Dark Father

by Cooper, James

  Jake nodded.

  “Then we bring down the axe in one smooth, uncomplicated stroke…”

  He gloved Jake’s hands in his own, held the hatchet tightly, and swung it cleanly through the air. There was a moment where he felt the boy draw in a sharp breath, his pulse quickened by his father’s skill, before the hatchet split the wood in two. Jake stared at the pieces for a moment, breathing hard, seeing something in the wood that Frank could only guess at. To him, they looked like two imperfect halves, one no longer dependent upon the other. Wasn’t that all there was to see? He looked closer at the wood and realized that Jake was staring at him. The boy let go of the hatchet and hugged him hard.

  “I’m glad it waited for me, Daddy,” he said.

  Frank hugged his son and wondered why he wanted to weep.

  “Me too, Jake,” he said softly.

  He squeezed him once and then reluctantly released him. Sometimes, he thought, it was so hard to hold him. Harder still to let him go.

  He watched the boy run out the door and scamper up the garden towards the house. He became so small so quickly. Just before he reached the patio, he turned around and waved. A five-year-old boy in pajamas and Wellington boots. Smiling at his father in the dark.

  * * *

  Frank closed the door to the woodshed and wrapped his hands around the hatchet, imagining that he could still detect the subtle warmth of his son’s fingers. On the cutting block lay the two halves of wood they’d chopped together. Frank lifted them to his nose and inhaled the smell. He felt humbled by how ordinary it seemed. He pressed them to his lips and tasted bark. Up close he noticed how the light wood inside was unblemished. A thought surfaced and he felt a cold hand work its way across his skin. He dropped the pieces of wood and stared at them. For a moment he had been convinced that he was holding two bones, pale and soft. Picked clean of flesh by wolves.

  * * *

  The following day Cindy had arranged for them to visit Belmont Pines, a large child–friendly wood on the outskirts of the county. There was a vast wooden fort for the kids—and their envious fathers—to expend energy on. Jake loved it. He would sprint around its circumference screaming for Frank to chase him. The towering pines offered shelter from the sun and Frank would hurtle through the shadows, dodging the flying knuckles and elbows of excited children, often struggling to pick Jake out from the crowd. When they were both exhausted and returned to base camp to refuel, Cindy would always be prepared: she’d be waiting for them with drinks and biscuits, which they devoured in silence, secretly plotting their next move.

  “What do you want to do first?” Frank asked Jake as they drove out of the city towards the wood. “Football or fort?”

  Jake assumed a look of intense concentration and Frank wanted to laugh. It was the face he often saw drawn across the boy’s face when he was taking a shit.

  “Nitpic,” Jake said finally, seemingly happy with his answer.

  Frank turned his head and looked into the backseat, frowning. Beside him, Cindy was laughing.

  “He means ‘picnic,’ don’t you, Jake?”

  The boy was already losing interest in the conversation and was looking out of the window.

  “Nitpic,” he said. “Nitpic on the grass, under the big tree.”

  Frank laughed. “Okay,” he said. “Nitpic it is.”

  They drove through the gates that marked out the perimeter of the woodland and headed deeper into the swathe of trees. Once they’d parked they gathered the picnic and the football from the trunk of the car and began a leisurely walk into the heart of the woods. The pace was slow to allow Jake to meander, both Cindy and Frank taking great delight in the boy’s simple curiosity. He picked up stones and touched them, delicate as rose petals. If they met a certain mysterious criteria that only Jake himself was privy to, he would drop them into his coat pocket and move on. After ten minutes the boy was so loaded down with the damn things Frank had to intervene. He suggested that some of them needed to be released before the weight of them dragged Jake to his knees. There followed a five-minute inspection of every stone hitherto collected to determine which ones might be considered incidental. It was a considered process, Jake initially forming three piles, which he gradually whittled down to one. These he returned to his pocket. The stones he’d decided to discard he hid beneath a large bush, which his parents had seen him do before. His plan was to retrieve them the next time they visited the woods, but invariably he would forget. Either that he already had a load stashed away, or under which bush his treasure had been placed.

