MOTES OF DUST / COLD AND METAL
I was twelve when my daddy put a suitcase by the door.
“What’s that for?” I asked from the kitchen.
He sighed, low and rough. Took him a moment to turn around. “When did you get home?”
“A while ago.” My skin itched. Didn’t feel right.
He glanced at an old clock on the wall. The plastic covering its face was cracked. “Later than I thought. Look, Ox…” He shook his head. He seemed flustered. Confused. My dad was many things. A drunk. Quick to anger with words and fists. A sweet devil with a laugh that rumbled like that old Harley-Davidson WLA we’d rebuilt the summer before. But he was never flustered. He was never confused. Not like he was now.
I itched something awful.
“I know you’re not the smartest boy,” he said. He glanced back at his suitcase.
And it was true. I was not cursed with an overabundance of brains. My mom said I was just fine. My daddy thought I was slow. My mom said it wasn’t a race. He was deep in his whiskey at that point and started yelling and breaking things. He didn’t hit her. Not that night, anyway. Mom cried a lot, but he didn’t hit her. I made sure of it. When he finally started snoring in his old chair, I snuck back to my room and hid under my covers.
“Yes, sir,” I said to him.
He looked back at me, and I’ll swear until the day I die that I saw some kind of love in his eyes. “Dumb as an ox,” he said. It didn’t sound mean coming from him. It just was.
I shrugged. Wasn’t the first time he’d said that to me, even though Mom asked him to stop. It was okay. He was my dad. He knew better than anyone.
“You’re gonna get shit,” he said. “For most of your life.”
“I’m bigger than most,” I said like it meant something. And I was. People were scared of me, though I didn’t want them to be. I was big. Like my daddy. He was a big man with a sloping gut, thanks to the booze.
“People won’t understand you,” he said.
“Oh.”
“They won’t get you.”
“I don’t need them to.” I wanted them to very much, but I could see why they wouldn’t.
“I have to go.”
“Where?”
“Away. Look—”
“Does Mom know?”
He laughed, but it didn’t sound like he found anything funny. “Sure. Maybe. She knew what was going to happen. Probably has for a while.”
I stepped toward him. “When are you coming back?”
“Ox. People are going to be mean. You just ignore them. Keep your head down.”
“People aren’t mean. Not always.” I didn’t know that many people. Didn’t really have any friends. But the people I did know weren’t mean. Not always. They just didn’t know what to do with me. Most of them. But that was okay. I didn’t know what to do with me either.
And then he said, “You’re not going to see me for a while. Maybe a long while.”
“What about the shop?” I asked him. He worked down at Gordo’s. He smelled like grease and oil and metal when he came home. Fingers blackened. He had shirts with his name embroidered on them. Curtis stitched in reds and whites and blues. I always thought that was the most amazing thing. A mark of a great man, to have your name etched onto your shirt. He let me go with him sometimes. He showed me how to change the oil when I was three. How to change a tire when I was four. How to rebuild an engine for a 1957 Chevy Bel Air Coupe when I was nine. Those days I would come home smelling of grease and oil and metal and I would dream late at night of having a shirt with my name embroidered on it. Oxnard, it would say. Or maybe just Ox.
“Gordo doesn’t care” is what my dad said.
Which felt like a lie. Gordo cared a lot. He was gruff, but he told me once that when I was old enough, I could come talk to him about a job. “Guys like us have to stick together,” he said. I didn’t know what he meant by that, but the fact that he thought of me as anything was good enough for me.
“Oh” is all I could say to my dad.
Copyright © 2016 by Travis Klune
Exclusive Wolfsong short story copyright © 2023 by Travis Klune
