After reading Jack’s instruction last week about narrating a day in your life to find material, you will be interested in looking into this story to find the quantity of details that come from such close observation, from the way one of the characters tugs at his beard and the other covers his ears and sings when he doesn’t want to hear what is being said to the not quite tuned in radio and the silence during a car ride.  You’ll notice that even though the story covers memories the brothers share (and don ‘t share) of growing up, the day they are together is well drawn.  That’s what the short story writer must do, and what Jack’s exercise from last week’s article lends itself to developing.

This story first appeared in the Beloit Fiction Journal, Volume 7, Number 1 & 2, 1992

Fatherhats
by Jack Heffron

At two-thirty, Frank still sat in suit and tie, overcoat folded in his lap. On top of the coat lay three plastic roses, each with a green leaf glued halfway up the wire stem. Johnny had left at eleven in Frank’s car, swearing he’d be back by two. All he’d said was, “I need to see some people.” From his pocket, Frank pulled a rosary, a. souvenir from the seminary. He said a decade, mumbling the prayers softly, but he couldn’t concentrate, kept losing his place on the beads, and finally he said, louder than the prayers, “Damn you, Johnny.”

Visiting Dad’s grave had been Johnny’s idea in the first place. Home for Christmas from what must be his tenth year in graduate school, he had said, right out of the blue, standing there in snow-covered parka, a puddle swelling around his beat-up, brown boots, “Later on, let’s go see Dad.”

Frank had planned on going during the holidays but never thought to take his brother along. Johnny and Dad had nurtured with something like reverence their 25-year “misunderstanding”‘: freezing men stoking a fire. Frank said, “Must be two years since you’ve gone.”

 “Exactly.” Johnny’s face flushed, in anger or embarrassment. He was thirty, a year younger than Frank, but be looked older. Purple half-circles, like bruises, sagged under his eyes; his snarl of dark curls and bushy black beard were decked with gray. In that parka he looked like a mountain man or an Arctic explorer, a bear of a guy. He looked like Dad.

When Frank agreed to go, he added, “‘But you start on him and that’s it.” He’d wanted to sound forceful, but it came out strained, whiny.

At a little past three, Johnny wheeled through the driveway slush and blared the born. “I’m sorry, Frank, really,” he said. “I didn’t know what time it was.” He smelled of alcohol but insisted on driving. Frank refused, stuffing beer cans and an empty McDonald’s box into the plastic bag tied to the stick shift. He tugged on his gloves, snapped his seatbelt, clipped his sunshades to his glasses, and placed the roses on the console next to his wallet and whisk brush. Johnny kept pulling at his beard, then smoothing it down–kind of nervous tic. Like Dad, he was always in a hurry.

“What’s the rush?” Frank said.

“No rush.”

“You’re the one who’s late.”

“I said I was sorry.”

‘”So relax.”

“Hey, I’m not the one who laid that slow poke shit on you.”

“If you’re starting on him–”

“I’m not.”

“Well, don’t, just don’t start.”

“All right.”

“Because I won’t hear it.”

“I’m not starting, okay?”

Johnny’s hands shot up, as though he expected Frank to hit him. Frank wished he had gone alone. Or that Tony, the youngest, was with them. Tony could always bring out the best in Johnny, in everyone. Three years ago, he skipped off to California with this Chinese gal named Opal, never writing or calling. Didn’t even come back for the funeral.

Only a few cars splashed along the streets, now more wet than icy, but Frank kept the speed at 25, his gloved hands tight on the wheel. Johnny squirmed, thrummed his fingers against the dashboard, twisted his beard. Except for the soft squawk of the radio, the station not quite tuned in, they sat in silence. Johnny had been home almost a week, so they’d already argued sports and politics, discussed the women in Johnny’s life, the lack of women in Frank’s, and found themselves staring like strangers in a waiting room at each other. Years ago, they had been close. Now they couldn’t get past the silence. Not even Johnny, Mr. Bring-it-out-in-the-open, mentioned Tony.

“These streets are slick,” Frank said. “We shouldn’t be on them.”

Johnny said, “You’re doing great.” As he reached to pat Frank’s shoulder, he brushed the plastic roses on the console, then jerked his arm away as though the flower were on fire.

“Sorry,” he said. From his top pocket he fished out a cigarette and lit it. Snow began to fall lightly on the windshield. Frank turned on the wipers, but after a few swipes they groaned against the glass like honking geese. “Frank, can’t you bear that?” Johnny said.

Frank switched off the wipers. “I wish you’d throw out that cigarette.”

