Rest in Pieces by Anthony Ferguson

Author:Anthony Ferguson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: IFWG Publishing International
Published: 2023-03-18T06:22:43+00:00

Gary is taking the family on holiday. His wife sits politely along­side, two children in the back. It was an effort to get them organised, but he’s really looking forward to the break. Winds down the window, enjoying the feel of the wind in his hair. The car hurtles along the open highway. Then up ahead, a figure steps into the road. Gary slows the vehicle to a halt in front of the man in the suit who waves them down.

SINS OF THE FATHER

I pulled a beer from the fridge and sat on the battered old couch. The front of my sweatshirt was soaked through. I didn’t think clearing up the old man’s estate would be so tough. Arcadia. That was the name on the old wooden sign out front. Dad’s idea of a joke, though he was never big on irony.

It would have been useful in these circumstances to have a sibling who could have given me a hand, but life doesn’t always work out that way. On the other hand, being the only child meant dad left the place to me. Mom didn’t get a say, having bailed out over thirty years ago.

Now it was mine to do what I want with. I could choose to move in for good, or just clean it up and sell it off. I had been leaning toward the latter after five days of dirt, sweat and tears.

That was until I found the box.

Dad died a couple of months ago, just as the November chills came sweeping down off the mountains. I sat with him those last few weeks in the hospital, watching him slide in and out of consciousness, watching him slip away. In the moments he was cogent he would talk to me in the hoarse whisper the cancer had left of his voice box, begging me for a smoke.

He often reminisced about the old days, the years it was just the two of us in the house through my teenage years. Mom walked out for good when I was fourteen. She had been practicing for years. Most times I would stand at the front gate and watch her walk away, pulling her suitcase along behind her. Dad would sit on the porch drinking beer, swearing, refusing to go after her.

Other times we would jump in the truck and trawl the streets until we found her, shuffling along with her case. She would be crying and he would get in her ear until she gave in and climbed in the car.

Lying in my bed at night I would hear them through the cracks in the wall, fighting and fornicating. His voice getting louder, then the sound of stuff being thrown around, both of them screaming in either pain or pleasure. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between the two.

Then one night she left and just never came back. I remember Dad got a real bad drunk on, worse than usual. He was yelling stuff at her about being a whore and he laid into her right in front of me.

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