say a word.
“What is it, Frank?” I heard Mr. Ludwig ask Dad. He sounded like he was in pain. “What’s going on?”
“I hit your dog,” Dad said, calm as can be. He came plodding toward the rear of the tuck.
“Hazel and Scottie!” Mrs. Ludwig shouted, breathless.
In a flash I felt myself yanked backward and out into the light. Dad didn’t say anything. I stood up fast to let everyone know I was okay, but Hazel still wasn’t moving. There were no cars coming in either direction, but I could see other neighbors out on their lawns, treading toward the truck like they expected to see death up ahead.
I turned and squatted beside Hazel. Dad leaned over me with his hands on his knees. The Ludwigs formed a fence around us.
“Hazel,” I said.
Hazel rolled over and snapped up onto her feet. That was when we all saw that her forehead was bleeding. She had a little gash right in the center. Everyone backed up and waited for the next thing to happen. Hazel looked at Dad then. I knew what she was seeing. I knew she was wondering what had happened to his eyes, why they had gone blank and empty and hollow. I saw Hazel’s face change from sadness to anger and then she leaned forward and pushed me with her fists.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhg!” she yelled. I tried getting closer but she slapped me in the chest and kicked at my shins. She turned around, baring her teeth, ready to attack anyone who might get in her way. She stomped back down the hill toward our driveway.
“Hazel!” I said. I chased her, grabbing her from behind and pinning her arms down against her sides.
“Why?” She said, “Why!”
“I know,” I said. I held her there, absorbing her feet and elbows as she bucked about. In a while she stopped struggling and started sniffling.
“He hit Sunshine, didn’t he?” she said.
“Shhh,” I said. I nodded.
“That was a beautiful dog,” Hazel said.
“He’s okay,” I whispered.
“No he isn’t!” she protested. “He’s weird now. He’s fucked up.” I had never heard her swear before and it made her seem like a different person. It made me feel like I had missed a big shift in her life. “He’s got our slime all over him now.”
I let go of her and took her hand. I led her over to the side of the road and walked her back to the house. Mrs. Ludwig was yelling for us to come back. She wanted to know if we needed an ambulance.
“We ruin everything,” Hazel said. “That was a perfectly regular family with a beautiful dog. We should leave,” she said. “ We should get out of here. We’re awful. We’re poison.”
Things had been going to dirt for about two years. When it started I was eleven and even then I could tell something major had changed. Dad started coming home after midnight every night and then soon he didn’t come home at all. When he did decide to come around he was twitchy and nervous, like someone was tracking him and getting closer by the minute. His eyes were all bloody looking and crusty. He clanged through the rooms of the house, always searching for something, ripping clothing and shoeboxes out of the closet or tilting the couch up with one hand just to see what was beneath it. We were all powerless against it. All we could do was watch as the gentle, passive man we once knew transformed into an aggressive, volatile brute. Whenever I’d try to get close to him he’d give me this awful, startled look, like I was the last person he wanted to see, like he knew for certain that he couldn’t deal with me being anywhere around him right then. His eerie silence was the worst. As he became more like an intruder to us, we became more like obstacles to him.
In a town our size the rumors came early on. Even the kids at school thought they knew something. The muddled, half-cooked gossip of children consumed my fifth and sixth grade years and ruined Hazel’s ninth and tenth birthdays. Mom started grocery shopping two counties away and hardly left the house aside from that. We’d become a “type.” Nobody wanted our type around. We got threats. Things got so bad Mom had to change our phone number.
Just when I thought we’d all go crazy from the stress and tension, Dad got arrested. He was in a trailer somewhere in Carlisle when the cops raided the place and hauled everyone off to jail. Dad got three months for having a pouch of cocaine in his wallet and a bag of pills in his coat. Some of the other guys were black. Some of them got three years or more, but they couldn’t prove Dad was selling anything so he got off pretty easy. The story was in the paper the next morning. I knew I’d never want to read it. Just the thought of it gave me chills; made me feel all spooked and squirmy. I didn’t want to think about my dad that way and I didn’t want anyone else thinking about me like that either. I understood that whoever read it wouldn’t know that it hadn’t always been like that.