“Didn’t know it bothered you,” When Johnny cracked the window to flick away the cigarette, a gush of cold air swept in.

“Things’ll kill you. ”

“I appreciate your concern.”

“I am concerned.”

Johnny laughed. “‘Which is why I love this crazy guy,” he said, jabbing Frank’s shoulder, jostling him, messing his meticulously brushed hair.

“We’re going to wreck.” But Frank couldn’t help smiling as be patted his hair, risking quick glances at the rearview mirror. For some reason, and only for an instant, he expected to see Tony in the back seat, laughing with them.

When they arrived at St. Josephs’, the sky was twilight dark, gunmetal clouds packed low, drifting to the east. Sleet drizz1ed on the snow-covered hills, dripped from the black trees. As the car snaked along winding streets, the marble faces of saints– bearded and solemn–stared through the mist like mourners turned out for a funeral procession. Except for the crackle of tires through slush and the hush of wind across the snow, the cemetery was silent–as if abandoned, left to its own devices.

Johnny gabbed about a summer job at a cemetery, years ago. The tales of exhumed bodies–black sinews snapped off and stuffed into garbage bags–which usually made Frank sick. strangely comforted him, Then, for the first time in years, he remembered how, when they were kids, Tony would come to their rooms, wanting to shake bands before they went to sleep so if one of them died during the night, they’d know for eternity, that things had ended on good terms. Frank and Johnny would make a joke of it, hide their hands behind their backs or under pillow, but Tony was serious, his eyes drawn tight under that mop of blond curls. He’d say, “Just shake, okay?”

At the top of a wide hill, the limestone statue of St. Joseph the Worker loomed over them, a mallet clutched to his chest, an auger in the hand at his side. Their father’s grave lay near the crest of the hill, demanding a climb up the slick embankment. Johnny fell twice, laughing the first time, yelling, “God damn it,” the second. Frank chided him for cursing in a cemetery. Their voices echoed across the hills.

Frank arrived at the marker first and waited for Johnny, who made it up the hill, panting, a minute later. The roses in Johnny’s hand were covered with snow, the wire stems bent from where he had fallen on them. One had lost its green leaf. “‘This is it7” he asked.

“Uh-huh,” Frank said. Crusts of ice clung to the corners of the brass plate but had melted away to reveal the name JOSEPH EDWARD MITTLEHOUSE

“This is Dad’s?” Johnny looked down at the marker, then at Frank, then back at the marker again. “That’s … one of those…” He was still panting, “That’s nothing but a government-issue marker.”

“Dad was in Korea.”

“You mean it was free,” Johnny said. A jet of frozen breath fumed from his mouth. “Dad probably made twice what these guys around him made. And they get granite stones set up off the ground, and he’s stuck with.  . .  this.” Frank studied the marker. It did look a little cheap. Then Johnny said, “And look at the date on that thing.”

“1 know,” Frank said. “It says the seventh.”

“I said 1 know.”

“Dad died on the sixth, December sixth, Saint Nick’s day. I remember.”

Frank flinched. Johnny remembered? He was five hundred miles away. Frank was the one who walked into the room and saw Dad still under his covers, his head on the pillow, his face as white as that statue of St. Joe, the alarm clock blaring. Even dead he looked big, sprawled across the bed. ‘”The engravers messed it up,” Frank said. ”They installed it a few days after the funeral, and we didn’t realize until later.”

“So what, it was too late or something? You couldn’t get them on the phone and say, ‘Hey, you guys, it was the sixth”?”

He spun away and walked a few steps down the hill, slipped, but righted himself against a gravestone. “Bad enough he’s stuck with an Army marker, but the date–”

“‘Then you fix it,” Frank shouted, his voice ringing out over the snowy hills, the silent markers staring back at him. Softer, he said, “I’m not a bank, you know,” Since Dad’s death, Frank had taken over the family finances, helped his mother sell the old house and move into a condo, and though he didn’t make much managing a computer store, he had lent Johnny thousands to prolong his education. What was it now? Archaeology? Anthropology?

Johnny stared wide-eyed at him, then said, almost whispering, “You know I’ll pay you back.” Frank turned away. That wasn’t the point. Someone in the family should finish school, should be something. Dad wanted that. Johnny would succeed where Frank and Tony had failed. A gust of wind blew hard across the hill. “You know I appreciate … hell, if it wasn’t for you … I’ll get a student loan,” Johnny said.

