Prodigal Sons

by Mike Miner

  Dreams and reality collided that night, tumbling one on top of the other. They would never fully separate again. A creature perched on his chest. Tiny eyes examined him. His mother consoled him. Small sharp teeth tested his skin. “Let me get some goddamned sleep!” his father bellowed.

  In the morning, his mother’s heavy steps in his bedroom woke him. An odd intake of her breath caught his attention. Her fingers touched his face. The spots she touched stung.

  A gasp. “David!” The fear in her voice opened Luke’s eyes and pulled the hair on the back of his neck tight. “Oh, Luke. David!” She looked up at the corners of the ceiling. She clutched him to her. Trying, too late, to protect him.

  What could have done this, they wondered. Mr. Flanagan remembered a crawlspace above Luke’s bedroom. Mr. Flanagan’s mother used to hide Christmas presents up there. Bats? Maybe one had squeezed through an old grate and found Luke in his bed.

  He never slept well again.

  His father took him to the hospital.

  The nurse at the ER was kind, gentle. “How did you get these cuts, Luke?” He wasn’t sure, he told her, then the doctor. The doctor looked at his wounds, each one, touching the new scabs, shaking his head as though puzzled.

  “What do you think, doc?” Luke’s father asked. “A bat?”

  The doctor didn’t answer, instead examining his young patient’s fingernails. Luke looked too, saw the dried blood there. Then the doctor met eyes with Luke, kind eyes, worried eyes. “Luke, the nurse is going to clean up these cuts.” The doctor stood. “I’m just going to show your father something. We’ll be right back.”

  His father rubbed the back of Luke’s neck. A rare show of affection. Don’t go, Luke wanted to shout, don’t tell my dad, he wanted to beg the doctor. They stepped into the hallway outside. When he returned, Mr. Flanagan looked like a man who had too far to swim in water too deep. Spooked. He looked at his son, at the self-inflicted wounds on his face, on his arms, couldn’t think of anything to say. Luke had never seen his father cry before. It was terrifying.

  Then they went home.

  The inevitable question from his mother. “What happened? A bat?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What exactly?”

  Luke stared at his feet, at his fingers, wondering, how he could have done this to himself. There wasn’t a monster in the closet, it was in his head, in his hands. While his father tried to explain things to his mother, Luke chewed his fingernails to the quick.

  They took him to another doctor. She didn’t look like a doctor, more like someone’s nice grandma. A little woman with a gentle voice who wore soft sweaters and asked about his dreams. Luke claimed he couldn’t remember, that he hadn’t had that dream in a while. The scabs on his face healed. From studying the faces of grown-ups, he learned to give them the answers they wanted, tried to appear normal.

  He learned to suffer in silence. When his monsters woke him up at night, when they swooped at him during recess, he was quiet, bit his tongue, tried to control his shivers. An elaborate game that he couldn’t tell anyone about, not his family, not his friends, not even his brothers. A lonely way to grow up. Sixteen years later, he would still wake up fighting them off. They had never left him. He hadn’t told anyone.

  Lunch with his father meant a shower and a shave. In his old bathroom, a wave of nostalgia. He tried on childhood memories and feelings like an old pair of jeans that didn’t quite fit anymore.

  Clean towels were a rare thing in his life. He took his time, enjoyed the feeling on his skin. Even the smell was soft. He composed a quick haiku.

  scrubbing soft towel

  smells of clean smells of laundry

  drying my body

  Basho didn’t have anything to worry about. Luke enjoyed focusing his thoughts with a nice haiku once in a while.

  “Hey. I have no clean clothes,” he shouted downstairs.

  His mother, “Always the planner aren’t you?”

  “I’ll do the funny stuff.”

  “There’s a bunch of clothes Matthew never took to California in the closet up there. All his winter clothes.”

  She was right. His mother was a walking bank of this sort of knowledge. Information just waiting for one of her sons to need it. There were a half-dozen plaid flannel shirts and a few pairs of jeans. He stole some underwear and socks from Matthew’s old dresser.

