My Son Sam
I want to tell you about my son Sam. He was my first child, and the most evil of all my children. But of course I still loved him. How could a father not love his son? It was 1976 when Sam was born. I was living in Idaho and working as a lumberjack. I lied about my age to get the job. Sometimes people thought I was 25 or older but I didn’t want to overdo it so I told the foreman I was 18.
Cutting trees was hard work but I never complained. I got three square meals a day and a pretty damn good paycheck at the end of the month. I knew my mother would turn over in her grave if she knew her son was doing manual labor but I loved the outdoors and I was dying to get away from school. I wanted to experience life first-hand. I didn’t want to sit in a classroom and read about it in books.
Things went really well for the first couple of months. We were paid by the number of trees we cut down and although it was dog eat dog, nobody ever bothered me because I was too small to threaten anyone else’s paycheck. I got along well with the other lumberjacks. I decided to stick around for a few more years until I had enough money to move on.
But I missed women. There had been a lot of girls in my school in Wisconsin, but in Idaho, out in the forest, the only girl was the foreman’s daughter. Her name was Magina. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen and she was kind too. She would bring us water while we were working. No one joked about her or gave her any shit. She was like an angel. Sometimes she would sing to us. We would often join in on her during the song and she would laugh when we sang off key. But she never laughed in a cruel way. She laughed in a way that made you love her. She was really a girl after my own heart. But what could I do? I couldn’t even hope against hope. I had no chance. The only women I had were the ones in the dirty magazines the lumberjacks passed around. Sometimes I would find a far off place in the woods, look at the dirty pictures and dream of Magina.
One day I was in the woods jacking off when I heard a noise behind me. I turned around and saw Magina. She had caught me off guard. I immediately pulled up my pants and started to run away when I heard her call out, “Don’t run! Please! Come back!” I stopped running and turned around. Magina smiled. “You don’t have to be embarrassed about that. It’s a natural thing. I do it too. If you want, we can do it together.” I couldn’t believe it. I always took it for granted that Magina would not be interested in me and now here she was talking to me in the woods! We talked for hours. I was never very good at small talk but with Magina it was easy. She made me feel like a king. She was interested in all my opinions.
After that day we continued our meetings in the woods. She would sneak out of the house, making sure the coast was clear and no one was following her, we would go on long walks together. We kept our relationship secret until one spring day five months later when I got down on my knees and proposed to her. Fireworks went off in my head when I heard her say yes.
We had a happy wedding. Magina’s father accepted me as his son-in-law and spent a lot of money on a huge wedding. After the wedding everyone went to the dining room and pigged out. The food was delicious. After dinner I kissed Magina and carried her out the door to her father’s house. We smiled at each other and promised that we would stick it out no matter what happened. Our marriage would last.
The first few months married to Magina were like walking in a dream. We were really a happy couple. Magina got pregnant. I couldn’t wait to become a father. We moved all of the old things in the store room to make room for the baby. But life isn’t a fairy tale and good things never last. Magina died shortly after giving birth. She died in my arms before the doctor could come.
It took me weeks and weeks to get over it. I stopped working and would just sit on the bathroom floor hour after hour, with my hand in the toilet. Magina’s father tried to snap me out of it, but nothing worked. Magina’s mother took care of the baby but she was too busy to do a good job. So most of the time, the baby just lay on the bed with no one to talk to it. It just lay there, looking at the ceiling.
One day, while I was looking in the toilet, I suddenly realized I had to stop feeling sorry for myself and start taking care of the baby. I stood up and went to the baby’s room. I didn’t know very much about babies, but I figured I could play it by ear. When I went into the bedroom the baby didn’t even recognize me. It cried when I picked it up. I felt nervous. To break the ice I smiled and tickled it. The baby smiled too. But his smile wasn’t a normal smile. It was evil.
I named the baby Sam. I still had to work to make ends meet, so I hired a nursemaid to take care of him. She was only 20 years old, but soon after she started work, she died of a heart attack. The second nursemaid died too. She jumped out of a window. The third nursemaid killed herself by drinking rat poison. The fourth died in a car accident. When the 23rd nursemaid died, I knew something was wrong. I decided not to hire any more nursemaids. I quit my job, borrowed some money and moved to New York. I had a fool proof plan. I would use the borrowed money to buy a hotel.
The hotel plan worked well. I could work and take care of Sam at the same time. I even had extra time to start dating again. There were a lot of M women in New York. But most of my girlfriends died before I had a chance to really get to know them. I even fell in love with a woman that was working at the U.N. stamping out world hunger. But she got hit by a truck.
The years passed. Sam was ten years old. I spent my afternoons teaching him how to play basketball. When I was young I was the best player in my school and I still hadn’t lost my touch. Sam wasn’t very smart. When he saw the basketball for the first time, he smiled and said, “What’s that thingamajig?” But soon he learned to play really well. He spent all his time playing with the other children in the neighborhood, but there were a lot of accidents. After three months, they were all dead. I told Sam he should spend more time studying, but he smiled and said he didn’t give a damn. He said school was boring because most of his teachers were dead. He said if I dropped out, then he could too and I was a hypocrite if I tried to stop him.
Finally I realized the truth. My son was evil. It wasn’t easy to accept the fact that my son was the devil. I started drinking. I would drink every night and the booze wouldn’t wear off until the next afternoon. How could my son have gone bad? I just didn’t understand it. I didn’t know what to do. I was on the fence. Should I call a priest and have him exorcised, or should I kill him myself? It was tough decision. Finally I decided to call a priest. I wasn’t Catholic, but what the hell.
The priest came the next day. He went into the room and told me to wait outside. The whole house was shaking. The sky was dark and I heard terrible screaming coming from my son’s bedroom. I went outside. I couldn’t take it any longer. I sat down on the front step wondering what I should do.
A beautiful woman jogged by. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I jogged after her. She stopped and asked me why I was following her. I looked at her and said, “Beautiful woman, I can’t escape your beauty.”
“Well then, come with me. I live on a houseboat and tomorrow I’m leaving. I need a man. It’s been a long time since I shared my bed.”
“What’s your name?”
“Mintilla.”
“OK, let’s go.” I went with Mintilla. How could I say no? She was an M woman. What happened to Sam? I have no idea. I never saw him again. But sometimes when I read about accidents in the papers I wonder. Sam? Is that you?
Mintilla was a great woman but it didn’t last long. She dumped me after three months for a soap opera actor and my search for M women continued.
