Wrath
The stack of tires hides me from view, masks my teenage fear behind the pungent smell of cured rubber. I cower and watch.
The silhouettes of adult bodies block the front doorway. I can’t make out what is being said. It escalates too fast to gather. My dad turns screaming madman before I can perceive the threat in the room. Someone needs correction. Dad sounds like Jesus when he turned over the seller’s tables in the temple. Angry, but angry over the right things.
Time slows to a crawl but everything’s running through my head too fast. Should I stay hidden? Should I be hiding at all? Do I stand by Dad? Or would he want me to stay clear? Am I a man or still just a boy?
I just started working here, learning to put my hands to use. Dad woke me up on a Saturday morning and whispered to me if I wanted to go into work with him, start learning the family business. What would any thirteen-year-old boy say? Their father asking for their help like that? The passing of the torch. Of course. Of course, I said yes, even if I didn’t want to, even if all I wanted was more sleep.
But I’m not sleeping. I wish I was. I wish I was anywhere else but here with the screaming, and the hollering. I didn’t even know people could scream that loud. It was like he was tearing his vocal cords. Like the screeching of eagles, or else, the final trumpet of God raising the dead. My dad shouts things like, I’ll take every one of you on! And, there’s three of you and just one of me! Maybe, I’m not a man yet. Not at all.
I think it’s over his tire prices. Maybe. It’s something small, though, since it’s over tires. It makes me think he forgets I exist, or at least, that I can hear him. Did he forget he brought me here? Is he wondering where I am? Hearing the things he screams? Seeing him seething, ready to draw blood?
The men aren’t having any of it. They’re terrified. I’ve never seen eyes look that way before. They back out into the parking lot with their hands up and the sun reveals their features as they glow like angels. Dad’s hands are up too, just in a different way. He’s ready to demolish faces, still in the shadows of the tire shop. They have a boy who looks about my age with them, though taller than me, lankier. His eyes are glassy, bloodshot, and he holds his stomach like he’s wounded. Not a man yet either. I feel for him. But I feel for myself more, seeing my father so angry, so unrecognizable to me. I clench my stomach, too.
Dad’s hands finally drop to his side. The boy sees me as I edge out from behind the tires; courage forming when it doesn’t count anymore. Dad turns to check behind him, remembering me, remembering he has a son, and we see each other like it’s the first time we’ve ever gotten a good look. But then I see past him, the boy again, his eyes wild now. I see a fist raised to strike Dad.
A sense of excitement bubbles up underneath the sickness in my stomach. Deep underneath the anxiety and the fear, there’s a rage, a flame I’ve never felt. It squirms to free from a cage. Men are fighters, animals, out of control lunatics who prove themselves through violence, and blood, and through pulverizing flesh and smashing guts and breaking ribs. I picture me bashing blurred faces with my fists, smashing teeth, snapping noses, gouging eyes, taking the teenage boy and stomping his face until I can’t see weakness anymore — in him or in me. He is no angel, so I strip him of anything that reminds me of one.
Voices are behind, in front, circling me. I don’t know where I am anymore. Dad lifts me off the boy as I come to and see a bloody face under my shoe. I’m crying.
Dad screams for them to leave. Leave! I’ve killed someone. No, I’ve gone to hell. I’m dead. Or just a man now.
They carry their fallen boy to the car as blood bubbles at his nostrils. Still alive. I pray for him, harder than I’ve ever prayed for anything or anyone before. They fill their vehicle, laying the boy down in the backseat, and peel off the lot, spewing tiny rocks from their back tires into our large glass window with our prices painted in bold numbers. It’s their only method of retribution. I get it.
I feel like me and Dad both just got tossed out of paradise, though he’s the only person to ever tell me about it.
I feel naked.
We stand in front of the tire shop, hands down, faces down, tears streaming, both without words to share. I want to say something, anything — a prayer, an apology — I want to yell at him for ever trying to fight to begin with, for screaming so loud, for bringing me here, but nothing comes out. Nothing at all.
“Wrath” by CG Miller, first printed in Brilliant Flash Fiction, January 2021, reprinted by permission of CG Miller