Frank shook his head no. He watched Johnny pull at a tangle of beard, standing there like an Eskimo in that parka. ”You look like you should be holding a fish,” Frank said, smiling. For a moment, it was like the old days, when it was easier to talk and laugh together. “And you’re right. After all he did–”

“I’m not saying we owe it to him.” Johnny’s eyes flashed.

“You said you wouldn’t start.”

“You brought it up.”

“You promised not to start.”

“Why are you so afraid to talk about him?”

“Let’s say a prayer and go.” Frank grabbed the flowers from Johnny.

“He wasn’t God, you know. Really. He wasn’t.”

Frank said nothing, knowing that, despite his earlier promise, Johnny, indeed, was starting. When Frank thought about his father, he did think of him, in a way, like a god, someone of infinite power and wisdom.

“He pulled a lot of shit on us,” Johnny said.

“He was your father.”

“And I remember him well.”

Remembered all the bad things. Well, Frank remembered, too. Lots of things. He remembered one spring when they were little, Dad bought them these hats. They called them fatherhats.  Little Tyroleans with a feather stuck in the band, like the hat Dad wore. The three boys would wear them to Mass on Sunday, troop single file down the center aisle, Dad at the lead, nodding to everyone he knew–and be knew everyone. Frank loved that. walking in like that. With Dad he felt important, special somehow, as if his father’s love offered membership in a very select club.

Mom had home movies of the brothers standing outside the house on Mayview Court: Frank, straight and solemn, Johnny laughing, his hat cocked back on his head, Tony, curls peeping from beneath the brim, the three of them together, waving.

“Remember those hats we used to wear?” Frank asked. “Fatherhats?”

“Not really,” Johnny said.

“Sure you do. Fatherhats, Those were so great.'”
Johnny combed through his beard, molding the wild hairs along his jawline.

“We wore them to look like him.'”

“Frank–”

“You wanted to start, okay, so start. How about Lives of the Saints? Remember Lives of the Saints? Him reading to us about our patron saints?”

Johnny’s head shrank back into his hood. “Well, didn’t he?”

“If you say so.”

“He’d lie on the couch with the book, and we’d sit on the floor listening!’

Frank saw the scene clearly: Dad sprawled out, the little red book resting on his chest, soft voice droning across the pages. “Saint Francis of Asissi, Saint John Vienny, Saint Anthony of Padua–”

“Patron saint of lost articles. Anybody seen Tony l.ately7” Frank scooped out a place in the snow and stabbed the wire stems of the roses into the ground. “You blame him for everything. ”

“Because every time we mention him, which we don’t because even dead he scares the shit out of us, but when we do, we all bow our heads, say, Yessir, he did so much for everyone.” He plucked a chunk of ice from his beard, flicked it away. “Maybe if we talked about what really happened, we cou1d help each other, like when we were kids.”

“What do you need help with?”

“Frank, look at us.”

Frank crossed himself, closed his eyes, and folded his hands. He tried to pray but couldn’t. His body shook from the cold and from something else–up in heaven, Dad was hearing every word. Frank stood there, listening to the wind hiss across the hill, and to Johnny crunching back and forth in the snow. No prayers came to him. He saw the three brothers, marching off to Sunday Mass in their fatherhats.

Then, “What was the point, Big Daddy?” Johnny’s voice, soft, insistent. Frank opened his eyes and saw Johnny staring down at the marker. “You must have known what you were doing to us.” He darted his eyes from the marker to Frank.

“You planned this,” Frank said. “You came here to do this.” Johnny shook his head, no. “Just thought of it right now. Need to get a few things off my chest.”

“You promised not to start, and now you are, you’re starting.”

Johnny stared down at the marker. “‘1 knew you would, I knew it.”

“Yes, I am. I’m starting. It’s about time I told Big Daddy what I really think.”

“Right, like you never did. You never let up on him, never.  Always in his face, yelling back at him.”

“Big Daddy always bad the last word.”

“Just leave him alone,” Frank said, grabbing Johnny’s sleeve. Johnny whipped Frank’s arm away, moving him backward. Frank swung his arms wildly to right himself, his feet almost sliding from under him. When he had regained his balance, he said, “‘Let’s just leave, huh?”

Johnny glared at him, his eyes sharp, full of rage- -Dad’s eyes. “Always protecting him. Taking his side. Even when he was running you down like some yard dog, you believed every word. Yes, Daddy, I’m an idiot, yes, Daddy, oh, yessir, you’re so right.”

“I never–”

“‘This is for you too, you know. You need it as bad a! I do!’

“I don’t need anything,” Frank said. “I’m leaving.”

