Father’s Parts by Scott Brothers

It was last summer when Father began losing body parts. His arms failed first, then his legs―both pairs refusing to function. Eventually the limbs fell away entirely, like brittle, dead branches from a tree. We began to haul his truncated body around the house in an old wheelbarrow, his large, empty eyes starring upward into the heavens. What was he looking for exactly? He gummed words with his toothless mouth. He made nodding gestures with his bald head. We (the children) named each of his discarded limbs after an appliance found in our kitchen―it was comforting to bestow upon the parts the brand name of a blender or toaster oven―we felt it gave them a certain value, an intrinsic history, that they were sections of a grander mechanism such as they were when they belonged to a topography known as Father. It was only until they turned green and blue and emitted foul odors that we finally threw Father’s parts into the river. We watched the four limbs float along, the current carrying them further and further away, until they were out of our view, vanishing completely―as if Father had never been attached to them. Ultimately our minds returned to more atavistic thoughts such as: When would Mother return? As the oldest this was the question that I had to field for most of those long, dry days, even though we had all heard the same words uttered from our Mother’s slack mouth before she turned her back to us and began walking westward, which was: I'll be back soon. Jonathan, the youngest, dug holes in the backyard, depositing into them items he had collected from around the house; lamps, discarded bubblegum wrappers, an old bowling trophy Father had won when he and Mother still slept in the same bed. Eventually Jonathan threw himself into one of the make-shift holes. A few hours later Mary, the second oldest, found him buried up to his waist, staring blankly ahead. On Sunday nights we placed slivers of raw meat on plastic plates of various colors and left them on the ground twenty feet in the front of the house, just as Mother had instructed us before she left. Every Monday morning the meat would be gone, only the plates left behind. None of knew what this ritual accomplished, except that when we finally ran out of meat last Sunday all of us were suddenly and deeply anxious. On the twentieth day of Mother’s absence, five individuals wearing white and yellow All-Terrain/Sub-Subterranean suits and tinted face-goggles that obscured their collective countenance appeared upon our doorstep. Without issuing a word they took Father away, who was still languishing in the wheelbarrow, the front wheel deflated from extended usage. Now: the other children look to me for guidance. What should I tell them? The truth? I'm not even sure myself. At night I hear the din of the air-raid siren as it wails in the distance and feel that distinct tug―my arms beginning to secede from my body.

About the author:
Scott Brothers has yet to write a novel, although he plans to do so just as soon as he forms the proto-psychedelic prog-rock band he's been talking about starting since high school (double-disc concept album to follow). Scott likes Hostess Fruit Pies, but not the magician fellow on the front of the package (he seems to be up to no good), and believes that Leo Tolstoy was the funniest person who ever lived.