Sourland

summoned. Advancing to the very edge of the stage the daddy clasped his hands to his chest and spoke in a grave voice: “‘Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law My services are bound;…I grow. I prosper: Now, gods, stand up for bastards!”p>

Tod laughed as if he’d been roughly tickled — bastard was one of the bad words. Yet the daddy pronounced bastard happily, like the words of a song.

Another time the daddy paused to wait out the applause of the audience. Then with a dramatic flourish the daddy rubbed his face as if erasing its features to begin again, with a look now of grief. His voice thickened as if he were about to cry. “‘All my pretty ones? Did you say all? O hell-kite! All? What, all my pretty chickens, and their dam, At one fell swoop?’”p>

Hearing these utterly perplexing words Tod became frightened. He had no idea why his father was speaking of chickens but by the tone of his father’s voice he understood that something very bad had happened to the chickens.

The daddy’s voice trailed off. The daddy seemed less pleased with this recitation. Perhaps the applause was less enthusiastic — the daddy waved it away negligently as if brushing away flies.

Now the daddy repositioned himself on the stage, as if beginning again. He kicked aside several broken tree limbs then thought to pick up one of the smaller branches which he broke in two. Across the daddy’s flushed face came a look of something furtive and eager.

“Tod — come up here. I will need you for this, Tod. Daddy insists.”

Quickly Tod shook his head no. Between his legs he felt a pinching sensation, a sudden need to pee. The daddy onstage regarding him expectantly and the blurred faces of the invisible audience turned to him were making Tod very nervous though he knew that no one was seated on the stone benches — of course. It was what the mommy called All in your head.

“Tod! Don’t you hear me? Come.”

The daddy had been brandishing the stick which now he hid behind his back in a playful manner. Tod had seen that the broken-off end looked sharp as a knife. He felt a thrill of childish fear, the daddy meant to hurt him.

Like a large predator bird the daddy paced about the stage flapping his arms. In his right hand he held the sharp-ended stick. His voice was deep and quavering like a voice out of a well.

“‘And it came to pass that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, “Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell you of”…And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and laid it onto Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together. And Abraham stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son…’” Gripping the sharp-ended stick in both hands and in a crouched-over posture like a wicked old man Tod’s father approached the edge of the stage where Tod was cowering. Tod scrambled away, tripped and fell amid rubble but managed to scramble to his feet like a panicked rat.

At the edge of the stage the daddy squatted glaring at Tod. “What God has decreed isn’t for us to countermand. Daddy is telling you, Tod — come up here.”

Still Tod held back. Still Tod dared to disobey. That look in the daddy’s eyes was scary to him.

For a long moment the daddy glared at Tod. Tod saw the daddy’s mouth working as if something had gotten inside his mouth he had to chew, chew, chew in order to swallow.

At last the daddy straightened out of his strained squatting position. His knees ached, he made a blowing noise with his lips. “Christ! You don’t trust your own father! This is unacceptable.”

Tod jammed his thumb in his mouth. Tod was ready to giggle, if the daddy relented.

Still the daddy said, in disgust: “Tod, for Christ sake this is just a stick. It is not a knife and I am not the Biblical Abraham — far from it. And this crummy setting is just a stage, you must have noticed — a ruin of a stage. None of this is real. Did you think that Daddy was real? — or you? You are just some ejaculate that got lucky.”

Some ejaculate. Tod understood that it was something nasty. The daddy’s face was red-flushed and creased and the daddy’s eyes shone with indignation.

“Which brings us to — ‘destiny.’ Humankind is the only species besotted and beset, beguiled and bespoiled by its own destiny. Long ago — before you were born — your daddy was not your daddy but a student — a graduate student in biology — your daddy immersed himself in studying ‘the teeming life of multitudes’ — in a lab, we were studying a species of cuttlefish — not a fish but ‘most intelligent invertebrate’ — a fist-sized thing the shape of a clam with tentacles — slimy — sharp-eyed — color-blind yet camouflages itself in coral reefs of the most exquisite colors. It was our task to try to comprehend how the cuttlefish can ‘instruct’ its body to change color when its eyes can’t see color. Why we knew, but not how — never any mystery about why in animal/plant camouflaging — but how eluded us. Such design, such complexity in something of such little consequence as a cuttlefish means that for higher primates like Homo sapiens a more meaningful destiny might not be utterly absurd…”

Yet another time the daddy’s voice trailed off. Tod could not fail to note how, as soon as his father ceased speaking, the silence returned.

In the distance were muffled voices, or wind — far distant. Here in the ruin of the outdoor theater there was a sudden terrible silence. As soon as you ceased speaking this terrible silence oozed back.

Then, suddenly, unexpectedly — “Bra-vo! En- core!”

There was someone in the audience after all. Suddenly now a sound of clapping — loud frantic clapping — coming from the rear, right-hand side of the stone benches. About forty feet away on the ground beside one of the benches was what appeared to be a bundle of rags — a bundle of rags that had stirred into life.

“Bravo! Bravo!” — the bundle of rags clapped and whistled.

The daddy was taken utterly by surprise. The daddy blinked and shaded his eyes to stare though there was no sun to obscure his vision. At last with a wry, rueful smile the daddy said, “Well — thank you, sir. We didn’t see you over there. We appreciate your applause.”

The clapping man was old, or old-seeming — of that category of individual the mommy called homeless. If Tod had been alone, he’d have run from such a person. The man had very dirty matted white hair and his jaws sprouted whiskers like a dirty broom. He had wrapped himself in what appeared to be an old blanket or tarpaulin. In his face there was something livid and pitted like the skin of a fricasseed chicken.

The daddy thanked the wild-white-haired man for his applause and “good taste” — the daddy said he’d had an “aborted career in the theater” — his “destiny” had derailed him in other less rewarding directions. The daddy said that he had a “very bad” child in his keeping — and wondered if the white-haired man wanted him? — “His name is Tod. He’s four years old. He’d been a reasonably good baby, a promising toddler, now he’s a very spoiled little boy who believes he can disobey his father with impunity for his father is not of God’s Hebrew chosen.”

Stricken with shame Tod heard these words of his father’s flung out carelessly and with a strange sort of daddy-elation. The white-haired old man laughed heartily. In horror Tod saw the old man wriggle erect, like some sort of nasty big insect out of a cocoon. His eyes shone with merriment in the fricassee-face. In his hand was a grimy paper bag he lifted to his mouth, to take a swig from a bottle inside.

“Yah? Y’say so, mister? Shit how much you askin for him?”

“One hundred dollars and ninety-nine cents.”

“One hunnert! So why’d I want to pay so much for a brat like that, that nobody wants?”

“Sir, this boy may be bad but he’s a bargain. He’s been discounted for the month of April, forty percent off his usual price. Do I have a bid?”

The wild-white-haired old man took another swig from the bottle inside the paper bag. Wiped his whiskery mouth on the edge of a filthy sleeve. “Nineteen dollars and ninety-nine cents. That’s a bargain.”

As Tod listened in disbelief the daddy and the old man shouted back and forth like TV characters. You could