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enjoy this writing from
Patrick Trotti in the Scars Publications
free 2012 PDF file chapbook:

Sadly, Forever
(click on the front cover image or the
title text to download the free PDF file)
Sadly, Forever, a Patrick Trotti chapbook    
Bloody Boots

Patrick Trotti

        “Alright, enough bullshit. What happened? Don’t go holding back on me either. I know you probably kept some of the juicy stuff from mom to protect her.”

    Before he finished his sentence he was heading towards the kitchen, his words trailing off. He reappeared with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and two glasses in the other. I wasn’t sure if he was waiting for me to start talking. I sat, motionless and silent, ready to wait him out.

    He poured himself a full glass, the other one he filled a third of the way. He passed it along the table, refusing to lift it. The sound of the bottom of the glass amplified against our silent glares, wood grating against glass. He pulled out two cigarettes, placed each in his mouth and lit them with his Zippo. A flick of the wrist that showcased his unique talent. Without an exhale he unlipped one cigarette, turned it around so the flame was facing him, and reached across the table. I took it, careful not to drop it, slowly without any idea as to how to proceed. My every move felt magnified, under my father’s unflattering microscopic lens. He sat back in his recliner, hands full with his two vices, and shot me a look that I’d never seen before. He wasn’t looking through me anymore. I was, for this moment, an equal, someone who had a story to tell, an experience to share, and he wanted to soak in every word.

    “It ain’t gonna smoke itself.”

    I looked down and realized that I hadn’t taken a pull from the cigarette yet. Despite the half finished packs strewn about the house over the years I had never once lit one. I used to place them in my mouth and practice talking into a mirror, I wanted to be John Wayne or Clint Eastwood, I wanted my words to guide the end of the cigarette, to use it as a sort of weapon, to keep my imaginary audience at a distance. I’d gotten pretty good at it over the years too. I was so used to the smell of smoke, the fog that it created, that I didn’t realize the cigarette was almost down to the filter. I jerked my hand up towards my mouth. The three inch crooked line of ash fell to the floor, breaking up on its way as it glanced off my arm. I took it to my lips, sucked in hard, and waited. My mouth began to feel like the embers of a campfire log. I let out a plume of smoke. My dad’s laughter broke through the cloud before it reached him.

    “Do it again. This time after you suck in go for another breath, open up your lungs and take a deep breath in like your about to go underwater and then let exhale.”

    I did as commanded. Maybe I wasn’t quite his equal after all, but I was getting there. His tone was different, his body language more relaxed, he was acting like he did when he’d come home from the bar and take mom upstairs. My stream of thought was broken up when the smoke hit my lungs. It felt like a burning arrow, piercing holes in my chest, daring me to cough up everything inside of me. I wanted to hold out, to act the part, to remain unchanged but I couldn’t. I threw up, just a mouthful really. It dripped from my mouth like when I was a child being fed liquid vegetables that tasted like dirt. I let the vomit fall down my chin, proud that I hadn’t coughed. I’d seen boys my age in the movies cough violently when they first smoked. I even new some kids at school who’d tried smoking in front of me, like they needed a crowd to witness the event, to somehow legitimize their weak attempt at grasping some semblance of manhood that they’d seen from their dad’s.

    There was no laughter at the other end of the room. Not this time. He’d observed my attempt at manliness and even though it was superficial and resulted in abject failure, he held his laughter. His usual condescension and sarcastic remarks were saved for another time. I was gaining on him, slowly leveling the playing field as much as I could, tipping the scales a notch towards the middle, lessening his grip on the title of lone wolf in the house.

    “Drink some, it’ll wash away the taste in your mouth.”

    I sipped from the glass. He slowed down his pace abandoning his usual gulps in favor of my hesitant pinch of whiskey. It wasn’t the taste that slowed me. The smell, fire tinged acid, struck my nostrils with a ferocity that had only been matched previously by the odor of the worker’s lingering scent that was still holding on to part of me.

    “Now, what’d you see?”