“The mighty Joseph has forsaken us,” Johnny yelled like some deranged preacher across the silent cemetery.

Frank started down the hill toward the car, then: stopped.  “I’m really leaving,” he said. “With or without you.”

Johnny looked down at him, slowly shaking his head, no.

“You’l1 just beat yourself forever for not becoming a priest like Daddy wanted you to.” Then he began shouting again, preaching some nonsense against their father, laughing idiotically. He seemed to be addressing the gravestones spread across the cemetery bills.

When Frank reached the car, he yelled, “Come on, Johnny. You promised.”

Johnny stretched out his arms and stared up at the gray sky. He looked small and silly up there, St. Joseph towering over him. “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani,” he shouted, breaking into laughter, his voice echoing in the silence. A thought flashed through Frank’s mind: Johnny comes down the hill. whips off his gloves to show, in the middle of each palm, a bloody stigmata, then says, “I told you, Frank, didn’t I?  Didn’t I tell you?”

They rode home in silence. Frank didn’t even bother to switch on the radio. Johnny had tried to apologize, then to joke it off, but Frank wasn’t giving in. Still, something nagged him, some sliver of doubt inspired by Johnny’s ranting. After a while, he broke the silence with, “I wanted to make him proud, okay. Didn’t you?”

Johnny made a gun with his thumb and index finger, placed the finger against his temple, and said, gently, “Pow!”

“Dad was a great man,” Frank said.

“He had problems.”

“Everybody has problems.” Frank turned a corner sharper than he intended, and the car fishtailed. Terrified, he managed to right it, then headed, more slowly than before, up the street. Behind the clouds, the sun was setting, and the melted snow on the roads had begun to freeze again.

“We paid a high price for his problems,” Johnny said.

“I didn’t.”

“Your spirit, buddy boy. Your will. That’s what it took. Our pledge of allegiance, unconditional surrender. There could be but one stud in our split-level barn. We bad our balls whacked off and put in matching cups of ether. There on the mantle, three pairs of nuts swimming around forever.”

“Ether’s a gas,” Frank said.

Johnny peered at him.  “A gas?”

“Nothing could swim in it.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Really, it’s a gas.”

Then isopropyl alcohol, or whatever they use.”

They rode in silence again before Frank said, “Remember how he used to tell that story about when be was eighteen and won those prizes?”

Johnny said, “Twenty-four in a row,” in a deep voice, mocking Dad’s.

Dad had sunk 24 straight baskets at a Coney Island booth, winning eight big stuffed animals that he had to lug around the rest of the day. Of all his great accomplishments, he seemed to treasure that one most. When telling the story, he would break into a big smile. rare for him since he was self-conscious about the large gap between his two front teeth. His smiles were usually tight-lipped. “Twenty-four one-handed push shots right through the hoop,” Frank said. And he could see it, as though he had been there.

Johnny said, “Yeah, right.”

“It’s a true story.”

“Of course it is.”

“How would you know?” Frank wanted to slap the smirk off Johnny’s face.

“It’s bogus. ‘Apocryphal,’ as we like to say in graduate school.”

Frank said, “Dad wouldn’t lie, but as he spoke, doubt crept into his mind. “It’s a true story,” he said, more urgently.

Johnny waved him away. “Okay, he won some toys once.”

“Eight, he won eight stuffed animals, and the guy told him the booth was closed because he was losing his you-know-what and wanted Dad to move on. Dad had to carry those stuffed animals around the rest of the day.”

Johnny was at him curiously, as though at a stranger.

“Okay, Frank, he did it, you’re right.'”

“I am right,” he said. “I am. He did it.”

“Dad was successful because he ground his ass to dust, not because he was a genius, or fearless, or any better than we are. We aren’t the stuff of Derby winners. His vision of what we should become was crazy. His little tadpoles weren’t bloated with anything more than–”

“You’ve got a filthy mouth,” Frank said.

Johnny sunk down in his seat. “And ether is so a liquid.”

“But it’s a solvent, not a preservative.” Johnny, like Dad, hated to be wrong. Frank felt a rush of pleasure at having trumped him.

“He wanted the best for us, worked his ass oil to get it, then hated that we had it.”

“I don’t know where you get this stuff.”

“Any idea of our own was a direct challenge to his perfection. ‘Go ahead and use your judgment,’ he’d say. ‘Go make an arse of yourself.”

“He never said that.”

“Only a million times.”

“He never said it to me.”

