1 Short Story

Tim Hanson

Inchoate: A Parable

His mother reads him stories at night, tales of bravery and friendship and charity, and her soft voice ushers in a bliss only capable when it’s just the two of them. His father, though, criticizes him during the day, and decades later, those thunderous rebukes against everything he loves will echo louder than anything else ever will, pulling his strings and setting into motion a lifetime of rage and self-effacement.

~

But the boy’s love of reading stays with him throughout childhood, yet he knows better than to admit such truths aloud. The schoolyard is a minefield, and he’s already stepped on far too many to count; but he’s learned from each blast, from each redress, from each storm cloud of laughter chasing him home after school. He’s learned it is better to be part of the flock than to go against it and lose its favor.

~

The boy attends St. Francis Xavier Catholic School. The teachers and priests there just adore him, and they often tell his parents that he’s “one of the good ones.” However, at Mass, when everyone falls to their knees in reverence and espouses the teachings of their Lord, he feels a pang of guilt, urged on by his mother’s melodic voice—who tells him always to follow his heart and do good, no matter what—for in the pew before him sits the chubby boy he and his friends punish daily, their harassment and the boy’s subsequent tears a release valve from all those confrontations with their Lords at home, fathers who see their sons as their own release valves from what they endure at work. The behavior is so ingrained that these fathers believe their actions not to be harassment but tutelage, a rite of passage held in such high regard that it may as well be called holy.

~

As one, the boys say, Amen; as one, they take each other’s hands during the Lord’s prayer and bask in His grace and good favor, His promise for Heaven on Earth, as long as they say the right words, the ones He’s penned for them.  

~

But his mother’s words somehow rise above the herd’s recitations, echoing the priest’s intonations, and the boy’s eyes fall back to that lump of flesh, that post to be whipped so they all can endure another day. In the stories his mother reads, would the boy be cast as hero or villain? And as the boy swallows a lump too large for his tiny throat, he knows the answer, and he’s ashamed. 

~

That night, she reads to him again, but before she can finish the story of a brave little hero, the boy tells her to get out, his voice sounding so much like his father’s that it chills him to the bone. Silently, she closes the book and abides, sparing a pained glance back at the boy who’s becoming a man, at the continuation of what she silently condemns.

~

But the boy considers her words carefully under a veil of darkness, that period removed from his mother’s melodic voice and his father’s rage when he must face the night’s terrors alone, and he thinks of his mother’s stories and that look back, an echo of an echo, the stare she gives his father whenever caught in the throes of rage, the stare she undoubtedly gave her own father for the same reason when she was the boy’s age.

~

So with a determination to break the mold, to follow not the scripture penned by the schoolyard bullies he calls his friends but the edicts decreed by his matriarch, the boy clumsily makes his way toward the herd, again circled around their favorite whipping post, and he raises his voice. However, no one stirs or ceases their torment, and when he speaks again, louder this time but still so soft and weak, one of the herd, not even its leader, calls him a name verboten in that bricked institution across from the recess area, and the boy immediately rethinks his plan of attack. Raising his voice even louder, not to ward off the herd but to double down on its authority, he too screams the slur just thrown at him, insisting no, that fat boy is the one who should be called that, and the fallen boy wails against his words. The boy’s friends clap him on his back, though, and build upon his torment, the young man’s bravery melting like a snowflake wafting into Hell.  

~

Behind his smiling facade, the boy feels worse than he ever has, and the relief from escaping the herd’s condemnation only exacerbates it. The boy promises himself next time he’ll do better; however, he never does, for the boy cannot know, does not have the wisdom or life experience to even recognize the fact, that this is a turning point, that life can veer towards something perpetually heinous not just at the most notable forks in the road but on a day like any other. From here, the boy will travel a road where any detour will seem more arduous than simply staying the course, and each time he passes it, with his mother’s words chiding him from the back of his mind, he will be more and more convinced that this is the right path, the only path—that is, until nightfall, when he will remember the stories his mother told him once upon a time, of heroes undertaking great tasks, of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, and wryly, the boy, now becoming a man, will think, Who would ever write a story like that about someone like me?