The Lifespan of a Long Fuse
by Ben Bird
I’m staring at the baby blue paint peeling off the back of our house, daydreaming about blowing up the neighbor’s pool. Fat John and I have been going to the library once a week, reading up on how to build pipe bombs. Truth is, it’s not that hard, but we’ve never been able to get enough firepower to do any real damage. We tried putting one under Fat John’s stepdad’s car after he ran over Fat John’s foot and didn’t even apologize. All it did was mess up the tire a little bit and get Fat John a nice belting. He showed me at school the next day, his big, bruised ass spilling out over his pants as he pulled them down. We got in real big trouble for that. When I met Fat John, in second grade, he was a skinny little kid, just like me, but even more thin, even more wiry. That’s how he got his name. People could see right through him. They thought it would be funny. As we got older, Fat John filled out a little bit more each year. Almost like he had to catch up to his name.
Behind me, Dad and my baby brother Carl are digging up potatoes from the plot in the backyard, searching for Dad’s next prized potato. He won a blue ribbon at the local fair, twenty years ago, about six years before I was born. He’s been chasing another one ever since, always talking about how it’s in our blood, his parents being immigrant farmers and all. They came from Poland after World War I, or that’s how the story goes. Dad’s hair has been turning gray and falling out ever since he lost his job. Today’s the first day I see the sun reflecting off the top of his head.
Carl isn’t so much a baby anymore, but he’s been a little slow ever since Dad took a shovel to his face. It was a few months ago, Carl threw one of Dad’s potatoes in the air, thinking he could catch it, but he never had very good aim, and the spud just exploded on the ground. “That’s not a fuckin’ toy, damnit!” Dad yelled, pulling his shovel from the dirt, chasing Carl through the yard before connecting the shovel right to his beak. He’d say it was an accident, that Carl shouldn’t be running around like that when Dad’s got a shovel in his hands. That’s what he told the paramedics, anyway. It sure didn’t look like an accident, not from the kitchen window.
Dad’s been on edge ever since Grandad took a bullet to his own head, about a year ago now. I never really knew the guy, so it didn’t affect me much. “He was a coward,” Dad will say every now and then, “don’t ever be a fuckin’ coward.” I want to tell him, don’t be an asshole, but I don’t want to know what the shovel tastes like. Carl already had the flattest face out of all of us, but apparently kids at school have been calling him flounder.
Mom is on her second pack of cigarettes. Her hand shakes as she floats back and forth on the porch swing. Unlike Dad, Mom’s hair is long and dark, nearly touching the floor when she walks around the house. The swing is probably big enough to hold the whole family, though we’ve never sat together to find out. Probably never will. My baby sister Lilly, who really is a baby, is crying inside the house. “I’ll get to her when I finish my smoke,” Mom says, talking only to herself, every time she takes out a new one. I’m the one who usually deals with Lilly, making sure she’s alright, changing her diaper or bouncing her up and down in my arms. Not today though. Today I build the perfect pipe bomb.
I climb up the rotting wood of the porch stairs to grab my bike. I consider grabbing Carl’s too, since I told him I’d bring him along when he caught me drawing up my plans, but he’d just slow me down, or try to talk me out of it. Mom stops me, putting out her cigarette on the swing and says, “Come inside Douggy, before you go wherever it is you’re going.” What’s this about? Lilly? Or did she find my plans? I thought I kept those hidden—unless Carl got into them. Fucking Carl.
She walks us into the living room and sits on the couch; the blue floral pattern is ripped in several places, revealing the stuffing underneath. She points to a stack of papers sitting on the stained coffee table. Over the last year, I’ve been submitting my comics to the Bloomington Times. Each time, generally after a month or so, I’ll get my comic returned to me in the mail with a note that says: We appreciate you considering us, though now is not the right time for us to publish your work. The first time I read that, I took it to mean that I was ahead of my time, and to keep submitting, every week, just to avoid missing the right time. The second, third, and fourth times, I would crumple the note into as small and tight of a ball as I could and pop it into my mouth, chewing them down with my anger. I still send them my comics, but I got tired of eating paper. Now I just keep a little stack of the rejections in the corner of my side of the bedroom and use the backs for my drawings.
