Hunting Pop
by Mark Putzi
We assume he’s in the city. He wouldn’t want to be driving drunk too much, although he has several places on the outskirts, peppering the borders. One place we know has a long unpainted roof with cars driving under it. What’s called a cocktail lounge attached to a hotel where truckers stay with their escorts, the kind of people he likes and spends his time with. We’ve never actually found him there, but Mom says she’s been there with him and “he seemed to like it.” She remembers him talking with the bartender and then she struggles to try to figure out what the bartender’s name was. I’m guessing she assumes it’s the same bartender all the time, but I don’t see why it would be. That’s because, when I think of a “cocktail lounge,” I see a place that’s open past hours, that’s serving drinks too at 6 am to the truckers and escorts, Pops kind of people. He fits in places like that.
I’m wondering why she’s so insistent on him coming home. It’s always frustrating. He’s home every two three days or so and waiting for him is a pain in the ass because Mom’s constantly acting worried, calls herself a “worry wart,” whatever that is, and takes it out on anybody near her. Once she clocked me in the ear, the one that gets infected all the time, hit me so hard my earlobe stuck to the side of my head, and I had to like peel it off. It felt raw and I ran to the bathroom to look at it, and it was red and blistered. It would come and go that, what they called eczema, but when she clocked me, it was bad, climbed all the way up to the top of my ear, and I kind of wondered why it didn’t just spread all over me. And then I thought, it must be the shadow, you know, like from my ear. It must like not being in the light. I had something there. Always, in the parts of you that you don’t show because the darkness, makes it warm there and moist, something it likes. Like when I go down in the basement, just to be by myself, and I can’t hear them down there because of the furnace, when it starts up and makes that whirring noise and then POW, it lights, I think and then it makes a louder whirring. And I can be by myself down there. I don’t have to worry about them, my brothers and sisters. They all have their places too, the places they like to go.
Mom always takes me in the car. I don’t understand why it always has to be me, because Azalia’s older by one year and I have two brothers, Ansell and Abel. But I don’t tell her she should take one of them. They wouldn’t know exactly how to do it. I’ve done it before. I’m the one she sends in. I know how to ask business like, make it an obligation, make it feel like there’s some responsibility to it, not be all pathetic and weepy, not make it seem like there’s a need. It’s just there’s a matter of work tomorrow for him. We’re reminding him. He shouldn’t lose another job, or he won’t have money for the bar. He needs to come home and get some rest.
But when we go out like this, we almost never find him. The bartenders, they’ve gotten to be friends with him, and they throw us off, say he’s here, he’s there. He hasn’t been here. Haven’t seen him all week. Then they laugh. Everybody laughs in the bar and even me. Even I understand. I’m the one who’s out of place here. The truckers, they’re fine where they are, the escorts, the old couple sitting in the corner, the delivery boy, the dog barking in the back room behind the bar. You’ve been told it’s the kitchen, but there’s no one ever cooking there, and you don’t smell food. And the bars got like hundreds of bottles lined up against a mirror in the back so that doubles the size of them. It’s dark except for there, right there, with the lights lining the top of the mirror, sparkling through the bottles, shining up the whole back of the bar, and the bartender stands in front silhouetted there so it’s hard to see his expression when he tells you he hasn’t seen him, not today, then makes a suggestion, “He might be at SoAndSo’s. I hear there’s a party.”
