Never Say That

Never underestimate the power of a child’s words. They may not have many to choose from, but when they find the right subject-verb agreement, it’ll floor you faster than a plastic stegosaurus.

Sometimes, they say something so adorable, you feel compelled to pick them up, purse your lips against their forehead, and freebase the innocence straight from their cranium. One time, Becca–my one and only little lady–put a dollar in a panhandler’s cup and asked, “Can I play in your fort now?” Unfortunately for me, the bum said yes, and instead of basking in my daughter’s naieveté, I spent the next thirty minutes sopping up her tears with my sleeve while trying to explain why I wouldn’t let her rummage through the homeless man’s cardboard castle.

Kids are also capable of channeling an astounding amount of sympathy. Case in point, at my mother’s funeral, when Becca comforted me by saying, “Is okay, Daddy. I be your mommy now.” I don’t know if that promise magically altered my gray matter or what, but from that moment on, I couldn’t look at Becca without seeing little traces of my mother: the mannerisms, the mole on her right cheek, the missing teeth–the cancer treatments made my mom’s teeth more fragile than daisy petals. Seeing the woman who gave birth to you in the girl you gave life to is oddly comforting.

But little ladies aren’t all pigtails and endearing speech impediments. There’s a darkness lurking not so deep inside each and every one of them, and in Becca’s case, it rises like the Kraken right around bath time. It was then–no more than a day after making her noble pledge–that Becca told me she hated me for the first time. “I HAT YOU,” if we’re being specific, but I knew what she meant. And all because I told her scotch is only for adults with dead mothers.

I was in no mood or emotional state to hear her declaration of hate, but even that didn’t disturb me as much as the string of syllables that rolled out of her mouth earlier this afternoon. There we were–me, Becca, and our matriarch, Jennifer–enjoying an idyllic autumn day on the state capitol lawn, when Becca came down with a wicked case of the questions: “Why is the sky blue?” “Is Gramma on that cloud?” “Who is he?”

She was pointing to a statue of George Washington, and I, trying to be a good father/American, walked her towards it while relaying all the biographical information Google could provide. That’s when she looked up at me with an ear-to-ear grin and said the worst thing a child could ever say to their parent, “I want to be president.”
In retrospect, I probably should’ve given her proclamation about as much weight as the h-bomb she dropped in the tub–her hair shampooed in a mohawk–but I wasn’t thinking rationally at the moment. All I could picture was my sweet, innocent Becca wearing a Hillary Clinton pantsuit and holding her finger over the big, red button that would usher in the nuclear apocalypse.

“Never–say–that,” I said, putting my pointer finger so close to her nose her eyes crossed and filled with water. Before the first tear could roll down her cheek, she went screaming down the hill towards Jennifer.

“What’s wrong,” Jennifer said, scooping Becca up into her arms and searching for signs of injury.
I caught up to them just in time to hear Becca mumble, “Daddy said I couldn’t be president,” into the wool of Jennifer’s turtleneck.

“Why would you say that?” Jennifer asked, perplexed by my need to squash our daughter’s dreams.

“In my defense, I never said she couldn’t be president,” I argued. “I simply told her to never say she wanted to be president.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want her to be president.”

“WHY?”

“Have you SEEN what it takes to be president these days: the pandering, the backstabbing, the flip-flopping, the begging for money? Think of all the Republicans and Democrats currently running for office and name me one who you’d actually like our daughter to look up to.”

Jennifer thought for a moment, bouncing Becca in a way that made her whimpers sound like a helicopter propeller. “Lincoln,” she said.

“Lincoln Chafee?” I said, nearly swallowing my gum.

“No, Honest Abe Lincoln,” she clarified.

“That’s cheating! I said CURRENTLY running for president.”

“I heard what you said, but I couldn’t think of any.”

“Exactly.”

“THAT’S NOT THE POINT,” Jennifer yelled so loud Becca stifled her sniffles and shot me a look of concern. “Sorry sweetheart,” she said, coaxing Becca’s head back to her neck.

“Then what is?” I whispered, out of respect to Becca’s ears.

“The point,” Jennifer continued, matching my tone, “is that she is three years old. Today she wants to be president, yesterday she wanted to be a butterfly, and there’s no telling what she’ll want to be tomorrow, but whatever it is, we need to support her.”

If Jennifer was holding a microphone in place of our daughter, that was the moment she would’ve dropped it. Ceding defeat, I sidled up to the remaining loves of my life and rested my head against Becca’s back. Her quaking lungs confirmed that she was still pouting about the whole president thing.

“Hey, Becca Bear,” I said, prompting her to bury her head deeper into Jennifer’s neck. “Do you still want to be president?”

Her nodding caused Jennifer and me to rock back and forth like timid concertgoers.

“Then you have my vote.”

Becca turned and placed her arms around my neck, swinging from parent to parent like a baby chimp. Once her velcroed sneakers were affixed to my ribs, she gave me a big kiss on the lips and said, “I love you, Daddy!”

“You can say that again,” I said; so she did, and I realized if I can just teach her to be a moral, honest, and kindhearted person, I’ll never have to worry about her becoming the president.


