beautiful father.

This piece was written in 2005. It relied on adopting the style of another author, and using part of their work to inspire your own. Olga Masters' short story 'Call Me Pinkie' was my starting point.


Beautiful Father


“The back of his neck was creased beautifully like a doll’s pleated skirt. When he moved the pleats deepened. His hair grew in and our of his collar touching him lovingly. He made some nice little gentle grunts. My blouse felt too tight for my skinny chest, my throat too tight to swallow…”
- from Olga Masters’ ‘Call Me Pinkie’.

Father glanced up at the house, black against the darkening sky, and swatted a few stray flies from his face. The tall grass and flowers that grew wild along the fence-line, masking the view to the road, rustled in the suddenly cool breeze. Hesitating for a moment, Father walked around the back of the house to the woodshed. He could hear someone inside, and turned the corner to see Nancy, back to him, her hands scrubbing fiercely at a pair of pants with a cake of crumbling yellow soap. She started and turned to face him, a smile spreading quickly across her skinny face.
“Oh Father!” Her voice quavered slightly as she spoke.
A moment later, he greeted her with a broad smile.
“Hullo, Pinkie!” he chuckled, using the name he had given her at birth. “Little washerwoman Pinkie.” Her pale eyes bore into his, her eyebrows standing to attention.

The smile fell from Father’s face as he sat down in the doorway and he groaned slightly, the taut muscles in his back stretching with the movement. He wearily lifted his heavy feet; his boots caked with red clay from the road works. Pinkie watched him as he worked, hypnotised by the rhythmic unlacing of his boots. The wind cooled her burning cheeks and she blinked furiously, turning once more to face the washtub. Father glanced at the sky, watching the dirty smudges of yellow stars that had begun to appear in the distance. Behind him, Pinkie’s choked voice was breaking the silence.
“Mother’s not sick,” she said earnestly. “She’s getting the tea.”

Father was suddenly cold and the hairs on his arms stood to attention. His gaze fell on the house. Its flaky white paint was peeling around the windowsills, the garden beds a mess of scraggy bushes and wild geraniums. Vines clawed their way up the outside walls, choking out other plants. An open-air veranda fenced in three sides of the house and it was from here that Mother would watch the partially obscured road for hours on end, waiting for a rare passing car to break the silence. At the sound of an engine in the distance, her eyes would become glassy and her face taut, a small smile creeping out at the edges of her lips. Hands gripping the veranda, knuckles white, she would peer out between the rows of May bushes that ran along the fenceline, hoping to catch a glimpse of the car’s shiny duco. But as the cars would pass by the house, leaving in their wake a cloud of brown dust, Mother’s eyes would lose their shine, her hands would become limp again, and her face would settle back into its lines.

”I’ll have to go inside soon,” Father said softly into the stillness. His brown face was creased like leather.
“When I’ve washed the pants I’ll come too,” Pinkie answered loudly. Her voice echoed, staccato, into the darkness. The muscles in her arms twitched involuntarily, like dogs nipping at the heels of strangers. Father showed no sign of having heard her. Standing quickly, he brushed the dirt off the back of his pants and turned toward the house.
Evening had fallen, and the sky stretched bleakly away toward the mountains. Father paused a moment before pushing into the house, running the corns on his hands over the rough and rusty door handle. The old kitchen door screeched loudly as he entered, and slammed shut behind him. The house was cold, dark. Breakfast things were still messily spread over the small kitchen table, and one of the children had emptied the saucepan cupboard of its contents.
“The fire’s out,” a stony voice said from the darkness.
Father turned to see his wife standing in the doorway, her thinning muslin dress loose on her skinny frame. She often moved like that, silent and swift, through the rooms of their small house. Her hollow cheeks gave her the appearance of having constantly pursed lips.
“Hullo Pearlie,” Father said, leaning forward to place a kiss on her cold cheek. She flicked her grey eyes up at him and his heart sank. Little Eric, naked but for a singlet, ran in and threw his arms around Father’s weak knees.
“G’day sport,” Father said, ruffling the boy’s hair.
“The fire’s out. Nancy said she was getting the wood.” Mother moved to the kitchen bench. Outside, Father could hear Nancy’s soft whistling as she washed the pants.
“You know Pinkie’s too small to chop the wood. She can’t get the fire going,” he replied. He glanced at the stove, and it was dead black.
“It’s always ‘Pinkie’,” Mother sneered, spittle forming at the corners of her mouth.
In the bedroom, newly born Clem woke up from his nap and began to cry. Mother let out an exasperated sigh and tears began pricking at her eyes. Glaring at Father, she picked up a teacup and threw it to the floor. Small pieces of china shattered into all corners of the kitchen. Eric began to wail loudly, and clung tighter to his father, who could only look on blankly. Father gripped Eric’s arm tightly, to stop him cutting open his tiny feet and dragging blood through the house. Mother then joined in Eric’s cry with one of her own. Together with Clem, the three of them were like the instruments of a human orchestra, dull and relentless in their song.

“You don’t know! Nancy said she was getting the wood!” Mother flew to the couch, hurtling herself on it and pulling at her unkempt hair with her hands. She rolled her head back and forth on the arm, moaning and weeping. Clem’s shrill cries cut across his brother’s snivelling and his mother’s moans. Tears welled in Father’s eyes. He roughly snapped Eric from his leg and pushed him to the floor, causing him to shriek louder. Father’s face was ugly in the dark light of the cold kitchen, jagged creases forming around his lips and eyes. He pushed open the back door and hurtled down the steps into the woodshed. “Go inside,” he called to Pinkie. He fetched an axe from the workbench. “Inside!” he snapped again. “The fire’s dead out. You had to get wood for the stove!”
“Oh, Father, I know!” Pinkie wailed.
Father began splitting damp wood with hard quick blows, sending pieces flying everywhere. He looked at his daughter, standing there in her dirty clothes. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes moist. His heart lurched and he desperately wanted to hug her. “Inside at once! Nancy!” He growled the last word. It sounded so foreign, coming from his lips, ‘Nancy’. His big arms stretched toward the sky, axe in hand, before he ripped them back to earth, scattering bits of wood in his wake. Pinkie’s lips formed words but her throat wouldn’t speak. The chop of her father’s axe was the beat to her mother’s wailing inside. Pinkie stood still on the back step whilst a bitter wind whipped the evening into frenzy. Father looked over his shoulder at her. He was panting now. Separated by blocks of firewood, Pinkie’s eyes met Father’s. After a moment’s hesitation she turned toward the house, her gaze falling to the ground, the blows of the axe echoing in her ears.

There was a wind, too, one of those winds that come with evening, a wind with a breath of warmth from the day just gone and a chilly edge warning of worse to come.


References

Masters, Olga (1996) Collected Stories, University of Queensland Press, Queensland.