An employee at the pet store approached us and asked if he could help.
“They want a dog but there’s no way,” Mom said. “I have a husband who would croak.”
“I understand,” the employee said. He was a young boy with short, thin hair; a willowy figure with slanted buckteeth and bad face acne. “We get that a lot.” He looked down at Hazel and smiled. “I usually suggest an alternative solution.”
“What’s that?” Hazel said with renewed ambition.
“Fish,” the boy said. “I suggest fish. They’re great pets. They don’t ask for much. From my experience, husbands usually approve.” He gave Mom a little wink.
“Oh, boy!” Hazel shrieked. “I’d like a fish! What have you got?”
Mom agreed to have a look. The boy led us toward the aquariums in the back. In no time at all Hazel had the boy skimming up a plain orange one and ladling it into a plastic bag. Mom let me pick out something called a Koi fish with silver and gold splotches and a long swishy tail that reminded me of white old-lady-hair. Hazel was insistent that Mom get one too. She wanted a whole family. Mom was a softy. She gave in right away. She asked the boy to reach her some sort of African fish she’d had her eye on, one with bright bubbly blue skin and black whiskers. She bought us a three-gallon fish tank and let us pick out some little plastic plants and treasure toys to place at the bottom.
We were all very happy on the way home. We sang whatever songs came on the radio and Hazel kept holding her bag up to her nose and making kissy faces at her fish.
“We have to name our fish our own names,” Hazel said from the backseat. “I want us to treat these fish like they’re us. I want to pretend we all live in the fish tank together and hang out and tell jokes and stuff. We’ll be a family!”
Mom said it was a fantastic idea and I said it would be okay. I thought Hazel had a bizarre imagination but I kind of admired it. Hazel was the smartest, most clever ten year old around. She was already living in her own world.
That night Dad called from jail. He was getting out the following weekend. Hazel answered the phone. She was curled up on the sofa in her pajamas. She told Dad all about the fish. We had spent all afternoon getting the tank ready. Hazel did almost the whole thing by herself. She wedged the little treasure chest in the corner and suctioned the plants in the middle. She dumped the fluorescent purple pebbles into the bottom and smoothed them out with her hand. As she spoke to Dad on the phone she kept her eyes on the table in back of the couch where the aquarium was resting.
“Don’t come home without a Dad fish,” she told him. “We’ve already got a Hazel and a Momma and a Scottie one. We need a papa for the family. You can be the father of Tank Town. They’ll all fall in love with you.”
When she got off the phone she ran over and got the fish food. She dumped some in and watched the fish race for the top of the water.
“Hazel has a huge appetite,” she said, “just like me!” She draped her head over the top and cheered for Hazel. “Scottie is too skinny,” she said, “and poor Mom is slow. Isn’t that funny, Mom?”
On the Saturday Dad was scheduled to come home, Hazel and I woke up early and helped Mom get the house ready. I cleaned the bathroom and took out the trash. Mom vacuumed the floors and dusted the shelves. Hazel emptied the fish aquarium in the sink. She put the fish in a big mixing bowl on the counter and wiped down their tank.
“I think Scottie fish is angry with me,” Hazel said. She was lying on the counter next to the fish, her hand dipped inside the tank, mopping the walls with a dishrag.
“Let me see,” I said. I came over and had a look. “Nah, he’s fine. He’s just thinking. I’m a thinker.”
“Mom!” Hazel hollered. Mom was in the bedroom folding sheets. “You look like you could you use a nap!”
“What dear?” Mom hollered back.
“Your fish! She looks sleepy.”
“That’s how I feel, all right.”
Hazel giggled. When she was finished she put everything back in the aquarium. I’d never seen her take such care with anything before.
We were all watching television when we heard a key in the door. Everyone knew it was Dad. I got really tense and clenched all my muscles together and Mom drew in a big breath. Hazel hopped up and dashed to the door.
“Dad!” She said. As soon as the door opened Hazel planted a big hug on him. He was holding a brown paper bag.
