It was a fine weekend day in the country that day and as soon as I had gotten up from sleeping and come downstairs to meet my Father for breakfast I knew that he was troubled by the same notion.  

He had a distracted look about him, which I detected at once—a truth which was borne out soon after when he poured the coffee directly onto the crotch of his shorts instead of into my cup.

 

Though he did not shriek, (for he never exclaimed in the presence of another) I could tell that he was in some distress, though not merely from pain of the hot liquid or the effort in suppressing the symptom of this pain or even the humiliation he must have felt in having seemed to err so transparently in front of his only son. It was the distress—primarily—of a persistent notion, the presence of which I had long ago learned accurately to discern. 

 

The final clue as to the precise character of that morning’s notion came about, curiously enough, as a result of the distraction that was its primary symptom.

 

The fact that my Father was wearing shorts indicated to me that he meant to go driving, since he always dressed in that style of pant when he meant to drive. In a way, I believe that the act of spilling coffee onto his shorts was contrived in advance by my Father as a way of announcing his intent without having to assay my approval, though this was nominal anyway. My Father did not like to speak at all if he could avoid it and while his authority was unassailable, neither did he relish playing the tyrant. Given these proclivities, a compensatory vocabulary of gesture had sprung up between us, increasing in sophistication over the years and eventually plateauing at the sublime incarnation evinced on that portentous morning.  

My Father loved to drive and especially on fine days such as that one, however, he was loathe to do so without some object of even the most perfunctory type. It was against his nature to be aimless in anything, lest, I suppose, he appear arbitrary. Therefore, occasionally, when he desired something that appeared arbitrary, he resorted to creating a condition that might reasonably impel him to chase an otherwise aimless pursuit. In this way, his authority and good judgment remained, at a glance, unimpeachable. The spill was an ingenious manipulation of the strict reasoning that governed my Father’s actions. Since my Father only owned a single pair of shorts—and since the fine nature of the day impelled him to wear these, and since he could not wear these because they had been badly stained in a humiliating location, and since no one might see this if his lower body were disguised, and since a fine breeze of dry air was the best method for drying wet clothing, and since the lower body would be disguised in driving, and since the store which sold shorts could be reached by driving, and since he would need a new pair of shorts to enjoy the day which impelled him to wear shorts, and since he was impelled to enjoy the day since it was a weekend day, and since he enjoyed wearing shorts while driving—he must drive to the shorts store. 

 

When he spilled the coffee, it was as if to say: “Come, I wish to drive immediately.”

 

I needed no further injunction and quickly finished my eggs.  

We began to drive almost immediately and it was not long at all before I had given myself over totally to the pleasant experience.

 

Perhaps I had not had enough coffee or my Father had made it too weakly, which especially was the case when he was distracted, for I soon found myself unable to recognize our surroundings, as if I had dropped into a light sleep at some point without knowing it and woken up seamlessly much farther down the line.

 

The road was familiar—in the way that all country roads resemble one another in this part of the country—yet I was certain that I had not been on it before in my life. I assumed that my Father had intentionally taken a circuitous and unusual route to the store that day in order to maximize his time at the wheel though he would undoubtedly claim, if pressed, that he had done so in order to determine whether the route would yield a shortcut to someplace we liked to frequent that he had somehow previously overlooked.   

I could tell that my Father did not know precisely where we were either because both of his eyes were wide open and were scanning the country ceaselessly, which is how my Father assessed a situation or experience that was novel to him, whereas he would often close his eyes three-fifths of the way or even fully for many seconds at a time and seem to drift into a light sleep when he was confident in his knowledge of the composition of the land, allowing the breeze to gently flutter his eyelashes and the car to guide itself down the dusty golden roads.

 

This road was golden, too, rising and falling occasionally as the roads in the area tended, between the mild banks topped with grass and trees and other vegetation, but the grass on these banks was growing differently than on the banks of roads I had previously encountered.

 

It was as if we were driving at another time of day than we usually did; there was a different quality of light on the grass, which made it seem somewhat luminous—as if the grass were only painted green and if we had stopped to examine it we might discover that we could scrape away the green color and there would be another color underneath. Luminous was perhaps not the right term, because I imagined the color would be a kind of green-black, if that were conceivable, and this would not shine but would, in fact, do the opposite but with a commensurate intensity, which I can only describe as luminescence (or the obverse of luminescence)—each blade concealing itself with tangible fervor.

 

It was slightly unsettling for me to think about but not frightening exactly, except that I felt my Father was unsettled by it too, but to a further degree (commensurate, possibly, to his size) and this amplified my concern, which seemed to enlarge his until I could tell that he was becoming distracted.   

I did not like to talk to my Father if I did not have to, since he didn’t appreciate the distraction of conversation, but I felt it had become incumbent upon me to intervene and justified my interruption of his distraction with the fact that, in interrupting him, I meant to irrupt the circuitous course of his distraction.

I said, “Father” and immediately he had fully depressed the brake pedal so that our stomachs were both nearly cut open by the seat-belts and our heads dashed against the dashboard.