We run over to SoAndSo’s, mom crying now driving, and you wonder how safe that is. But you can’t pull the seat belt out because the car’s too old and rickety, and hitting a pothole the whole thing shakes, and rocks, Pop says it needs a new suspension. You’ve seen ads on TV. Monroe shocks and struts, and you wonder specifically, “Does it need a shock or a strut or maybe both?” Or maybe it would still rock like a rowboat no matter how many things you replaced. It’s an old car, after all, and you wonder what people must feel like when they drive around in a new car. Once when Pop took you through the car wash and you got to ride through and watch the rags dragging back and forth and the spray soap and the rinse and then the blower, you remember Pop paid and hanging from a little peg board at the counter you saw air fresheners and one of them said, “New Car Smell.” So, you took it down from the peg board and sniffed it so you could know how a new car smelled, and then you wondered why would anyone want to smell like that? So, you grab one in the shape of a tree that says “Evergreen” and that one smells better. And you grab one in the shape of a deer with antlers that says “Buckskin” and that one smells better, and Pop grabs all three out of your hands and says we’re not buying those, and you tell him you were just smelling them. Then Pop paid and off you went, and the car was bright and clean and still wet in some places, the old car, with a new wax shine. And you’d drive down the street, and it was summertime, not like wintertime, you drive two blocks through a puddle and have to wash the car all over again. Of course, you make it fun most of the time washing the car with the hose and spraying each other, you and your siblings, and the bucket of soap and water, and sponges and little towels called schamee’s. You wonder how a little towel ever got a name like that. And you think it can’t be true, because schamee has the word sham in it, so it must be a lie, whoever it was who told you want it was called. They were lying to you. They did it because they knew you didn’t know what they were really called. But at some point, you just don’t react anymore when someone lies to you. You know they’re lying, and you just can’t say so because you don’t know what the truth is.
At SoAndSo’s, Mom wants you to check inside for him. And you can hear outside, the party, laughter, and music. It’s not anything you want to be doing, walking in there, spoiling everybody’s good time. But maybe you can hide yourself. You’re not really dressed for the occasion. It’s wintertime. You have your heavy coat on, so you pull the hood up and cover your face as much as you can, but the bouncer at the door stops you, says you’re too young to go in, and you tell him you’re just looking for your Pop, but he won’t let you. So, when you tell Mom, she’s pissed and gets out, has a word with the bouncer, and then the both of you go inside, you and Mom, because the bouncer says it’s ok for you if Mom comes with you. And then the party. Mom walks right through the middle of the dance floor with you behind, both hooded in our coats, right up to the bar in back and asks the bartender about she names him and says he’s her husband. And the bartender, toweling off a glass, says he hasn’t seen him and suggests another place where he might be. So, you walk just as deliberately back through the dancing couples and not listening to the noise and out the door and into the car. And Mom’s leaning up with her forehead on the steering wheel crying.
After you get home, you get undressed and into bed, but maybe half an hour later, she wakes you and tells you she wants to talk to you in the living room. Your two brothers are still sleeping. Both of them are younger, so you know why she won’t take them, why it’s your responsibility. There’s a light on in the living room over the couch, and you can see she’s been reading the Bible, it’s turned open to a page with a bookmark stuffed into the spine between pages, a red bookmark that looks like it’s made of silk or something. She asks you to sit across from her in the lounge chair. She faces you with a very calm look. Mom tells you you’re the man of the house now, and wondering what that means, you say ok. She says she wants you to promise you’ll never treat a woman the way Pop treats her. And you promise right away. Then she makes you promise a couple more times about a couple more things.
You go back to bed, and she tells you she’ll be up reading a little while longer. You know better than to ask about Pop, where he might be, when she thinks he might be home. You understand she can’t answer a question she don’t know the answer to.
Regardless of his behavior, she took him back. Not even an ashtray filled with lipstick-stained cigarette butts could convince her. They’d, every one of them, been extinguished in exactly the same way, crushed and twisted, splitting each filter directly in two, leaving each at an angle between 5 and 40 degrees, all like little boomerangs. The priest insisted on an annulment, but she wouldn’t have it, didn’t want each of her children ending up a bastard. And, in divorce, the priest told her, she’d be excommunicated. She accepted her position as a sacrificial vow, embracing her choice of husband, setting a place at the family table for both his excursions and himself. In this way, Pop never disappointed her, made her understand she would always be subservient to his whims, no matter their stupidity.
We listened to them scream at each other. We powwowed, discussed our positions relative to their influence. We vowed to separate ourselves from them as early on as we could muster. But only one of us–one sister and the youngest–proved to be true to her word. The remainder crawled back to them, then, suffering as a family, welcomed our guest as a slew of fine enablers, each of us crushed and extinguished between her ghostly fingers. We felt her kiss depositing a red stain on us all, our hair lit on fire, and each burned like Joan D’Arc, caught in our blood ties, and forever stained. And did we, each of us, conclude it was inevitable, this suffering or some other? Did we each, on a daily basis, accept ourselves and heal? Did we know more so than a happy family what became of original sin? We only imagined, and carried with us who we were, bastards anyway.