“Whoa!” Dad said. “Hello there.” He put the bag down and lifted Hazel into his arms.
I had to admit that he looked better. He was thinner and the beard was gone and his skin looked oily and polished, like he had shined it with lotion. I thought about the T-shirt and the sweatpants he was wearing. I wondered if he had been allowed to wear that stuff in jail or if it had been locked away somewhere waiting for his release. I wondered if they made him shave.
Mom stayed frozen to her spot on the sofa, only turning her head in his direction. I stood up but didn’t go anywhere. Dad put Hazel down. “Hello, son,” he said and nodded at me. I nodded back. “I didn’t want to get a scolding from this one,” he said, patting Hazel’s head, “so I brought something with me.”
“Let me see!” Hazel squealed.
Dad picked up the bag, reached inside and pulled out a small plastic box with holes in the top. “This is Butch,” he said. He put the box on the palm of his hand and lowered it for Hazel to see.
Hazel took a step back and gasped, then she took a few steps forward and put her head up close to the box. “That isn’t a fish,” she said.
“It is,” Dad said. “It is. It’s called a crayfish. Isn’t it cool?”
“It looks like a crab,” Hazel said. She straightened up and swallowed hard. “It’s scary.”
“Ha! It is a crab, sort of,” Dad said. “They call it a fresh water crab. It can live in the tank with the other fish.” It had been ages since I’d heard Dad talk so much, and with such emotion.
“But it’s not a fish,” Hazel said, “and your name isn’t Butch.”
“What are you talking about?” Dad said, his voice turning loud and defensive. “I didn’t want a sissy fish,” he said. “You know me. Butch is more of a man’s...”
“Hazel wanted to have the fish be just like us,” Mom interrupted from the couch, her voice already biting. “She wants to name it Dad.” She put her head down and picked at one of the cushions.
“Mine’s name is Scottie,” I said.
Dad made a snorting sound and shook his head. “This is just like me. It’s… It’s Butch. If you can’t see it you’re all blind. He’s going to be a watchdog, you’ll see. He’ll take care of everything. You guys will see.”
Dad carried the box over to the tank behind the couch and shook the crayfish out into the water. It made a plop and then a fizzy sound as it sailed to the bottom. I watched it bounce off the pebbles and then wiggle its little legs as it scurried toward the corner. Scottie, Hazel and Mom darted to the other side, nearly crashing into one another as they fought the ripples. Butch was an ugly looking thing. It was a dark, speckled red color with pink scribbles along its legs that looked like scars and fierce little eyes that made it look angry. It was old and surly looking too, like it had been in fights with other fish and won most of them. It had antennas. Right away it started trying to climb the walls, flexing the hard, glossy shell on its back and flicking at the glass with its tiny claws. They opened and shut mechanically, like trap doors.
I looked at Mom with her mouth open and then at Hazel who was still standing by the door. She looked pale and frightened.
“There now,” Dad said with a smile. Nobody moved. “What? What is it? A guy comes home with a present and he gets the silent treatment? Jesus,” he said. “I just got here and already I feel like taking a leave. Me and Butch are rattling the bars already!” He bent down and rapped his fingers on the glass where Butch was perched. “Ha! We’re hungry. What’s for dinner?”
That night, I sat with Hazel on her bed until she calmed down a little. We could hear Mom and Dad arguing out in the kitchen. Her door was shut so we couldn’t make everything out but I could tell by the way dishes kept clapping together in the sink and how Mom kept shushing Dad that it was pretty bad. Every time she shushed it sounded more and more strained coming out, like she was a toy losing battery power.
“He doesn’t understand, does he?” Hazel asked. She was leaning against the headboard.
I shrugged, laid down across the foot of her bed and faced the ceiling. “I don’t know.”
“He thinks my idea was stupid,” Hazel said.
We were quiet for a while and then I said, “I like my fish.”
“Last year he thought my birthday was stupid.” Hazel said. “He had a better idea than coming to my party.”
“He was totally out of it,” I said. “He’s been out of it for a long time.”
