“To love is to burn, to be on fire.” – Jane Austen
Charlie crushes back into the dirty bean bag chair in front of the TV glow. I watch him from the hall outside his and Piper’s bedroom. He either doesn’t see me through the partially opened door or he just doesn’t give a shit. Either way, I’m golden; I can take in the creature in its natural habitat at my own pace; I can look at this kid who is half me- maybe more, hopefully more- and I can shove putty into a few of the gaping voids that let in the rain and the snow and that godawful howling wind.
It’s weird. With nothing but his mere existence/ my youngest bio kid can pick his nose/ eat a booger/ stare at the Trolls World Tour movie that he’s so hot about/ all the while offering his old man a subtle but powerful transcendence. It’s as if he’s flipping a burger down at McDonald’s but he’s also controlling the universe.
It hurts me a lot to see where I have been when I look at his wild bowl cut swooping down into his eyes. Within the tender tough of my dad moves: squeezing his little feet/ pinching his ear while he’s sitting in my lap trying to watch the movie/ kissing his scalp/ the drifting tones of beechnut grove/ the sunbaked straw/ the smoky ham hanging on the country store porch/ the river mud dog tracks I lift up to my nose like flowers/ within all that: I guess: is the slash of burning that I smell all the time.
The wires smoldering before the true, true blaze.
Something lurking back in the safe, smooth walls.
When I was his age, Charlie’s age, 8 going on 9, I witnessed the dissolution of my own parent’s marriage. Right before my eyes, I saw things that made no sense and yet I understood completely. The grown man drunk/ asleep on his dinner plate. The woman dripping cry-snot onto her wrist, onto mine sometimes. The hollering. The screaming. The violence and the chasing me down. People acting like savages. People running from things they would never really escape.
I look in on Charlie and I think I could coerce him out of there with a promise of something that costs money. Maybe a trip to Sheetz for a milkshake or a Suicide. Maybe I promise him Arms, the video game he’s been bugging me about for a while now. I don’t though. I only stand there being ignored. Taking it all in. The kid with his finger jammed up his nostril. The supreme rook of it all, of all this parenting shit. Me: a sucker for his every move. Him: a con man on the take. Back behind him is a dog food bag that I cut into a big shirt for him the other day. It makes me happy.
Eventually, I have to roll. He spots me in the doorway and the air changes. His eyes look me up and down and I can tell he’s not so into my presence. He was vibing and now it died.
So I roll out/ the TV glow wrapped around my son like a daddy’s arms.
Whatever.
____
Sleep has become strange. There was a bat on Christmas Eve in the bedroom and we never did watch it leave. Arle tried to give it the window path while I hovered behind her but we never saw it go. It ended up over by my Gettysburg books. And then it was gone. Into the Devil’s Den. Into the Wheatfield. Into the fray in the Herbst Woods. Men screaming. Dense chaos. There goes a bat. I’ll be damned, boys.
Since then I have kept the light on while we sleep. It’s stupid, I know. But some part of me is afraid, I guess. Some little kid inside me is afraid that the bat will emerge if the room ever goes black. And that it will flit about the small confines of our space as Arle sleeps and I sleep until she becomes frustrated. Or mad. Or both. And it all ends with her landing on the bed. On my side. Jaws wide open. Little tiny bat razors gleaming out from its bat mouth. Then… shazam!, vampire fangs into my flabby arm and I have rabies. Just like that: Rabies Boy.
Then I go mad. Frothing at the mouth. Chasing after people. Climbing the rain spouts on the side of the house and grabbing old yellow jacket nests and waving them at the staties yelling up at me through a bullhorn.
“Come down, son,” they say flatly, secretly hoping that I don’t. So they can light me up with a hundred bullets. Lift me up off the house and suspend me in the sky for a full three minutes on a wind of hot lead. Like a Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon. Sponge Bob, Broadway, 8am, 19 degrees Fahrenheit.
Rabies Boy.
Trigger Finger.
“Come down, son.”
I leap towards the crowd below and they light me up with the MeatheadBoomBoom.
So, yeah.
Goodbye.
_____
Also, I think I’ve been reading too much about those college kid murders in Idaho. So, you know, I’ve got that floating around my head along with the Gettysburg Book Bat.
And all the rest of it, too.
The beat-up bank account.
The dead birds in the attic.
The dogs shitting in the morning hall.
The years on the end of the tight chain, the narcissist’s leash.
The harsh lies and the masterful gaslighting and the raging abuse and the not knowing what was happening.
And you have to believe me. Please believe me. Why would I lie? What would I gain?
Please.
Think about what I’m saying to you.
I’m talking to YOU.
Because I’m dying, man.
And only the truth can save me now.
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Serge Bielanko lives in small-town Pennsylvania with an amazing wife who’s out of his league and a passel of exceptional kids who still love him even when he’s a lot. Every week, he shares his thoughts on life, relationships, parenting, baseball, music, mental health, the Civil War and whatever else is rattling around his noggin. Once in a blue Muskie Moon, he backs away from the computer, straps on a guitar and plays some rock ’n’ roll with his brother Dave and their bandmates in Marah.
