A father's heart

Literary Review, Spring, 1995 by Ellen Cooney

"I thought I'd make you some furniture," he calls out in his big voice.

"Gee, that would be great," says Brian. Patty resents it that Brian doesn't believe her when she tells him that her father's hearing is normal.

Her dad shouts, "A coffee table, I was thinking! Hold on a minute, I'll get the design." He starts walking over to his truck, then says over his shoulder, "You got a jigsaw, in case the edges come out a little plain, and need some jazzing? The jazz stuff, I'm not good with."

"Brian has everything!" Patty shouts.

Bill Murcher climbs into the truck, reaches into the glove compartment. Brian nudges Patty so hard she almost loses her balance on the step. "Can't you see he's trying to get along with you?"

"Then why did he wait to make me furniture until I started to live with a carpenter?"

"He wants you to like him."

"You're taking his side?"

"There's no sides."

"There are, Brian."

"Look at him. Every time you see him, his hair's more gray. So is his face. If he asks you again to go and talk to your mom for him, I think you should do it."

"Do not even mention my mom."

They're talking in whispers. Patty thinks, Here I am, this is what I am, in front of my house, with two men-one I scream to, and one I whisper to, with nothing going on in between.

"You O.K. over there, Mr. Murcher?" Brian says. It's suddenly very quiet. The chill that comes over Patty makes her shiver, and she understands why people use the expression, for times such as these, "My blood ran cold."

What does she see? Her father with his hand on the door of the truck, half in and half out. His body seems doubled over. His hands are clutching at his chest as if he's trying to pull off his jacket and shirt without unbuttoning them. Perhaps he's joking, to stir up some sympathy, Patty thinks. Patty feels like saying to Brian, "Falling out of vehicles must be something I inherited."

"Mr. Murcher?" Brian runs past her down the steps, and then a strange thing happens. It's not a hallucination. Patty sees a man she used to know, by the name of Harry Paulson. He looks as real as if he'd walked over to her from a ray of yellow sunlight.

Harry Paulson is as old as the last time Patty saw him. He's dressed in an old tweed coat; his face is brownish and wrinkled, like a walnut shell. He also wears a red wool cap, and seems to be thinking about something very deeply. His mouth is scrunched to one side. He has powerful upper arms that are out of proportion to the rest of his body -- he looks, as he had looked to Patty always, like Popeye.

Harry Paulson had been a paper cutter in the mill not far from the Murchers' house. He had lived at the end of their street. Sometimes on a Friday night when Bill Murcher had a poker game going with guys from the lumber yard, Harry came walking down the sidewalk, as slowly and patiently as a barge. "Here comes Harry," someone glancing out the window would say. Five or six hands later he'd appear in the doorway to join the game. Patty's mom had always put her to bed hours earlier, but after she'd gone into the big bedroom across the hall from Patty's, and after she'd turned on her television set, loud enough to drown out the men, down Patty went to be with her dad, looking over his shoulder at his cards, learning everything she could. She fetched beers and popped the tops off, and asked questions which the men couldn't answer. "If poker is fun, why is no one laughing?" "Why is this thing I open beers with called a church key?"