Bag of Hammers

I learned about blowjobs from a small picture book I found in the undeveloped land behind my house. The book was weathered and its pages were dry and crisp like the wings of abandoned angels. I couldn’t make out what was going on at first—in the photographs—but when it clicked, my stomach tingled. I was thirteen.

“Why would you want someone to do that?” I asked my father a few weeks later as we walked through the very same desert. He switched the small black bag he carried from his right hand to his left, stretched his unburdened fingers, then answered, “I suppose you want someone to accept every part of you.” I shrugged and realized a tiny stone had made its way into my shoe. I rolled it around between my toes for entertainment and the sun reached the middle of a cloudless sky.

“Here, hold this.” My father stopped and extended the black bag towards me. 

I’m was nervous, and didn’t want to touch it.

“Well, come on,” he said.

I took the bag, and it was heavier than I expected.

My father stepped away, unzipped, and peed.

The thirsty ground sighed with relief and the sound made me have to go.

The night after I found the book with the blowjobs, I masturbated. Afterwards, the tingle in my stomach was replaced with a bag of hammers. The next day on the school bus, I sensed that everyone knew of my crime, that every glance and sudden movement juried me guilty. That night, I swore on every page of the bible that I would never do it again. I got halfway through when I realized I was only swearing on one side of each page. So after I sinned again, I went back, and swore on the missing chapters.

“All right.” My father zipped up and stretched his large open hand towards me. “Give it here.” I handed-over the bag, and, relieved of its heaviness,  my next few steps were light and quick. I imagined that if I jumped, I would float all the way to heaven… and not be let in. I returned my attention to the stone in my shoe. I used it to take my mind off the pressing heat, the quiet dirt, and the black bag swinging in my father’s grip.

“Do you feel guilty about looking at that book?” He asked.

“Yea.”

“Well, get over it,” he offered with ease, “there’s a lot bigger things to feel guilty about… You’ll see.”

His news of the future was one more hammer in my stomach.

My father stopped, reached into the black bag and pulled from it my first trial: a can of beer. I watched as he opened it. Winced at the grinding of metal on metal. He took a sip, sighed, then signaled my turn. I hesitated, then took a sip too large.

“Easy,” my father said, snatching the can. “We’ve got a ways to go.”

Gulp. “How far are we going?”

He measured the distance with his eyes. Then with his ears. “Until we can’t hear any traffic.”

The farther we walked into the desert, the more I began to think about the story of Abraham and Isaac. But I knew there was no lamb to take my place; there was just me, my father, and that heavy black bag. I looked at him and wonder what holy deals were being negotiated inside his head. The stone in my shoe began to hurt more than it entertained and seemed to grow in size with every step.

We stopped walking. My father took a seat. I was too anxious, too unsure of the future to sit.

“Sit down,” he said.

I did.

He opened the black bag and pulled out my second trial: two cigarettes. He lit both and offered one to me. Again, I hesitated.

“Go on.”

I burnt myself taking it. My father laughed. The ash grew. I tried to flick it, but ended up dropping the whole damn thing. I raised its skinniness to my mouth and felt the dampness of my father’s lips. I inhaled and was certain that he brought me out here to kill me.

My father put the cigarettes out on the soles of his boots and, instead of tossing them to the ground, placed the butts into his pocket. I figured he didn’t want to leave any evidence that could be used against him, once people started inquiring about what happened to that pervert kid who kept talking about blowjobs.

We continued our journey, progressing deeper into the desert.

How will he kill me, I wonder. Most likely, the old fashioned way, with a knife or a sharp stone. Probably go for the neck. But would that be too quick? Maybe he’ll settle for a gut jab, something that would leave me writhing and leaking. But then I could crawl, squirm my way back home. Father would have to break my legs first. But I could still moan. Even if he did cut out my tongue. I practiced quietly.

“What?” My father asked.

“Nothing.”

I wonder, once the deed is done, how he’ll dispose of my body. Bury me? But the wild dogs, I hear sometimes at night, would smell my rotting flesh and dig me up. They would eat me until I was nothing but bone. And you can run tests on bones. A man’s bones can tell you everything. I can see the headlines now: FOUND: The remains of young man who masturbated an embarrassing number of times. He often looked at trees and tried to imagine what sexual position they were in. He would sometimes fall asleep at night imagining that the crackling power line outside his window was the sky farting. He was left for dead, after being stoned by his father. It serves him right, it was only a matter of time before he touched himself to death.

