Time
for some more flash fiction. Hope you can sympathize with Marvin Hoeckler and
give him a little support as he breaks some personal news to his parents.
#####
A CLOT IN THE
CREAM
By
Don Travis
Panic? Disappointment? Fear? Probably
all of those, but mostly it was mortification at letting my parents down. I’d
just done what I’d been struggling to do for the last three years. Confessed
something close to my heart. Something that made me me.
Cheeks blazing, I cut my eyes to the
left where my mother sat, head down, lips moving silently. Likely praying.
Begging enlightenment for her profligate son.
My gaze swept across the old-fashioned
kitchen table laden with hot fluffy buttermilk biscuits, steaming platters of
bacon and sausage, and a tray of over-easy eggs with yolks like yellow eyes filmed
with albumen cataracts. The heady aromas seemed somehow diminished by the
situation. Maybe I should have waited until after we ate.
My father, filling up the chair to my
right, glared at me through flared orbs made even bigger by thick bifocals. His
face was as red as I imagined mine to be.
“Marvin Hoeckler, tell me you’re putting
me on.” His voice hovered between anger and disbelief. “We’re simple dairy farm
people. We don’t get mixed up in things like … well, like that.”
My insides shriveled as I realized he
couldn’t even bring himself to say the word. I’d known he would take it hard,
but this was worse than anticipated.
“Son, are you sure?” Mom asked, sounding
as if she were just coming out of shock.
“I’m positive. I’ve known since I was
fifteen.”
My father loosed an explosive snort, a
sign he was really mad. “You’re my only son, and I won’t stand for
it, you hear? You live under my roof and eat my food, you’ll live my rules. And
those rules don’t stand for nonsense like that.”
“Now, Father—” my mother began.
“Don’t you take the boy’s side, Bertha.
Don’t you dare! You know the plans we made, and they don’t include this kinda
thing.”
I went defensive. “I do my share of
work. I pay my way. If I wasn’t here, you’d have to pay a hired hand.”
“Don’t backtalk me, boy, or I'll take on
that hired hand tomorrow morning.”
The skin on my back went cold and
puckered. I hadn’t considered my father might kick me out of the house. Mortification
abated as fear took a healthier bite of the apple.
“It’s not that big of a deal,” I said,
unsure my tone supported my declaration.
“Not a big deal?” Dad didn’t even bother
to snort that time. He let his rising voice do the job for him. His fork hit the empty plate with a clatter. “I never saw anything like that in you.”
“I dabbled at it now and then, but I guess I was good at hiding it.”
“It’s not every dairyman in the state
who has to sit and listen to his son confess nonsense.”
“Dad, be reasonable. There are bound to
be others who feel like I do.”
He rose and threw his napkin on the
table. “I doubt that. Most sons would have the decency to keep such things to themselves?”
I shrugged my shoulders and held up my
palms. “How? You’d know eventually.”
He stomped out of the room without
bothering to answer.
My mother’s touch as she placed a hand
on my arm drew me back to her.
“Be patient with him, Marvin. He’ll just
have to come to terms with this in his own way and in his own time.”
“How about you? Are you okay with it?”
She sighed and withdrew her arm. “I’ll
handle it. After all, you can’t go through life without an occasional clot in
the cream.”
I winced. My confession that I wanted to
be an artist rather than a dairyman had rendered me into a clot in the cream.
#####
Poor
Marvin. That was quite a confession. But when folks get fixated on something,
it’s hard to make them see another point of view.
See
you next week, same time and same place. Thanks for reading. Take a look around
the blog site while you’re here.
New Posts are
published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.