“He doesn’t like me and he doesn’t like Mom and he doesn’t like you.”
“That’s not true,” I said. I sat up and scooted closer to her. “It’s just…”
“He threw you into the swimming pool!” Hazel blurted. She picked up a pillow and folded it against her chest.
I took a deep breath. It was true; he had pushed me into a pool the previous summer. He was supposed to be helping me learn how to swim but he got frustrated when I wouldn’t get in the deep end and shoved me. I told Hazel not to tell Mom because she was already upset enough at the time but she did anyway and Mom packed her suitcase and made me and Hazel pack ours too, and then right when we were about to go out the door Mom said she forgot something in her bedroom and after she went back inside she never came out again. Hazel and I heard a loud thump and we rushed into her room. We found her sitting on the carpet sobbing. She was so upset at herself she had kicked a hole in the wall beside the closet. She kept saying things were hopeless. Leaving was hopeless. Dad was hopeless. Some people were runaway trains, she said. She said it was part of life and there was no use trying to fight life. Everything was predetermined. Hazel and I hadn’t talked about it since, but I knew she thought about it.
“You’re right,” I said.
“He threw you in like a dead animal. You weren’t even ready. He called you a girl’s name, and you said you were going to punch him!” Hazel said.
“Shhhhh,” I said.
“You made a fist,” Hazel whispered. “I saw it.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“You wanted to hurt him,” Hazel said, “you said he made you sick,” she said.
I said I wanted to punch him, that part I remembered. I had never wanted to punch anyone before. I couldn’t remember how close I’d come, but Hazel told me I was shaking all over; she said I looked insane when I got out of the pool.
“Does he love us?” Hazel asked.
I started to say something but I stopped. I had to think about it. “I think so,” I said. I could tell Hazel wanted me to say something big and I didn’t want to disappoint her. “I heard Mom talking to Aunt Cassie on the phone,” I said. “Dad used to do drugs before we were born,” I said. It was true. “He stopped for awhile, but then he started back up again and mom couldn’t stop him.”
“Runaway train,” Hazel said.
It was the same thing I’d been thinking. “Yeah,” I said.
“Do you think it’s true?” she asked. “About runaway trains?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t know why it should be.”
“Me neither,” Hazel said. She was getting restless and I thought she might be ready for bed.
“I know he used to love us,” I said. We were silent for a bit after that.
“I remember Good Dad,” Hazel said.
“Me too,” I said. “Remember when he used to take me to the batting cages all the time? And he made you that dollhouse. Remember?
“I loved that dollhouse,” Hazel said.
“Everybody said they’d never seen anything like it before,” I said. “Do you remember that? How unusual it was…”
“That was the best part,” Hazel said.
“It had those little refrigerators with the bottles inside and the tiny slippers by the beds…” I said. “Things felt so different back then. I wasn’t so… so jumpy back then. I’m worried all the time, you know. I am. I’m sorry. Right now I feel like I could jump and hit my head on the ceiling.” Hazel was thinking about something. She had her eyes closed.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Hazel shimmied her back up higher on the headboard and slipped her feet in under the covers. I stood up to give her legs room.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said. I started for the door.
“I’m not mad,” Hazel said. “You don’t have to be sorry.”
I shook my head. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll keep the light on.”
“You don’t have to,” Hazel said. “Mom’s been turning it off every night for a few weeks.”
“Really?” I said. “Okay. I’ll see you in the morning.” I turned the light out.
I walked to my room. I had something rumbling in my stomach, some kind of grinding that made it hard to breathe. I was mostly thinking about how everyone around me was starting to feel like a stranger, like they were all keeping secrets about their identities. It made me feel like I didn’t even know myself. I didn’t think families were supposed to work that way, be so distant like that. The house was silent. Mom and Dad had given up for the night. I must have fallen asleep eventually, but I don’t remember.
I woke up to Hazel screaming. It was light outside.
“Mom’s gone!” she said.
“What!” I heard Mom say. “I’m right here! I’m right here.” She came whooshing out of her bedroom and I followed her.
