Of a Time (Short Story)

This one is fresh off a rejection from a literary journal I won't name here. But we all know how that goes. I wrote to the theme Anachronism-- if the ending leaves you baffled, keep that in mind.

Knock, Knock.

“No knock three times Matty! This isn’t some kid’s joke.”

Knock, Knock, Knock.

“And wipe off that smile or they’ll think you’re a Mormon.”

“Hello?” the woman at the door wore a teel cardigan buttoned only at the top. She smiled at Matty, but her jowls soon sank when she noticed Mathew Senior hovering behind him. “I’m sorry but I already donate to the cancer foundation,” she said half closing the door and speaking exclusively to Mathew Senior as if afraid the blue eyes at her waist level might change her mind.

“No we’re not here with a charity,” piped up Matty.

“Oh.” Her expression only hardened further.

“And we don’t want to sell you anything either.”

Mathew Senior kicked at his son’s heel.

“Well not the type of thing folks usually sell door to door anyway,” the boy clarified.”

Fingering the crucifix around her neck, the woman suddenly lost her air of confusion. Her eyebrows rose as she peered down her nose. “I’m sorry boys. I trust you’re doing good work up here this morning. But my soul is already spoken for.” She extended the wooden token as far as its brass chain would allow.

With a huff, Mathew senior gently pushed Matty aside, dropping his packed briefcase at the woman’s feet as he did so. “No Miss…” he paused. “It’s Miss Lynch isn’t it?”

Before her taken aback gape had a chance to fully form, he gestured down the steep street he and his son had just trudged up. “I’m Mathew Tonka. I literally grew up at the foot of this hill.”

Her eyes widened. “Sarah’s boy? My gosh I….” She leaned forward and squinted. A slight goofy smile spreading across her cheeks. “I don’t think I’ve seen you since she used to trolley you around the supermarket! I haven’t seen in—-” she never finished that sentence.

Mathew Senior lowered his gaze and bore her reinfused attention with a nodding head. “Yes it’s been a few years since I stepped foot on Whanganui dirt.” He kicked at her wicker welcome mat.

“Well don’t play coy. Where have you been all these years then?”

Her eyes narrowed as Mathew Senior unclipped his briefcase in answer, yet enough of the twist in her lip remained to betray her piqued curiosity.

“I’m a writer.”

“A writer?”

“Yes a writer!” piped up Matty, stepping in front of his father and bathing that title in all the wonder and awe that he’d been taught to do. “See miss. Can I call you miss?”

“Call me whatever you like, sweety.”

“See miss, my Dad just hit gold on a major publishing deal with his debut novel!”

“Oh did he?” asked the woman. A healthy distrust clouding her tone as her eyes strayed to Mathew Senior. The latter offered a humble bow.

“Yes, and before you ask what he’s doing out here on a Tuesday morning knocking on people’s doors, I’ll spare you the breath. He’s doing it to teach me a lesson.” Matty’s small finger’s cupped the space over his heart.

“Mmm hmm.” The woman’s arms were folded as she moved her foot to steal a peek into the briefcase.

“Yes he’s always talking about how people these days are lazy. Even the successful ones.” Matty risked a glance for reassurance from his father who rewarded him with a almost-too-subtle-to-spot nod. “Especially the successful ones!” resumed Matty. “The moment they ‘make it.’ Most folks start to think they’re too good for the grind. Too fancy to get out among the people and sell their work.” He shook his head in disgust. “At the very moment when the public have good reason to believe in your dreams, and might actually be interested in hearing what you’ve got to say, you suddenly decide they’re not worth your time?” Matty threw an adoring gaze at his father. “My Dad will never be caught dead walling himself off from his people.”

“Walling himself?”

“Walling himself,” insisted Matty.

“And is there a Mrs Tonka in the picture?” asked the woman, biting her lip and looking at Mathew Senior in a manner that was too adult for the boy at her apron line to understand.

