Make and Model

by Nicholas Claro

Years ago, when my father was still alive, I watched him put a cigar out on a kid’s cheek.

I say “kid,” but he was probably closer to twenty than twelve. That made him adult enough.

“He was acting like a dumbass kid,” my father told me later.  

This was the reason for doing what he did. Acting like a dumbass meant acting recklessly. My father said people should strive to act right. It was the least they could do.

My brother and I had been playing near the mouth of the driveway with a large Styrofoam airplane I’d sent soaring over the yard. This was back when we lived at the end of a cul-de-sac on a quiet street in a small town on Long Island. The kind of place where you knew who drove what. My father said he’d never seen the truck before. Or the person—the kid—behind its wheel.

The make and model of the truck were indiscernible due to crude modifications and a paintjob that must have emptied twenty cans of green spray paint. It was lifted. Taller than any car I’d ever seen. And the kid was speeding around the cul-de-sac so that the tires let off an awful screeching noise and emitted thick whorls of white, chemical smoke.

My father believed the odds of the kid rolling the truck over his children were high.

“Back up,” my father shouted to us, waving. And to me he said, “Keep your brother close.”

He got up from the front step.

I put a hand on my brother’s shoulder and moved him further into the yard. He looked at me. I smiled. I said, “It’s all right.”

Then to my father, I said, “What are you going to do?”

He had a look about him I’d never seen.

“Hopefully nothing.”

He’d been chewing on a cigar, and now he paused to strike a match and cupped the flame behind his hand. Tufts of smoke rose from his mouth and were pulled apart by the wind. My father fanned out the match and dropped it into the grass and walked to the street.

At the sidewalk, my father waved his hands over his head.

To my surprise, the truck slowed and stopped. The sickly smell from the tires dissipated. I smelled ocean salt, sweet tobacco, my sweat. The truck idled for a moment before it crept close in front of my father.

The kid unrolled the window.

My father had his back to us. Without looking, he pointed our direction.

“This is a residential street,” he said. “Not a racetrack. Can’t you see my kids playing here?”

The kid revved the engine.

This scared my brother, who was three.

He started to cry.

“You’re okay,” I said, just to say something. I put my arm around his neck and pulled him close, like my father instructed.

When I looked over, my father had climbed onto the running board of the truck. He was yelling—not words, but noise. Sounds. The kid tried to roll the window up, but my father grabbed the pane and held it in place. He removed a hand to yank the cigar from his mouth and…

I’ve already told you what happened.

What I haven’t told you about what happened is that I never in my life want to hear someone cry out in pain like that again.

A chill ran through me then. And I hadn’t realized how much I’d tightened my grip around my brother until he squirmed and through a whimper, said, “You’re hurting me.”

My father got his arm free and hopped off the truck a millisecond before the kid tore off down the street.

He stood there panting with hands on his hips.

Soon, the engine noise disappeared. Somewhere overhead, a seagull let off two piercing keows.

My father walked to my brother and me. Breathing hard, he looked at us. I looked at his right hand so I didn’t have to look at his face. His thumb and index finger were bright red and ashy.

“What?” he said.

I didn’t know what to say. I was scared but wasn’t sure what I was scared of. I looked away, over at the Styrofoam airplane in the yard. A wing had popped off.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”

I unhooked my arm from my brother, who was still crying. My father bent down and picked him up. My brother buried his head in that soft pocket of flesh between my father’s neck and shoulder. My father rubbed my brother’s back. He shushed him; whispered something into his ear. My brother stopped crying. He knuckled one of his eyes.

They walked toward the house. At the front door, my father grabbed the knob, but didn’t turn it.

He glanced at me over his shoulder.

I hadn’t moved.

“Are you coming or what?” he said.

This is the only other time in my life I remember my father going somewhere I wasn’t ready to follow.

 

 

Nicholas Claro holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Wichita State University. His stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and appear or are forthcoming in Louisiana Literature, JMWW, Midway Journal, XRAY, Necessary Fiction, Write or Die Magazine, and others. He is the author of the story collection This Is Where You Are, published by Roadside Press, and the forthcoming collection Sedgwick County, also from Roadside Press. He teaches high school English in Wichita, Kansas.