Free After the Parade by Lori Ostlund Page B

that day, trying to see his father’s anger as something predictable, he began here, hoping to understand the slow build of his rage, but when he remembered the way that his mother had giggled and spoken their names, he knew that she had been enjoying the attention, that his father’s tone had been free of reproach. And so Aaron, too, had been happy. It was that simple and that treacherous.
    Aaron and his mother waited, without speaking, for his father to return, and when it became clear that he was not coming back, they spent the afternoon at a free storytelling event about the life of Paul Bunyan. The storyteller—an old man dressed in a plaid lumberjack shirt—fidgeted as he spoke, his right hand rubbing the wrist of the left as though it had just been freed from handcuffs. He regarded the audience eagerly, too eagerly, when he thought he had said something funny. At the end, everyone rose and filed out of the hot room quickly.
    â€œStay put, and don’t talk to anyone,” Aaron’s mother said, and she left too.
    The storyteller regarded him nervously. “Young man, did you know that when Paul was just one week old, he was already so big he had to wear his father’s clothes?” He chuckled. “Can you imagine?” Aaron thought about his father’s shirts, which smelled of sweat that had worked itself deeply into the fibers. Even after his mother washed them, the odor remained, requiring only the heat of his mother’s iron to rekindle it. Aaron smiled at the storyteller. It was not his fault that he thought Aaron might be intrigued by the idea of wearing his father’s clothes.
    The man shuffled out, and Aaron was by himself in the room. It was the largest room he had ever occupied alone, and the empty spacegave freedom to his thoughts. What he imagined was his parents getting into the Oldsmobile and driving away without him, returning to their house in Moorhead (because his imagination was not equipped to send them elsewhere) while he established a new life here, sleeping under Babe’s stomach when it rained and spending his days listening to the tall tales.
    Into the room came two boys. He could still recall the shock he had felt as he looked at the boy on the left, taking in the severely upturned nose and knobby, receding chin, the blue eyes and unusually short lashes, and then saw the same configuration of unfortunate features on the other boy. They were around twelve, the age at which threatening younger children offered both pleasure and a way to subvert their own feelings of vulnerability. They spoke loudly and swaggered up to Aaron as if he had stolen something of theirs that they aimed to get back.
    â€œHey, asshole,” said the boy on the right.
    The other snickered and kicked Aaron’s chair hard. “My brother’s talking to you, asshole,” he said.
    â€œMy mother told me not to talk to anyone,” Aaron replied, his voice soft and overly polite. When he used this voice with his father, it only made him angrier.
    The boys sat down behind him. “I heard that Paul Bunyan had a pecker as big as an oak tree,” the one directly behind him said. He kicked the back of Aaron’s chair, jolting Aaron forward.
    His twin laughed. “Yeah, and nuts like basketballs.”
    The first boy leaned forward, his voice loud in Aaron’s ear. “I heard a train thought his asshole was a tunnel—went in and never came out.”
    â€œPaul Bunyan was a fag,” his brother said, and the boys slammed backward in their chairs, yelping like puppies.
    Aaron’s mother returned and glared at the boys. “We’ll wait in the car,” she said to Aaron, which meant that she had not found his father.
    They left the park and walked up and down several streets, his mother pausing at each corner, giving careful consideration to all four directions. Her tendency, like his, was to leap to the worst conclusion; he felt her fear in