Flags and Nets and Cannons and Rails for the Stairs

nd Nets, and Cannons, and Rails for the Stairs

  By Nicholas Kidd

  Copyright 2012 Nicholas Kidd

  Flags, and Nets, and Cannons, and Rails for the Stairs

  I sit at my work bench in the basement. A lamp hangs over my head, casting a dim yellow light onto the table. My bare feet rest in a pile of sawdust and wood chippings. I like it down here. It’s quiet and peaceful, so I can work on this model boat. My son loves boats, the old kind, with sails and hundreds of parts. I have to carve every piece perfectly, he likes to touch it. He can’t see with his eyes, so it has to feel as beautiful as it looks.

  He can’t move much. He just lies in bed most days, except his birthday. On his birthday I pick him up and bring him down here. Every year he gets a new ship, each bigger and better than the last. He names all of them, and I keep them on the shelf down here. All nine of them.

  The light in the basement shows them off nicely. It’s not much light, just enough to see the color. It almost forces you to reach out and touch them. My son likes to run his little fingers over every piece. That’s why everything has to be smooth, with no splinters. He likes to touch the deck of the boat, where the people go. He even turns the wheel sometimes. I think he’s pretending to be the captain.

  This ship has to be different though. It has to be the best one. The whole town will be here, especially my father. It needs flags, and nets, and cannons, and rails for the stairs. I’ve cut each wood panel, the size of a popsicle stick. The hard part is the rudder. The rudder has to move. You can’t have a rudder that doesn’t move.

  The town calls my son an inspiration. He wasn’t supposed to make it past nine years old. Yet even in certain death, he keeps sailing on. Yesterday, he gave a touching speech in front of the school. He wasn’t even nervous, he told me. He’s always telling me about how tough he is, and how he never gets nervous. Strangers are always coming to give him teddy bears and flowers. What’s he supposed to do with that? He used to like teddy bears though. The fur felt nice. But he grew out of that, and he had to touch everything. We went all over the city and he touched the buildings, the sculptures, even the elevator buttons. But there are no ports near us. He wanted to know what a boat felt like. Not the water, water has no shape. Just the boat.

  “Hey Will,” my wife shouts down to me from the kitchen, “The newspaper is doing an article on him! Isn’t that great?”

  “Yeah that is great,” I lied. My son is just good news to them.

  “Oh, and your dad sent you a birthday letter.” My birthday was last week. Mail wasn’t slow. He just forgot.

  I carefully tie each thin string to the masts. I have to tie them tight or they won’t catch the wind. These are the best sails I’ve made yet. I used the finest canvas I could find. They are lightweight, and flap every time I breathe. The tips of my fingers have calluses from carving the wood. I treat every piece with care, some are small enough that I can break them with my pinky.

  My son always tells people he likes ships. They think it’s cute, but they don’t get it. They just admire his strength, believing that his love for ships meant he was happy. I think some of the kids understood though. Society hadn’t stomped out their imagination yet. When he touches the ships, I see it. He closes his eyes, not to cancel out visual distractions. No, it helps him to see. He doesn’t ever say much. He just runs his fingers along the wood, smiles a bit, lets out a laugh or two, and then he is calm and focused. It always looks like he is about to say something, but he just smiles and hugs me.

  I can hear my wife upstairs, tidying up the house and preparing dinner for later. The pans make a clanking noise when she pulls them out of the cabinet, and her feet frantically run around the house. She has been stomping around all day, making sure everything is perfect, and making a fuss about impressing the town. I think I can smell chicken cooking. The scent warms my nose. I wonder if it smells the same to my boy, because it sure tastes different to him.

  “I can taste the peanut,” he said once, with a mouth full of chicken. I gave him a funny look. “No really, close your eyes,” he insisted, as if he could see my confusion, “It must be mom’s secret!” I did what he said, and sucked on the chicken. It was juicy and smooth. Each string of the meat peeled off like cheese. To this day, I try to taste the peanut, but my senses deceive me.

  I cut my finger again. I’ve done that a few times already. But it’s worth it. My son is worth it, so I wipe off the blood and keep going. Everyone says they care about him, or they understand him. But they don’t get it. If they cared, they wouldn’t just send flowers or teddy bears or week-late birthday cards.

  Doctor Glenn came today. She is a sweet young lady who wears her name-tag all the time, her smile is glued to her face, and her cheeks are perky and round like she has marbles implanted in them. She comes over often to check up on “the little trooper”, as she calls him. She said his condition hasn’t changed. Then, she gave him two shots: one to numb the pain, one to hide the truth.

  I keep playing with the cannons, they’re perfect. They have to feel like real cannons, so I took apart some metal pens and used them for the gun barrels. I glue them in place, peeking out through the gun ports. I carved out an angel to put on the ships beak. Every feather can be felt on her wings, and the hair is perfectly engraved on her head. I tenderly glue the angel to the front of the ship. Waiting for the glue to dry, I hold the angel in place and scan every piece of the model. I smile wide, teeth and all. It looks better than I could have hoped.

  “Will, get ready. The whole town will be here any minute,” my wife calls down.

  I quickly throw on some clean clothes and fix my hair, in an attempt to look presentable. I take one look back at the ship and smile. I know he will love it. I run upstairs to my wife. She’s wearing a dress I’ve never seen before. It’s bursting with color, laced with feathers and gems. The house looks better than it ever has. It hardly looks like my own home.

