Brass Hook
Brass Hook
A Michael Lee short story
July 28, 18
J.P. Grant, the great great great grandson of Ulysses Grant (okay 7 generations since U.S. Grant), is 36 years old and not truly doing much with his life other than working a nine to five dead-end job, growing old, and putting the minimum into his retirement fund against his mother’s weekly encouragements. He has a five-acre homestead and a few livestock animals that cost more than they are worth. His father stops by most days to tend to the animals while J.P. is at work, has been known to name the chickens here and there, and only charges a few eggs a day for his services.
J.P. Grant woke late Saturday morning, like most other Saturdays this year; still drunk from the night before and head spinning. He rolled out of bed, tangled in worn cotton sheets onto the floor; his head hitting the nightstand on the way down before his arms could free themselves from the sleep-made straight jacket, created after a night of drunkenly tossing and turning. Pushing the nightstand over with his head, his phone and lamp crashed to the carpet with him; he groaned with regret, had no desire to untangle himself, or to get up off the cool floor. Grant lay there on the soft matted carpet saying to himself for the first time “never again.”
His phone lay on the ground, the speaker as close to his ear canal as possible without actually being in his ear, began to ring at full volume. Grant rolled over with a start; struggled to untangle his arms and lifting himself up on his elbows threw up in his mouth a little bit, swallowed then grabbed his phone and said hoarsely. “Hello, mom.”
“Where the hell are you John Paul? Have you been smoking cigarettes? You sound like you’ve been smoking! Your dad’s birthday is today and you two were supposed to go fishing! Remember?” She said as unhappily as any mom could sound when her son misses an important outing with dad.
“Mom, I don’t smoke and Dad’s birthday is tomorrow, not today.”
“No John! It’s today! You are five hours late; your dad said just come out to the lake and he will come to get you in the boat. Maybe you can salvage his day. So get your ass up and go meet your father before I come over there! Don’t forget his present either, you forgot it last year, and even though he didn’t say anything I just know it hurt him.” She exclaimed.
“Okay ma, I’ll be there in a little while. Can you call him and tell him I’ll be there?” Grant asked knowing that if he called his dad, he’d be told not to worry about coming so late in the morning.
“Yes, J. P. I’ll let him know you are on your way.”
Grant got along with his parents pretty well and didn’t actually mind going fishing with his pops a few times a year. He didn’t forget the present this year either. A brass fishing hook with “Love you Dad” engraved along the side of it. So yeah, not a real hook. It’s one of the hat clip hooks but J.P. got a quality one that his dad wouldn’t mind keeping around for a while.
Grant got up off the floor, not stepping too far from his bed, looked around his room for a clean shirt to wear. He hadn’t always been so messy, or even a drunk, seeing his room like this made him feel gross inside. His eyes still a little blurry, mouth dry and filmy he could feel the room spin just a little before falling to the bed and going back to dreamless drunken slumber.
“Hey, son. Wake up. We need to talk.” Grants father said calmly as he gently rocked his son’s shoulders as to not surprise the sleeping young man half off the bed like he had just fallen there.
Grant opened his eyes a little thinking he was dreaming, then sprang up shouting. “ah shit dad I am so frickin sorry! I didn’t mean to go back to bed for real. What time is it?”
Grant’s father looked at him brokenheartedly, chin down he said. “It’s 3pm son.”
“Hey dad, you know, let me get cleaned up, maybe we can go get an early dinner or something, please let me make it up to you.”
“That sounds good but we still need to have a little talk before we go anywhere okay.”
Grant nodded his head, grabbed the clothes he attempted to put on earlier, and rushed to the shower leaving his dad in the bedroom doorway still glum-looking.
“Hey Dad, how did you get in the house?” Grant yelled from the shower. His father didn’t yell anything back and Grant figured he was a bit too far to hear him or was watching the news by now. Grant got out of the shower just as the steam finished filling the bathroom, dried off with a towel that still smelled fresh from the laundry mat then took a blow dryer to the bathroom mirror to dry away the fog. J.P. Grant didn’t have the dad-bod of his friends and still checked himself out in the mirror after every shower, asking himself where the beach was and what the shape of the world was even on his worst days.
“Hey, dad, where you want to eat?” Grant said while trying to shave off a week’s worth of hair with a two-dollar razor. He finished getting ready skipping the hair gel and settling for the trucker hat his dad got him last Christmas, blank with just a patch sewn on the front displaying a colorful rooster, and headed to the kitchen passing his living room where his dad was patiently watching the news, turned up just loud enough to drowned out a shower, waiting for his only son to hurry along. Grant rifled through the fridge trying to find something to drink to get the strange taste out of his mouth. Two cans of cola sat in the back of the fridge. One of the cans said in cursive along its side “Share one with dad.” Grant rolled his eyes and said to himself “just rub it in why don’t you.”
“Hey dad, you never said how you got in or where you want to go eat,” Grant said curiously as he walked from the kitchen to the living room sitting on the couch across from his recliner that his dad was occupying. His dad’s head was down and his eyes were closed and a house key on his knee. Grant smiled, cracked open the can just right to make it noisy but not spray soda everywhere, took a sip of his drink, and looked around at his clean house. “Hey there sleepy head, you cleaned my whole fricken house? I’m going to miss more family gatherings if you keep that up.”
