Our Love Will Go the Way of the Salmon by Cameron Pierce

Author:Cameron Pierce [Pierce, Cameron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Broken River Books
Published: 2014-12-18T23:00:00+00:00

Tonight, the man thinks, tonight the fish we never spoke of will go back to that dark water.

His daddy’s ghost is there to lead him.

How did his daddy lose his legs? He lost them on account of the tiny kites his son used to sell. Selling tiny kites put the son in a state of constant agitation. The tiny kite business is more stressful than most people know. The son filled up with sadness and anxiety, and eventually, rage. He didn’t kill his daddy. No. Killing daddies is bad.

One Sunday evening, he and his daddy and his wife had themselves a summer barbecue. They barbecued catfish the man and his daddy had caught and they ate the catfish with potato salad and cornbread made by the wife. They ate slices of watermelon for dessert. They sat in plastic chairs on the front lawn and ate their food and drank mint juleps. This barbecue was held to celebrate the success of the man’s tiny kite business. In just over a month of selling tiny kites, he’d made his first thousand dollars. He was well on his way to becoming a premium salesman of tiny kites. He’d already coined his own pitch line. “Easiest kites there are to fly,” he’d say, flying two tiny kites at once. This sold him a lot of kites, but it also impacted his relationship with his wife and his daddy because he’d taken to saying it all the goddamn time. After making love to his wife, he’d roll over and lie on his back and sigh contentedly and exhale a long breath, then say in a voice just above a whisper, “Easiest kites there are to fly.” Out fishing with his daddy, every time he caught a fish, in this time when he was becoming a successful tiny kite salesman, he’d raise the fish by its lip, kiss it on its big old slimy head, and say, “Easiest kites there are to fly.” The man became obsessed in his first month of selling tiny kites, so that finally, on the night of the barbecue to celebrate his success, his daddy said to him, “Son, shut up about those stupid kites. They make you a living but a living’s not a life. There are more important things than tiny kites.”

Now, this was a thing the man knew. Of course there were more important things. But the man was not himself then. He was mad with mint juleps and even madder with tiny kites, so far gone in fact that he struck his daddy across the face. He said, “Daddy, don’t you trample on my success. I shed blood and tears to get to a point in my life where I can sell tiny kites. Don’t you trample that.”

His daddy rubbed his head. “I’m not trampling your success, son. I’m proud of you. You make me nothing but proud.”

“Proud my ass,” the man said, and he struck his father again, for his heart had been blinded by his ambition.

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