  “I’ll go get the birthday boy,” she said, “You wait by the door and welcome our guests.”

  I stand beside the door for only a moment before cars begin to pull up. As guests arrive, I greet them with a smile. I don’t recognize many of their faces. Some kids are all dressed up, obviously not by choice. They look bored, kicking their feet and playing with their buttons. Women are wearing fabulous dresses, like they just came from the opera. Their faces are coated with make-up. One man walks in without acknowledging me, too focused on his phone. Then my father arrives.

  “Hey there sport,” sport was always my name according to him, “You get my card?”

  “Yeah, I just got it today.”

  “Oh that’s funny. Mail must have been running slow.” He walks past me and greets my wife with a jolly hug.

  The party has already begun. I walk into the room and it hardly looks like a party for a ten-year-old boy. The chatter of the room is as loud as the music, creating a dull chaos. A group of women is packed around my son, like he’s some sort of spectacle. Their wild giggles make my eyes twitch. My wife is talking to a group of reporters. She holds her head high, dramatically tossing her arms around like an actress. I stand in the far corner of the room and watch.

  My son starts opening gifts. A teddy bear, a sling shot, a wine glass (which I assume is really for my wife), a card, another teddy bear, a hat, sunglasses, flowers, and a baseball glove. I look around the room, until I’m distracted by a kid shouting for his daddy. He runs up to his father, who is talking to another man, and pulls on his pant leg. The kid holds up a drawing, made from crayon. The father stopped his conversation, put down his wine and hugged his son. I watch the two of them walk out th
e door together. Not sure why I focused so much on it, strangely it felt alien to me.

  “Will, don’t you have something you’d like to show Ben?” My wife turns to me. “Will is such a good father. He works so hard for Ben.”

  I like the way that sounds. Suddenly my skin is warm and I’m bursting with courage. With a grin, I lead everyone down to the basement. As they reach the bottom, they begin to whisper to each other.

  “What’s the big boat for?”

  “He must like pirates.”

  My wife brings Ben down and sits him in front of the massive ship. My son already knows what it is. His hands are shaking more than usual, but his smile is radiating. He reaches out his hand and touches the ship.

  “This ship is different from the others,” I tell him, “It’s the best one I’ve made. It has flags, and nets, and cannons, and rails for the stairs. I’ve cut each wood panel, no bigger than a popsicle stick. The rudder even moves. You can’t have a rudder that doesn’t move.”

  Hearing a growing “aww” from behind me, I look back at the guests. The room is full of smiles and even some applause. I spot my father, hidden behind the crowd. His arms are crossed and a wrinkled grin is stretched across his face. Now he knows; now they all know what it really means to care. But their smiles abruptly vanish. Suddenly, everyone gasps in shock. I hear hundreds of parts snap and shatter. I turn back to my son. He is frozen in fear, with his arm still stretched out. The boat had tipped over and fallen to the floor, broken into hundreds of wooden splinters. Everyone is holding their breath, unable to figure out what to do. I can’t even speak.

  In an effort to break the tension, my wife calls out to the guests, “Oh! I think dinner is ready everyone,” then herds the awkward pack of spectators back upstairs.

  Now my son and I are alone. Ben sits at my work bench, silent. A lamp hangs over our heads, casting a dim yellow light onto the table. It’s quiet down here, and I don’t like it. My son drops his head and plants it on the table. He is sobbing.

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to,” he mutters.

  “It’s alright…really.” I kneel down beside him to pick up the pieces.

  “I got nervous. I always get nervous.”

  “No you don’t,” I’m stammering, “It was just… an accident.” I fail to hide my confusion.

  “No Dad, you don’t get it. I try so hard,” he struggles to squeeze every word out, “to make you… proud.”

  Proud feels like such a funny word to me, yet it has a piercing effect, like opening an old wound, or finding a lost love letter. Then it clicked. I get it. I really get it. I thought I did before, but now I truly get it. What do I say to that? No, I know what to say. It’s the one thing I have never heard. I never thought to say it, because it was never said to me. I wrap my arms around my son and squeeze him tight.

  “I am so proud of you,” I love the way those words sound. I can’t stop saying it. “So proud of you. So proud. So proud.”

  Ben wraps his arms around me and smiles, “Best birthday ever.”

  “Yeah? You did get a lot of gifts,” a dumb remark, in an attempt to remain modest.

  “No. I got a dad,” he says with his eyes somehow locked onto mine. This is the happiest I have felt in a long time. Fortunately he can’t see my skin turn red.

  “Let’s go have some of Mom’s chicken.” I say, “I still can’t taste that peanut.”

  “I promise it’s there.” He smiles wide.

  So I carried my son upstairs, and joined the party. When the day was done, I put Ben to bed and tucked him in. Then I snuck down to the basement to clean up the mess, hoping to repair some of the damage.

  Now, I sit at my work bench in the basement. A lamp hangs over my head, casting a dim yellow light onto the table. My bare feet rest in a pile of sawdust and wood chippings. I like it down here. It’s quiet and peaceful, so I can fix this model boat. Behind me, I hear my father walk down the stairs. I don’t say anything. I know what I want him to say, but he won’t say it unless I ask. I close my eyes, and run my fingers along the wood. I touch every piece and smile. I think I even laughed a bit. Then I focus my mind on what I need to say.

  I turn to face my dad. I can hear the words “Are you proud of me?” But I don’t say it. I can’t. I’m too nervous. I just smile and hug him.