Johnny leaned over in his seat, his face inches from Frank’s, his breath sour– cigarettes, beer, onions. “I’m sorry to say this, I really am, but what about when you–?” He shook his head. “Forget it.”

Frank froze. How dare Johnny bring that up? After Frank took a semester leave from the seminary, he enrolled at the Catholic College, but even there the pressure was too much. He dropped out but kept pretending to go, leaving the house every morning, book under his arm. Then someone, one of the priests, called, asking about him, and Dad found out. Frank swore never to go home–to just leave. He made it as far as the shopping center, where he stayed, parked in a distant corner, a hundred yards from the nearest car. The only thing near him was an abandoned grocery cart, empty except for a bag of potatoes sagging in the babyseat. And he kept thinking it was a baby, just for an instant, when it caught the corner of his eye.

Wondering if maybe he should kill himself, wondering how he would ever make it up to Dad who had worked so hard, he watched the shadows grow longer on the black asphalt, across the grid of yellow parking lines. Then it was dark. He sat there near the abandoned potatoes until around midnight, when Johnny and Tony found him, Johnny screaming, “You tell him to fuck off, Frank.” Johnny hugged Frank, held him when the tears out of nowhere started falling. “Tell him you’ll be who you want to be. Tell him.” Frank didn’t. He went home, where Dad said nothing, couldn’t even look at him. Two weeks later, he got a job at the computer store, where he’d spent the last ten years.

Johnny said, “1 shouldn’t have, but I’m trying, really, to help.”

“I’m not even listening,” Frank reached for the radio knob, but Johnny grabbed his arm.

“You’ve got to listen. We’ve got to help each other.”

“Da-dee·dee-da,” Frank sang, and when Johnny tried to shout over him, Frank sang louder, put his right hand against his ear.

“Okay, Frank, let’s cut the shit—want to?

“Why can’t you finish school, Frank?” Johnny shouted, mimicking Dad again.

“You a wimp? Guy with your brains should do something. I gave you a head start, a lot better than I had. But you’re slow, not aggressive, got no guts.”

Frank was shouting now: “Da-da·da·da-dee … ”

“I thought we were going to have a priest in the family. You always said so, that you were going to be one. What’s the problem? You a sissy’!”

Frank flicked a backhanded slap at Johnny, and the car swerved into a low bank of blackened snow on the curb. He tromped the gas pedal, and the car plowed through, then fishtailed back into the street. Johnny slammed against the door but quickly righted himself, as if nothing had happened.

“Heard that for twenty-five years, didn’t you? He’d come to me, 1 guess you knew, and he’d say, ‘What’s wrong with Frank? I don’t get it. Do you think maybe he’s, you know, a homo or something?’

Frank stopped singing, stared out at the road ahead. Three young boys, bundled in heavy coats, lobbed snowballs at each other on the sidewalk.

“And what about when be used to come home from work on days like this? We’d shovel the driveway after school, but the snow would keep falling. When he got home, it’d be covered again. What would happen then?”

Frank sped up, wanting to race through the icy streets. The windshield had begun to fog, and Frank wiped at it with a rag.

“Three little chairs by the window?” Johnny said. Frank saw them clearly, the three chairs where he and Johnny and Tony would have to sit and watch Dad shoveling outside in the cold, his big black coat, wool hat, smoky breath pouring from his mouth and nose, snow falling, glistening in the glow of the streetlight. He’d shovel for a while, then stop, straighten, rub the small of his back. Or lean, dog-tired, over the shovel. “What a show that was, huh? We’d sit there hoping he didn’t have a fucking heart attack and drop dead on the driveway. No doubt about whose fault that would have been. And he made sure we knew all about heart attacks.”

Frank kept wiping the windshield long after his brother fell silent. A few times, he started to say something, then stopped. They rode on, nearly home now, night falling quickly. Johnny’s head was buried deep in the parka. He was just as crippled by all of it as Frank, who already knew there was no point lugging around fatherhats and Lives of the Saints like prizes from a carnival booth. But without them, without that feeling of walking into church with Dad, he was nothing.

Frank also knew that Tony was never coming back. He saw Tony clearly as a boy often, about the time when he developed a nervous tic, his head jerking every few seconds in tiny spasms. Dad would yell, “Stop it, Tony, cut it out.” Not meaning anything, just frustrated, but still, yelling at a little boy for something he couldn’t help. And when Tony took off, he didn’t ask to shake everyone’s hand, just left. If nothing else, Frank wanted to shake one last time. He wouldn’t make a joke of it or hide his hand behind his back. He’d say, “Just shake, okay?”