  On one occasion, Frank and Cindy had spent most of the afternoon hunting down a particular white stone that Jake had rejected by mistake. It was special, he said. It was smooth all over and kept him safe. They found a dozen neatly balanced cairns under a dozen different bushes, but the white stone, as Jake remembered it, was never recovered. He had cried softly to himself in his mother’s arms as they drove home. Frank had felt uneasy for days after that and had bought a flat, white moonstone from a local craft shop, more to appease himself than to reassure Jake.

  The boy had looked at him, unblinking, and Frank had felt exposed by his son’s simple intelligence.

  “This ain’t for safety, Daddy,” he said. And he had placed it back in his father’s hand, where it rested, round as an eye.

  * * *

  The oak tree under which they customarily ate their picnic was situated at the top of a large incline overlooking the woods. The climb was a difficult one for Jake but the payoff was worth it. Frank would lift him into the lowest branches of the tree and he would sit, nestled in the palm of the great oak, eating his sandwiches and looking out at the distant children clambering over the fort like ants.

  Today was no different. They had made the journey in good time and all three of them stood at the top of the incline with the wind blowing grit through their hair. Jake reached his hands out to Frank.

  “I can climb now,” he said, as though pointing out that the allotted time for this very thing had arrived.

  Frank checked instinctively with Cindy, who nodded. “I guess that’s the green light,” he said.

  He lifted Jake into the lowest branches of the oak and held him steady.

  “Careful now,” Frank muttered. “I don’t want to have to run down that bloody hill for first aid.”

  Jake wasn’t even listening. He found his familiar spot in the crook of the old oak and waited for Cindy to feed him. He looked imperious, Frank thought, as though the bark had been levelled to receive him. He looked up at his son, who was now reaching out for his packed lunch, and noticed something disagreeable. From this angle, he could only see the top half of Jake’s body, and it looked like the boy was being drawn into the trunk of the old oak. Either that or, arms extended, he was desperately trying to claw himself free.

  The image evaporated as soon as Cindy handed Jake his lunch, but Frank found the suddenness of it, the speed and force with which the image had come upon him, difficult to dislodge. It stayed with him all during lunch, and he found himself glancing into the tree every few seconds to ensure that Jake was still safely balanced in the dark arms of the oak.

  “What’s that?” Jake said, his attention suddenly caught by something that neither Frank nor Cindy were able to see. He put down his sandwich and started fidgeting in the branch. Frank rose quickly and steadied him with a gentle hand.

  “Give up,” he said. “Why don’t you describe it for us?” This was a trick Cindy had taught him to try and broaden the boy’s vocabulary, forcing him to re-evaluate his own surroundings.

  “That’s easy,” he said, laughing. “It’s a red ball. See?”

  Frank looked through the thick grass and could just make out the upper rim of a deflated football. From this distance it looked incongruous against the swaying grass, like a lipsticked smile turned upside down.

  Jake was already clambering from the tree, assuming that his father would crane him to safety long before he crashed to the ground.
<
br />   “I can get it, can I?” he said, already running towards the ball. Frank laughed at the boy’s diverting syntax, finding it immeasurably cute.

  “Can he?”

  Cindy sighed. “We already have a football,” she said. “Why on earth would we want a dead one?”

  “You’re missing the point. Look at him. He’s like a hunter chasing down his prey!”

  They both laughed and began tidying away the leftover lunch.

  “Straight back!” Frank shouted to Jake over his shoulder. “We want to see what you’ve caught!”