Mom holds up one of the letters and says, “Listen, I’m glad you have something to keep your mind straight. I know things aren’t easy around here. I know what it’s like kid. It’s not roses for me either. But I’m worried about you.” She flips the letter around, showing me one of my comics, Gilbert the Father-Eating Hellhound, which depicts, as you could imagine, a large, beastly dog with three heads, each devouring parts of a man like a cob of corn. One could argue the hound shares a striking resemblance with my dad. “I’m not going to tell Dad. But God forbid he ever finds these. You’ve got to be careful, Douggy.”
I don’t know how to respond, so I just sit, nodding, looking at her big bushy eyebrows, like caterpillars, moving the tip of my tongue across the roof of my mouth. Mom’s paintings are scattered across the living room floor, unfinished and unlikely to be anything but. “Those are from a different life,” she’d say, haunted, whenever I’d ask her about them. Before she had me, she was an art teacher, and before that, dreamed of being an artist. That’s how she met Dad, selling her paintings at the local fair. Dad never talked about his job, but I know he worked at the university. Fat John said his older sister was in one of Dad’s classes, before she dropped out. But then he was fired and took it really bad. I read about it in one of the letters he buried in the trash with some of Mom’s cigarettes and matches. “I can’t stand the smell of those fuckin’ things,” he’d say, storming around the house, throwing shit around. The night I found the letters and cigs, I inhaled the words misconduct and unethical along with the smoke, coughing my lungs out. Carl asked me what I was doing, from his twin bed across from mine. I told him to shut his trap and get back to bed before Dad wakes up. Then he started crying, so I jumped into his bed, petting his soft blonde hair, telling him things are going to be just fine. Not that I believed that or anything. Still don’t.
Mom gets up to check on Lilly. She’s been crying this whole time. I gather my comics from the coffee table and bring them back into my room. Clearly, under the bed wasn’t the best hiding spot. There’s a loose floorboard where I keep all my materials and plans in a messenger bag made from one of Dad’s potato sacks. I grab the bag and shove the papers under the flooring, listening for the back door in the back of my head. On the way outside, I see Mom holding Lilly close to her chest, bouncing her up and down. Lilly is all quiet now, but I can tell Mom is about to cry, tears welling up in her eyes. I want to comfort her, but I don’t know what I could say. I walk outside.
Carl and Dad are bent over, their backs covered in sweat, still attacking the dirt with their shovels. Carl’s tool is much smaller than Dad’s, and so is his pile of spuds next to him, but the way he is digging, so earnest, gives me a warm feeling in my chest. Truth is, I think he gets that same excitement Dad does, pulling them up from the soil. Like it’s a magic trick. It’s almost enough to make me want to bring him along, get him out of here, but I have no interest in explaining to Dad where we’re going. I try to get my bike down the stairs, real quiet, and pedal out through the gravel driveway. If Dad is yelling out for me, it’s lost in the crunching of rocks on my tires.
The houses on our street look mostly the same. Small, one-story homes with sharp, angled roofs, dingy porches and dried up lawns. Ours is the only one with an upstairs. Mom painted the outside baby blue, right after I was born, making ours the only one with any color to it, too. She said she was inspired by my big eyes. Across from our house is the neighbor lady’s, painted that same tan as every other house on the block, the only one on our street with a pool. It’s tucked behind a big, wooden fence that protects the back of their home from view. The neighbor lady walks to her front window and looks out, waving at me. She must have seen me staring. I feel the anger creeping in again.
The neighbor lady’s husband is in the army, stationed somewhere far away. That’s what she tells people, anyway. I’ve heard her husband left her after their little girl drowned, ten years back. But nobody really knows much about it. Last week, I caught Dad sneaking out of her place. When he saw me looking at him, he told me he was over there helping her out with maintenance stuff, before telling me not to tell Mom about it, that she’s always worrying about something. I’ve never known Dad to fix anything. I told Mom about it later, when Dad was out back, but she didn’t seem surprised.
