Shotgun Lovesongs: A Novel by Butler Nickolas

Author:Butler, Nickolas [Butler, Nickolas]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2014-03-11T00:00:00+00:00

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MY FATHER DIDN’T HAVE ANY friends. He didn’t play in any softball leagues and he wasn’t a member of any civic organizations. He shook hands with other dads at church, and I can remember that now, his short-sleeve dress shirts in summer and his navy blue wool suitcoats in winter. I can see him, holding a hymnal in his hands so that we could both read the words, his finger scrolling beneath the musical notes that neither of us could read, understanding only the rises and falls of the music; his baritone and my soprano mingling in somber, self-conscious monotones. I can smell his cologne and feel his hand on the back of my neck. I can remember all that. But I don’t remember that he had any friends.

He was a farmer, too, though back then, he and my mother milked about fifty Guernseys and Jerseys—a fairly sizable herd for that time. I’ve more than doubled the herd and right now, it’s all that I can do to keep up, even with Beth’s help. But it’s fair to say that he worked harder than I do and I remember that, too, him out in the milking parlor, hands buried beneath a cow’s udders—this was before all the new machinery that I have now, though Dad began installing his own machinery in my teens. I remember his hairy forearms, and how in the late mornings, they would be covered in motor oil and axle grease from the old tractors that he was perennially fixing. And mornings in our kitchen, sipping coffee and eating a plate of scrambled eggs. At lunch: standing over the sink, eating a salami, onion, and mustard sandwich, as he looked out over the fields or toward the barn, the herd out there, lazing and grazing. A look in his eyes that could have been pure contentment just as easily as it could have been the shock of seeing a ghost, the sure knowledge of being haunted.

Evenings we ate early, my mother leading us in the same nightly supper prayer, and afterward, I carried our dishes to the sink as Dad retired to his favorite chair to watch the nightly news, always shaking his head. “I don’t even know why I watch,” he would say sadly.

He died, three years ago. I’m happy to say that he met our kids, that he had time to play with them, to hold them in the hospital after they were just born. I know he was proud of them, of Beth, of me. I think I can say that he was happy, coming over to our house with Mom, surveying my new equipment, nodding his head as I talked about improved crop yields or greater milk production.

But he didn’t have any friends. The telephone rarely rang for him. And I don’t think he desired friends either. I don’t think he was lonely. When I think about my dad, what impresses me is how dedicated he was to his farm, to my mother, to us kids.

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