Michael Collings - The Slab

Only then, when Willard stepped back into the kitchen, his nose frosted by the January chill and the sudden discovery that he had forgotten to put on a jacket-only then did he breathe easily.

He gave the counters and tables a quick once-over with a steaming hot washcloth, then looked over at the clock.

Six-fifteen. Time to get the kids up.

Waking Will and Burt was every bit as frustrating as he had feared it would be. They were deeply asleep, and when they finally sat up in bed, they were cranky and sullen.

“I don’t feel good, Daddy,” Burt whimpered, trying vainly to slip back between the inviting covers.

“Are you bleeding or throwing up?” Willard asked, echoing his mother’s litany, remembered from almost three decades before.

“No,” came Burt’s reply.

“Then up and at ‘em. Breakfast in fifteen minutes.” He swatted Will, Jr.’s rump and yelled out a final, “Out of bed, right now,” before he left the boys’ room and went into Suze’s.

Suze always woke more easily than the boys-Willard didn’t mind trying to get her out of bed on the rare days that the duty devolved onto him. This morning was no exception.

Apparently he had made enough commotion that when he opened her door a slit and stuck his head in, she was already sitting up.

“I’m awake, Daddy,” she said quietly

“That’s my girl,” he answered. “Breakfast in fifteen minutes. Don’t forget to make your bed.”

“Okay, Daddy.”

Just as a matter of course, Willard retraced his steps and glanced into the boys’ room.

Will was up and staggering around the room, his eyes half closed as he struggled to pull on shirt and pants in the crisp air. Burt was snuggled back in bed. Willard yanked the blankets off the bunk bed, pulling so hard that they ended up a mash of rumpled blankets and quilts at his feet.

“Up and at ‘em, I said.”

Burt sat up groggily and rubbed at his eyes with his knuckles.

“If you’re not out in fifteen minutes, you go to school without breakfast.”

Willard surreptitiously monitored the progress in the back bedroom for the next few minutes and was not particularly surprised to see how slowly his second son could move when he wanted. But somehow, miraculously, Burt actually made it up within the required time. Even more amazingly, from Willard’s admittedly biased perspective, all three of the older kids managed to get through breakfast, get dressed, instruct him in the intricacies of making lunches-“ya gotta put the peanut butter first, Dad, then the jelly,” that was Burt’s contribution to fine cuisine-do a lick and a promise cleanup job on their rooms, and present themselves ready for his inspection beside the front door by twenty minutes after eight.

In spite of the frequent flurries of “But Dad, Mom never does it that way” and “Why do we have to do that?” the kids were finally ready, buttoned into heavy coats and scarves, each carrying a thin plastic raincoat just in case the volatile January weather decided to shift before the end of school.

“Now you keep a good eye on your little sister, Burt,” Willard instructed as the younger two shuffled through the front door to confront the wide outside world once more. Burt and Suze went to Charter Oaks K-6 Grammar School less than three quarters of a mile away. Catherine had walked the route with them for the first weeks after Christmas vacation ended; today they were on their own for the first time.

“Go straight to school and no playing around. You’ve only got twenty minutes to get there.”

“Yes, Dad,” Burt said. His voice was low and muffled, as if he were still upset that his father had had the temerity to insist that Burt actually smooth out the wrinkles in his bed. After all, the whole thing would just get wrinkled again as soon as he slept in it tonight, so why waste the time. Willard grinned to himself at a recurrent memory-that had been precisely his attitude toward bed-making when he was about eleven.

“Bye, Daddy,” Suze chimed.

Willard leaned over and kissed the top of her head.

“Bye. See you this afternoon.”

“Are you going to stay home today?” she asked, her eyes wide in surprise. “Are you sick?”

“No, hon, I’m just staying here so Mommy can get some rest after last night.”

“What happened to her?”

For a long moment, Willard was stumped. He didn’t want to mention the dead roaches he had swept away this morning, for fear that he would reinforce Suze’s incipient fears of the vermin. He noted that Will and Burt were watching intently as well, as if his answer to that question were the single most important event of the day.

“She probably just had a bad…dream,” he said finally, aware of the weakness of the excuse.

“Just like me,” Burt said.

“Yeah, after you watch one of those monster movies,” Willard said, tousling the boy’s hair. Burt ducked his head and escaped; Willard knew how the boy felt about that kind of display of parental affection and reminded himself to watch it in the future. The kids were growing up. They weren’t all that little any more. Still, his answer seemed to satisfy Suze, who took off across the damp lawn, her plastic Toy Story lunchbox thumping heavily against her legs. Burt followed, shoulders slumped, as if he were marching on his way to certain execution.

Will, Jr., stood just inside the doorway. He walked a mile or so to the junior high-a squat stucco structure bearing the highly original name of Ronald Reagan Junior High. Still, it had a good reputation in the district and so far Catherine reported that Will was doing all right-working hard, and not too far behind from the trauma of starting mid-year at a new school and settling into new routines. Classes there started twenty minutes later than at the elementary school, so Will’s departures had gradually become more leisurely as he became familiar with the way.

Willard noticed a pack of five or six kids Will’s age gathering on the front yard of a house several doors down.

“Those guys look like they’re about your age. Do they go to Reagan?” Willard asked, motioning toward the knot of giggles and laughter.

Will, Jr., glanced down the street. “Yeah,” he said noncommittally.

“Do you know any of them. From classes or anything.”

“A couple.”

“They seem like fun kids?”

“I guess.”

“Have you talked to them at all.”

“Some.”

“Why don’t you catch up with them and walk with them to school?” Willard was growing impatient at the boy’s apparent inability to take a hint any faster.

Will shrugged, an eloquent gesture in a twelve year old that carried meanings impossible for the boy to put into words. “Dunno.”

Willard looked closely at his oldest son. There was a look in the boy’s eyes that bothered Willard. They were hooded, masked, downcast, as if the boy were afraid that Willard would see into his soul and ferret out whatever problems he was trying to conceal.

“Well?”

“They said…”

“They said what?”

“Uh…nothin’, Dad. I just like walkin’ by myself. It gives me time to think.”

In spite of himself, Willard smiled at the sudden adult tones in the boy’s voice. Maybe there was even a hint of a crackling basso beginning to emerge.

“Well, don’t stick to yourself too much or it’ll get even harder to make friends.”

“Okay, Dad.”

“Now get going.”

Will, Jr., got going, trudging down the sidewalk, gripping the rolled-up top of his brown paper bag lunch. He had steadfastly refused the offer of a new lunch pail, arguing vehemently that such things were kiddie and no one else at school ever took a lunch pail.

Willard watched until his son disappeared at the bottom of the hill. He didn’t notice that Will, Jr., had carefully timed his progress so that in spite of the fact that the other kids paused occasionally to wait for other children to emerge from houses along the way, Will never quite caught up with them, never quite drew close enough for them to spot him lagging behind.