I wanted him to tell me.
Do you make them out of nothing or do you find their edges?
He used scrap. He used beaten-flat metal panels, which he’d heat and into which he’d sometimes hammer fetish scobs. He used the blackened bottoms of saucepans: those he liked because they were flat and thin already.
So was there a key waiting for him to cut it out of un-key metal? I liked the thought of it but I never did trust my own hankerings.
When I saw them from that time on, some of his customers wore ugly expressions or put them on when they saw me, to illustrate how much they disapproved of my father, how much distaste they had for him.
—
One hazy cold morning he told me to play and to be safe and to wait. He put empty bags over his shoulders and I heard the coins in his hands and he set out to the town again, for the first time since he had come to fetch me from the police.
“If anyone comes while I’m gone,” he called back, “tell them to wait outside. Or tell them to go away.”
If he girded himself to face the town that still despised him, though it would feed him again and used his cutting services again, he hid the fact as well as he hid many things.
I ran up the stairs to the top floor to watch him from its dirty windows. When he was gone there came a lonely calm and my chest loosened.
—
That was my first day alone uphill. I took the goats downslope a bit and they screamed at each other and I screamed too to see what it was like. They ravenously tore up what looked to me like nothing. I was close enough to our house to hear when, at noon, someone shouted at the door.
She was a thickset red-haired woman with a suspicious stare who watched me with her arms folded. When I approached and told her the key-maker wasn’t there she cursed filthily and threw something hard against the step, shouting, “What am I supposed to do with this now?”
It bounced away. I waited while she stormed away and when she’d left I got onto all fours and found what she’d discarded. It was a bit of some engine. It looked like a heart, I remember that. I put it on the kitchen table. When, hours later, my father returned, he put down his heavy bags at the sight of it.
“A woman brought it,” I said. He picked it up and turned it over. “She threw it away and went.”
“Whatever this came from,” he said, “what she wants is a key to make it start again.”
“Can’t she just put it back in?” I said.
Outside the goats howled. My father’s eyes flicked momentarily in their direction.
“She might,” he said. “She wants a key to help her. I could make her a key from this.”
I watched him sort his awls and files, his flat metal and vise.
He went down to town again, not many days later, taking the remains, and soon such a trip was nothing to remark on, and sometimes more people came up, as the woman had, while he was gone. And I’d tell them when to return.
I
couldn’t leave, still, and I knew it, though not quite why. I could only go so far down.
—
One evening I found only one goat, though I’d tethered the two together, as was usual. I knew them apart: it was the more adventurous and argumentative which was gone. I could have told you what her name was at that time.
I picked up her chain. At its end was her leather collar. It had been cut through.
Her comrade seemed untroubled. She rushed up to me in case I’d brought anything new or unusual to eat from the cupboard, as I was not supposed to do but occasionally did. She eyed and shoved me.
I whispered, “Where’s your sister?”
Of course I thought my father had taken her but even then in the waning light, my throat stopped up with fear for the animal, it didn’t feel as if he would have done this. I couldn’t imagine him taking a knife to leather that way, not with his face as I’d seen it.
Still I could barely speak as I returned to the house. I told him. His reaction both reassured and terrified me. His fury made me certain he
Do you make them out of nothing or do you find their edges?
He used scrap. He used beaten-flat metal panels, which he’d heat and into which he’d sometimes hammer fetish scobs. He used the blackened bottoms of saucepans: those he liked because they were flat and thin already.
So was there a key waiting for him to cut it out of un-key metal? I liked the thought of it but I never did trust my own hankerings.
When I saw them from that time on, some of his customers wore ugly expressions or put them on when they saw me, to illustrate how much they disapproved of my father, how much distaste they had for him.
—
One hazy cold morning he told me to play and to be safe and to wait. He put empty bags over his shoulders and I heard the coins in his hands and he set out to the town again, for the first time since he had come to fetch me from the police.
“If anyone comes while I’m gone,” he called back, “tell them to wait outside. Or tell them to go away.”
If he girded himself to face the town that still despised him, though it would feed him again and used his cutting services again, he hid the fact as well as he hid many things.
I ran up the stairs to the top floor to watch him from its dirty windows. When he was gone there came a lonely calm and my chest loosened.
—
That was my first day alone uphill. I took the goats downslope a bit and they screamed at each other and I screamed too to see what it was like. They ravenously tore up what looked to me like nothing. I was close enough to our house to hear when, at noon, someone shouted at the door.
She was a thickset red-haired woman with a suspicious stare who watched me with her arms folded. When I approached and told her the key-maker wasn’t there she cursed filthily and threw something hard against the step, shouting, “What am I supposed to do with this now?”
It bounced away. I waited while she stormed away and when she’d left I got onto all fours and found what she’d discarded. It was a bit of some engine. It looked like a heart, I remember that. I put it on the kitchen table. When, hours later, my father returned, he put down his heavy bags at the sight of it.
“A woman brought it,” I said. He picked it up and turned it over. “She threw it away and went.”
“Whatever this came from,” he said, “what she wants is a key to make it start again.”
“Can’t she just put it back in?” I said.
Outside the goats howled. My father’s eyes flicked momentarily in their direction.
“She might,” he said. “She wants a key to help her. I could make her a key from this.”
I watched him sort his awls and files, his flat metal and vise.
He went down to town again, not many days later, taking the remains, and soon such a trip was nothing to remark on, and sometimes more people came up, as the woman had, while he was gone. And I’d tell them when to return.
I
couldn’t leave, still, and I knew it, though not quite why. I could only go so far down.
—
One evening I found only one goat, though I’d tethered the two together, as was usual. I knew them apart: it was the more adventurous and argumentative which was gone. I could have told you what her name was at that time.
I picked up her chain. At its end was her leather collar. It had been cut through.
Her comrade seemed untroubled. She rushed up to me in case I’d brought anything new or unusual to eat from the cupboard, as I was not supposed to do but occasionally did. She eyed and shoved me.
I whispered, “Where’s your sister?”
Of course I thought my father had taken her but even then in the waning light, my throat stopped up with fear for the animal, it didn’t feel as if he would have done this. I couldn’t imagine him taking a knife to leather that way, not with his face as I’d seen it.
Still I could barely speak as I returned to the house. I told him. His reaction both reassured and terrified me. His fury made me certain he
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