I bike over the bumpy hills on the way to Fat John’s. The sun lights up the road ahead of me, with looming stalks of corn blurring into each other in the corners of my eyes. I pass by my school, which let out for summer break last month. What a relief that was. It’s not that school is difficult; in fact, it’s always been pretty easy for me. I think it has something to do with the air of importance people give to it. I’ll take real shit over fake shit any day of the week. I remember my teacher, Mr. Rose, telling me I have a good shot of getting into a good college if I apply myself. Why would I apply myself to something I’m not interested in? I just want to draw my comics, preferably somewhere far away.
Fat John is out on the street, riding his bike in circles, his own potato sack slung over his back. I hope he got the fuse, gunpowder, and matches. That’s what he was supposed to, anyway. He’s wearing a striped collared shirt with his belly poking out and some beat up jeans. His sister, Mary, is staring out towards us from the window of his stepdad’s beat up yellow one-story house. Before Fat John’s mom got remarried, they were living in the trailer park out in Terre Haute, that’s what he told me. He said he preferred it, back when he didn’t have to go to school and spent most of the day farming and running around with his shepherd dog Jim, who his stepdad also ran over shortly after they moved to Bloomington. From what it sounds like, he’s drunk more often than not. Which, for one of the town’s policemen, isn’t great for anyone.
Mary looks at me through the glass, and I’m met with the same feeling I get every time I see her. It’s not that different from a bomb exploding in my chest. She is, without a doubt, the most terrifying person I’ve seen. I always get the shakes around her. I’ve been growing my mustache out, in hopes of her seeing me as something more than her little brother’s friend. Someone older, more mature. But it’s too blonde for her to see it from here. I take off my glasses, wiping them on my shirt, hoping the act of seeing my naked face inspires something in her. She doesn’t really move, but her sharp eyebrows are turned down, making me question everything about myself. Did I do something wrong? Fat John yells at me, asking what I’m looking at, pedaling towards me, severely out of breath. Mary disappears back into the house and all of the many feelings of doubt and want begin to sift down into my stomach.
Fat John parks his bike next to mine, shaking his potato sack with a big, goofy grin on his face. I’ve always liked the big gap between his front teeth, the way it whistles when he speaks. “I’ve got the goods,” he says. I jostle my bag in front of him, the metal tubes clanging against each other. I hear the front door of Fat John’s place open, and for a moment imagine Mary walking towards us, before hearing the deep yet nasal tone of Fat John’s stepdad barking at him, saying he’s going to need to bike further than ten feet if he’s going to lose any weight. It’s ironic, coming from a man who eats more than he speaks, and drinks more than he eats. I imagine Fat John making a bite-sized pipe bomb and dropping it into his stepdad’s open, snoring mouth after he passes out drunk. I can’t picture what his insides would look like, splattered across the walls. Then we’d really get in trouble.
We pedal out and head to the abandoned house off of Victor Pike, out in the woods—our headquarters. Not too far from Fat John’s place. The orange sun spills out into the sky around us. Our headquarters is stripped down, the wood paneling always falling off in any direction. I found it one day, just riding around. Its big, blown out windows sit on the second story, looking out at the woods like hollowed out eyes. The inside is alright, if you avoid the splinters. One time a rat scurried in and bit Fat John, but it was through his jacket, and that was only the once.
We park our bikes on the side of the house and walk inside. It’s dark, and mustier than usual, but I brought my flashlight, and this shouldn’t take too long. Fat John spills out the contents of his bag, and I do the same. We spread them across the floor like it’s Halloween and we’re exchanging candy. I grab the little baggy of gunpowder that Fat John’s stole from his stepdad and begin sifting it into my metal pipe. “Do you think we have enough for more than one?” Fat John asks, moving the long fuse in between his fingers.
“Depends,” I say. “Is there something else you want to blow?”
Fat John considers this for a bit before nodding and saying, “My stepdad’s stuff. I’d like to pile up everything he loves on the front lawn and wait for him to come home to blow it up. Then when he’s coming at me, all mad and stuff, I’ll blow up his car too. And then have an extra one so he can’t come after me, or else I’d blow him up too.”
