A Father Has a Talk with His Son
It would be turning cold soon, so Woodrow was hard at work in the garden on the edge of the forest, pulling carrots out of the dirt, when his son came home from his new school with a question for him: “Dad, do you know how to chuck wood?”
Woodrow turned away from his work, brushed the dirt from his hair, and looked at his son. He’d known his whole life that this day would come, but knowing didn’t make the reality of it any easier to bear. “How come you to ask me that?”
“The guys in gym class asked me how much wood I could chuck.”
“They did, huh? And what did you say?”
“I told them I didn’t know.”
“And what’d they do then?”
“They laughed.”
“I bet they never asked you that at your old school, did they?”
“No, sir.”
Woodrow sighed. He hadn’t wanted to move, but Mrs. Woodrow wanted to be closer to her sisters, so they’d moved. He’d tried to warn her about moving to a more mixed neighborhood, but she’d pooh-poohed him. Now this. “Technically, asking someone how much wood they can chuck is the same as asking them how much wood they can throw. To chuck something is to throw something. So, for instance, I might say, ‘Help me chuck these carrots here into a pile over there.’ But those guys in gym class, they don’t care how much wood you can throw.”
“Then why did they ask me?”
Woodrow told his son that he’d be right back. He dropped down into the burrow that he’d dug the family for the winter, and when he climbed back out, he was carrying two cold bottles of hard cider. He sat down next to his son and held one of the bottles out to him. “If you’re old enough to deal with this shit, you’re old enough to have an adult beverage with your dad.”
“Really?”
“Really.” He clinked his bottle against his son’s. “Drink up. But don’t tell your mother.”
While they drank and watched the sun set big and orange behind the pines, Woodrow provided an explanation much like the one he himself had received at around his son’s age from his own father. He explained that their kind were, for some inexplicable reason, often the butt of immature jokes made by other woodland creatures, especially foxes. “Were any of these boys foxes?”
“Yes, sir. Most of them.”
“Of course they were. They’re the worst. Always have been. They think they’re so sleek and sly and cool. Well, so what if they are?” Memories of the foxes of his youth came to him, making him angrier. “They think it’s so funny to say that we eat wood. Did you tell them we don’t?”
“No, sir. They didn’t say anything about that.”
“I mean, I’ve had to eat bark before, but that was a long time ago, before I met your mother, when times were hard. You’ve certainly never had to.” More fox memories came to him, memories of how they used to run in circles around him, yipping and taking turns nipping at his tail. “I do a pretty good job of keeping us in grass and veggies, don’t I?”
“Yes, sir.”
Woodrow finished his bottle of hard cider and dropped down the burrow hole to retrieve another one. When he returned, he asked, “They didn’t call you a whistle pig, did they?”
“No, sir. What’s a — ”
“It’s like calling a porcupine a stab rabbit or a skunk a fart squirrel. You’ll hear it soon enough, I’m sure.” He said nothing more for a while; he just drank and watched the night absorb the last of the day’s light. After coming back up with his third hard cider, he said, “The next time they mouth off to you, you have my permission give them a little of this.” He flashed the sharp, burrow-digging claws of his left paw through the air in a Z like Zorro. “I let too many foxes push me around when I was your age, and I’ve regretted it all my life. They may be faster, but you’re bigger and stronger. Don’t you ever forget that. And don’t let them ever forget that, either. Draw blood if necessary.”
“But won’t I get into trouble?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll handle that principal of yours, that silly-ass barking squirrel, Mr. Rocky.”
“So, blood? Really? You wouldn’t get mad?”
“Not at all. I’d be proud. The next time this happens, let it flow. Let it flood. They’ve had it coming for forever. Now go do homework until it’s time for dinner. Your mother’s been working hard on it all afternoon.”
Woodrow Jr. shimmied down the hole, leaving his father by himself in the dark with what remained of his third hard cider, the effects of which he could feel pulsing pleasantly throughout his body. When he noticed the bottle that his son had left in the grass, he smiled. It was nearly full. He decided that, before burrowing down for the night, he’d drink that one, too. He drew in a deep lungful of air and thought of his son becoming a woodchuck that other woodchucks would admire — a woodchuck unlike himself, in other words. How wonderful that would be, to be the father of such a proud, revengeful creature. He imagined his boy coming home with claws stained with the blood of haughty foxes. For too long they’d run roughshod over every wood and forest. It was time for a reckoning. And, yeah, maybe he hadn’t been the one with the guts to deliver this reckoning himself, but he hoped that maybe he’d sired it.
He was really starting to feel the cider now. He laughed into the dark. How much wood, indeed. His boy would show them how much wood can be chucked, all right. He’d show those motherfuckers.
Kevin Grauke has published work in such places as The Threepenny Review, The Southern Review, StoryQuarterly, Fiction, and Quarterly West. He is also the author of Shadows of Men (Queen’s Ferry), winner of the Steven Turner Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. He’s a Contributing Editor at Story, and he teaches at La Salle University in Philadelphia. Twitter: @kevingrauke
