Saturday's Storyteller: "He just leaned against the wall like an old ironing board."
by Belinda Roddie
He just leaned against the wall like an old ironing board, smoking a cigar that smelled remarkably like dried pecans and rain-soaked resin. He rubbed his hands together continuously, the smoke spiraling around the blurs of his fingers, brisk, chafing sounds issuing from his cracked palms and age-weathered skin. He did not look at me, nor anyone else in the room, instead choosing to stare straight out the window, the stogie drooping haphazardly from his swollen lower lip, the scraping of his hands painfully audible from where I sat.
Outside, the fog was drifting endlessly forward, swathing the adjacent hillsides in an almost sticky mist that turned anything and everything white. The chill oozed its way through the cracks in the walls, and I found myself shivering. My brother, gray-lipped and narrow-eyed, folded his arms across his chest and continued to scowl at the man we were visiting. My mother, in contrast, kept her arms at her sides, her hands pulling at the hem of her skirt. We had not seen this cigar-chomping, spastic gentleman in over ten years. Now we were watching him in his deteriorated state, waiting for one of us to begin the verbal flogging.
My brother went first.
"Dad," he announced, "I didn't come here to fix anything. You know that, right?"
He didn't answer, but somehow, I knew he understood. He pulled the soggy stump out of his mouth and examined it.
"Nothing, nothing you say or do, will change how I feel about you," continued my brother. "Nothing. I hated you then, I hate you now, and I will hate you forever. That will not change. Will. Not."
"Hate," our father suddenly remarked, his voice echoing the grumble of a half-dead chainsaw, "is a very strong word."
"I know," snapped my brother. "That's why it's appropriate here."
When the reaction that my brother wanted never came, he stormed off into the kitchen for some water, with my mother silently trailing him. For the time being, it was me and my old man, alone, the fog still swirling by the window and the living space still bare-boned and unwelcoming. I sat in the only available seat, an easy chair that I remembered from childhood. I had sat on my father's lap more than once, against those cushions. They smelled like smoke now.
"You have something to say, too?" my father growled, sticking the cigar back in his mouth. "Or am I allowed some reprieve for my past sins?"
He was back to rubbing his hands again. I could see how the color was fading from them with each scrape. My father was surprisingly clean-shaven, well-dressed, and at a healthy weight, which was saying something after the last time we had seen him. The last time, when he had struck my mother and cracked her cheekbone, his frame gaunt and abused. He had tortured himself more than he had tortured us.
But now, looking at him, it was like he had smoothed out too much. There was no flush in his face, no hue on his mouth. He appeared to be flattened, heated, and hung to dry, just like a shirt on an ironing board. And somehow, like the haze outside, he appeared to be, all over, nothing but white.
This week's prompt was provided by Daniel Bulone.
He just leaned against the wall like an old ironing board, smoking a cigar that smelled remarkably like dried pecans and rain-soaked resin. He rubbed his hands together continuously, the smoke spiraling around the blurs of his fingers, brisk, chafing sounds issuing from his cracked palms and age-weathered skin. He did not look at me, nor anyone else in the room, instead choosing to stare straight out the window, the stogie drooping haphazardly from his swollen lower lip, the scraping of his hands painfully audible from where I sat.
Outside, the fog was drifting endlessly forward, swathing the adjacent hillsides in an almost sticky mist that turned anything and everything white. The chill oozed its way through the cracks in the walls, and I found myself shivering. My brother, gray-lipped and narrow-eyed, folded his arms across his chest and continued to scowl at the man we were visiting. My mother, in contrast, kept her arms at her sides, her hands pulling at the hem of her skirt. We had not seen this cigar-chomping, spastic gentleman in over ten years. Now we were watching him in his deteriorated state, waiting for one of us to begin the verbal flogging.
My brother went first.
"Dad," he announced, "I didn't come here to fix anything. You know that, right?"
He didn't answer, but somehow, I knew he understood. He pulled the soggy stump out of his mouth and examined it.
"Nothing, nothing you say or do, will change how I feel about you," continued my brother. "Nothing. I hated you then, I hate you now, and I will hate you forever. That will not change. Will. Not."
"Hate," our father suddenly remarked, his voice echoing the grumble of a half-dead chainsaw, "is a very strong word."
"I know," snapped my brother. "That's why it's appropriate here."
When the reaction that my brother wanted never came, he stormed off into the kitchen for some water, with my mother silently trailing him. For the time being, it was me and my old man, alone, the fog still swirling by the window and the living space still bare-boned and unwelcoming. I sat in the only available seat, an easy chair that I remembered from childhood. I had sat on my father's lap more than once, against those cushions. They smelled like smoke now.
"You have something to say, too?" my father growled, sticking the cigar back in his mouth. "Or am I allowed some reprieve for my past sins?"
He was back to rubbing his hands again. I could see how the color was fading from them with each scrape. My father was surprisingly clean-shaven, well-dressed, and at a healthy weight, which was saying something after the last time we had seen him. The last time, when he had struck my mother and cracked her cheekbone, his frame gaunt and abused. He had tortured himself more than he had tortured us.
But now, looking at him, it was like he had smoothed out too much. There was no flush in his face, no hue on his mouth. He appeared to be flattened, heated, and hung to dry, just like a shirt on an ironing board. And somehow, like the haze outside, he appeared to be, all over, nothing but white.
This week's prompt was provided by Daniel Bulone.
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