“Just wait until your father gets home,” she said. It was what she always said, but this usually did not worry the child. In fact his father was far more lenient than his mother, and would usually sit down and talk with him about what he done wrong instead of yelling or handing out punishments. He always told himself that getting yelled at was worse, but his father's increasing weariness disturbed him. He seemed more and more tired every time the child's mother approached him, “Guess what your son did today.”
This time he got his new school clothes all muddy. It doesn't really matter what he did. It had just rained, and the creek was swollen. He had a good time playing in the mud with his friends, but delayed the trip home as long as possible, knowing his muddy clothes would get him into trouble. By the time he started to make his way home, it had started to rain again, and he was sopping wet and covered in mud by the time he got home.
His mother made him take off his clothes outside before letting him in the house. This time he didn't even listen to her; dreading his father's weary sigh instead.
-Jonathan Nelson
I wonder if a covenant or agreement between him and his mother wouldn't be possible. It seemed that the son considered those covenants between him and his dad more often than not. Anyway, it might be worth a try.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your spin on Gentleman's Agreement. Often times, a child senses that something is amiss in their parents long before an adult does. The child in your story senses that there is something wrong with his father, and wants, instead of the weary sigh he recieves, to be yelled at. The mother, unaware that her husband is unhappy, keeps lobbing small problems at him for him to deal with. She doesn't get that, by doing this, she is only making his absence more present. Or maybe she does sense that her husband is not all there, and hopes that by getting their son in trouble they will have a common cause and he will come back to them? I don't know. All in all, it was a good story though. I enjoyed it.
ReplyDeletei like how you caputred the human characteristic of never being quite satiesfied...the child wanting the father to screaming at him instead of a sigh, i bet when he gets the screams he'd prefered the sigh. i dont know maybe its just me.
ReplyDeleteThere were parts of this that sounded repetitive in an awkward way every time you mentioned the clothes being muddy. Maybe try to approach it with less of that description or maybe try to bring in different details about it.
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