 |
 |
| A Growing Boy............ by � chibilunacat The boy stood with his fists clinched shut, facing the long field, looking down seriously, his brow was furled and his tongue was out at the corner of his mouth, pointed up ward slightly squeezed between his lips. He was watching the patch of hay directly in front of him intently, waiting for something. The house stood quietly behind him, an old dirty white farm house, three stories high. Suddenly it was there, a large green praying mantice walked busily over a long piece of hay, making its way to some unknown destiny, much like the boy. The boy showed sudden excitement across his face, his tongue retreated and a smile of relief broke his face, his eyes sparkled a moment. The sparkle faded as he moved over so slowly, not wanting to rush things and scare his prey off. He shuffled one leg to the side his tattered pant leg shuffling against a piece of hay. His worn shoe tinked against a washed out mayonaise jar that had been striped of its lable, holes poked through the lid, a few loose pieces of grass and hay lay in the bottom of the jar, a new future home of some insect or such. In the distance some patches of hay moved as mice or snakes or other creatures moved about, perhaps gathering food. The praying mantice moved on and the boy reached for it, he was close, sweat driped from his hairline, down into his brown eyebrows, and the silence of the house broke with a loud cry of pain and a huge burst of shouting. The boy turned suddenly, startled, and faced the now lively house with a knife of fear piercing his heart. His father was home early, he must have gottn laid off work again. He heard another cry of pain among the constant shouting of his father, apparently drunk as well. Not that he never shouted or swundg his fists around sober, it was just that he was slurring all his profanities. The boy looked worriedly at the dark windows of the house, he couldn't see inside from where he was, and the rooms lights were off. Another muffled cry of pain and the shouting momentarily stopped. The spell was broken and the boy turned back to his praying mantice, without much enthusiasm left. It was gone, faded into the field, probably never to be seen again. The boy kicked a bit of hay with some disappointment, then he turned back around again and looked towards the too quiet house, new worry arrising in his dry throat. He bent and picked up his jar-home, paused briefly and rushed to the side of the house, listening caustiously for signs of his fathers where abouts, he didn't hear the truck come in the driveway that would have forewarned of his fathers presence, so it must have broken down again, it wouldn't take a detective to figure out that it had farther enraged his father as he came home from being caned, and then he must have stopped at a quick-stop of mini mart or something for some beer before he finished his walk home. It was going to be a long night. The boy crept like a theif around the side of the house, listening under screened windows carefully, under the dinning room window he could hear his mothers faint, hushed sobs as she cried into her arms, curled on the table while she sat in the chair. Or maybe he stopped to get the beer in his truck and it broke down after that, causing him to have to walk home, with the beer of course. Either way he was home early and the truck wasn't with him, that equaled big trouble for him and his mother. He knew his mother would be in the chair in the dinning room at the table, thats where she usually went, if it hurt to bad to walk up the stairs to her neat bedroom. If she knew her son was watching she would sit up, if she could and try to smile, she was very discreet with her tears, she had alot of pride when it came to some things. It hurt the boy to see her that way. He had crept around most of the house and still no sign of his father. Usually he would be drunk and drinking in the living room in font of the old T.V., in his reclining chair, complaining about the antena reception and the bad shows on T.V. He sometimes went down to the garage by the barn and tinkered around and threw stuff. In the garage he had an old sixty-nine mustang in bad shape, mostly gutted, for as long as the boy had been alive the father had been working on that car and it never looked any different really. Sometimes maybe a small difference, like the antena was replaced, or a new side mirror would be on. For some reason the father was never happy with the mirrors, he'd jerk one off and chuck it, a month or two down the road the father would salvage another one from the junk yard in town and put it on. Along with the car and parts was a huge array of tools, there was a big box with drawers that sat neglected along one wall, there were only a few tools actually in it. Sometimes the boy would be called down to the garage to hand tools and parts to his father while the father guzsled beer and banged away. Occasionaly he would spout profanities, well more than occasionally to be honest, and a tool or