I’m wondering why she’s so insistent on him coming home. It’s always frustrating. He’s home every two three days or so and waiting for him is a pain in the ass because Mom’s constantly acting worried, calls herself a “worry wart,” whatever that is, and takes it out on anybody near her. Once she clocked me in the ear, the one that gets infected all the time, hit me so hard my earlobe stuck to the side of my head, and I had to like peel it off. It felt raw and I ran to the bathroom to look at it, and it was red and blistered. It would come and go that, what they called eczema, but when she clocked me, it was bad, climbed all the way up to the top of my ear, and I kind of wondered why it didn’t just spread all over me. And then I thought, it must be the shadow, you know, like from my ear. It must like not being in the light. I had something there. Always, in the parts of you that you don’t show because the darkness, makes it warm there and moist, something it likes. Like when I go down in the basement, just to be by myself, and I can’t hear them down there because of the furnace, when it starts up and makes that whirring noise and then POW, it lights, I think and then it makes a louder whirring. And I can be by myself down there. I don’t have to worry about them, my brothers and sisters. They all have their places too, the places they like to go.
Mom always takes me in the car. I don’t understand why it always has to be me, because Azalia’s older by one year and I have two brothers, Ansell and Abel. But I don’t tell her she should take one of them. They wouldn’t know exactly how to do it. I’ve done it before. I’m the one she sends in. I know how to ask business like, make it an obligation, make it feel like there’s some responsibility to it, not be all pathetic and weepy, not make it seem like there’s a need. It’s just there’s a matter of work tomorrow for him. We’re reminding him. He shouldn’t lose another job, or he won’t have money for the bar. He needs to come home and get some rest.
But when we go out like this, we almost never find him. The bartenders, they’ve gotten to be friends with him, and they throw us off, say he’s here, he’s there. He hasn’t been here. Haven’t seen him all week. Then they laugh. Everybody laughs in the bar and even me. Even I understand. I’m the one who’s out of place here. The truckers, they’re fine where they are, the escorts, the old couple sitting in the corner, the delivery boy, the dog barking in the back room behind the bar. You’ve been told it’s the kitchen, but there’s no one ever cooking there, and you don’t smell food. And the bars got like hundreds of bottles lined up against a mirror in the back so that doubles the size of them. It’s dark except for there, right there, with the lights lining the top of the mirror, sparkling through the bottles, shining up the whole back of the bar, and the bartender stands in front silhouetted there so it’s hard to see his expression when he tells you he hasn’t seen him, not today, then makes a suggestion, “He might be at SoAndSo’s. I hear there’s a party.”
We run over to SoAndSo’s, mom crying now driving, and you wonder how safe that is. But you can’t pull the seat belt out because the car’s too old and rickety, and hitting a pothole the whole thing shakes, and rocks, Pop says it needs a new suspension. You’ve seen ads on TV. Monroe shocks and struts, and you wonder specifically, “Does it need a shock or a strut or maybe both?” Or maybe it would still rock like a rowboat no matter how many things you replaced. It’s an old car, after all, and you wonder what people must feel like when they drive around in a new car. Once when Pop took you through the car wash and you got to ride through and watch the rags dragging back and forth and the spray soap and the rinse and then the blower, you remember Pop paid and hanging from a little peg board at the counter you saw air fresheners and one of them said, “New Car Smell.” So, you took it down from the peg board and sniffed it so you could know how a new car smelled, and then you wondered why would anyone want to smell like that? So, you grab one in the shape of a tree that says “Evergreen” and that one smells better. And you grab one in the shape of a deer with antlers that says “Buckskin” and that one smells better, and Pop grabs all three out of your hands and says we’re not buying those, and you tell him you were just smelling them. Then Pop paid and off you went, and the car was bright and clean and still wet in some places, the old car, with a new wax shine. And you’d drive down the street, and it was summertime, not like wintertime, you drive two blocks through a puddle and have to wash the car all over again. Of course, you make it fun most of the time washing the car with the hose and spraying each other, you and your siblings, and the bucket of soap and water, and sponges and little towels called schamee’s. You wonder how a little towel ever got a name like that. And you think it can’t be true, because schamee has the word sham in it, so it must be a lie, whoever it was who told you want it was called. They were lying to you. They did it because they knew you didn’t know what they were really called. But at some point, you just don’t react anymore when someone lies to you. You know they’re lying, and you just can’t say so because you don’t know what the truth is.
