Generational Fruit

My father was a cultist. I don’t remember much from those days, other than this. I remember lying on the torn-up couch in the living room, watching Tom and Jerry on the weekends until I fell asleep. That's when I was at my father’s house, every other weekend. On Saturdays, I wasn’t allowed to sleep on the couch.

My father worked in construction digging ditches, building roads, holding signs, and even operating the CAT machine. He would make the other guys laugh and tell dirty jokes and share cigarettes. He was a favorite because every Wednesday at lunch he would buy the guys one round of beers. They loved beer, and they loved him for providing it.

My father was also a supreme competitor, a fact which made his crew uneasy. Whenever he was assigned to a task with a partner, he would insist on being the first down the hole, or the first to hit the dirt with the ax. When groups were assigned to dig ditches, his shovel would always be in the ground first, and he would scoop and dig like a rabid dog, his eyes blazing with some unknown energy. The crew began to call him “Pose” behind his back — short for “possessed.”

On Saturday afternoon my father would go out by himself, disappearing from the house in the evenings. At night I would hear him return. Grocery bags ruffled against the door as he shut it and turned the lock. He would tip-toe through the laundry room and open the garage door, which had two manual locks plus a six-digit keypad. I would hear the heavy metal door slam shut behind him.

Later he would come out and check on me. I slept in the guest room upstairs on Saturday, watching cartoons till I passed out. I was awake that Saturday when he came up to me. His face was shiny in the dim reflection cast off the windowsill by the moon.

“Goodnight,” he said.

“Night,” I responded.

A couple of weeks later we shared a drink. He cracked open a can of beer and helped me crack open my Dr. Pepper. We sat in the chairs below the eaves, staring out into the yard. In the middle of the yard was a tree stump. I had asked him before why he never removed it. He always grunted and muttered something under his breath.

When I asked him this time his head turned to me and, for a second, an unconcealed scowl spread over his face before he pulled it back. He said nothing.

I noticed his hands were shaking as he pulled the beer to his lips. His eyes drifted over to my Dr. Pepper, which I sipped as slowly as he did his beer.

“Wanna trade?” I asked him, holding up the burgundy can.

He leaned back in his seat. Beneath his raised eyebrows, he considered the request. He extended the beer to me and opened his other hand.

“Just this once,” he said.

A few sips later his hands stopped shaking. I was halfway down a new soda. After placing the beer on the small glass table between us, I had gone inside to get a new Dr. Pepper. I saved the beer on the table for him, for his smoke break before dinner.

He was right. He never asked to trade for a soda again.

A couple of Saturdays later my father went to the store earlier in the day than usual. He placed the groceries on the kitchen sink and one bag on the countertop. He removed the contents from that bag and placed the mesh bag of pears on the countertop.

I asked him where he got them.

“The store,” he said.

I reached through the opening and placed my fingers around a pear. He slapped my hand softly and removed it from the bag.

“Not these,” he said. He reached across me and brought another bag up to the countertop. He removed a small tub of ice cream and placed it in my hands. “You can have this.”

“Thank you,” I said, smiling and opening the drawer to find a spoon.

He took the rest of the bags to the garage and then took a nap in his room. I went up upstairs in the evening and turned on my cartoons. Later in the night, the ding of the keypad and the slam of the metal door woke me up. I was terribly thirsty.

I walked down the steps and opened the cabinet to grab a glass. I filled it with tap water and leaned against the fridge, tipping the glass back in my mouth, letting the cool water flow down my throat. When I lowered the glass from my face I saw an empty countertop.

I looked in the fruit bowl on the table, then in the drawers in the fridge, then back to the empty countertops. The pears weren’t anywhere.

I heard a sound coming from the hallway, from the laundry room.

Never go in the garage, my father’s words echoed in my head as I tip-toed across the carpet down the hall. I peered in the laundry room. The garage door was open just a sliver. A line of glowing red light reflected on the wall in the darkness. I stepped toward the garage door.

I looked down and saw a pear wedged between the door and the frame. The corner of the door was slowly cutting into the pear, pouring its juices on the floor below. The voice grew louder and I snapped my head up and leaned close, pressing my eye against the gap.

My father was naked, lying back-first across the garage floor. His body was shiny. It had been lathered up with some oil or lotion.

A perfect circle of red candles was arranged around him, alight. I looked closer and saw lines of red paint on the concrete below his body. They flew across the circle created by the candles, forming a star.

His eyes were closed and he was muttering softly. Then he let out a yell and a tear rolled down his cheek.

“Please, please, take me back!” He cried. “I’ll do it right this time.”

I noticed his hands were shaking.

He reached his hand back and took one of the candles in his hand. He sat up, opening his eyes slightly, and blew out the candle. He set the candle in the circle. He rose to his knees and arched forward, supporting himself with his arm as he reached outside the circle of candles.

He placed his hand inside an open mesh bag lying across the floor. He pulled a pear out and leaned back into the circle. Picking up the candle, he poured the hot wax over the pear till it was covered with a coat of red.

He blew on it and let it cool. Then he brought the waxed pear to his mouth and tore into its flesh like a hungry wolf into freshly killed prey. The juices spilled down his face and his eyes were alight with something hot and aggressive.

Later that night, my father would fall asleep on the floor and I would poke around the garage. I would find an ax buried in a shelf in the garage.

My father had cut down the pear tree in the backyard before he even bought the house. It went back a long time, I discovered in a journal of his many years later, to a boy and girl in elementary school. In 5th grade, the teacher had given each of the students a few pear seeds to plant.

At the beginning of their 8th-grade year, the students would gather all the pears from their tree and compare how many they got. The family of the winner would be sent to a resort for a whole week over fall break. It was the only school around where my father grew up. No one left the school till they graduated.

The boy who won also won the girl that my father liked. That’s how he thought about it, at least. But the boy cheated. His seeds grew into two trees, and one he planted far out in the wilderness where no one would find it. In secret, he would go and water it over the years. When they compared, he had twice as many pears as everyone else.

My father laid back down on the red circle, the pear juice dried around his mouth. He muttered some more and reached for another candle. He would blow it out a minute later. He brought his hands down to his side for just a moment, and they were steady.