The screeching halt had stirred a great deal of dust and when this had cleared I noticed that there were two children, a boy and a girl, standing next to the grassy bank by the side of the road.

 

The boy was fat beyond the capacity of his age, which I put at less than ten years, and wore shorts which did little to conceal the girth that had begun to accumulate even around his legs. He had a hard look in his face that belied the softness of his person and cast an ominous pall over the smile that he wore. He clutched a ragged horse toy underneath his arm.

 

The girl, meanwhile, was very thin and possessed an aura of fragility, which gave her a tragic aspect and was enhanced by the timorous expression that she wore and her thinness also was enhanced by the long hem of the old-fashioned dress that she wore. She carried a stuffed lamb with much of the stuffing gone.

 

Both of them stood and seemed impressed by the car.

My enraged Father began to shout at them.

“Didn’t you see this car coming?  You really must be rustic children to be so stupid in playing in the road. You could have been killed, you know? This car could have churned right through you and left nothing but sauce behind. Would you have liked that?”

The girl frowned and the boy continued to smile. They both stood still and looked at the car.

“Where are your parents anyway, and do they know you play idiotically in the road like animals? Go and get them because I’d like to tell them what I think and what I would do if you were my children.”

He did not have to wait, for although the children did nothing—although the girl looked scared and the boy smiled to the point where it seemed a sneer—just then, two women arrived at the edge of the bank. One was slim and dark and wore spectacles and had streaks of grey through her coarse dark hair and a jutting lower jaw and the other was younger and thin but pregnant (a fact which her gingham did little to conceal) with dirty blond hair.   

“Are you the mother of these children?” my Father demanded angrily.

“I am,” confessed the older of the two women, “and this is the older daughter, soon to have a child of her own.”

“You’re lucky in that,” continued my Father, “because these two may not last much longer if this is the way they amuse themselves. Where is their father? Drunk I expect, in a hay rick somewhere.”

“He is gone,” confessed the woman, but did not venture more.

“Then you must take care to work twice as hard in raising them or else you can expect them to spoil like milk in the sun.”

With that my Father started the engine and allowed it a roar before he released the brake and squealed away in a cloud of dust and spinning tires. He could not have hoped for a better effect had he reared a chaise of horses and had them kick their hooves.   

I would have soon forgotten all about the incident if, a few moments later, I had not noticed that the children had leapt onto the hood of the car and were clinging to its smooth surface. My Father screeched the brakes and though the little girl went tumbling off over the windshield, the boy clung fast.   

I looked behind us and saw that the little girl was not moving, lying in the middle of the dusty road.   

I tapped on my Father’s shoulder and pointed at the little girl, but he ignored me. His eyes were set upon the fat boy, still smiling and staring straight at us through the windshield from the hood, where he clung with one thick arm, the horse-toy clutched under the other.   

My Father braced his arm against the side of my seat and turned his head around. He caught my eye but did not say anything to me. I could see he was set in his mind. He backed up the car until it was parallel with the little girl and idled there in the cloud of dust that had been kicked up by the car. Through the dust I could see the girl a little, crawling away.

My Father turned back towards the boy. He made sure that he saw his sister. The boy smiled and my Father stared at him.   

Father, I wanted to say, you cannot win against a child, but his mind was set. I could see that.   

“I’m going to have to roll him,” said my Father gravely, and revved the engine of his car.   

It was then that I decided to leave the car. 

 

I got out and I stood beside the girl. My Father did not look at me as he roared away. I watched as, up the road, he stopped the car suddenly, screeching the tires. I heard the boy’s heavy body bump on the hood but knew he had hung on. A moment later I heard the car start again and watched it scream off down the road, beyond the bend where I could see, where tall trees grew upon the banks.

I picked up the little girl and gently brought her to the side of the road. Her mother and older sister drew up then. They said nothing, but tried their best to tend to the child.   

We waited until nightfall, when headlights announced the arrival of the car.

It pulled up alongside us and idled there—the engine hot—its breath coming in rapid, shallow puffs.   

My Father was behind the wheel, looking haggard and the heavy boy was on the hood, bloody but undeterred.   

“We must get these children to a hospital,” he said. His face was grave and sad.

“But first, we’re to be married," he said, taking the woman’s hand.   

Later, in their house—which was a cozy shack with a mudroom and a tar-paper door—we ate beans straight from the pot while the bandaged-up children played at our feet with their dolls. The older daughter stood close to my elbow and I was pulling my Father’s coat the whole time while he talked with the woman between forkfuls of beans and I kept saying:

See, Father? Do you see, Father, that this is why you have to listen to children?  This is why you must listen to children. But he didn’t turn around.   

 

X

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I wrote this piece rapidly in 2010 or 2011, probably in one sitting. Most of it came to me in a dream that occurred after taking a nap in my bedroom in Val Verde, California one afternoon. I can't remember what season it was, though I know it wasn't summer. Despite feeling very good about it—no doubt because of how easily and naturally it materialized, which felt like some kind of grace—I struggled to find a home for it for a long time. It eventually appeared in print in the third issue of Iceview, in English and Icelandic translation, in 2018.