“Yes that’s my—”

“There’s a Miss Tonka,” corrected Mathew Senior.

“Oh…” the woman raised a hand to her lip. “Not the girl who Gale always brings up at bridge—?” her poised lips froze around the clenched teeth shape of that word.

There was an empty beat where the woman stared at the father without saying anything. She’d gone a shade of pale that made her makeup caked cheeks seem vulgar and it momentarily appeared as though she might have been resisting the urge to push the door shut.

But perhaps she considered her empty afternoon, perhaps she considered the void of her recently dead husband who would typically have been coming in from mowing the lawns around this time. Whatever it was, she took a step back from the door, drew her eyes down to the suitcase, then up to Mathew senior’s face. No longer rigid, she flashed a set of receding gums at little Matty and said, “Well you boys have certainly worked for it, haven’t you? So why stop now? Come on in.” she said, making a point to meet Mathew Senior’s eye. “Let me get you a cuppa while you tell me all about your novel.”

***

That little vignette might come off as contrived. But that’s how my dad was with everything. He wrote this piece under a pseudonym and sold it to the local newspaper so he wouldn’t get the credit. Humbled to the day he died. A real old school guy. Every minute of his day, lived like a man from another age. Modern values merged with him about as well as oil and water.

He cut his teeth as a journo and never dropped his working class ethic from my first memory of him to my last. That man gave me tools that may have once been ordinary, but by the time my crop had come to harvest were long forgotten.

I’m not sure why people let themselves forget either, because those principles work! His novel The Dalmation’s Smile hit the bestseller list before his publisher had even got the thing into Whitcoulls stores! Never underestimate the power of small town book clubs, or the resourcefulness of a retiree looking down the barrel of an old folks home! Henry Ford couldn’t have squeezed as much productivity out of an empty afternoon as some of those folks can, and believe me, they have no shortage of free time!

I guess people these days have simply gotten lazy. My dad’s way of going about business was undoubtedly the harder path to take, and in fairness, life doesn’t always reward you for your efforts.

They found my father’s suitcase in the center of our road at 8:00 pm on a Wednesday night. He hadn’t even hit his thirty seventh birthday. Half empty from a successful day’s selling, left there as if he’d been zapped up into a spaceship. My Mum barely let the lasagna get luke-warm before she phoned in the local constable.

While I was grieving, well I suppose I’m still grieving now, I used to tell myself it was a time machine that took him. Someone from the era he’d originally been warped out of had finally returned to take him home. “No Mathew, these people are not of our time. They do not deserve the wisdom of our way, and besides, they won’t understand it in any case.”

The hardest part was hearing my Mum cry at night. She did it when I got in trouble at school, she did it when she saw I needed him. That was the part that killed her.

My Mum, tried her best. But there are things only a father can teach their child, and while she had many talents, my Mum was not cut from the old style of cloth.

Modern to the core. I used to tear up when I saw the way she looked at me. Wondering how she was going to replicate the values that I needed. Knowing that no matter how she tried, I would always be of his kind. Perhaps fearing that I’d one day be taken by the same hand that struck my father from our lives.

Since then, I’ve tried to ground myself in the facts however. It was a public holiday when he disappeared — Tuakau Day. A celebration of the Ten Clawed Taniwha who was said to have dwelled in our river once upon a time. A holiday that ironically spurred the locals to leave our town for nicer weather. No one within ten blocks of our street was home that night to witness his disappearance— a detail the police posed was either bad luck or clever planning.

He didn’t leave any type of note to hint at his whereabouts. All he left was his suitcase of books, his values from another time and an ugly bruise on my mother’s cheek.

Don’t worry Mum. I had more love for my Dad than you could find in all the sixties singalongs combined, and I won’t deny, few days go by where I don’t wish he was here to guide me. But I know the hand that took him, even if I’ve never saw it in the flesh. It was the knuckle side of the palm that patted me on the back, taught me how to shake a hand. Mum, you don’t have to worry. I won’t let it take me.