More-than-likely, my father will just burn me. I will be incinerated in the flames I deserve until I am ash. The best I can hope for is a small wind to come and sweep me over my neighbors. Maybe I will be mistaken for snow. That would be all right, I guess.

I returned to the now and the giant stone in my shoe. I gave myself fully to the pain, and the throbbing slowly became a complete and final numbness. I didn’t even notice my father had stopped.

“Alright. Hold this.” He handed me the black bag once again.

I braced myself for the weight.

He walked fifty paces away, gathered stones, and began building what I recognize, immediately, to be an altar. I wanted to throw myself on it willingly, hoping that some last bit of bravery would save my soul. I named that option: “Thy Will.” Or could I run? Wouldn’t it also be brave to flee? To take charge against the principalities I read about in the bible, to go down in a haze of gun smoke? I named that option: “Come And Get Me.” But which bravery would God reward? I couldn’t decide and my indecision held me firmly in place, creating a third option, which I called: “Wait And See.”

My father placed the empty beer can on top of the stack of rocks like a false god and walked back. He looked me over and I squirmed under his measuring eyes.

“O.k. Give it here.” He commanded.

I forgot to breathe and returned the black bag to my father’s large hands. As he opened the damn thing, I saw my third trial.

The way the sun reflected off of the gun’s clean metal made it look like a star wrapped in a blanket.  I wondered if I, too, had something inside my black soul as beautiful and dangerous.

My father extended the gun towards me, “Slowly,” he said. “Everything you touch can kill you, this just does it quicker.”

We loaded it, dropping a bullet into each slot. I realized that I’ve been doing this sort of thing since kindergarten; putting shapes where they belong.

I couldn’t reconcile the weight of the gun. They never showed that part in the movies. They showed you how to twirl it, how to slide it across a table, how to stick it into some guy’s ribs, but never how heavy it was. The weight made it hard to aim, and my small hands shook.

My father took the two cigarette butts from his pocket, then placed one filter in each of my ears to aid against the impending bang.

The beer can was a blur in the tiny vice of the gun’s sights. Sweat stung my eyes. I wrenched the trigger and shot straight up into the air. It was beyond loud and the force ran through my body. The next pull I anticipated the recoil and hit the ground three feet in front us. Dirt flung up into the sky and landed on our shoulders.

”Jesus,” my father said.

We waited for the dust to clear.

I had enough and wanted to give the gun back. My father quickly ducked from my clumsy pointing of the barrel. “You’ve got four more chances,” he said. Chances for what, I wonder. What if I never hit the can? What happens if I fail? I was being taught something, but I couldn’t figure out what. I sighed. Lifted the gun. Held my breath. And squeezed.

This time there was a yelp. The first thing my father did, after the ricochet, was take the gun from me. He checked me for holes and then searched himself: both clean.

“EHHHHH!” There it was again… the yelp, followed by heavy breathing.

And that is how we found the beast, following the cry and desperate panting. It was a dog, a mixed chow. It made that god awful noise again and again. A noise that I was just beginning to fully hear as the pounding in my head slowed. The whimpers came more frequently, but lost their intensity.

“I’m sorry,” I want to say, but don’t. I want to say it to the kids on the bus. I want to say it to the dog. I want to yell it at the bible. I want to say it to my father. I want to lie down on the desert floor and whisper it to the dirt.

My father grew up on a farm, had served in the army, and could tell that the animal was beyond repair by the color of the blood it was leaking. I watched as the near-black liquid spread like wings across the ground. Wings too small to carry such a load.

My father left me alone with the animal and the gun and with the knowledge of what needed to be done. “Your bullet,” he had said, “your responsibility.” I didn’t want to believe him. I wanted to take the dog home and bandage it. Give it a name like Stray, or Ricochet. I raised the gun. The animal’s breathing was shallow and fast. Is it really right to put it out of its misery, I wondered. Or should I let it live as long as possible, even if it was only in pain? I stood there trying to get it all—the dog, the blow jobs, and the immense desert behind everything—into focus.

After the third shot my father returned to find me pounding the skull of the dead animal with the butt of the gun. It must have looked to him as if I were, one by one, pulling hammers out of an invisible sack, striking the animal only once before grabbing another gavel and swinging it down. The bag was bottomless.

As he wrestled the gun from me, I turned the attack on him, yelling, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”  My dad waited for the barrage to end and then carried my exhausted body home, breaking the long patches of silence with, “I know… I know… I know.”


*This story first appeared in Ashé Journal (2011) under the title: The Sacrifice of Beauciphus Royal.

C.P. SHAFER