The Small Boy
Sound started softly and repeated rhythmically as sodden boots met wooden steps. The boy heard and recognized the pattern — slow, measured, deliberate. A seizing in his gut. Sitting up from his wet pillow, he rubbed his wet, red eyes on the stretched collar of his worn white shirt and listened.
“I knew he’d come,” he thought, pushing the thought down within himself until it bubbled and flowed overflowing to his limbs. Molten blood swelled and boiled in his chest. His muscles tightened. Hands too heavy to hold up, eyes too heavy to look up. Time abided, eternal and instant and absent.
Then a feeling, unexpected, impetuous, with a warmness — like a red coal in a flame’s memory. Fear turned rage, ascending with the volume of the steps on the staircase, building to an apex during a moment of contemplative silence before the visitor entered.
The man stood before the boy, towering and dark, powerful yet not devoid of kindness. His hands wrapped firmly around his belt, which was not in his trousers but at his side, swaying softly. His fingers pressing the thick leather. He wore a black brimmed hat faded by sun and dusted by earth, spreading out and crooning like a halo.
The callous weight of the man’s gaze fell upon the boy. Firm eyes, but something more. An uncomfortable grace — a pleading to retreat yet a trained understanding of forward and its necessity, its absolute inescapability. The boy’s eyes were hard, round like marbles, hard like icicles. His face a stone casing filled with fury, tipping and overtaking.
“Why’d you do it?” the man said so directly that the boy averted his gaze momentarily before rejoining with a boldness — a resoluteness — that said, even in silence, “I am here. I see you. I know you will not back down and neither will I.”
“You shouldn’ta done it,” the man said. The boy remained silent, eyes locked. The man took a breath. A messenger, with slumping shoulders, yoked with knowledge unsought and unwanted.
“Her leg’s broke,” he said. “We was hoping for better news, but…” The man’s eyes left the boy’s. They saw the floor with its wooden creaking boards. His ears heard the stillness of the day, the buzzing of flies. “We’re gonna hafta put’er down.”
The words echoed and replayed in the boy’s mind like a nightmarish fiction. Sound reverberated in a hallway of truth. He did not move. He sat motionless, unmoving, cemented. The redness of his eyes; the quivering of his lips. His small frame began to shake and convulse until he could no longer hold his emotions prisoner and tears burst forth uncontrolled. For nearly five minutes, he sat on his small bed in his small room, his small head bent downward into his small hands. At once he appeared young, small, innocent, despairing. The man did not speak or comfort him, but stood unyielding in his place with his belt at his side and his eyes still firm and uncomfortable, with a present yet hidden gentleness.
When the tears quieted, the man continued. “Joe and I are gonna do it tonight. We hafta get’er outta the pain.” He waited. The boy said nothing. The man rubbed his thumb over the leather belt. His message; his slumping shoulders. “Your joyridin’ cost me a horse today, son. You were supposed to be in the fields with — ”
“I know!” the boy screamed suddenly, rage releasing all and at once. “Don’t you think I know! Daisy is my horse!” His clenched fists. “I know I had work to tend to, but she needed a run. We’re always workin’ and she’s always cooped up and… there was just a bit o’ dirt and loose rocks that…” His words ceased. Or they broke — or he broke. Faintly the tears.
The man beheld the boy. He saw in him himself. He saw a small boy. But forward. “Son,” he said, “I know you’re hurt by all this — we’re all hurtin’ — but fact is you lost me a good horse today.” The message, heavy. “As your father, it is my duty to teach you how to be a man.”
The boy regarded the leather belt that the man held, the man’s fingers wrapping around it like swirling tentacles. The face of stone casing. “No,” the boy said.
“Whad’ya mean no?” said the man, striations in his arm visible as they danced.
“I know I did wrong,” the boy said, “but I been through enough already.”
The man’s eyebrows pressed and clobbered. He expanded, taller, darker. “Been through enough?” the man said — calmness evaporating. “I have a farm to run, and now I’m behind on work and hafta put down a good horse because of you!” The wooden creaking floor; the small bed; the buzzing flies; the small boy. “Don’t you tell me what you deserve! It’s my job to teach you how to be a man. Now turn around and drop your pants.”
Flashing, the man saw a battle internal inside and within the boy. Witnessing — the man and the boy within the boy; the boldness and the terror; the spirit and the flesh. Then a victory. “No,” the boy repeated, meeting the man’s gaze.
Now a battle within the man — love and anger; fatherhood and fury. “Boy, you listen to me!” the man said as he lunged toward the boy grabbing him and bending him over the bed. The whipping of the belt — harder than he meant to, gripping the leather tighter than he meant to.