    He leaned in, as if to accentuate the question mark. I’d never seen him like this, so curious, so vulnerable, so empty and in need of something to fill him up.

    “A man died.”

    I knew this wouldn’t satiate him but I wanted to see just how far, how explicit I would have to get.

    “I know that much. It’s everything else that I’m curious about.”

    He was on his second cigarette and had already poured a second glassful of whiskey. He left the bottle and smokes in the middle of the table, giving me silent permission to indulge.

    “It happened so fast yet it seemed like it went by in slow motion. Does that make sense?”

    “Somewhat,” he said.

    “It was like I was watching a movie that wasn’t quite cued up properly, just a bit too fast, but then, when it was over everything came to a stop. I mean it completely slowed down to a crawl, like the events of what happened, like death itself was forcing me to replay everything over and over.”

    “What’d you do while it was happening?”

    “Nothing,” I said.

    He let an audible groan. I didn’t know if he empathized with me or pitied me.

    “Have another shot of whiskey,” he said.

    “Why? Does it really solve anything?”

    “I learned a long time ago that booze may not be the answer but it sure does make you forget the question.”

    The line hung in the air between us, marking the differing philosophies between the imparter and imparted. I wasn’t sure of my own guiding principles, or even if I had any, but for that night I deferred to the old man, anxious to see where his thoughts would lead us.

    As the horrors of what I saw left my mouth, leaving my tongue with a drunken immunity that I’d never felt before, they were quelled by my father’s intense glare. I spoke of hearing bones being broken, snapped apart like dead limbs off an old tree and of seeing the crimson red blood splattered on the road, a pool of death growing larger as it ran through the clear, white snow. I gave him specifics. How the air smelt different afterwards, how my body went numb when I saw where the telephone pole had broken off and speared him. All of my senses, working in overdrive alongside a stranger whose last few breaths were spent staring at my winter boots.

    He took in the information. Silent and unmoving, he let my words, my experience become his. This secondhand account was the most exciting thing that had happened to him in a long time. I could tell that much by his eyes which were glaring at me, into me, desperately waiting for my next words. When I finished he moved up in his seat, knowing he had to respond with something equally profound.

    “I remember when I first started down at the factory, a guy working on the assembly line across from me got his sleeve caught in the roller. Holy shit, man, did he bleed. His hand got taken clean off. I never thought I’d last the month.” He stopped, as if searching for a point to his story. “Anyway, I just had to tell myself that those type of things happen everyday you know?”

    “Yeah but what’s the point? I mean how did you get over it?”

    He tossed a cigarette into my lap, lit his and flung the lighter towards me. Exhaling through his nose, a favorite move of his, like he did whenever he was mad or drunk.

    “I was lucky it wasn’t me. The biggest lesson you’ll ever learn is that most of the time in life you have no control,” he said.

    I looked outside for confirmation.

    “Once you stop fighting that and just accept it and move on you’ll be much better off.”

    His thoughts just kind of trailed off, a side effect of the whiskey infused therapy session he’d practiced since he was my age.

    “That’s easier said than done, no?”

    “I never said nothing about it being easy, just said it was necessary. Big difference,” he said.

    I watched him as he began to doze off, lit cigarette inching closer to his fingertips.

    “It may not make sense now,” he said bolting to an upright position, fingers darkened from the encroaching ember of his cigarette. He looked down as if shocked by the cigarette’s appearance, like it was some prop a stranger had placed in his hand when he wasn’t paying attention. “But someday, when you’re older, it will.”

    He drained what was left in his glass, stubbed out his smoke and got up from his chair. Through the smoke and my whiskey filled eyes I tensed up for a moment. His breath was heavy and dark tasting as it fell down on my face. He put a hand on my shoulder, bent down and kissed me on my forehead.

    “Have a goodnight.”

    I didn’t respond, couldn’t find the words to express my appreciation, to properly commemorate the significance of the moment. I watched him ascend the staircase, my bloody boots in hand, taking each step as a mini hurdle, his every move deliberate and slightly off pace. We never talked about that day after that night and I never laid eyes on the boots again.



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