At SoAndSo’s, Mom wants you to check inside for him. And you can hear outside, the party, laughter, and music. It’s not anything you want to be doing, walking in there, spoiling everybody’s good time. But maybe you can hide yourself. You’re not really dressed for the occasion. It’s wintertime. You have your heavy coat on, so you pull the hood up and cover your face as much as you can, but the bouncer at the door stops you, says you’re too young to go in, and you tell him you’re just looking for your Pop, but he won’t let you. So, when you tell Mom, she’s pissed and gets out, has a word with the bouncer, and then the both of you go inside, you and Mom, because the bouncer says it’s ok for you if Mom comes with you. And then the party. Mom walks right through the middle of the dance floor with you behind, both hooded in our coats, right up to the bar in back and asks the bartender about she names him and says he’s her husband. And the bartender, toweling off a glass, says he hasn’t seen him and suggests another place where he might be. So, you walk just as deliberately back through the dancing couples and not listening to the noise and out the door and into the car. And Mom’s leaning up with her forehead on the steering wheel crying.
After you get home, you get undressed and into bed, but maybe half an hour later, she wakes you and tells you she wants to talk to you in the living room. Your two brothers are still sleeping. Both of them are younger, so you know why she won’t take them, why it’s your responsibility. There’s a light on in the living room over the couch, and you can see she’s been reading the Bible, it’s turned open to a page with a bookmark stuffed into the spine between pages, a red bookmark that looks like it’s made of silk or something. She asks you to sit across from her in the lounge chair. She faces you with a very calm look. Mom tells you you’re the man of the house now, and wondering what that means, you say ok. She says she wants you to promise you’ll never treat a woman the way Pop treats her. And you promise right away. Then she makes you promise a couple more times about a couple more things.
You go back to bed, and she tells you she’ll be up reading a little while longer. You know better than to ask about Pop, where he might be, when she thinks he might be home. You understand she can’t answer a question she don’t know the answer to.
Regardless of his behavior, she took him back. Not even an ashtray filled with lipstick-stained cigarette butts could convince her. They’d, every one of them, been extinguished in exactly the same way, crushed and twisted, splitting each filter directly in two, leaving each at an angle between 5 and 40 degrees, all like little boomerangs. The priest insisted on an annulment, but she wouldn’t have it, didn’t want each of her children ending up a bastard. And, in divorce, the priest told her, she’d be excommunicated. She accepted her position as a sacrificial vow, embracing her choice of husband, setting a place at the family table for both his excursions and himself. In this way, Pop never disappointed her, made her understand she would always be subservient to his whims, no matter their stupidity.
We listened to them scream at each other. We powwowed, discussed our positions relative to their influence. We vowed to separate ourselves from them as early on as we could muster. But only one of us–one sister and the youngest–proved to be true to her word. The remainder crawled back to them, then, suffering as a family, welcomed our guest as a slew of fine enablers, each of us crushed and extinguished between her ghostly fingers. We felt her kiss depositing a red stain on us all, our hair lit on fire, and each burned like Joan D’Arc, caught in our blood ties, and forever stained. And did we, each of us, conclude it was inevitable, this suffering or some other? Did we each, on a daily basis, accept ourselves and heal? Did we know more so than a happy family what became of original sin? We only imagined, and carried with us who we were, bastards anyway.
Mark Putzi received an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1990. He has published fiction and poetry, both in print and online, in the US and in many other countries. Most recently, his short story "The Dictator" appeared in Griffel #9 and "AM Radio Inspires With Hope" appeared in Barzakh Magazine. He lives in Milwaukee and works as a retail pharmacist.