What you don’t know about is the picnic table. It was, when I was growing up, our breakfast, lunch, and dinner table. School nights, it was my homework table. When he was sleeping off a drunk, it was a bed for my Old Man.
A log leg, second hand picnic table with split board bench seats, it took up most of the room in our kitchen. It had stuff carved in, gouged out all over the top. Hearts and arrows, initials, names and dates, excited naked people, alone and together—use your imagination—doodles, cars, cats, all kinds of stuff. Where my Old Man got it, and how he and his drinking buddies squeaked it in through our skinny side door, nobody knows.
Same deal every time. My Old Man has a temper. You never know what’s going to set him off. Say he’s at work, gets hot, beats up his boss and gets fired. He goes on a drunk. Maybe he just gets mad in general and goes on a drunk. Normal mad, it’s usually a two-day drunk. Big time mad, three to four. Two, three, four, it never much matters. Late afternoon on the day after, first person he sees when he wakes up, look out.
I was hungry. Hungry and not thinking straight. I’d been outside playing since just after breakfast. Which, for the record, was one small bowl of cereal. No jelly toast. No egg. No bacon. I knew there was a piece of cold fried chicken in the refrigerator. I knew there was a fat slab of Velveeta in there too, wadded up in a ball of tinfoil.
Side door, screen door slams, bangs shut behind me. Bangs, rattles, then rattles some more. Yanked open, the refrigerator door squeaks to set your teeth on edge. That door never did fit right. Fit or open easy.
Glass flying. Things hitting walls, busting up into little pieces. Crashing, smashing. Ceramic, bunny top butter dish. Pink pig salt and pepper shakers. A glass. A glass ashtray. One bottle, then another.
Over on the picnic table, kicking and twitching, my Old Man is surfacing, coming to. He sits up, feet dangling. Squints, scratches, sees me. Decides, on the spot, that I require religious instruction.
Bible stories. None of this ever would have happened if he’d taken the time, when I was little, to teach me some Bible stories. But, he didn’t. What he did do was march me straight on over to the Catholic church, sign me up for Saturday morning catechism classes, and leave.
We were not what you’d call a church-going family. My Mom never went. Unlike my Old Man, she wasn’t raised Catholic. She was, instead, raised to think for herself. She wouldn’t pretend. Not for him, not for anybody. He went three, maybe four times a year. Me, I only went if he whipped my ass and made me go.
Every Saturday it was the same deal. The nun would read us a Bible story, the priest would tell us what it meant, ask if we had any questions, then give us a quiz. “No such thing as a dumb question” he always said, “ask me anything you want.”
I was ten and went to public school. I knew squat about the Bible. The Bible or how to talk to priests. The rest of the kids in catechism class were six, went to Catholic school and knew not to ask the priest any questions. Me, I didn’t know any better.
Sin. Heaven and Hell. The Virgin Birth. Confession. Resurrection. Angels. Devils. Eternal torment. David and Goliath. Adam and Eve. The Serpent. Wafer and wine, body and blood. It was all news to me.
“Father, I still don’t get it. Could you explain that one more time? Just one more time?”
“It’s a holy mystery.”
“The Trinity Father, I just don’t get the Trinity. How does it work again, all that three in one, one in three stuff?”
“It’s a holy mystery.”
“Father…”
“It’s a holy mystery.”
For the record, he started it. He’s the one started the name calling, not me. Little Mister Question Box. Every time I’d raise my hand, that’s what he’d call me, Little Mister Question Box. You like being called names? Okay then.
The day I quit he wouldn’t call on me. I had my hand up, but he wouldn’t call on me. He looked right at me, but like I was invisible, like I wasn’t even there. “Class” he says, “let’s take a vote. How many of you want to get out early, get out into this beautiful Saturday morning, and how many of you want to sit here while Little Mister Question Box over there runs his mouth again. Shall we vote?”
Lard bucket, I thought, call him a fat ass lard bucket. But, I didn’t. Instead, I just left. Stood up, said nothing, and walked out.
What happened next was not planned. No premeditation. It just happened. Opportunity and inspiration, pure and simple. His golf bag was leaning against the wall at the far end of the hallway, right inside the doors that led out into the rectory parking lot. It had his name on it in big letters. His two-tone, brown and white golf shoes were next to the bag on the floor. They were shiny, like new.
I’d been sitting in class for going on three hours. I had to piss, the shoes were there, so, I filled them up. Up and over.
This last part happened the next day. Sunday, around two, two thirty in the afternoon. My Mom was out. My Old Man was sleeping off a drunk on the picnic table. Me, I was invisible, hiding out inches below him, getting quietly rich. Any time he’d shift or roll over more coins might dump out of his pockets and rain down through the cracks.
“Your son’s an animal” the priest is shouting through the screen door, banging with his fist to be let in. “Your son’s an animal and needs to be punished. Do you hear me in there? Is anybody home?”
Drunk or sober, my Old Man was never big on getting yelled at. Who knows what he heard? What he made of all the racket the priest was making out on our tiny, three step, poured concrete front porch. Then or later, he never said.
What I do know is what happened next. It took maybe ten seconds. He’s upright. He’s on the porch. He’s hoisting the priest up off his feet by his shirt front. WHAP, WHAP, WHAP, hits him in the face three times fast. Hard and fast. Dumps him, like a sack of spuds, onto our ancient, spiky branch pricker bush.
Before I can make my getaway, he’s back up on the picnic table, snoring and spilling change. Did he remember, when he woke up the next morning, any of what happened? Nobody knows. But, the priest never again came calling, I never went back to catechism classes, and my Old Man never asked me why.
Now’s the question. Who or what was responsible for my deliverance? Divine intervention? Hand of the unseen powers? Out of all the millions and billions of prayers being mumbled out, offered up just then, mine and mine alone that got heard?
Right, right, right. You’re right. There’s no holy mystery to it. Like you say, it was just the whiskey. It was all that whiskey my Old Man used to drink that I have to thank for my salvation. For keeping me out of harm’s way. That, of course, and the picnic table.
JIM KELLY is retired traveling salesman whose work has appeared in War Literature & the Arts, Harvard Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Coachella Review, The Galway Review, and others. His story collection “Pitchman’s Blues” won The George Garrett Fiction Prize from Texas Review Press.
