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Volume 2 Number 2 • Fall - Winter 2010-2011
Out in the stingy woods among the skunk cabbage and milkweed they waited, scraggly pines hardly hiding them from their humble bungalow.
They’d shot rubber-tipped arrows at the flamingoed mirror in the living room. They’d done it before many times; now one time too many: pink birds disintegrated into crashing shards forever lodged in the couch cushions.
The pleasure of the well-aimed shot—suction cup dead-centered in the eye of the father flamingo—was gone forever as they fled in every direction like a dismembered starfish.
They looked back once on their way down the hill. She was there: under the clothesline, canvas bag of clothespins clutched to her aproned bosom. They knew what she would say, whispered it with her: Just wait ‘til your father gets home.
Huddled in the stink of their sodden woodlet they rehearsed pleas and apologies for their father, who would not surprise them by heeding their supplications. His flamingo vengeance would be swift and disinterested and as inevitable as his coming home.
Elliott got a dollar regular at Mac’s Esso and enjoyed his cigar while the old man himself did the windshield. The boys were waiting on the front porch when he pulled up.
They wouldn’t move until he gave them a sign.
He took a last puff, tossed the butt into the street. He nodded, and the Rambler was instantly crammed. Sunshine Dairy? he asked. What’s your mother up to?
No one answered. Sunshine Dairy would be fine, and Peg would be taking a long nap.
Seldom crude, Elliott sometimes beseeched his seven sons to “Stop farting around.”
They always giggled; Elliott never giggled, except after a bottle of Roma Port , his preferred remedy for a head cold. Like Elliott, Roma Wine no longer exists.
Elliott’s sons still fart around, usually at the Happy Swallow, wishing he would call their names one last time, one last time to compare to other times, to contrast with other times:
the phlegm thick in his voice, his cigar just out of reach, his favorite tie a mile away, his backless slippers cracked and scuffed, shuffling towards impatient death through the dandelions of youth in the ill-lit room where they stowed him away with his crosswords and his phone and the family photo and his recalcitrant TV.
Let me step in and give you a free sample, Elliott implored.
She knew the ploy: counter reluctance with a pocket comb, a plastic letter opener or maybe a tiny bottle of toilet water.
Not today, she said emphatically, but he had his hat in his hand and was soon thrusting a catalogue into hers. She knew it by heart. She’d order more toothbrushes
He had seven sons, after all, and his tires were bald.
He adjusted the carbon paper in his order book. She gazed at his gray felt fedora on the coffee table. Soft bristles or hard, Mrs.?
She hated to make choices, but his shoelaces were already untied.
E. Michael Desilets lives in Los Angeles . His work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Boston Herald, California Quarterly, Creative Screenwriting and The Rambler.