  Downstairs his mother ironed some clothes and watched ESPNews with him. Over the years she’d picked up a fair amount of sports knowledge by osmosis. Peter Gammons was reporting that Duquette was “very close” to signing Manny Ramirez away from Cleveland.

  “Why would he leave Cleveland for that nuthouse?” his mother asked.

  It was a valid point. Luke tried not to read too much into her question. Why would Manny Ramirez leave nice, safe Cleveland where everyone loved him? There were larger issues at work here for his mother.

  “I don’t know.” Logic could play only so big a part. It was too bad for Cleveland but hey, all was fair in love and baseball. One had to wonder if logic was a factor in anything Manny Ramirez did. He decided to remember that line at lunch. The Red Sox were always a safe topic during meals.

  Lunch with the old man. The agenda was understood. What the fuck was Luke doing with his life? His father arrived.

  The black Acura glided up the long, curved driveway into the garage. Mr. Flanagan opened the door and stomped his feet on the rug there on the square tile entrance way. Luke waited for him to take off his coat but he didn’t. Instead, he looked at his son and raised his eyebrows.

  “Did you decide where we’re going?”

  Luke shrugged and regretted it. His father was in no mood for shrugs.

  “Let’s just go to Shady Glen.”

  “Let’s go somewhere I can get a beer.” Mr. Flanagan threw his car keys at Luke. “Cheney’s. You’re driving.”

  Luke cringed.

  Worse even than the living-room talk was the father-son-driving talk. It always felt like he was fifteen again and his father was teaching him to drive. Luke was a bad driver on his best day. Dad riding shotgun didn’t help either. Even worse than verbal criticism were his father’s groans or sudden quick breaths. The day Luke got his license, he’d taken a left turn too sharp, clipped an old lady’s Chevy. This broke Matthew’s previous record—a speeding ticket a week after he’d gotten his license, doing ninety-five in a fifty-five on I384. The Flanagan boys and motor vehicles didn’t mix.

  Luke gripped the steering wheel, taking it slow on the twisting bobsled run Case Mountain Road became in the winter. The Acura’s steering was tight, a bad thing in icy conditions.

  “Easy on the brakes,” his father said.

  Luke winced and remembered what Matthew told him to do in this situation. “Just drive like a bat out of hell. The old man won’t be able to remember why he’s mad at you.” Luke didn’t quite have the balls for that. Besides, he really couldn’t afford to piss his father off right now.

  Cheney’s was on Main Street. The Christmas decorations hadn’t been taken down yet. Stars arched across the road, Jesus was still in the manger in front of the library, Santa Clauses and snowmen painted on the front windows of businesses, a Grinch depicted playing the drums on the door of Beller’s Music Shop. Like fallen angels, Luke’s bats watched from atop the tinseled banners hanging from the streetlights.

  The pleasant smell of smoke and beer permeated the dim pub, starting to fill up for lunch. The bar was named after the first family of Silk City, the Cheneys, who were responsible for the now vacant factory buildings that still dotted the town. The Cheneys had imported silkworms from China and silk built the now-decaying mansions at the end of Main Street where the family had lived. Not much left of the Cheneys now but their name.

  The waitress looked familiar, like everyone in Silk City looked familiar. Small town cute, but tired, not aging well, just like Silk City. Her crooked smile an apology for the state of the town or the state of her life, take your p
ick.

  “What do you have on tap?” Mr. Flanagan asked.

  She listed them.

  “I’ll have a Bass.” Mr. Flanagan seemed to be tasting it as he spoke the name.

  “Newcastle,” Luke said.

  ESPN bass fishing was on one television, The Days of Our Lives was on the other. Luke faced the soap opera. Sand fell through an hour glass. Then a woman crying to someone (her lover?) but the sound was too low to hear. Luke watched the program and waited for his father to say something. His father seemed riveted by the bass fishing. Finally the waitress, whose name tag said Vikki, put their beers in front of them.

  “Thank you, Vikki,” his father said.

  “You fellas ready to order?”

  They were and they did.

