The Thinking Stick - short story

Here, for want of anything better, is another short story from my collection: Encounters, the unfinished, uncollected, unwanted, and unpublished short stories of Morialekafa.

The Thinking Stick

He knew, when she addressed him icily as Robert, she had still not forgiven him.

“Hello Molly, you look great, as always. Is he ready?” Just as he spoke the boy appeared.

“Hello son,” he said, looking down at the solemn seven-year-old. “Are you ready to go on a picnic?”

“You have to have him back no later than six,” Molly spoke with the authority of motherhood. “Remember, six! He has to go to his piano lesson.”

Robert took the boy’s hand and the two of them walked quickly to the Subaru. “You like the piano?” There was no answer.

Bob drove the car gently along the winding road that led to the lakeshore, past expensive, beautifully landscaped homes, each one unique in its own way. On both sides of the road was a kaleidoscope of rhododendron, azalea, dogwood, and camellia, against a background of evergreens, reminding Bob once again how beautiful the city was, and how sad he had been to leave it. The boy sat quietly watching him. When they came to a shopping center Bob stopped at a supermarket. “Let’s get something to eat, okay John?” Still silent the boy dutifully took his hand as they entered the huge store with aisles as far as they could see.

“What kind of sandwich would you like, ham, chicken, cheese, what? How about some fried chicken? You have to tell me what you want.” With no response forthcoming, Bob bought two ham and cheese sandwiches, a container of potato salad, a coke and a pepsi. We’ll eat down by the lake,” he offered.

Although it was a gorgeous, cloudless, late spring day, a chill in the air had apparently kept many people away. The two of them easily found a private picnic table near the water, protected from others by a grove of alder and some mature madrona trees. The red bark looked out of place amidst the diverse shades of green, the azure sky, the small whitecaps beginning to form on the lake, and the grey blue of the lake itself.

“I know you won’t remember,” Bob said, “but you’ve been here before. We brought you here when you were still in diapers, you were not yet two. You loved the water so much we had to watch you constantly to keep you from running out into the lake and drowning. I bet you can swim now.” With still no response, Bob tried again, “Here, I brought you a present,” he said casually. He handed a pocketknife to the boy who accepted it with a look of surprise. “It’s a fine knife for a boy. Every boy ought to have a knife like this. But you have to be very careful with it because it’s really sharp. See, it has two blades, a big one and a smaller one. They’re both sharp. Your mother won’t like it, she’ll be afraid you’ll cut yourself. But if you’re careful you won’t, because it’s a sharp knife. Its dull knives that make people cut themselves, ‘cause a dull knife doesn’t do its job, and when you try to force it you cut yourself, understand?”

John hefted the knife in his hand. It was heavy with a bone handle. He was pleased it was a real knife, not just a plaything. It made him feel grown up. He tried to open the big blade but it was too stiff. “That’s okay,” Bob said, “It’ll loosen up after you use it a few times.” He opened the blade and handed the knife back to the boy.

“Gee, thanks,” the boy spoke for the first time, “I never had a knife before. It’s awesome.”
Pleased with himself, Bob said, “I’m hungry, let’s eat something.” He handed a sandwich to the boy, along with the container of potato salad and a plastic fork. “You like coke or pepsi?”

“Pepsi,” John said. “My Mom doesn’t let me have it, but sometimes at school I have one. All the other kids drink it all the time. Mom says it isn’t good for me.”

“Well, you know, your mother’s right about that. It isn’t good for you, but if you only drink one once in a while it won’t hurt you.”

Bob couldn’t abide soft drinks of any kind, but he watched quietly as John finished his sandwich and part of his pepsi. The boy then went into the bushes and with some difficulty cut a thin switch from an alder. He returned to the table and began playing with his knife. Suddenly he asked quite matter-of-factly, “Why did you go away? Mom says that if you loved us you wouldn’t have gone away. She used to cry all the time. Now she says she hates you. Well, she used to say that, she doesn’t say it any more, she doesn’t say anything anymore except that you won’t ever come back. Will you ever come back?” John paused for an instant and then continued shyly, “ I like you... I’d like you to come back. The other kids tease me sometimes because I don’t have a Dad.”

Bob, taken by surprise by this unexpected outburst, was silent for what seemed a long time, collecting his wits, and searching carefully for a reply. He began, “Well, you do have a Dad, and he loves you very much. He just can’t be with you all the time. I don’t know what your mother has told you, but I’ll try to tell you what happened and then you can think about it.” Bob shifted about on the picnic bench so he faced John and looked directly into his eyes. “You know,” he continued, “I teach in a University. That’s what I was doing when you were born. I was just beginning and it wasn’t a very good job. There were lots of better jobs for people like me at that time and I was offered much better jobs at other Universities. Naturally I wanted to move to a better job, to earn more money and to have more opportunities.” Bob paused to see if his son was listening and, satisfied that he was, continued. “It would have meant moving to another city, but your mother didn’t want to move. She wouldn’t even discuss it. Her life was completely caught up in creating the shop. Her father was helping her and the two of them couldn’t think of anything else. She was very close to her father, perhaps too close. Anyway, she wanted to have the shop, which would allow her to travel and buy things all around the world. She wanted me to go with her and help with the shop. I thought about it, and I even tried for a time to get enthusiastic about it, but I just couldn’t. I knew I did not want to spend my life as a shopkeeper, just buying and selling things she thought were wonderful but I didn’t care about. I understood how important the shop was to her, but I don’t think she understood how important my career was to me. Anyway, the more we talked about it, and the more time went by, the angrier we both became and the more we fought about things. We had terrible fights. You wouldn’t remember because you were so small and usually in bed. But it was a terrible time. Your mother wouldn’t budge and it became obvious she never would. I decided I would just have to leave. I didn’t want to leave you, I loved you very much, but I couldn’t see any other way. Do you understand any of this?” Bob deliberately omitted the vicious unforgiveable insults that had been traded, and the occasional frightening physical violence that had marked forever the end of the relationship.

