Happy People Live Here

by C. Sean McGee

9B

  The Father always liked, when he was walking on loose gravel, to scrunch his feet in a kind of way that made all the rocks squash under his feet and spread out like an arid wake and more than the comet like footprint, he enjoyed the sound that his foot made, pressing into and pushing around, the little rocks with every step.

  On their way back to the car, it was Korine who was squashing her feet into the loose gravel and twisting as she lifted so that her footsteps looked like small boulders had smashed into the earth and disintegrated. She didn’t make any noise while she did it. It was enough to hear the sound of the rocks turning and splashing outwards.

  This was something The Father loved to do.

  Now, though, the sound irritated him.

  He didn’t speak to the girl at all, not since she threw herself at him. He wanted to. He knew that for sure. There was a torrent of emotion coursing through his veins. It was almost spoiling from his eyes. But it wasn’t one thing that he could explain. It wasn’t clear and definable. He had no idea at all, what he wanted to say.

  So he stared straight ahead and held his daughter’s hand, not by the wrist as he had watched other father’s doing, courting their children along the sidewalk like luggage. He didn’t do this. When he thought about this day, about picking her up, he imagined that it might have been something that he would have done, carrying her out to the car like a soiled garment or a live grenade.

  They stopped at the car.

  The lot was completely empty except for two birds, sitting on a telephone wire.

  The Father turned the car slowly. Part of him hoped maybe that the car was not his or that the key would snap and it would break and they wouldn’t be able to continue their journey. He hoped that something would happen. He just didn’t know what.

  Korine climbed up into the car. She was so excited that she didn’t plant her foot properly and she slipped, hitting her knee on a plastic toy. It didn’t’ cut or anything, but it did graze her and the part of her knee that she hit, it was glowing white.

  “Ow,” she yelled. “I hurt my knee dada. Dada it hurts” she said, over and over, gripping onto her knee as The Father picked her from her crumpled state and placed her in her seat.

  The girl wept out loud.

  It was loud and screeching

  The Father closed his eyes. He imagined himself hearing nothing, sitting in a white room where even his self was invisible; where he couldn’t see his own hands, where he casted no shadow and where he was mute to, even the sound of his own breathing.

  “Dada,” the girl said. “Dada,” she said again. And “Dada” this and “Dada” that and “I don’t wanna wear a belt” and “No Dada” and “You’re annoying Dada” and “Please Dada” and “I wanna sit in the front seat” and “I hate you” and “I hate you” some more and…..

  The Father stared at the girl and he heard nothing.

  He watched her lips move.

  He tightened the belt.

  But he heard nothing.

  Not a word.

  The Father drove the car as if it were driving itself. He was hardly awake and hardly attentive to what was happening around him. The whole time since they left the clinic, he hadn’t once looked at her. It was as if she was some wound that he knew was severe but of which would only become so at first sight. And he dared not look. He dared not look in her eyes and see, how deep her injury ran.

  Maybe he could look away, for as long as it took.

  For her to get better on her own.

  “Where’s mummy?” said Korine.

  The Father looked in the rear view mirror. Korine was strapped in her seat which was tucked behind the passenger seat. He couldn’t see her from where he was looking. And that was why he was looking there.

  He stared at his own reflection.

  Into his own eyes.

  His daughter was fidgety in her seat, squirming to free her arms of the tight bind. She did it so quietly that The Father had no inkling as he sat in the front seat, his hands working on their own accord; flicking the indicator and turning the wheel while his eyes and his thoughts and his conscious self, they stared at his reflection and they tried to imagine what others saw and whether this empty stare, whether they had seen this on the faces of other fathers - other well-to-do fathers.

  “I want the window open,” the girl said.

  She was already leaning over to wind it down.

  The father turned and saw her free and leaning over, her face pressed against the handle.

  “Sit back now. Sit the fuck back up. Korine. Fucking sit up straight now” he screamed.

  Her attention was the chopping block of which he beat down upon with his words.

  “Sit back now. It’s dangerous. Put your seatbelt on. Korine!” he shouted in rising fashion as if he were raising the back of his hand or an old leather belt.

  “No,” she said defiantly. “I want the window open. I don’t want the seatbelt. It’s too tight. It hurts. I don’t want to go home. I want to go to the park. I want to go to the park. I wanna go to…”

  “Sit the fuck back in your seat. Now!”

  The girl sat back.

  She kicked her feet and crossed her arms.

  “We’re on a freeway. This is dangerous. You can’t take your seatbelt off ok? Ok?” he repeated, this time shouting.

  “Ok,” she said.

  The Father turned back to the road.

  “Annoying,” she said in protest.

  The Father turned to the stereo and flicked the switch. He hadn’t heard this song in so long, even though he had been listening to it on the way here, it just felt different this time. He was looking at the sound differently. The music was turning his mind like a spiral toward the infinity of his sinking thoughts. And he went with the flute and the marching procession of drums and he imagined himself singing as the man on the record did.

  But he couldn’t sing like that.

  “I want the chicken song,” Korine said in the backseat.

  The Father tried to ignore her.

  Maybe if she just listened like he did, to the brooding piano, she could shut up.

  “I don’t like this song. Your music is annoying. You’re annoying. I want the chicken song. I want the chicken song. I want the chicken song. I want the chicken song. I want the…”

  “Fuck it. Fuck it. Whatever. Alright, you fucking win. Always whatever you want. Here, the fucking chicken song.”

  The Father changed the cd.

  It was a song about a chicken. The chicken had ten toes. The chicken didn’t like salami. And the chicken goes, wherever the chicken goes. And the chicken has a friend. And he’s a bright orange fox. And they were best of friends forever.

  The Father felt a hot wave of panic rush through his body. Listening to the words and his daughter sing them wrong and off key and out of time, his condition only worsened. He felt as if an oncologist were listing off all of his conditions and things that he should expect and before the end comes, which would be soon, he should have his house in order, he should settle, all of the end that until point, had been wound in and out of one another and picked at so much, that it was hard to tell, which problem belonged to which person.

  He felt that quiet urgency.

  As if there was nothing he could.

  Except what had to be done.

  “I’m hungry,” Korine said.

  “Ok,” said The Father. “Do you want ice-cream?”

  Korine clapped her hands excitedly.

  “Yay, I want ice-cream,” she said, tucking her arms back into the slips of her seat belt and sitting herself upright. “I want strawberry. Red is my favorite color. Green is your favorite color dada. Is there green ice-cream?”

  The Father thought for a second.

  “Mint,” he said.

  “What is that?”

  “It’s ice-cream.”

  “But what is mint?”

  “Mint is… mint.”

  “What is mint?” she screamed.


  She was about to cry, he could feel it in his nerves.

  “It’s green,” he said, “Mint is green.”

  “Is mint your favorite ice-cream?” asked Korine.

  “Yes,” said The Father, even though it wasn’t.

  He didn’t have one.

  Though he didn’t care for chocolate.

  Or vanilla.