  He turned around, smiling, and instantly froze. Jake was standing with the deflated ball at his feet. He was reaching out a small, inconsequential hand. There was another hand, an adult hand, reaching back. It held some kind of doll. An Action Man, perhaps; Frank could see its combat fatigues and heavy black boots. He and Jake had a pair just like them at home. He could also see dark hair on the back of the adult hand. Long fingers reaching out for his son. He followed the arm, hoping to see a friendly face, but the body was hidden by a clutch of trees, intent on disclosing only that long arm. Those bony fingers. That dark hair. He watched, paralyzed, as his son began to laugh, and he felt every muscle in his stomach contract. His brain was screaming at him to move, but the sight only fifty yards away was like the money shot in a horror film. He was mesmerized by it. He watched, frozen to the spot, as his son claimed the doll. He saw those covetous fingers briefly close over his son’s tiny hand, and he screamed. He screamed until every last breath was torn from his burning lungs.

  “Jake!” he yelled, terrifying Cindy into a volley of panicked shrieks. “JAKE!”

  He watched the hand slowly withdraw and saw Jake turn around in alarm. His brow was creased and he looked slightly irritated that his adventure had been cut short.

  “Daddy?” he said.

  Frank looked at the boy’s puzzled face and broke into a run. Whatever dread had possessed him moments earlier, he was now fully charged with the fury of a stricken parent. He hurtled through the long grass and collected Jake in his arms, Cindy only a heartbeat behind.

  “Here,” he said, handing Jake to his mother, breathing hard. “Check him all over.”

  He set off through the trees in search of the hand. When he found it, he swore to himself, he would cut the fucker off. Hell, given half a chance, he’d bite it off. Make the man it belonged to howl like a dog.

  Frank stopped for a moment to collect himself and ran a search along the horizon. The far side of the hill was denser than the side they had ascended, the long grass giving way to trees and gorse that thickened as the ground fell away. The idea of tracking the fleeing man over such unmanageable terrain was far from appealing.

  “Fuck!” He ran a hand through his hair and breathed deeply, scanning the bank of trees. How could the man who had made Jake laugh−

  Stop it. Don’t think like that. Don’t think of that sick fuck making your boy laugh. It’ll tear you apart.

  −how could he have disappeared so completely? Frank had been no more than fifty yards away from Jake; hardly much of a head start. Yet he hadn’t even been able to ascertain in which direction the guy had fled.

  He threw his hands in the air and turned to look towards the top of the hill. Cindy was standing with her arms wrapped around Jake’s shoulders. The pair looked terribly fragile and small. The gray sky loomed over them like gunpowder. It was streaked with clouds just starting to hiss with rain. Frank stared at Cindy and then at Jake, realizing how vulnerable they seemed. He started the long walk back up the hill, his shoulders stiff with defeat. His family increased in size as he moved, as though he were zooming in on their distress. He trained his gaze on Jake and felt a chill run through him. His son was wiping tears from his eyes. Still clutching to his chest the black-booted Action Man. His gift from the man in the trees.

  * * *

  Frank walked back towards Cindy and Jake, his sense of humiliation hardening with every step. He looked down at his hands. They felt slick and useless, leathery with rain. His whole body felt weightless, as though the best part of him had escaped.

  He approached Cindy and stared into her rain-sodden face. She looked shell-shocked.

  “Why does he still have it?” he asked, his temper simmering.

  Cindy looked confused.

  “The fucking doll! The one that pervert gave him.”

  Jake’s whimpering grew louder and he sensed the boy’s grip on the Action Man instinctively tighten.

  “I tried,” Cindy said. “He wouldn’t let the damn thing go.” She held Jake even tighter, and Frank had a fleeting image of his family as Russian dolls, steadily decreasing in size: Cindy, Jake, and now the Action Man. He wondered, for a desperate moment, why he suddenly felt so excluded from the group.

  “Jake,” he said, bending down to his son. “Are you okay?”

  The boy nodded nervously, sinking into the fabric of his mother’s skirt.

  “Did the man touch you?”

  Jake shook his head.

  “What did he say?”

  “He gave me Joey,” Jake said, holding up the Action Man. “He told me he was my new best friend.”

  “Can I see him?”

  Jake shoved the doll behind his back. “He’s asleep right now, Daddy.”

  Frank glanced at Cindy, feeling the weight of her gaze, the hardness of it.

