Father’s Day
By David Barringer
THE cemetery was packed on Father’s Day.
The neighbors screwed in their hot tub again. I was driving
to the gym for a sauna. I pass the cemetery when I drive to
the gym. Packed, I couldn’t believe. I had been painting
for two days. So many fathers. You don’t think. Women
standing around. She screamed. He didn’t even hush her.
I was wearing a mask. They tell you wear a mask because of the
particles. And your lungs, your lungs accept the particles into
their alveoli, or maybe I’m making that up, but particles
in the lungs, that’s not a positive. They don’t
have kids. Maybe they’re trying. Who tries in a hot tub?
Nails were popping. Out of the ceiling. Little raised hives
in orderly rows. They should have used glue or screws. You’d
think they’d have been embarrassed. Nope. I use the spackle
and let it dry and sand it when it’s dry and wear a white
mask like a surgeon. Sweat like a bitch in that mask. Windows
open. She grunts. You hear the splashes, splash splash splash
while I’m sweating in the mask. I spread the spackle into
the cracks where the nails popped and let it dry and sand the
spackle and breathe shallow and keep the window open and the
fan aimed out the window. I’m using the roller in proper
diagonal-pattern fashion and thinking I’d like to screw
in a hot tub some day. Never have. Might. Days to come. Paint
this ceiling, sell this house. Move. Move to a neighborhood
where people don’t screw in their backyards every Saturday
night. I’d like to screw in the backyard a Saturday night
or two, just to say. One or two. Father’s Day. The fan
was black, black plastic, and as the sanded spackle dust was
sucked through the blades and coated the blades, I thought probably
none made it out through the window, there was so much on the
blades. Or maybe there was a white cloud smoking out the window
and up into the night sky and drifting and settling across the
yards onto the shoulders of a grunting woman splash-humping
in a hot tub feeling my white dust on her neck thinking what
the hell is it snowing? Two days I was painting. The sauna,
wow, it was great. Was. The sauna was great. It’s what
I like to do there, at the gym. Cleans the pores. Cleans the
gunk. There’s something about a dry heat and the hot rocks
and the cedar planks and the lungs, the lungs are open and it’s
like there is no boundary there the lungs are open to empathic
cedar-plank hot-rock ventilation it’s like you’re
cracked open in a womb the temperature of your own body and
you wouldn’t be surprised to look down and see the twin
pink lobes hanging right there in your ribs, pink as they please.
I’m glad to see them, and I think they know it. Thank
you. I say, Thank you. Thank you very much for being there and
being pink and warm and I thought you might like the cedar-scented
air, you’re welcome. I wore the mask, I thought you might
appreciate that, you’re welcome. Some nights this neighbor
in a wheelchair shoots off fireworks from the street across
the way, shoots them over the houses, waking up babies, I imagine.
The cops never come, that’s something. And he did it that
night after I got back from the sauna, and me and the kids and
the wife went out and we all each got on one of our swings,
and we were swinging at night watching fireworks burst above
rooftops. The exploded papers were floating down on us and all
around us, onto our lawns and they were still burning, a shower
of cinders you could mistake for fireflies, and we were swinging
into them and out of them, back and forth, floating and flying
and going out in the damp grass in our backyard. That was a
good night. Fireworks and the swinging and all of us. They invited
us once to come over for sangria and a little dip in the old
hot tub and I had a picture you know what picture in my mind
and I said thank you but I have another room to paint. But next
time. And Happy Father’s Day.
....
read medicine by David
Barringer
read name that quote
by David Barringer
....
David Barringer's third
collection of fiction, We Were Ugly So We Made Beautiful Things,
is now available from Word Riot Press, it includes a beautifugly
introduction by Steve Almond and artwork by Eduardo Recife.
Site: www.davidbarringer.com
Email: curious@davidbarringer.com
