Creative Fiction

Worth the Wait

When I was growing up, my dad always told me to enjoy every minute of my youth. He told me that time began to tick faster and faster the older I would get. He was a fairly large man, his gut sticking an inch or two over his belt with his polo shirt beginning to come untucked. He was beginning to bald on the top of his head and the man always seemed to smell like Lay’s potato chips. I never knew they had a specific smell until I began spending more time with Dad. Mom was rarely ever home. She was a famous motivational speaker who would go on tours lasting several months at a time before she got any sort of break. My older brother had already graduated from high school two years ago and was accepted into UCLA, well over a thousand miles away from our home in Bozeman, Montana, so we really only saw him around the holidays. That left me alone with my dad almost all year long.

He worked at a carpentry business during the day, then came home and spent the rest of the night in his woodshop until he was tired enough to go to bed. I didn’t really know what his problem was, but the only time he ever talked to me was when he needed an extra set of hands to help him out with the project he was working on. My days were spent either doing homework or chores around the house. I was a senior in high school and had a countdown on my iPhone for the day when I finally graduated. This town didn’t have anything to offer me anymore. Most of my friends were tied up in relationships or some type of sport program, so that left me alone to entertain myself.

When mom signed her new contract to travel around the country to speak to schools and corporations a year ago, I tried to take advantage of the situation to get closer with my dad. I thought we could go watch some of the school sporting events together or maybe start a new series on Netflix we could both get into. I would receive the same answer every time I asked him to spend time with me, “I have other things to do. Maybe some other time, Bobby.” I essentially gave up after three months of asking and hearing the same exact answer over and over again. This was when I first began the countdown on my phone.

Now that there is only five days left of school and Mom is still nowhere even close to the same zip code as us, I figured I could muster up enough energy to give one last attempt to improve my relationship with Dad. I made sure to finish all of my homework in school one Friday so my night was free for any sort of impulse activity we felt like doing. I wasn’t going to take no for an answer, no matter what form of sugar coating he smothered it in.

When I got home, I walked straight towards his undersized woodshop located in our back yard. It was a pretty sorry establishment for anyone over six feet to work in, which both me and Dad were by a solid couple inches. The dimensions were roughly eight feet by four, while the height of it was no taller than five and a half feet, causing us to duck considerably whenever we were inside. The floor was scattered with wood shavings which gave off a very potent scent of aged oak. Although the aroma was strong and beginning to adopt a smell more related to mildew, the scent was actually my favorite part of entering that small box. The lighting was awfully poor which gave every tool hanging on the shelf a dark gloomy shadow, giving off a sort of ominous feeling. Sure enough, Dad was hunched over working on the same project he had been attempting to complete for a year.

“Dad, I was thinking we could maybe go out tonight and watch the new Sylvester Stallone movie. Do you like his movies?” This was obviously a loaded question, for I knew that Sylvester Stallone was Dad’s all-time favorite actor.

He turned to look at me, forcing a grin across his face, saying, “Maybe some other time, bud. I really need to finish this.” It was the same response he had always given me, however, this one felt different. It felt personal and I couldn’t keep silent any longer.

“Are you aware that I graduate next Friday, Dad? Are you aware that I will be leaving town the day after graduation to go live Danny at UCLA? Are you aware that I have absolutely no reason to ever come back to this town?” I screamed all these things at him, hoping for some sort of reaction in retaliation to my outburst. Yet, all I got in return was sad puppy dog look while he stared down at his shoes as if I had taken away his favorite toy.

“I’ve had enough of this! Have fun with your precious project,” I said. I turned around and stormed out of the shop, slamming the door hard behind me to be sure that my message was fully received. Not once has he ever taken time out of his day, at least since Mom left on her tour, to spend some quality time with me or to even ask how my day had gone. Well I’ve had enough of it now. Just one more week and I didn’t have to put up with any of this anymore. I’d finally be free to start my new life on my own.

