A Short Story By Mitchel Weaver
December 13, 2011
“WHILE LISTENING TO ALBAN BERG’S PIANO SONATA, I REMEMBER A MOMENT OF CHILDHOOD HORROR”
by Mitchel Weaver
He was sitting cross-legged in front of the window’s column of eyelids. They blinked orange sherbert onto his shoulders.
I’d gone to church with daddy that morning, and after the service, as we were walking to the truck, the sun had made me keep my head down and close my eyes. To keep from falling, I had to hold the sleeve of daddy’s suit jacket, which he occasionally shook. “Just walk!” he said. Later, in the truck, I concluded that I dislike it when the leather on the door is hot: it feels like it has a fever, and it gives me headaches. Daddy said that after we eat lunch we have to go to Brother James’s house. I asked if I had to go, and he said that I did.
For lunch we had roast with potatoes and carrots. The carrots smelled like the sun, so I refused to eat them. Mama was very angry. I told her that they smell like the sun and that the liquid in the pot they’re in is like a lake with a headache, which made her laugh. I laughed, too. I ate very quickly, so as to escape the carrots, but when I attempted to run, I had trouble sliding my chair away from the table. Mama laughed again. She screamed at me as I ran, “If you eat one little ol’ carrot, I’ll let you have some sherbert.” I walked hesitantly to the table. The thought of eating a carrot terrified me. I stuck my fork into one and looked at it. Mama said it’s just a carrot.
Once we arrived at Brother James’s house, Brother James’s wife said hello to me, and I told her that I had eaten orange sherbert. “Oh, really?” she asked. I told her yes, and that I had even eaten a carrot. She agreed with me that eating carrots is very serious. I felt manly.
Brother James’s entire house was brown, like roast. Several people were there, but I could not tolerate being around them. I went into a room on the other side of the house. The room was hotter than the others. There was a leather chair and it was fascinating. I stared at it and walked in circles for it.
The sound of creaking boards disturbed me. Then Brother James seesawed into the room on legs that were like creaking boards. I was embarrassed that he had seen me walking in circles and was mortified when he sat down into the leather chair. I remembered the leather in the truck and I looked at the light coming from the window, which somehow seemed like the liquid in the pot. My head began to hurt, and the smell of carrots was everywhere. He sat cross-legged in front of the window’s column of eyelids. They blinked orange sherbert onto his shoulders. He – like a terrible, amoral god – blinked at me.