  “Alright,” Frank said, reluctantly playing along, desperate to tear the thing from his son’s hand and rip its fucking head off. “But when Joey wakes up, Daddy wants to see him. Is that okay?”

  Jake looked up at Cindy, then back at Frank. He nodded slowly, but Frank knew already that Jake had no intention of handing the toy over to his father. Not that it would present too much of a problem. He suspected Joey would have an accident in the middle of the night. Something unspeakable. Something the black-booted bastard deserved.

  “What else did the man say?” Frank said.

  Jake smiled, remembering. “He made me laugh,” he said. “He made funny faces for me.”

  Frank felt another wrench in his gut, a sense of violation that an unknown man had taken something that was uniquely his—the capacity to make Jake laugh—and had twisted it into something toxic and unwholesome. He was struggling to breathe and was feeling light-headed as the memory of Jake’s terrible laughter returned. He grimaced and rubbed the rain from his face.

  “What kind of faces?”

  Jake frowned, not sure how to answer. “Like the ones you do,” he said.

  Frank closed his eyes. He grabbed Jake’s hand, more for support than anything else, and he felt the boy recoil.

  “Daddy, you’re hurting me.”

  Cindy placed a hand on Frank’s arm. “You’re scaring him,” she said. “Let’s not make it worse than it is, okay?”

  Frank released Jake’s arm and turned his attention to his wife. “Excuse me?”

  “He’s five years old, Frank. He doesn’t understand. A nice man just gave him a toy. Right, Jake?”

  The boy nodded, staring at his father. “I got Joey,” he said to Frank, as if his father had misunderstood. “See?” He held up the action figure in the rain.

  Frank exchanged another look with Cindy and she nodded encouragement. “Let’s leave it at that, shall we?”

  Frank felt as though he were the only one whose stomach was still tied up in knots. His heartbeat was racing and he felt physically sick. Hadn’t Cindy seen that hideous arm uncoiling from behind the tree?

  “I understand what you’re saying,” he said, glancing down at Jake, “but I think we should report it.”

  Cindy knelt down and gave Jake a kiss. “Absolutely. But later. When we’ve had more time to think things through.”

  Frank didn’t like the sound of that. When Cindy said they needed to “think things through,” it usually meant he listened while Cindy decided what course of action they should take.

  “Look,” she said. “We’re getting drenched. Let’s go back to the car
and talk about it later. Agreed?”

  Frank nodded and looked down at his son. Jake was whispering something to Joey, and Frank felt another unpleasant wave of nausea. There was a pause as the boy considered something. Then he held the doll up to his ear and listened as Joey whispered back.

  * * *

  The journey home was tense, the air in the narrow interior of the Volvo squeezed between the three of them until Frank found it almost impossible to breathe. The rain had started to fall heavily now and was spraying off the windshield like pellets. The countryside beyond the glass looked blurry, even slightly distorted, like a Polaroid trembling on the edge of being developed. Frank was having to peer hard through the windshield, his eyes fixed on the road. He was conscious of Jake in the backseat, fiddling with the action figure; he was also aware of Cindy seated upright beside him, her shoulders taut, her face unmoving in the dull light.

  They stayed that way for much of the journey home, though as they left the countryside behind, the rain stayed with it. The familiarity of the dry city streets was like a gentle reminder never to leave them behind again. As they approached the road that led to their house, Frank saw Cindy visibly relax. Improbably, the horror of the afternoon, the harrowing impact of it, was already beginning to fade.

  As he pulled onto the driveway, Frank closed his eyes, trying to remember the unfurling arm, the fingers extending towards his son. The image was still there but the degree of terror it had previously evoked had started to shift, to mutate into something almost manageable.

  He opened his eyes and saw his family walking down the drive. A shadow stretched across them, cast by the comfort of home.

  * * *

  Much later Frank would look back on the next thirty minutes and repeatedly analyze every last detail he could recall. He was hoping to find something anomalous, something he had missed, but his memory of what happened that afternoon was no more exceptional than the actual event. He’d seen it a hundred times with a hundred different kids on TV. And each time it made him want to weep.