The boy screamed and struggled and raged. The man held him, but then he, realizing his own rage, loosened his grip enough for the boy to free himself but not enough for the boy to realize the man had allowed him to do so. Across the wooden creaking floor and away from the small bed in the small room, the boy fled.
He raged outside, dumping bags of cattle feed and scattering the chickens. He took a metal pipe and slammed it against the side of the barn as he screamed words that were not words but the communications of an animal. This new and unknown rage erupted until it was no more. Or if not no more, buried then, lurking and ugly.
The sun crossed the sky. Wind blew over the fields of wagging grain. An old pickup truck groaned and bounced up the dirt road toward the farm. The boy watched from the hill that he had been sitting on for nearly an hour now, the farm spreading and rushing out around him. The old man that stepped out of the truck had a bronze complexion and a beard of pure white. Bent by time and seasoned by experience, he stood, turning his head toward the hill.
Wearing a gentle smile, and walking unhurriedly and with effort, the old man approached the boy, leaving the worn path and traversing the grassy hill. The boy waited, saying nothing, his eyes like a slow pendulum between the grass and the old man.
“Hey old chap,” the old man said, his smile ever present, his hands open, his spirit felt — almost as if he wore it like a coat. The boy did not look up, pendulum pausing. “Let’s go for a ride,” the old man said.
Another sway of the pendulum. “Now?” the boy asked.
“Yessir, now’s just as good o’ time as any, I’d say.”
The truck rolled slowly down the road until it came to a diner at the corner of two streets. They sat down next to each other in a booth, a clean and shining table before them. The boy could see the deep lines in the old man’s face, bordering a set of sparkling blue ocean eyes. It was his father’s face and not his father’s face. He heard, flashing in the recesses of his mind, the reverberating sound of boots on steps. And feeling came the seizing in his gut.
“Did you order everything you’d like?” the old man said. “You got a burger and fries, but how ‘bout a milkshake, too? You like milkshakes don’t ya?”
“I’m alright, Grandpa,” the boy said.
“Nonsense,” the old man said smiling. “Waiter!” he called. “Get this boy a chocolate milkshake, please. Large. Extra cherries on top.” He winked at the boy.
“Thank you,” the boy said quietly. His eyes held their redness. He thought. With earnestness he asked, “Why are you being so nice to me? You know what I done.”
The old man straightened. “Can’t an old man treat his grandson to a milkshake?”
The boys eyes were cold and unchanged. His mind held a knowledge of his actions and his smallness, the significance of his trouble and his own insignificance. “Just get on with it. I know I’m a troublemaker. I know I shouldn’ta done it. I know I’m no good.” The boy did not look up as he spoke. “And to be honest, I can’t take waiting for you to give me a talkin’ to any longer, so please sir — I don’t mean any disrespect — just… just get on with it.”
Shining, the old man’s eyes, and kind. “Son,” he said, pausing, pausing for a long while, “I am sorry to hear about Daisy.” Then silence. Space and time and silence. Not gaping but filled, not a hole but a whole. How? A hand, a branch, withered and used to used up, nearly, but strong, very strong, placed on the boy’s shoulder, with arm wrapping around the boy, holding the boy like a cradle. The stone casing; the fury; the rage; the small boy. Peace.
The boy looked up at the old man. Time inescapable had cut lines in his face, lines that curved toward heaven. A drop, just a single drop, a tear fell in and out of the cuts, falling from glazed and downcast eyes, a grief in a drop that fell to the shining and clean table, from a face as motionless as ice yet as moving as a symphony.
An opening, a space unknown for a time and rediscovered, like a flower in spring; a blooming, a freshness, a lifting of life.
“I’m really gonna miss her,” the boy said.
“We’ll all miss her,” said the old man. “Daisy was — is — a special horse, and a fine horse. It will be hard to say goodbye, at least for now. I reckon there are times in life when we grow up a lot in just a little bit o’ time. Trouble is you’re never quite ready. But all things are done in the wisdom of the great and gracious Lord God. Daisy will be in the stars with Him, I suppose, pastures without end.”
The old man paused, seeing tears again brimming in the boy’s eyes. His small frame and his small hands. A treasure, so plain now. The sun. “Do you love her?” he said. Tears and a soft nod. Cradling still, and closer now. “Son, that’s how I feel about you; that’s how I feel about you.”
The boy lay in bed that night. Again the sound on the old wood, loud, unlike an old man. Softly, the opened door. A man, a father, his hat in his hands.