  Mr. Flanagan smiled and chuckled at his son. This always made Luke feel like his mind was being read.

  “So you’ve quit a perfectly good job.”

  Luke stared at the TV. The woman slapped the man.

  “With a boss who clearly liked you, liked the job you were doing.”

  The woman stormed out of the room and after a long reaction shot of the man rubbing his face, the picture cut to commercial.

  “Do you mind looking at me when I talk to you?”

  I do, Luke thought, but decided to humor his father.

  Mr. Flanagan sighed.

  Luke continued to stare without focusing. His eyes felt dry.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “Twenty-five.” His father’s eyes turned far away. “That’s about right.”

  “What is?”

  “That’s how old I was when I left your grandfather’s store.”

  “You what?”

  “You never knew?”

  Luke shook his head.

  Their food arrived. A burger for Luke, a Reuben for his father.

  “Yup. Just before I married your mother, I’d had enough of your grandfather and working with her brother, and I needed a change.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I was a sales rep for a few years.”

  “But you hate sales reps.”

  “I know. I hated being one.”

  “Wow. How did you come back to the store?”

  Mr. Flanagan paused, watched someone catch a monster bass. “I quit my job.”

  Luke smiled and took a bite of his burger. “So you quit a perfectly good job?”

  A sheepish grin tugged at his father’s face.

  “What the hell were you thinking?”

  Mr. Flanagan tore into his sandwich.

  Luke was tempted to tell his father about his nightmares. What would he say? Would he understand? No, Luke was never going back to that place. He couldn’t risk telling a soul. Instead, he bit his thumbnail.

  “The economy wasn’t so great. After a few months, I didn’t have much choice. I had to go back to work for your grandfather.”

  Luke could see his parents now, Luke’s age, trying to figure out what to do.

  “So you already had two kids.”

  Mr. Flanagan nodded. “Believe it or not, I do know what you boys are going through.”

  This was a new way of seeing his father. He tried a French fry. It was too hot.

  “You’re not married so I suppose you can do what you want.”

  Unlike Matthew, Luke thought.

  “Do you know what you want to do?”

  Luke took a sip of beer. “Nope.”

  Mr. Flanagan nodded.

  “Did you know?”

  “I still don’t.”

  For some reason Luke found this comforting.

  “Right now all I want to do is find your fucking brother.”

  Luke took another bite of his burger and savored the fact that he was not in trouble. Just like when he was little, Luke could still count on Matthew to be in deeper shit than he was.

  Overhead, the soap opera woman looked smug.

  Back at the house, Mrs. Flanagan looked pleased with herself and Luke realized she’d made his father take it easy. Always protecting her children. He recalled a few occasions when she had literally saved Matthew’s life. Grabbing Mr. Flanagan’s cocked fist or belt. “Enough David.” Magical words.

  “Any word from Matthew?” his father asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Out of boredom, Luke decided to get the mail. The brisk walk down the driveway to the mailbox seemed about the right sized task for him. He wanted to get out of the house but not too far.

  “I think I’ll go get the mail,” he told his mother.

  “Stop the presses.”

  Luke nodded, amused. Sarcasm was mainly how his family interacted. A good way of avoiding emotion. He stepped into a pair of tall, waterproof boots and put on his heavy pea coat. A pair of gloves completed the outfit.

  Once he got through the garage and onto the driveway, the rubber soles made a satisfying quack on the thin layer of tightly packed snow. His father called them duck boots. The cold breeze felt good on his cheeks, in his hair. The snow kept a record of each quacking footstep. Ice cracked, the bare trees shivered.

  The mailbox was jammed full. A catalog of catalogs, a wad of windowed envelopes, Luke trudged back to the house, flipping through them when he came to a postcard from the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. He stopped. The wind clawed at the corners of the postcard between his thumb and forefinger but he held it tight, staring at the picture on the front. Couldn’t be anyone else. He turned the postcard over. Saw the handwriting. For some reason he raised the postcard to his nose. It just smelled like mail.

