Empty Spaces

Incept

"When I was a little lad, my father taught me a great many lessons. He taught me how to fix up a car, change the blades on a lawnmower, and whatever else an old Mick can give ya. But when he spends all his days drinking up his paycheck in a pub, I took whatever time I could get with him as a blessin'. Every day, 'twas the same thing o'r and o'r again. Go to work, go to the pub, go home, go to bed, and repeat for the days to follow. He didn't love us, but we didn't blame him. Poor man had been through a tough life, the old bastard. Fought in the Pacific, yea? Him and all his brothers...but, only one plane ticket home. That would've been enough, that."

Pop was always a poignant man, but never a touchy one. Seeing him here, smoking his cigarette and drinking his black coffee, it was disarming. We both sat at the table, the small fold-up picnic table with coffee stains and half scrapped off food splotches all over the grey surface like Twister. The coffee machine was still on, slowly dripping the brown gold into the pot. It always ran slower when the toaster was on, sometimes it would even flip the breaker. Through the crumpled and tattered blinds, the morning sun rays illuminated the room with its golden hue, giving the room a holy and almost sandstone-ish atmosphere.

Dad slowly twiddled his fingers around the coffee cup, wiping off the droplets of water from the glass mug. I looked up at him, and saw him looking at the mug with a lost gaze; somewhere, deep in his head, he was reliving the past. Good and bad.

"When he landed state side, he decided living in the city wasn't for him, and left his mum and aunt in Queens for the western life. Landed on his feet somewhere in Oklahoma, with nothin' to his name but a few pennies, his boots, and a trailer. There he found me mum, working in a dinner. The Frontiersman, it was. Not long after that he found a job, drilling oil with a couple o' mexican handymen. The pay was god awful, but you don't bitch about poor pay when your belly's rumbling at night. Your uncle Hugh popped out that year, then came me, Morgan, Shannon, and Christine."

His hands gripped the mug sternly, his eyes starting to mist.

"That winter, we lost Christine." he said. His words were dropping from his mouth like they weighed a million tons. His breathe rushed afterwards, slowly inhaling and leaving excrusiatingly slower.

It was times like this where my dad showed just how fragile he was, despite his maverick appearance. Although, even if you knew him, you'd be forgiven for thinking that a former NAVY SEAL could still find himself breaking down over his childhood travesties. My father was a handyman, doing any and everything he could with tools and machines to keep food on the table and the bills in the Paid stack. His commitment to keeping us afloat prevented us from having quality time recently, with my usual teenage shenanigans and his frequent trips to Phoenix driving a communicative wedge between us. We used to talk all the time, when I was a youngin'; every so often he would take me along on a job and I would watch him lose focus of the real world as he became surrounded in the car. His tattoos and colossal forearms proved masculinity to me, and were something of an asphyxiation for the younger Logan. He was the image of a true man to me, and became the standard I would measure myself by as a way of seeing how manly I had become. That was a mistake.

He became to collect himself for another round, but then a vibration in my pocket divided my attention. I pulled my iPhone out of my pocket to see an unexpected call. It was from Calvin, an old friend. I looked at my dad to see if he objected, but he motioned for me to answer it.

"Hello?" I said.

"Hey! We got donuts and an empty chair, you able to come?" The contentment from his voice was loud enough for my dad to hear, who nodded when I looked over to ask. He even forced an awful fake smile.

"Uh yea, I'll be there in a few."

I rushed into my room and looked past the empty dressers and shelves and walked over to the opposite side of my rather large room for my backpack, which was buried under papers screaming at me reminding me that I was a senior. Stopping my locomotive motion for a time, I looked long at one particular paper. LAST CHANCE it said. Wow. Very vague, yet true. The straps of the bag launched across my arm and onto the shoulder by the time I had turned around to leave the barren room. Turning left out of the room, you enter the main space of the house, with the only thing dividing the family room and the kitchen being the different flooring. The family room was full of automotive related objects and items, with an old dirt bike being disassembled by our grandmothers piano.