"Father" by Armin Tolentino

I sat at the kitchen table I guess for an hour trying to untangle the fishing line.  When that became too frustrating, I played with the hook, digging in gently into my thumb, deeper and deeper, easing it in like a cock in a virgin until a bubble of blood began to rise out.  What could he have thought we'd catch with this thing?  And if anything did bite it, would we pull it in with our bare hands?  This is what I was thinking about when I began to think of the box with his clothes and how he, right then, was in a freezer, naked and blue.  In there, it must be as cold as the Chesapeake in December.  Outside it was a perfectly warm night with lightning bugs flickering on and off on our lawn, and I thought tomorrow was going to come on me in a few hours and so would my mother and my brother and some psychiatrist and kids at school.  Tomorrow was going to crash on top of me and I was terrified of it.  I tried to come back to that nothing that I felt those months on the streets with Paul, but I couldn't hold onto that feeling.  Instead there was a vise clenching around my chest and my mind couldn't focus on a single point.  I never planned on coming back home and I didn't know what I was supposed to do now. 

I guess I started crying again, pretty loudly because my brother came downstairs, pillow creases etched on his cheek.  I looked at him, but he wouldn't look back.  His hair was darker than mine.  He was six inches shorter than me, but probably weighed more.  He started playing football last year.  Seeing it was just me crying, he started out of the kitchen.

"Charlie..." I said and he stopped, but didn't turn around.  I was the only one who still called him Charlie.  He made everyone else call him Charles.  I wanted to tell him about Paul, how Paul died and no one gave a shit and he'd be thrown into an incinerator like trash in a week.  I wanted to tell him about the football I bought for him--for us--to play with that day after our father left, but I could see how much he hated me in the tightness around his shoulders, the rapid breathing.

"Charlie, I'm sorry."

He turned around and his face was wet with tears.  "You're a coward just like dad."  That's when an angel dropped this line in my head, the last thing Paul was trying to tell me before he died, when I wasn't listening.  He was going to teach me how to fish on my birthday.  He died without ceremony in a cell like a stray dog while cops were drinking coffee and doing crossword puzzles.

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