  He read it twice before walking back. Then he started reading between the lines. JTF? Jack The Fool. He smiled and shook his head. Why send the postcard? Why not call? He shrugged. Dad was going to flip. Vegas? Jesus.

  In the house, he stomped his feet. Snow shook loose. His mother sat by the window eyes pasted to a tiny pair of binoculars, bird watching. She put them down and looked at him.

  “Anything good?”

  The postcard was still separate from the rest of the mail.

  “Whattaya got there?”

  He enjoyed the few seconds before she would know. Instead of answering, he put the rest of the mail on the kitchen table and took off his coat.

  His mother waited. Reluctantly, took the postcard. She looked at him for comfort he couldn’t offer. Her reaction did not make for pleasant watching.

  A small laugh died in her throat, tears welled in her eyes. She had to wipe them to keep reading. Her face contorted, a battle of expressions; pain, anger and confusion had a tug of war. A knot in his stomach. Finally, anger won.

  “Luke, this is not how men behave, not real men. When you lose someone you love, you don’t run away from home, you don’t give up.” The tiredness seemed to leave her; she sat straighter, flexed her jaw.

  “What do you do, Mom?”

  She squinted at him. “Listen carefully, my son. You go get her. You fight for her. You kill or die for her.”

  “So what should we do?”

  His mother stood. “Same rules apply when you lose a son or a brother. Call your father. Tell him to get his ass home.”

  She walked upstairs, muttering to herself about all the things she didn’t raise her son to do. Every few minutes she sneezed, something she did only when she was very upset. Matthew had made her sneeze a lot.

  Luke read it again. Sat at the kitchen table and looked at the front of the postcard for a while. Looked like a fun place. He pictured his brother there, wondered if Matthew had any idea how much pain he was causing. Did he care? Luke tried to imagine doing the same thing. Had trouble imagining people caring about him so much.

  He called his father at the store. “I think you might want to come home.”

  “Matthew?”

  “Yup.”

  “Did he call?”

  “Nope.”

  “What is it?”

  “He sent a postcard.”

  A long sigh. “I’ll be r
ight there.”

  Luke sat in the family room. He made a fist with his right hand and punched into his open left palm until his father showed up.

  When Mr. Flanagan was finished with the postcard, he made a laughing noise but didn’t smile. Nothing was funny.

  “Vegas?”

  Luke figured this was rhetorical but nodded just in case.

  “Las fucking Vegas.”

  He nodded again. It was like saying it was raining when you were standing out in it without an umbrella.

  “That’s his solution?”

  What was there to say to that?

  “Asshole has no job. Wife has split.”

  Luke waited. He’d finish eventually. He wondered if his father was even speaking to him.

  “What are you smiling at?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Damn right nothing. Jesus H. Christ.”

  Luke always wondered what the H stood for.

  Mr. Flanagan rubbed his face with his hands and breathed heavily. He looked tired, his jowly cheeks drooped, like all that was keeping his heavy body standing was his furious blue eyes. He opened the glass cabinet, took out two wineglasses. He opened a bottle. Filled each with red.

  Luke took a sip. A California Syrah. Tasty.

  Mr. Flanagan pounded down half the glass.

  “Where’s Mom?”

  Luke looked up at the ceiling. No noise.

  Mr. Flanagan nodded. “How’d she take it?”

  “Not as good as you.”

  A wry smile.

  “I’m gonna fucking kill that boy,” his father said very quietly.

  “He’s no boy.”

  “He’s no man.”

  Luke smiled, raised his eyebrows.

  Mr. Flanagan finished his wine and looked up at the ceiling.

  Luke took his second sip, hints of chocolate, berry.

  “Here we go.”

  Luke raised his glass. “Cheers.”

  His father’s heavy footsteps creaked up the stairs. Luke drank his wine and half listened to the voices and creaking movements of his parents above him. Nothing surprising. He checked SportsCenter. They were still reporting on Manny Ramirez. His slugging numbers compared favorably with guys like Jimmy Foxx and Babe Ruth. Luke found himself salivating. Peter Gammons said it would be great for Boston. The Yankees signed Mussina. It was that kind of day.