nightly lessons for his boy.
“Hell, boy,” rubbing at his naked eye, filling the socket with drops of liquid from a tiny bottle. “Saw a guy stabbed with his own toothbrush today. Right through his throat,” and Tiny William would listen, taking it all in. “Fine by me. That fucker was nothing, anyway.”
William swallowed his father ’s stories. The eyelid, his father says, was punishment, ripped from his face when he was young, “about your age,” he’d say year after year after year. But he was born with the defect. “If anything,” William’s mother told him, “it was pre-punishment, just a sort of an inborn charge against him because God knew he’d be bad.”
“The problem with perfection,” Mrs. Rose says, and William is back in the car, the rain still falling up, “is that it must be based on a single model. Who has the right to decide what the end is?
Why not accept that there is no end and exist accordingly?” She is driving with only glances to the road between sentences. Cars honk. “People change and grow but not toward something. We influence people, William, but only to show that we can really do nothing. How else would they know if we didn’t show them?”
Prison paid for their house. If it weren’t for criminals, the Lowsons would brush their teeth with rigor mortis squirrel legs and gargle in soup kitchen bathrooms. Tiny William understood the nobility of his father ’s occupation, which is why he wanted so badly to mimic it. After the call from his teacher, Tiny William falls to his bed, pulls a hidden roll of tape from under his pillow, and presses fresh strips to his face. His right eye stretched open like his dad. “Shut the fuck up, worthless childfucker,” he says to himself, his bedroom window posed as steel bars securing an outdoor prison cell.
With the tape off, he’s one of those childfuckers, those murderers, those thieves. “I’ll shut the fuck up when I want to shut the fuck up,” he tells his reflection in the glass.
These arguments end always in Tiny William adopting the criminal persona with intentions of crafting viscous shanks from aborted accumulatea. He filled the crevasses of his room with these items, pinning them under dirty clothes and blankets.
When his father gave haircuts, Tiny William would rescue each cluster from the trash. He kept all of his hair in the corner nearest his bed.
William would cut his toenails and fingernails every other day just to have them. William lived with the consistent sting of a shorn nail sliced too close to the skin. The moment the pain stopped, he’d cut again. These trimmings he kept at the furthest corner of his room, placing them low on the hierarchy because of their being easily attainable.
Under his pillow he kept outside collections, stuff unavailable from his father ’s house. Tea bags, miniature shampoo and lotion bottles, sample bars of soap, single serving condiments, all the building blocks of improvised prison weapons. Toys, really. Just a boy’s imagination left to worship his father.
Tiny William would spend hours counting, organizing, displaying, melding, tying, knotting, balling, taping, cutting. His mind followed a strict pattern: listen for Dad, make a weapon, listen for Dad, hide a weapon, listen for Dad…
When it ended, Tiny William left his searched room with a bruise and open cuts he had been talked into believing he deserved.
Tiny William stopped asking for Christmas gifts. He just waited and accepted anything as the way it was supposed to be.
Mrs. Rose hits the dashboard again. The static drops for a moment but returns even harder. “Damn,” she says. “You ever been taught something? Been told lies?”
William mumbles a word like ‘yes’ but it comes out as only breath.
“Every day, I’m sure,” she says.
The night of the bedroom search F. Lowson calls Tiny William out into the backyard. He tells him to bring a lighter from the dining room table. Tiny William brings
“Hell, boy,” rubbing at his naked eye, filling the socket with drops of liquid from a tiny bottle. “Saw a guy stabbed with his own toothbrush today. Right through his throat,” and Tiny William would listen, taking it all in. “Fine by me. That fucker was nothing, anyway.”
William swallowed his father ’s stories. The eyelid, his father says, was punishment, ripped from his face when he was young, “about your age,” he’d say year after year after year. But he was born with the defect. “If anything,” William’s mother told him, “it was pre-punishment, just a sort of an inborn charge against him because God knew he’d be bad.”
“The problem with perfection,” Mrs. Rose says, and William is back in the car, the rain still falling up, “is that it must be based on a single model. Who has the right to decide what the end is?
Why not accept that there is no end and exist accordingly?” She is driving with only glances to the road between sentences. Cars honk. “People change and grow but not toward something. We influence people, William, but only to show that we can really do nothing. How else would they know if we didn’t show them?”
Prison paid for their house. If it weren’t for criminals, the Lowsons would brush their teeth with rigor mortis squirrel legs and gargle in soup kitchen bathrooms. Tiny William understood the nobility of his father ’s occupation, which is why he wanted so badly to mimic it. After the call from his teacher, Tiny William falls to his bed, pulls a hidden roll of tape from under his pillow, and presses fresh strips to his face. His right eye stretched open like his dad. “Shut the fuck up, worthless childfucker,” he says to himself, his bedroom window posed as steel bars securing an outdoor prison cell.
With the tape off, he’s one of those childfuckers, those murderers, those thieves. “I’ll shut the fuck up when I want to shut the fuck up,” he tells his reflection in the glass.
These arguments end always in Tiny William adopting the criminal persona with intentions of crafting viscous shanks from aborted accumulatea. He filled the crevasses of his room with these items, pinning them under dirty clothes and blankets.
When his father gave haircuts, Tiny William would rescue each cluster from the trash. He kept all of his hair in the corner nearest his bed.
William would cut his toenails and fingernails every other day just to have them. William lived with the consistent sting of a shorn nail sliced too close to the skin. The moment the pain stopped, he’d cut again. These trimmings he kept at the furthest corner of his room, placing them low on the hierarchy because of their being easily attainable.
Under his pillow he kept outside collections, stuff unavailable from his father ’s house. Tea bags, miniature shampoo and lotion bottles, sample bars of soap, single serving condiments, all the building blocks of improvised prison weapons. Toys, really. Just a boy’s imagination left to worship his father.
Tiny William would spend hours counting, organizing, displaying, melding, tying, knotting, balling, taping, cutting. His mind followed a strict pattern: listen for Dad, make a weapon, listen for Dad, hide a weapon, listen for Dad…
When it ended, Tiny William left his searched room with a bruise and open cuts he had been talked into believing he deserved.
Tiny William stopped asking for Christmas gifts. He just waited and accepted anything as the way it was supposed to be.
Mrs. Rose hits the dashboard again. The static drops for a moment but returns even harder. “Damn,” she says. “You ever been taught something? Been told lies?”
William mumbles a word like ‘yes’ but it comes out as only breath.
“Every day, I’m sure,” she says.
The night of the bedroom search F. Lowson calls Tiny William out into the backyard. He tells him to bring a lighter from the dining room table. Tiny William brings
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