weathercock

Turn and watch the light... | short fiction

Apr 14, 2025

Da wanted something less shamefaced than what he got. The first time Ma plopped me in his cactus arms he snorted, “A blebby dumb shit, ain’t it?”

Ma cursed him, stealing me away, pressing me flat to her humming throat as he laughed his face into a mad sunrise.

The walls spoke with the scratchy hum of Da’s records, his Great War big bands and their huckster bugles and the breakneck ragtime that tickled the stucco when his stool pigeons came for whiskey.

Ma sat with me as the walls sang. I watched through crib slats as she stitched tinkertoy mobiles from pipe cleaners and sardine cans. She hung them above the crib. They jellyfished over me, tanging the nursery with a sweet brine. “Turn, my love,” she said, her eyes puffy, “Turn and watch the light."

Da and Ma are on the couch watching the game. Da’s got a bottle between his knees, fondling its lip with his finger. I’m on the floor, legs splayed, tracing perfect circles in the shag. Da ninja stars a Kraft square at my scalp. It hits with a cold plop. My mouth strains into a wet egg. Hot decibels boil my throat. Ma giggles and flashes light to show the web-kin:

Cutie!

Aww!

Wtfs wrong with his head?

My teeth start wiggling. Ma tied a string to the first one, yanked quick and pressed a folded towel onto my gums. "You're gonna get rich off that tooth fairy!" She put the bloody enamel in my palm and told me to tuck it under my pillow. That night, I woke to a broad shadow at the bed's foot, perfuming my room with sweat and Marlboros. Come morning, there’s no dollar, only the tooth, still warm from my head. Ma won’t meet my eyes when I show her.

My birthday cake was lopsided, its northeast quadrant smushed by transit. Ma stuck six candles in, lighting them with Da’s Zippo. Da’s chair is empty. She pecks my forehead. “Make a wish,” she says, brushing a crumb off my cheek. I raspberry the lights out and sniff in the smoke. Ma applauds and puts a big slice on the special birthday boy's plate. Her wrist is purple when she sets it down. A port-wine bloom peekaboos out her sleeve.

By the time I’m grown enough for school, Da’s gone more often than not, working odd hours at the factory or drowning in moonshine rivers. One morning, Ma drives me to a lopsided brick building. The door farts as she heaves it open. The inside is wet animal crackers and dried apple juice sucking my feet. We reach a door. I cling to Ma’s leg as a strange lady rubs my nape and sweet-talks me, hell-bent to lure me into a room of doe-eyed others. Ma plays with my hair; it’s okay, she says, I’m a nice boy, she says, and everyone knows it.

The sun is high when she comes. I run to her leg, crying. She says I am good and handsome and good handsome boys get ice cream. We both get vanilla. “You’re a big man now!” she says, wiping ice cream from my cheek. “You need a big man coat!” We go to Target and she buys me Legos and lets me pick whatever color coat I like. I choose yellow and her smile curls inward like I’ve fed her a dollop of sunlight.

Meatloaf for dinner. Da’s cutting his loaf with medical strokes. Ma fills the silence with stories about how the strange lady said I was a good boy. Da sees my new yellow on the coat rack. “How much?” Ma tells and he crushes a beer can. I tell Ma how the others spit at me and called me things as I perp march pruned peas around my plate. She puts a cold hand on my arm and looks to Da, expecting some wise nugget but he just stares, chewing with his mouth full, squeezing the dead can in his fist.

At school I learn quick to keep my head down. The other kids ask, “Does it hurt?” and throw rocks when I try to join their games. At recess, a boy with scabby knees follows me, muttering mean words. When I don’t turn around he shoves me and I fall to my hands and knees. “Aww is the freak gonna cry?” I don’t. I don’t cry. I crawl under the oak and sit, digging my nails into the soles of my shoes. When the bell rings, I don’t move until the teacher calls my name twice.

Ma is waiting at the curb, leaning against the car with crossed arms. She’s always on time, parked just past the flagpole. “How was it today?” she asks as I slide into the seat. I press my stinging hands into my lap. “Okay,” I say. She exhales through her nose like she almost believes me. At the next light, she pulls a bandaid from her purse and wraps my palm without a word.

When we get home we make cookies and watch cartoons until bedtime.

I came down after my alarm, dressed and ready. Ma’s in the kitchen, wearing her robe, scraping jelly on my toast. She turned when she heard footsteps; she’s wearing sunglasses and a half-smile. She limped over and gave me my toast. At the kiss and drop she pecked my forehead and told me how clumsy she was.

The bell rang fifty minutes ago and she’s not at the flag pole. No one is. All the others are gone. The bench is cold on my bum. I trace circles in the dirt with my Sketchers watching the maples flash their foam-white bellies. Everything’s glazed with ignored aquarium brown. It’s been twenty minutes since I’ve seen a car, ten since the janitor left.

I am watching the stained cotton loom in the west when I hear the Pop Rocks of pebbles in a wheelwell. The wind puts cookies in my nose and tousles my hair. I turn into it and see Da’s blue Chevy sidewinding into the lot. One tire goes over the curb as he sputters into park. He unfolds himself, gets upright, and looks around Meerkat-ish. The leaves have settled back into their green. My hair falls back into my eyes. I grab my bag and walk.

I climb into the Chevy. The air is moist wool and bleach. He scowl-smiles and throws a paper bag into my lap. “For the ride,” he slurs. Inside is a single clementine, its skin tight and bright with inertia.

He says nothing. He cranks up his big bands and bounces his leg. His eyes are milk saucers ping-ponging from windshield to rearview. He drives fast and his right hand is a slick with a maroon veneer. I don’t know where we are anymore and it makes me hungry. I want cookies, but I settle for the clementine. I peel it and let the orange oil cling to my lips.

Da drives until the road runs out. He slows the Chevy and stops on a windy bluff where the sea lays gray and rowdy below. Da steps out, grabs a bottle from the floor and walks to the edge wiping his hand on the seat of his pants. The wind tears at his hair and coat. For a moment it looks like he might lift off. He stands, his toes over the bluff, sipping. I suspect I am meant to join him. I walk over, tonguing the worms of clementine flesh in my teeth as my feet flash blue red blue red in the scruff.

Together we watch the weathercock atop the old church spin frantic as the storm rolls in. The maples are all belly. The sky burned toast. The first raindrop falls cool and sharp on my cheek. Da takes a sip. The rain turns heavy but we do nothing. We stand and soak to the bone. When Da finishes the bottle he starts for the Chevy without a word. I follow. He doesn’t drive right away. He just sits, dripping behind the wheel, head tipped back and eyes closed. Rehydrated red glowing like lipstick in his nail beds as the thrown Goose bottle drums against his steeltoes.

I climb onto the dashboard, pressing my hands against the glass, watching the weathercock twist and turn like a cornered rodent against the blackened sky. The rain comes harder, streaking the windshield. I trace the rivulets with my fingertip, craving a pattern, a direction, something. Beside me, Da’s humming a half-familiar tune, something slow and sad. I close my eyes and smell the brine of Ma’s tinkertoys floating overhead in the quiet of young eyes.

When I open them again, the storm has swallowed the church, the bluff, the horizon. The weathercock is gone. The world is nothing but wind and rain and bleach and the faint hum of a song I almost remember.