“Where is she?” Hazel said. She was in front of the fish tank, hopping up and down like she had to pee. “She’s gone.”
Mom and I looked where Hazel was looking. We looked at the fish tank until we saw what she was talking about. Mom’s fish was missing.
“Oh, dear,” Mom said.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Mom said.
Dad wasn’t home. We’d have woken him up by then. Scottie fish and Hazel were still there. Butch was curled in the corner of the tank. It looked like he was sleeping. Hazel climbed the sofa and stuck her hand in the water. She swished her fingers around, hoping to stir up Mom’s body from somewhere. That’s when Butch woke up. Hazel leapt back. Butch skittered across the pebbles with his claws open. The water was carrying him.
“What’s he doing?” Hazel yelled. She was trembling.
“Look out!” Mom said. “Shoo!”
Butch was after Scottie. He had Scottie scraped against the wall and he was waving at it with his pincher. He slashed at it with his claw and caught a piece of Scottie’s fin. Something silky and colorless leaked from its side.
Hazel was screaming. “He got Scottie,” Mom said. “Do something!” She looked at me in a manic, desperate sort of way.
“Fuck!” I said. I sprinted to the kitchen and threw open the drawer where we kept our large cooking utensils. I picked out the meat tongs and ran back as fast as I could. “Get out of my way!” I yelled. “Get out of the way!”
Hazel had turned away and flung her face into a pillow. She was screaming into it.
“Yes! That’s it!” Mom said.
I jammed the tongs deep inside the water without thinking. I tried stabbing Butch with it until I finally got a crisp hold of his middle section and jerked him out of the water.
“Ack!” Mom yelled. “Where are you going? Where are you going with it?”
I ran to the front door and hurled it open. I ran out onto the driveway with the thing raised over my head like a torch. Mom and Hazel came out right after me. We were all wondering what was going to happen next. I could feel the thing’s body growing softer in the grips.
“Put him down!” Mom said.
I did. I reared back and hammered it onto the pavement, then backed away. I threw the tongs out onto the lawn. I was breathing like a maniac. It was upside down, still moving, wriggling its dark pink torso and pedaling its legs in an attempt to right itself. It looked so small lying there, so ridiculous. We stood there staring at it for a long time.
“Run it over,” I said.
“What?” Mom said. “How?”
“It’s right in front of the garage. Back your car over it.”
Mom looked at Hazel. Hazel was wringing her hands together, rocking back and forth. She nodded her head.
“With the car?”
“Yes!” Hazel said. “Please, Mom. Do it.”
“It’s dead,” Mom said.
“It’s still moving,” I said.
“Oh, but honey, it’s gone. That’s its nerves twitching or something. It’s only nature. It’s only
natural...it’s dead!”
“No!” I said. “No it isn’t.”
We looked at Butch. He was still making those bending motions, arching his spine like a baby trying to flip over in its crib. It didn’t look aggressive anymore, but you knew it still could be if you gave it a chance.
“Okay,” Mom said. “Okay.” She walked to her car, the old Chevy resting in the garage, and got inside. She rolled down the window and looked over her shoulder at us. “Okay,” she said one more time, “your father is at the hardware store.” She started the engine and yelled over it. “Get your bags packed!” she said. “Hurry up.”
I moved Hazel to the side. I pulled her in close against my waist, but we didn’t go anywhere. Mom inched the car backward and then stamped on the gas hard. Butch disappeared under the tire. I wished she had driven slower so I could really take it in, hear it crunch. Until she moved I couldn’t be completely sure he was gone.
Everything was still for a while and then all of a sudden I felt Hazel laughing. She was laughing so hard my legs were shaking, and then I started laughing. Mom stuck her head out the window and started laughing, too. She put her head down on her arm and let loose. Pretty soon we were all letting loose. It was coming out whether we liked it or not, tears and laughter at the same time. We didn’t care who heard us. And it was the weirdest, most incredible thing. It was like we all had the same thing passing through us, surging from one connected tube to the next, like we were being filled with something. I can’t remember a time we made more sense together. It just seemed right.
©2010 by Simon A. Smith