Friday and Saturday passed with little excitement to be had, bringing forth a dreary Sunday morning with nothing to do but count the time until it was time to start one last week of school. I was sitting in the living room with a bowl of soggy cereal balancing on my lap. I was flipping between SportsCenter and the Discovery channel when Dad walked in and sat in the chair facing me on the opposite side of the room. He wasted no time in starting a conversation.

“Bobby, I know I haven’t been available much lately to do anything with y--,” I interrupted him before he could finish.

“No, you’ve been available plenty of times. You just feel that your little project in the shop is more important than anything anymore.” My cereal had transformed into a brown mush of fiber, looking more like soup now than anything else.

“That’s not true!” This was the first thing my dad has said with any form of emotion in months. “That project is important to me, but you are so much more important. That’s why . . .” I interrupted him yet again.

“Ya know, remember when we would go down to the shooting range every weekend. We would tell Mom it was just for target practice, but we would really go there to compete with one another to see who the better shot was? Where did that Dad go? I’m leaving for college in less than a week, so you would think now more than ever would be the time you asked me to go shoot with you again. You know how much I love hunting and firing off my gun, but the reason I loved it so much was because I got to do it with you! But don’t worry, I understand that some things are just meant change.” I stood up after saying this, walked into the kitchen and threw my bowl into the sink. I threw it a little harder than I had intended to, however, and the bowl ended up splitting in half; half of the cereal beginning to slide down the drain, while the other half was managing to stay put on its half of the bowl.

The day had finally come! It was graduation day and I was standing in the hallway of the auditorium with the rest of my class dressed in their gowns. The ceremony managed to drag on for more than an hour, but before I knew it, it was time to throw our caps into the air while screaming and chanting consumed the entire stage. I said my goodbyes to my friends and then got in my car to drive straight for home. My conscience was still eating at me a bit from the Sunday when I yelled at Dad, but it needed to be done. I decided I would simply grab my duffle bag full of clothes I had packed the night before, and drive straight for California without saying anymore farewells. However, when I pulled up to our driveway, my dad was sitting on our front porch with his elbows on his knees. His hands were folded and pressed underneath his chin where the stubble had begun to turn silver.

I got out of my car and approached him with my head facing down and my hands shoved inside my pockets. He stood up when I had walked up to him and asked if I could follow him to the backyard. I felt that I could honor his last request, being this could be the last time I ever spoke to him again. We walked around our house where the siding had begun to split and crack like worn out skin. There was something standing upright in the middle of the yard with a sheet hung over it. Before I could ask what it was, he ripped the cloak off and revealed what he had been working on all this time.

The oak shined with fresh coating of vinyl all throughout its structure. The smell of it hit me as soon as he had revealed it, a smell that reminded me of summer walks through the forest or the crackling sound the wood made when thrown into a blazing fire.

“It’s a gun rack for our rifles. I figured you would need a place to put them for when you came back to visit.” After he said this, he squinted his eyes down to the ground while trying to control the trembling his shoulders had begun to make. Seeing my dad in this state made me feel as if I had let him down. I knew my breakdowns were justified, but perhaps if I had known what he had been working on all this time, I would have cut him some slack or even offered to help him out more.

“I wanted to finish it before you left,” he said. “So you knew that there was always a place waiting for you if you ever needed it.” While his last few words rung around inside of my head, I walked up to the gun rack he had made from scratch and saw that there was something carved into the side base. It was a record of every score we shot at the shooting range when I was growing up. Dad currently had two more wins than I had. I looked back to my who had finally broke down and allowed the tears to start rolling down his crimson cheeks. I walked to him and embraced him in my arms, trying to tell him that I forgave him without actually saying it. All I could manage to say was, “How about I stick around this weekend? It’s about time I finally took the lead in our little competition.”

His body began to shake even more after I had said this, but I knew it wasn’t out of sadness. He just simply said back to me, “I would like to see you try.”