Harry’s father was an emotionally unavailable man, one who lost his temper easily and wasn’t shy to resort to violence in order to get his way. He remembers his father cutting a piece of clear pine on the table saw the day his mother died, the blade pushing a plume of agitated sawdust throughout the house. His mother, stomping about for a reason he was too young to understand, ran downstairs in a fit of rage only to return back up the stairs in a stretcher. Harry heard a soft scream and something that distantly resembled the sound of a wet stump being split by an ax, before a prolonged bout of silence. The silence lasted eleven minutes before his father came upstairs, slowly, to call the emergency line.
When Harry was young his father would tell him stories about Harry’s grandfather, Georgi — usually in a resentful, unhappy tone that Harry was rather familiar with. Harry’s father would take out his pocketknife and describe how Georgi would threaten him with it, slashing it back and forth dangerously close to his face. He would talk about the stink of mold that laced the air of his basement, and the cold nights he would spend down there. Any opportunity that Harry’s father got to tell him how bad things were for him, he took; with every chance to remember, he became more and more enamored with his own anger.
Georgi loved a small dog, a Boston terrier, more than he loved his son or wife. It was named after Georgi and barked loudly in the early hours of the night. One day, after Georgi had beaten Harry’s father for a reason Harry was never told, Harry’s father killed the dog in an act of defiance. He claims he does not regret this, since it put Georgi into a state of bed-ridden depression for a few weeks, but when he tells the story there is a hint of sadness behind his eyes. Georgi took his own life not too long after the dog died. He was found in the woods after a week-long search about two miles from the backroad he parked his car on. There was a closed casket funeral, and Harry’s father wept out of obligation while Georgi’s wife stood solemnly. They moved to a smaller house about a month later, where Harry’s father would take up woodworking to distract from the boredom. He claims these were the happiest years of his life.
When Harry was young his father would forbid him to enter the workshop, out of fear of Harry breaking his equipment. Despite this, he would take his time to sneak around the outside of the house, through the garage, and into the shop to look around and work on his own projects. Every time he was caught, Harry’s father put bigger locks on the door as Harry garnered an increasingly larger collection of hammers to match. After each lock was broken, Harry would suffer a beating and a scolding, but this was not enough to dissuade him. A few days after Harry’s mother died, he and his father sat on the porch together watching the golden sun oxidize into a rusty orange as it sank over the horizon. Harry’s father was a few beers in, per usual, as Harry sipped on a Coke.
“I’m hard on you because I’ve made a lot of mistakes… and I just don’t want that for you,” he said, avoiding Harry’s eyeline, “I just don’t want that for you…”
Harry mouthed the words “no shit” to himself as he sat there silently, continuing to drink his Coke and stare at the sunset. This is the only time Harry remembers his father opening up, and he still remains bitter at what he perceives to be a half-hearted attempt. A few years later, just as Harry moved out, the woodshop caught fire while Harry’s father was working, and he was pulled out of the rubble a black skeleton. Harry’s father’s church had to hold the funeral, since Harry refused to plan it, and what little of Harry’s family that was left cut ties with him over the incident.
There was always a lingering fear in Harry’s mind that he would end up exactly like his father. And just like his father before him, this fear consumed his life until he ended up in the same exact place: cutting a piece of clear pine on the table saw. Only, the world had moved on without Harry as he refused to develop with it, so Harry cut his wood without a wife to be fed up with or a child to unknowingly transmit his resentments onto. When he switched off his assortment of tools, there was no fight upstairs waiting for him. No dishes destined to be chucked at the walls, no closed fist fights to be had with someone much weaker than him. He felt a sense of emptiness. He threw an extra couple of logs into the fireplace and sat in his chair to watch TV, preparing to enjoy another evening of the carpentry channel and gentle drinking before passing out on his recliner. Harry flinched at his reflection as he drunkenly stumbled to the bathroom; for a few seconds, it was like his father was standing in front of him. He had nightmares of his father reaching through the mirror with his calloused fingers, gripping Harry’s shoulders tight, hurting his arms before telling him with his rotten whiskey breath just how “proud he was.”
Harry found himself enamored with how his fire danced, its orange appendages flicking back and forth as if they were sarcastically applauding his life every time he went to warm his home. One night, in a drunken stupor, a casually aimed toss onto the fire caused a half-burned piece of wood to roll out onto the floor. Immediately, the drapery and carpet surrounding the fireplace caught on fire, the orange glow climbing upwards towards the roof. Harry stood in awe, half astounded by its beauty and half startled by its ferocious speed. After a minute or so, the fire had reached his roof and began to peel off the paint. Large sagging pockets of air began descending down towards the floor like bulbous stalactites. After the shock had settled, Harry went over his options carefully. As a piece of support beam fell behind him and the smell of smoke continually got thicker, he thought about how his father had died in a house fire just like this one. He wondered if he had made any attempts to flee. He wondered whether or not his father thought about his mother while he burned to death, whether he thought about Harry. Whether his father had ever thought about anyone other than himself. And as Harry sat down to watch more TV, he realized his father probably thought about Georgi, just like him.
Kameron Skrobacz was raised around the Pittsburgh area and has always been fascinated with mental health and its consequences. “I find a lot of enjoyment in exploring those themes and they make constant appearances when I’m writing. I am a film production major and hope to be a successful filmmaker at some point in my lifetime. Other than that I live rather uncomfortably but with a great deal of solace.”