Free A Song for Carmine by M Spio

over her voice.
    I think of how easily I could take him out. My foot fidgets at the thought. I lean to one side; it would just take one kick, a hard punch, there’s not much left to him. He smells of cold cardboard, mildew; he is sour inside.
    I lean down, take in his features: the gray eyebrows, the broad smile like my own, the arthritic hands, the stiff jawline, the disheveled yellow hair. The pulpit would have to hold him up now, not the other way around.
    “Here, Pop, grab my arm. I’ll pull you up.” I put my hand out and stare up at the ceiling. His skin feels hot to the touch; he’s heavier than I thought he would be. I am frozen inside.
    When I’ve pulled him up all the way, we stare at each other, feel the gravity trying to pull us back down. I’ve not been this close to him in many years. We are the same height for the first time; neither of us looks away. We search the other for as far as we can go; we hold on, climb, wince, twist, and turn. It happens so fast. His eyes are wet, and when they pool over, I look away, blink, my skin burns.
    Ma comes to the end of the hallway but doesn’t say anything. The afternoon light reaches into the side window strong and hot; my skin prickles when I look at the oblong triangle we make in the hallway, the sharp edges we’ve always had, then the symmetry. It’s not special; you can’t tell that it is us.
    I hand him his cane and walk out the front door and head north. The leaves move in the trees above me and the sky is dry. I feel paralyzed, can’t tell if what I feel is pride, destruction, or the aftermath; there isn’t a palpable beginning or end to it.
    I keep walking, then start to run. I remember times when life was good, when the childhood memories were cherry in color and bled together, full and ripe, mouthfuls of them. The memories of those days used to flood me in Dallas at the weirdest times. Memories of when I’d watch cartoons on Saturday mornings, holding my mother’s hand, while she smoked Salems and laughed at the television with me, the old TV set buzzing; or sitting atop my father’s shoulders, fishing pole in hand, the low-hanging leaves of the trees brushing my head as we hiked down the trail to the Gulf in East Texas.
    I run through the neighborhoods of Eton and feel as though gravity has left me behind, that I’m destined to float through space, or bump along, hitting things here and there forever, never finding solid ground. It’s the way it’s always been. Touch-and-go.
    When I run long enough to get the high, I pay attention again, slip into the present. There is a sense of randomness in Eton, to the order of things here: houses and then trailers, white, white, white, and then an occasional black. The patterns here are hard to find, yet easy to identify. I count the number of houses I pass, the number of barefoot children, the curse words I hear; I see the dirty, old furniture on porches, skinny men on street corners, old cars on blocks in drives. Then the grandeur: the mountains so much softer and bluer than the Rockies, the sweet, melon air, the gusts of wind, the quiet calm of life here, the space in between it all.
    *     *     *
    A few days later, I am sitting at the kitchen table with Ma drinking a cup of coffee from one of the old plastic mugs we’ve used for years. The edges of the rim are frayed; the plastic chafes my lips as I drink.
    “Carmine, your father, well, he’s real sorry for how hard he was on you back when you were just a boy.” She’s drinking out of the same brown mug, and her hand shakes noticeably as she brings the cup to her mouth. She’s got a lifetime worth of something she’s holding back, and I’m always afraid the dam will break when I’m around.
    I run my hands over my face, feel the stubble, the rawness of my own face. There hadn’t been a day in twenty years that I haven’t shaved, but there’ve been ten lately. I wake up and don’t know what to do with myself anymore. My clothes