“Is that the only fuse you got?” I ask him. He nods. I take the long fuse from his hands and shove it into the pipe, then I cap it shut. “I don’t think there’s enough for more than one then, sorry.” Fat John pouts, but I don’t think he’s too mad. I’ve been planning this for a while, and I don’t want to see him get hurt. I put the bomb and the rest of my shit in the sack. We go to grab our bikes and resolve to head home for the night.
“Hey, Doug. You ever wonder why your dad got fired right after my sister quit school?”
“What do you mean?” I ask, not wanting to know what he means.
“I don’t know. Seems weird, that’s all.”
Out in the woods, in the dark, the stars kick and scream overhead. An owl hoots in the distance. We get out onto the road and Fat John asks, pointing back to the woods, “You ever think about just living out here? No school, no parents. We could make it work.”
“All the time,” I respond, and start biking home.
*
By the time I get back home, only the kitchen lights are on. I can hear the neighbor lady crying by her pool. I pity her, I do. She’s not the monster here. I tip-toe up the rotten wood stairs, holding my bike in one arm and clutching the banister in the other. I put my bike down as delicately as I can and start to open the back door. That’s when I hear Dad in a half-yell say, “Where the fuck have you been.” It’s too dark to see him, but I can hear him squeaking back and forth on the porch swing now. “Just with Fat John,” I say. I can tell he’s drunk by the way he let the word been slip out from his mouth.
“John Bingham? That family is all trouble. I don’t want you seeing him anymore.”
“I’m going to bed, Dad. Night.” I walk into the house, clutching the sack to my chest. What does he know about their family?
“Don’t wake your mom up, she’s sleeping,” Dad yells after me, slurring, chuckling to himself.
Inside, on the kitchen floor, Carl is sitting next to Mom, who is slumped over, propped against the sink. I ask Carl what happened, rushing over to her, dropping my bag in the process. He tells me that her and Dad got into a fight, after getting real drunk, and that he heard a loud thud after the yelling stopped and rushed downstairs. Mom is breathing slow and heavy. She would look almost peaceful, if it wasn’t for the big brown ring taking shape over her eye. I start to get real hot, seeing spots in my vision and anger flush in my chest. I tell Carl to go back to bed, though it takes two or three times of me saying it louder and louder for him to listen. He looks real scared, climbing up the stairs all slow. I don’t blame him.
I fish through my bag, pulling out my pipe bomb and matches, feeling the cool metal on my boiling palm. My heart thumps one, two, three times each second as I strike the match and rest the flame on the tip of the long fuse. I’m going to scare him shitless. I’ll blow up his potato plots. That’ll teach him. I switch off the kitchen light, just in case Mom wakes up.
I burst back out through the back door, brandishing the bomb like a torch in the night. I try to think of something, anything I can say to make him consider the person he’s become. But the anger makes my tongue swell up and I can’t find the words. Then I wonder if I have it in me to kill him. To not worry every time I hear a loud noise down the stairs at night. I shake off the thought and expect him to be yelling at me through the darkness, asking what the fuck I’m up to, but all I hear is the cicadas chirp and his soft snoring. The son of a bitch will probably sleep through his spuds exploding. And when he wakes up, he’ll blame it on God, like he does everything, and take that blame out on me or Mom or Carl. How long until it’s Lilly getting the brunt of it? Maybe I ought to kill him, after all. I cock my arm back and chuck the bomb as hard as I can. It catches the porch roof with a clang and lands right by the porch swing, right at Dad’s feet. Maybe I should go and stomp it out, there’s probably still time. But I’m frozen. Even if I wanted to, my body wouldn’t listen, knowing Mom is still slumped over in the kitchen just past the back door, her face swelling up. He deserves it. The son of a bitch. It isn’t until the fuse is almost burnt up that I see Dad’s frame slumped over with Lilly on his lap.
Ben Bird‘s fiction has been published in the Chicago Quarterly Review, Catamaran, Vol.1 Brooklyn, and elsewhere. He lives in San Diego with his wife and two dogs, and is hard at work on a novel that he hopes to finish before he dies. Find him at birdwritings.com.
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