Bonus Pater Familias

by Jack Gayer

CHAPTER XXXV

New Hampshire, 1994

The white pickup truck tore down the road. 12-year-old Tyler Wells rode in the passenger seat next to his father, John Wells. They rode with both windows down, Tyler's sandy blonde hair flapping in its overgrown bowl cut. He rode without a seatbelt and surfed the passing wind with his hand. His Gap jeans were bunched at the ankle, having been folded several times over. His shirtsleeves hung wide and extended past his elbows.

His father spat into a faded Styrofoam cup. His arms poked out of his Prussian blue New England Patriots t-shirt. His legs appeared out of ripped cargo shorts like stirring sticks in a cup of coffee. He wore white sneakers, and his protuberance of a belly contrasted with his thin appendages. He tweaked the radio knobs — steering off a soccer game as he muttered about sissy European faggots. He settled on a talk radio station. The flinty yet pleasingly voiced host lambasted Bill Clinton as a “tax and spend” president. Someone who had unequivocally failed to live up to any campaign promises. However, the host teased a sense of hope. Dick Armey and Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America.” John nodded along to the station with a curled sneer on his face.

The view outside the truck blurred with the blue-yellow of a Blockbuster Video, the brilliant red and white of a Friendly's restaurant, and a geometric RadioShack. Forest after endless forest: red-yellow sugar maples like upside-down pears, monolithic beeches, spindly, piss-yellow birches with haggard white-green trunks like mold growing on a femur. Roadside shops sold fireworks, long, thin rockets, and short, fat ones like stacks of quarters.

On the edge of town, off exit 15, they shot past the town's only theater: a Nickelodeon showing Reservoir Dogs, Glengarry Glen Ross, and the X-rated Bad Lieutenant. The scent of pine and burning leaves tumbled into the truck, mingling with the scent of dip.

They pulled into a Western Auto. Tyler was told to wait inside the truck. When his father returned nearly twenty minutes later, he carried the aromas of burnt coffee and grease with him. A brown paper bag in his hand contained a fuel cap and spark plugs. Chewing on a pickle, John threw the plastic wrapper on the street before getting in the truck. From previous visits, Tyler had spied the stained coffeemaker—nestled in packrat clutter behind the counter. The machine perpetually harbored several inches of oil black coffee.

Inside the store, men had ruffled Tyler’s hair and offered him Cokes. The men loomed. They invariably had monstrous guts and mouths full of stained and missing teeth. They smelled of either sawdust, fry oil, paint, or alcohol. Once, a man had brushed the back of his hand against Tyler's crotch. The back of his fingers had seemed to dance like a spider's legs over Tyler’s young groin.

At bars and barbeques, football Sundays, and July 4ths, these same men's eyes swam when they told Tyler they loved his dad. The men tiptoed the fine edge of middle age. They had sex with other men's wives in closets and locked offices. They drove trucks and SUVs. They watched television for an average of five hours a day. Many had grown up in the same town they now worked in. They drank cheap beer and had pinch-faced wives with names like Sharon, Joan, or Barbara. Their kids played hockey in winter, baseball in spring, and football in the fall. They went to colleges that were in-state. Few had passports or library cards. Many of the adults never bothered to vote but still held strong political opinions—ready to be whipped out at a moment’s notice like a coupon book in the grocery store. The girls knew to keep the sexual assaults to themselves, and the boys knew it was all in good fun.

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