During this monologue John had continued his whittling, but he had been listening carefully. He turned away to face the water. “Why didn’t you ever come to see me,” he accused. “You were gone for a long time and you never came to see me.”

Bob, on the defensive, knew how impossible it would be to explain to a seven-year-old the irrationalities, absurdities, and pettiness of adults, but he tried to explain. “I wanted to visit you,” he began, “but when I finally left, your mother sued for divorce. She was terribly angry and not at all cooperative. When I suggested visiting you she made such terrible scenes that it just didn’t work out. I took a new job and moved so far away it was very difficult to see you even if she would have allowed it. Then I was awarded a grant to do some work in Australia. I knew I would be gone for at least two years. I tried to see you before I left but your mother slammed the door in my face and made it impossible. I did write to you. I wrote almost every week, and I sent your child support check faithfully. I never missed. Not even once. Didn’t your mother read you my letters? You must never think that I didn’t love you or didn’t want to see you. I think maybe your mother didn’t always tell you the truth.”

“Sometimes she read me letters. But I didn’t understand very well. Your letters were mostly about where you were and what you were doing. They didn’t mean anything to me. Mom said you were living with a lot of dirty black people way out in the desert somewhere. She thought you were crazy.”

“Yeah, I know. She never understood why I wanted to go to graduate school in the first place. She just wanted me to be a shopkeeper. Didn’t she tell you about the money I sent?”

“She just told me about a year ago. She said she had deposited all the checks in an account so I would have some money in the bank. I thought that was neat, but I didn’t know about it.”

“Well, that was good of her. I’m glad she did that, at least.” Bob stopped talking and began to
look across the huge lake. John did likewise. A lone sloop was running downwind and moving fast. The billowing white sails against the background of the heavily timbered mountains formed an unforgettably lovely image. The wind had picked up, making the whitecaps larger and appear angrier. High above a large flock of geese was flying so high up and into the wind, their honking was barely audible. “Look, John,” Bob said, “Canadian geese,” pointing up at the large V formation. “They’re late this year, it seems to me, usually they’d already be in Canada or Alaska by now. That’s where they spend their summers. Can you hear them honking?” He started to say, “You know, they mate for life,” which was one of the things he loved most about them, but caught himself before he did so.

John looked up from his whittling at the distant shapes, but said nothing.

“Now that you’re older,” Bob began, “maybe you’ll be able to come and spend part of the summers with me. Would you like that?”

“Well, yeah, I guess so, if Mom lets me.”

“Not only that, I’m trying to get a job closer to here, where you are. Then I’ll be able to see you more often. I’d like to see you play baseball and football and stuff. I’ve already applied for a couple of jobs and I’m hoping one of them will work out. I’d like to see you often. I love you very much. You must never think otherwise.”

John looked away, and silently continued playing with his knife. Bob was disappointed. He wondered if perhaps his son was embarrassed. “I guess I’d better take you home, your Mom will be mad if you miss your lesson. Do you like piano lessons?”

“No, I hate them,” John blurted out. “Mom makes me take them. She knows I hate them but she makes me take them anyway. All the other kids are playing and I have to go to stupid piano lessons.”

Bob, momentarily taken aback by such an unexpected and obviously truthful outburst, finally replied, “I know just how you feel. My mother tried to make me take piano lessons. I never liked them either. I always just wanted to play football. Do you like football?”

“Yeah, but she won’t let me play football. She says it’s too dangerous. She makes me play soccer. Soccer’s a sissy sport. It’s not as good as football.”

They drove in silence for a time, back through the same upscale neighborhood they had driven through on their way. The boy, obviously having been thinking about it, announced unexpectedly, “I’m not going to tell Mom about my knife. She’ll probably want to take it away from me.” He looked questioningly at his father, as if for advice.

“It’s your knife,” Bob said. “You can do what you want with it. Your Mom will probably be mad when she finds out I gave it to you. Mom’s are sort of like that sometimes.

As they pulled up to the curb in front of the small but well kept house, Bob stopped to let John out of the car. “It’s a quarter to six, you’re right on time.”

As he left the car John turned and said, “Here, this is for you.” He shyly handed Bob the stick he had been whittling all afternoon. It was a slender stick, about two feet long. The bark had been carefully removed, it had been bent into a half circle, and small crude knobs had been carved on each end.

“Thank you Son, what is it?”

“It’s a Thinking Stick…Dad,” the boy said softly. He turned and walked dutifully toward the house