Written by: Mark Killian
Photograph by: Chris Boyles

The Old Homestead

Henry noses his SUV into the narrow spot next to a cherry red convertible with the top down. He squeezes out and closes the door before Zeus follows him. The dog lets out a displeased whimper from inside the car.

An older man with salt-and-pepper hair gives him a friendly nod. Henry notices he has a new cowboy hat on the dashboard, the tag still on it. The hat’s small and feminine, a turquoise heart encircled in hammered silver, black twine strands secured with a cheap, plastic toggle. Overpriced tourist tchotchkes.

Its owner skulks out of the convenience store, a teenager with a real chip on her shoulder. She wears pastel pink Uggs, cutoff denim shorts, and a pink and white plaid top. She looks like the kind of girl whose name has too many ys as vowels.

“They didn’t have caramel. Ridiculous.” She rolls her eyes and sets a vanilla Frappuccino on the hood, the glass bottle emitting a high-pitched squeak. The man winces and the girl pulls an iPhone from her back pocket. Henry walks into the store as the man attempts to engage her in conversation, monosyllabic responses her weapon of choice.

When Henry returns to his SUV, large Coke in one hand and a bag of Doritos in the other, the man blocks his path, eyes pleading and desperate.

“Bob,” the man introduces himself, “and this is Persephone, my daughter.”

The girl sticks out her hand, not looking up as she continues to text.

“We thought we’d take a little father-daughter getaway this summer, while her mom’s on a trip,” Bob says.

“Jesus, Dad, she’s on her honeymoon,” Persephone groans. Bob blushes, and his brown eyes grow cold and distant before he wills a too-wide smile to appear on his face. His eyes remain sad, and Henry has a hard time looking at him, the divorced dad who’s miserable but trying to keep it together for his kid.

“Anyway,” Bob forces his voice to sound happy, “Persephone loves roadside attractions — ”

“You like them.”

“— and we’re wondering if there are any here. We got some cold cuts for a picnic somewhere on this stretch of highway. With all that dust on your truck, I’d bet my last paycheck you’re a local.”

Henry nods and asks Persephone if he can borrow her iPhone and keys in an address.

“My family’s land,” Henry explains. “Technically it belongs to Uncle Jim, but he went AWOL years ago so we just let it be. Mama says he always turns up, not to mess with it more’n we have to. There’s always been stories about things that happened there when they were kids, like funny lights and weird storms. The kind of rumors you get when military testing facilities are around.

“Anyway, it’s gorgeous, and it’s deserted and peaceful. There’s an old mailbox at the end of the road; you can put your trash in there. I usually check on it once a month, but I’ll swing by this afternoon.”

Bob thanks him and Persephone gives a shrug of approval.

                                                                                                        ***

That afternoon, Henry almost drives by the narrow split of road. He peels off the main road, another motorist protesting the lack of turn signal with a long, loud honk. Zeus braces himself during the swerve and lets out an annoyed bark.

“Sorry, sorry,” Henry mutters as he glances in his rearview mirror.

The SUV bounces along the dirt road when the sky goes bright — a hot, white light blinding him. A stream of obscenities escape his mouth and brakes. Henry exits the car, blinking until his vision returns. Zeus whines and nuzzles against his leg.

The sky has a lilac tint to it, pale where it previously blazed orange and red, a swollen sun setting on the horizon.

Henry has never seen the buildings in person, though he recognizes versions of them from yellowing photographs that also feature his grandparents, mother, and uncle.

The old homestead, no longer in faded two-dimension but standing, real and in front of him and wrong. Green paint peels from the first building. Behind it, a second building fights a losing battle against time, the roof already caved in.

A low, eerie cry comes from the house and Zeus bolts toward the haunted sound. He bounds through wayward drifts of snow on the ground.

Henry fights the survival instincts that tell him to turn back and feeds that dangerous streak of curiosity, the one that got him rattlesnake-bit at fourteen. In the hot summer sun, he can feel the phantom venom throb and pulse under his hand, but in this odd, ethereal thaw he feels nothing but a compulsion to follow his dog’s lead.

Persephone sits, limbs pale and pulled to her chest. She looks up, brown eyes like her father’s, cold and distant.

“Jim said it’s the crossing-time,” Persephone says, “when he can go back, when things can come over. I wandered away. I guess I came over.”

Henry nods, but he does not want to know. He wants to get her out of here, get her to the authorities, and never know the details. Zeus paws at Henry’s legs, eager for permission to go inside.

“Can you stand up? Can you walk?” Henry asks the girl. “We need to leave, right now.”

The cold bite in the air is more than wind and snow. It is something dark, something unsettling. People pray over things they do not understand, and Henry begins to pray..

Henry gets them all into the SUV when the blinding light comes back. And then it is summer again, a stream of police barreling down the main road.

To her credit, Persephone said she wandered off and fell, and when she came to it was Henry who heard her cries for help. Bob didn’t contradict; he'd searched the land for an hour before going to the police and telling them Persephone was missing. The cops were happy the reunion didn’t require a lot of paperwork; they let Henry go without much hassle.

He pulls out his cell phone when he’s down the road, lights and siren behind him.

“Mama —” he begins, but she interrupts.

“You’ll never believe who turned up!”

Written by: Erin Justice

Photograph by: Blake Bronstad