Emile's First Man

CHAPTER 3

In the low light Emile could make out his father's frame. He was about to ask when he had arrived, what he was doing there but then he saw his father sitting on the edge of the bed with the open box beside him, and he stopped in the doorway. His body froze.

His own clothes had been pulled forward in the wardrobe. In Joe's lap lay a pile of cut-outs. The one on top was the new one, the man photographed from behind, the shoulders still dusty from work. Emile had not even had time to trim the white border.

Silence.

Without looking up, Joe spoke, low and flat.

"I was lookin' for my old sweater. The one I gave you. Thought I might've left it in here."

Silence. Emile stood with a knot rising in his throat.

Joe finally looked up, his eyes hard. He held one photo between his fingers.

"What is this, Emile?"

Facing those cold eyes, Emile did not know what to say. His breathing came quicker.

"Where did you get them?"

Silence.

"I asked you a question."

Embarrassed, Emile confessed. "From magazines. From behind the kiosk, in the trash —"

"You pick through trash for pictures of naked men?" The sound Joe made was half laugh, half sob, with no humour in it. "I can't belie—" He broke off, teeth gritted, and flung the handful he was holding. They fanned out and landed face-up on the floor.

One after another they settled across the dirt between father and son. In the near-dark the naked bodies of the men caught an uncertain light.

Emile had looked at them many times alone in his room, learning every detail by candlelight. Now, with his father looking too, he felt as if it were himself lying there uncovered, naked.

He did not dare look at his father. He could whisper, "I'm sorry."

Joe glared at him "For what? Sorry you have them, or sorry I found them?"

Emile tried to defend himself "I never meant — "

"Is that why you wear your hair like that?" Joe cut in. "Like a girl?"

Emile frowned, caught off guard. "No. That's not — I know I'm a man."

"Then why do you have these? Huh?" He jabbed a hand toward the floor.

Emile wanted to answer, anything, but his mouth would not make words for something he himself did not understand.

Only his vision went cloudy.

"If you were truly a man, you wouldn't hide pictures of naked men like a rat. You would be living with your wife, in a beautiful house with beautiful children."

Emile lowered his head in shame. He shut his eyes so the tears would not come, holding back his sobs. Crying in front of his father would only make it worse.

"At lunch I told you; those boys going to the city for work. Loading, factory work, whatever it is. They are willing to take it. That's what a real man does. He sacrifices himself to stay afloat. He holds a house up. He—"

"I do hold — I cook, I wash, I keep —"

"That's what a woman does!" Joe snatched the paper bag of meat from Emile's hand. "You cook, you clean, you let your hair grow, and all you think about is —" He dropped the bag. "While I'm out in frozen mud for a basket of half-rotten potatoes to hold us up. You think that's fair?"

He turned away and leaned against the window,

Emile watched the meat lying on the floor on top of a picture. He wanted to say he had tried selling cooked meals in the market, two weeks, to stay afloat. But to say it would only remind them both that it had failed. That he had failed. So he stayed quiet.

Then he heard: "My father would have taken a strap to me."

Silence filled the room again.

"You're nineteen, Emile. You should be out of this house, and still you're here. I should have raised you better."

Joe turned back and began gathering the scattered photos from the dirt, squaring their torn edges with his thick fingers, putting them back in the box one by one.

"You're gonna forget this. All of it. You're gonna cut your hair, and tomorrow you're gonna come to the market with me, and you're gonna be a real man."

Emile's eyes went wide, realization hitting him. "Dad, no—"

"Starting with this shit." Joe tucked the box under his left arm and went out toward the kitchen.

Emile understood at once where he was going and followed, the paper of meat slipping from his hand and falling unnoticed in the doorway.

"No — Dad, please —"

The kitchen was already thick with steam. On the mud stove against the back wall, the big pot sat high in its round mouth, full to the brim, water at a rolling boil, the lid rattling.

Joe set the box down on the plank table and reached for a folded sack to lift the pot. If he lifted it clear, he would have a mouth of open fire, perfect to feed the photos to.

Emile saw it and stepped in between his father and the stove.

"Please, I'll do whatever you want, just not that — I'll go to the fields, I'll cut my hair —"

"Then you don't need this" Joe said, and pushed past him to take the pot.

Emile lunged for the box, hugged it to his chest with his left arm, and with his right hand caught his father's wrist just as Joe tilted the pot up off its clay seat.

"Please, no—"

They were too close in that narrow space to move cleanly. Joe pulled up and sideways to clear the pot from the fire; Emile hung on his arm and pushed back toward the stove, trying to force the pot back down while keeping the box against his ribs.

“Emile, stop it!”

“I’ll burn them myself, just give me some time —”

“Time for what? So you can hide them again? Nothing's gonna change if…”

The pot caught on the lip of the clay rim and tilted.

For half a second it hung there, while father and son tried to talk, half off its seat, water was sloshing hard to one side, too heavy for either of them to right with one hand.

Then the rim slipped. It fell.

The hot pot tipped sideways off the stove and went over, mouth-first. Hot water sprayed across the packed earth. Emile rolled onto his side, yelling.

The hot water fell on him.

Boiling water sheeted across his left side.

For a moment everything stopped, Joe just stood there, chest heaving, the empty pot rocking on its side, steam rising off the floor.

Emile kept whimpering, drops of water dripping between his fingers. The left half of his torso, including his face, was already turning into a map of red flesh and peeped skin.

Joe stared down at his son, the silence returning heavier than before. He stayed there, listening to his son’s suppressed sobs, just looking at him.

The night remained silent with only the sound of a random dog barking.

After a moment, he withdrew the scattered photos from the floor and got out of the room.

As the footsteps faded away, Emile remained on the floor with a hand covering his burning face.

In the solitude of the night, only a piece of fresh meat remained on the floor.