Excerpts from Mud and Grandpa's Watch
By David Fingerman
Mud
Tom saw the anger in his mother’s eyes. He looked in the mirror by the front door and noticed his sandy blond hair caked with mud, and his new tan jacket almost black. He sniffed and could feel the dried blood around his nostrils start to crack.
“Nothin’, I just fell,” he said under his breath.
“What am I going to do with you?” she screamed. “You have to be the clumsiest kid on this earth. You get those clothes washed and get yourself cleaned up before your father gets home. You know as well as today’s Tuesday he’ll beat you if he sees you like that. My God, we just got you that jacket, and you ruined it. What am I going to do with you?”
Tom started down the hall to the bathroom when his mother yelled, “And hurry up. I need some help in the kitchen.”
The beatings by Tom’s dad weren’t too bad anymore. He learned to dodge the serious blows, and at least his father never had threatened him with a knife, not even when he was drunk. The goose-bumps returned as Tom thought about that knife.
The plate of food in front of Tom remained untouched as his parents ate in silence. Before dinner was over, Tom raced from the table to the bathroom. His stomach was in knots. As he ran, the bruises from where he’d been kicked started to burn.
“Are you all right?” his mother yelled.
A lump climbed its way up Tom’s throat.
“Are you sick?”
A huge glop of mud spewed from his mouth, splashing into the toilet.
“Answer you mother when she asks you a question.”
Tom’s stomach convulsed, then a stream of black water shot out of his mouth.
“What the hell are you doing in there?” his father shouted.
Like a contaminated fountain, the dirty water kept coming. Off in a distant background he heard his parents start to scream at each other. When he felt that there was no more liquid left in his body, he stopped. Dirt and grit lined the inside of his mouth, and to Tom’s surprise, it tasted good.
Grandpa's Watch
Milo snapped open the watch. “It says the eighteenth.” Startled and afraid that his grandfather might take the watch away, he quickly jumped in, “I didn’t fix it. I swear.”
“I fixed it,” Patty said. “I noticed it when you went out to Uncle John’s truck for your present. Are you ready for bed?”
“We gotta get out of here,” Jacob said getting up from the sofa.
“What the hell are you talking about,” said Paul. “Wrestling’s on.”
“It’s the watch, it’s cursed,” the old man said. “We have to leave, now!”
“You gone loony, old man?” Paul spat at his father.
“You gave my baby a cursed watch?” Patty stared incredulously.
“He was supposed to be its guardian, to keep this from happening,” Jacob cried.
“To keep what from happening?” Paul and Patty asked in unison.
“I was going to explain it all to the boy tomorrow,” Jacob said, mostly to himself.
Paul turned back to the TV, fed up with the old man’s nonsense, while his wife continued to stare.
“Explain what?” she asked. Impatience and anger tinged her words.
Milo came into the room and sat near his grandfather. The air in the room was stale and the smell of rotting meat started permeating in through the kitchen window.
“Go get your clothes on, boy. We got to get outta here,” Jacob said.
“You’re not taking him anywhere,” Patty said. “It’s time he went . . .”
A bang on the front door made everyone jump. Milo looked at his grandfather and saw terror in his eyes.