part would come flying out from under the car, sometimes slamming the boy in the leg, if he yelped in pain he was called a wimp, in not so nice of terms, and laughed at. Despite it all the boy loved his father. Loved him almost as much as he sometimes hated him for the things he did. When he hated him, in the painful nights when he lay in bed buised and bleeding, he thought about the old shot gun in his fathers downstairs closet. The boy wasn't allowed to touch it, but when his father went shooting bottles withhis buddies he got to come along and hold ammo and count hit targets. The amoun tof hit targets would decrease as the amount of full beers decreased, the boy noticed, but would never say it out loud. He thought about that gun, and what if would be like having no daddy, and sometimes it made him cry, sometimes smile, depending on the amount of pain. He had never touched the gun, sure his father would know if he even sneezed on it, but he thought he would know how to work it, he had watched his father use it loads of times. He also knew his father was always talken about needing a new gun, cause this one was getting to old, but year after year he put it off and used the old one again. Some things the boy just didn't understand. The boy nearly rounded another corner and jumped as he heard his father shout for him to get his rear in the kitchen pronto. The boy went imediately, he had dropped his jar and it lay shattered beside the house, accusingly. He knew he would have to pick it up before his father caught sight of it or he'd be sleeping on his stomache and eating standing up for the next two weeks or so. What was important now was getting to his father in the kitchen. The boy made it to the kitchen, and his father was chucking a crushed empty beer can into the trash. He turned to the boy and sighed, then said "I'm goin' to fetch my truck down the road aways, gotta fix 'er when I get to 'er though, I'll be gone for a few hours maybe. I want you to clear out the sticks from the yard and mow it, if it ain't done when I get back its gonna be your butt." he told the boy. He opened a fresh can of beer, it looked like the last one, and drank it down fast, chucking the can he crushed in his fist much the way he did the last. "Yes sir" the boy obediently answered. The father studied him a moment, nodded his head, scooped up a battered metal box of tools and his cluttered key ring and walked out the door, leaving the metal screen door banging closed behind him. The boy sighed in relief then grunted about the work ahead of him, there was a lot of grass to mow, and it was a hot still day. He decided to check on his mother frst, he could still hear her faint sobs coming from the dinning room every now and again. He entered the dinning room slowly and quietly, taking in his mother, one arm was swelling pretty bad and there was a knot forming on one shoulder, probably from sheilding her face from the blows. The boy wondered what excuse his father gave himself for hitting her this time. Seeing his mother sobbing softly into her battered arms, and shuddering made his mind dart to the gun. If he took it in the night, while his father was passed out in bed, he could load it, creep up to their room and...... He made hisself stop think about it, he walked over to his mom and put one arm gently around her "Its alright moma, he left again" he softly spoke to her. She straightened up, he noticed with a grimace of pain on her face briefly. She brushed back strands of her dirty blonde hair and pushed away tears with it, she pushed a smile onto her face. "Oh, honey, I think your father wants you to mow the lawn today, think you can do that?" she said, with that fake smile still on her face, it had been used so often it was flawless, and to anyone else would appear genuine, unless they caught a glimpse of her eyes. She was pretending as thought nothing had happened out of the way, and in a way it hadn't. "Sure mama" he replied, noticing one of her eyes was swelling and discoloring, and a bit of tear dampened blood nestled at the corner of her swelling mouth. He started to leave the room, having assessed the visible damage, wondering how bad the rest of her was, then stopped. He turned to her once more, and asked for probably the milionth time in his life "Why don't we leave here mama, leave him and all this, we could make it, I know we could." Here was a boy of maybe eight or nine, so full of hope and life, and it hurt her to have to repeat the answer, but in her heart she was sure it was right, hadn't it always been this way when she was a girl? "Because a growing boy needs his father, you know that." she told him, and stood up. He wouldn't bother her by asking again, they both knew it. With a sigh, he went on, to pick up the sticks and to mow the yard, wishing he weren't on summer vacation. Thinking of school made him think of the teachers, at first they would call home, or stop by, the boys grades were never that good and he came to school pretty battered somedays. Then they would