Steering

Flash Fiction

An aunt gave him a five-dollar bill in a birthday card. The thank you was barely out of his mouth when his dad took the bill.

His father’s smile that day was burned into his memory like a sunset contrasts with a calm ocean.

The smile wasn’t pleasant, or loving, it was the smile of someone who thought they were doing you a favor, unlocking a secret passage, pulling an exotic fruit from a tree.

“This is going in your car fund.”

He nodded and smiled back, he remembered nodding and smiling, in a way a naive eight-year-old would.

OK, a car fund.

Like of course, all kids had those, right?

Years later it was plainer than unbuttered white toast that the car fund was his father’s dream, not his, and at fourteen he simply, though brazenly, asked why.

Why?

Maybe I don’t want a car.

Maybe there are ten other things I could buy right now.

And then the story came, though his father wasn’t given to stories,  about how kids teased him because his own father had taken the bus to work. How his father brought him to work one day, on the east side, and how they had gotten robbed on the way home, right on the bus, as the sun set on Mack Avenue and the slush splattered ladies waiting for the bus and the bus was for losers and that’s why a car fund, you ungrateful brat.

He carried a picture of his father in his wallet, his father watering the lawn, alone, concentrating, intent on a green lawn, and cars in the garage.

He got a little per diem from the theater company, not much, but appreciated, and he would see his father’s face and tan arms when he slipped the money in his wallet.

Then he’d get on the bus, and sit in front, and ask whoever was riding if they’d like to hear a song.

Sometimes they’d say fuck no, and sometimes they’d ignore him, and sometimes a woman with slush on the hem of her coat would say “that would be lovely, young man.”

And sometimes they’d applaud and he would thank them and think you can’t get that driving alone in a car.

***

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