Grant sat back and smiled; he was holding the brass fishing hook so when his dad looked up he wouldn’t be able to miss it. Thinking to himself, “Shit, my dad can be so damn cool sometimes.” His dad just lay reclined back as still as could be, the news lady on TV was complaining about something, and Grants eyes grew big body lunging forward.
“Oh fuck… DAD!”
Harvey is home.
The good news is that my son Harvey is home, with his family, and is a perfect little bundle of joy with all his tiny little fingers and toes. Everything went medicaly well during his birth and introduction to this crazy world. The day started at about 3:45 in the morning and on my end there was no need to wake since I had not yet fallen asleep from the night before. Sarah got up and started making sure we were all set to go while I handled putting the kids in the van and asking if she remebered different random things we may need. She had everything under control and I just smiled at her awesomeness. From the house we went to my parents who were eagerly awaiting Macey and Reagan’s arival. Macey in no way wanted to stay with them, only because she wanted to meet Harvey as soon as we got to make his accauintence. It took a couple of minutes but we managed to leave with enough time to get some hot chocolate and make it to the hospital with time to spare.
After arriving, we got checked in and brought up to the labor and delivery ward where all the festivities were about to begin. It was a nice room, though nothing I would want to spend to much time in regularly. The clock said it was five am. IV’s got started, plans were presented, and shift change happend; the new nurses came in and finally sarted her on the patossin. From there it was a waiting game; Sarah and I tried to get some sleep until the Dr. came in. When she got to the room to see Sarah ,she told us “well I think you’ll be having the baby around one pm”. There went all my precious and much needed sleep, since it was almost nine now and family started showing up; more people were in and out of the room than I could count. At amost one Sarah really started having contractions and decided she wanted an epidural. The nurses, in vain, kind of tries to convince her to skip it since she was so far along. “No” she said, and soon there after the anastisiologist showed up with his greater than thou you are waisting my time, I should be facebooking, bad ass good job doing self with his helper who was pretty calm and collected. The nurse had me hold Sarah’s shoulders, (I had a very empty stomach, no sleep, and nothing to drink at all), I got this. I go to holding my lovely wife up and am watching the guy fill her spine with pain easing fluids of joy. (Hey why are my arms all tingly, oh I’m getting all warm. Am I having a heart attack? Is this when I am going to die? What the hell is going on? If I fall I am going to pull Sarah down too. “Nurse, we need to switch spots right now. Yes I am fine just take over. I’ll sit down. Oh not on the floor. The chair. Right, that is where I was going. I am okay, I don’t drink soda any more. I’ll drink it but I am fine.” What the hell was that. Yeah that is how about a minute of my life went. I have never felt that way that I can remember any how. I let her down and there is no way to redeam that. All I can say though is that I guess I needed some good food and bad sugar.
Sarah laid down after the epidural, gave a practice push for the nurse who went and got the Dr.. Sarah gave a pracice puch for the doctor who promtly put on her sterile gear and had her push again. Harvey’s head came out with that push; the rest of him came out with a second half push. That boy was as purple as Grimmis and just about as big too. Eight pounds fourteen ounces. He quickly went from purple to bright red, closely resembling the hard exo-skeleton of a freshly cooked lobsted. Yes it was a fast delivery. I held Sarahs right leg and her mom held her left leg; Macey who stayed in the room with us held the shoulders of the nurse who would be soon taking care of my sons medical well being for the duration of our stay. By saying she was holding on to the nurses shoulders I was trying to convey that she was being held up off the ground making it possible for her to see the entire delivery. Macey’s face was priceless, with utter discust writen all over it; she didn’t squint away or try to hide her eyes either. My little four year old held out like a champ. There was a stool waitng for her over by the heated crib that Havey would spend some time in after getting cleaned up and fed. Macey diligently watched everyting the nurse did and managed not to get in the way at all. She did reach out to touch his feet after they were clean and didn’t look as messy as when he was first presented to her. Before everything was all cleaned up I took her, from her watchfull position upon the stool, into my arms and carried her to where the plasenta laid used and wasted waiting to be dicarded like broken toy. I told her that was where Harvey was sleeping all this time in mommy’s belly. She wasn’t pleased with what I had presented her, even though she did want to touch it. Macey went back to Harvey to make sure he was in good handes.
I kept my eye on Sarah during and after the birth to make sure nothing was wrong and to let her know that through all this she is still my number one. After the clean up, people started flowing in and thats when things got hectic. I quickly fixed that and things went back to normal. Soon after everyone was gone and it was just the three of us, I got some sleep here and there, Sarah fed Harvey here and there, sleeping very little. Havery did a lot of sleeping until about midnight. He said goodmorning and stayed up until about six in the morning. My wife by the way is a champ.
Havery is home now. Just sucking up the good life. Tomorrow is his first doctors appointment.
Michael Trump 