notice that whenever they notified the parents out of concern the boy would come in the next day of school looking three times worse than usual. They stopped calling home. Their hands were tied anyway, neither the mother nor the boy would point a finger, they just were clumsy was all. ********************** The boy was laying in bed, in his pajamas, he heard his fathers truck rumble down the driveway and cut off. Heard the truck door slam and a loud crash and jangle of metal hitting metal as the tool box fell into the driveway. The boy only listened as his father first cursed then began picking up tools, slamming them into the box, he knew better then to peek throught the window, if his father knew he was still awake he would get it good. A little bit later the boy heard his father finally flop into the creaing bed in his room down the hall. His snores began to carry into the night almost imediately afterward. The boy lay awake through all of this and lay completely still, concentrating in the moonlit room on the paint chipping white ceiling, concentrating rather intently. After about an hour, the boy stirred. He very cautiously crept out of the squeaky bed and down the stairs, avoiding the steps that squeaked, and the boards at the bottom in the hall that creaked. He tiptoed through the kitchen and stoped in front of a closet. Then he quietly turned the latch, and the door popped open with litle more noise than wood brushing wood, and one creaky hinge. The boy paused, peering though the moonlit darkness, his brow creased and his tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth slightly, and squeezed between his lips. the appearance of a boy with the eyes of an ageless being, he nodded his head, and reached inside. The boy got what he wanted from the closet and now he was upstairs, at his parents door. It wasn't shut all the way, so he pushed it gently listening and watching alertly in the darkness. His father mumbled in his sleep and the boy froze in place, a cold sweat breaking across his forhead. The snores resumed and the boy sighed, his breath whispering across his lips and escaping into the room, he carefully picked his way across the room, listening to his mothers quiet snores of sleep, and his fathers loud ones. The boy pushed the cold barrel of the shot gun into the soft flesh below his fathers chin, he allowed the butt of the gun to rest against his small but strong shoulder and braced himself for what he was about to do. He readied the gun, squeezed his eyes shut, and broke the silence of the house, and night, with a huge blast, the smell of gun powder filled the air briefly and was ushered out the screened in window by the night breeze. The mother started awake by the noise and screamed as she sat straight up. The father mumbled then groped around for the lamp nearly knocking it off the beside table. It flckered on, peircing the darkness much as the noise. The gun had backfired, the boy stood there a moment, his eyes unclenched, then he fell backwards in a lifeless thud onto the floor, the gun dropping from his hand, the barrel caught on the bed and stayed there, with the butt on the floor and pointed at the father accusingly, blood rushed around in a widening circle. The fathers eyes widened in horror, then flashed in anger as realization dawned upon him. "He, he.... you see that, he was trying to kill me, the little brat was gonna kill me!" he shouted "Why that ingrate! I told him never to touch that damn gun!" the father was yelling. The mother pailed in shock and stared at the body of her son. "Damn, what a fix he got himself into!" the father was continueing. The father was quiet for a minute, then said "start cleanin this mess up, I'm gonna go call the police or something" he told her, pulling his pants back on. She said nothing, nothing at all, she got out of bed, got dressed and went to the closet. She pulled out a suit case and started putting clothes in it. Her husband was talking on the phone downstairs, answering questions. She heard him hang the phone up. He didn't come back upstairs. She finished packing and heard sirens in the distance. No one really noticed the mother as she slipped out after being questioned. An officer was sitting in the living room with the father asking away about why he didn't have the gun locked up and this and that. The mother slipped out of the house and out of the fathers life. He never saw her again. However once a year on the boys birthday a cake with candles amounting to how old the boy would be that year was left on the grave with a gift wrapped present. The candles had been lit, and went out as though being blown out, as the birthday boy goes on wishing with the wind in the field, where he can always hunt for insects and where he never bruises, or watches his mother cry. She is safe Childhelp USA "Child abuse kills more children in America than do accidental falls, drowning, choking on food, suffocation or fires in the home." United States Department of Justice 1-800-4-A-CHILD (1-800-422-4453) |