Son in Low
Joe watched the Bentley draw up the drive and come to a halt. The chrome looked so pristine that the light reflecting off it made it look dinted. He’d been fighting with his words since the moment he first popped the question:
"Will he accept me?" he’d asked her imploringly.
"Of course," Nicole replied, "why wouldn’t he?"
"Well I’m not exactly part of the same world."
'It’ll be alright,’ he kept telling himself as her father emerged from the gleam. His glasses caught the sun and flared in Joe’s direction causing him to step back into the shadows.
He listened to the front door career effortlessly on its hinges before being put firmly in place. There framed in the entrance stood a man of towering stature.
Joe had stature, but his was bulked rather than stretched.
“You must be Joe?” he said loftily offering his hand, “pleased to meet you.”
"You too,” said Joe grasping his hand firmly.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” said the father motioning Joe to the chair.
Joe was about to repeat the phrase but thought better of it, looking about the room towards the window as if ushering his soul to escape. “Quite a day isn’t it?”
“Yes.” replied the father sternly before delivering the question like a balling ball at the carefully placed pins. The question Joe had been dreading. The question that demeaned him. Diminished him. And to those who didn’t know him—defined him.
“What is it you do?”
“Well, I’m working full time trying to find a job,” laughed Joe nervously.
“I see,” replied the father, his glasses opaque from the light.
“It’s hard out there at the moment.”
“Hard,” repeated the father as if trying to empathise without himself knowing it.
“It’s even harder when people look down on you for not having a job when those same people won’t give you one.”
“I see.”
“They act as if we got our thumbs up our ass while they got their heads up theirs. They don’t think. They think they think because they don’t think about it. But they don’t think things through. They’re too preoccupied by their lives so that they react rather than think. It’s those kinds of reactions that leave the have nots more vulnerable so that those that have, have more and more opportunities than those who have not.
At this point Joe saw the father’s eyes for the first time, drooping, like a basset hound, with scepticism.
“All I want is a chance to prove myself and make some bread.”
“The proofs in the pudding,” replied the father cramming his eyes back into his glasses.
“But I can’t get a starter.” Joes attempts at humour weren’t getting the rise he was hoping for. Falling as flat as the bread he wished to make.
“I see.”
To Joe he saw about as much as his Eleventh grade English Teacher, Mr. Hellebore. He could see him now, shimmering with ugliness. His face taken by his head to be almost two dimensional, tilted to the left as if that hemisphere were weighed down with knowledge. He was so stagnant he could only act on impulse. Tiptoeing around something before frog marching himself into it. Moving like a fly in incremental spasms, then strutting, like a capercaillie, head plunging towards the ceiling, his brain clacking like it were being dragged behind him. ‘You’re a scatter brain. He would tell Joe, “I can’t see you amounting to much if you don’t settle down.’
Those words repeated on Joe like pastry. He could hear the father thinking those very same words as he merged into him. His cirrus-like hair sauntering aimlessly about his head. His eyebrows taking exception to his countenance. Taking flight whenever it surged. Which wasn’t very often.
Now Joe was speaking directly to Mr. Hellebore. “It’s not that I don’t have the brains, it’s just I can’t keep them in one place.”
“I see.”
“Do you?” releasing the frustration he’d kept for Mr. Hellebore these past few years.
“I beg your pardon.”
“You’ll have to beg for it.”
“Excuse me.”
“Excuse is right. Those who’re good with words have an excuse for everything. They know how to talk the talk. While us illiterates have to answer for everything, you have an answer for everything. You can get out of paying what we have to pay over the odds for even though you’ve got the money. While those who don’t have to pay and pay again. Those who have, have it all, while those who don’t have, have nothing.”
“People who have, have generally worked for it.”
“Worked it out more like. There’s work and there’s work. My father worked his fingers to the bone. People like you ought to think yourselves fortunate, not deserving.”
“Just who do you think you are, talking to me like that?”
“Who do I think I am? Who do you think you are, that my opinion can’t be contrary to yours? You speak down to me and expect me to speak up to you, and you ask who I think I am. I’m speaking against you, not down to you, you prick.”
“Would you please mind your language.”
“Mind my language! I’m practically looking after it. It’s all words, words, words with people like you isn’t it? The right words in the right place. Telling people exactly what they want to hear and pretending to laugh at their jokes. Laughter is meant to be a reflex not a response. I prefer to laugh from the heart, not from the head. That intellectual wit makes me want to gag”
“It’s how we get on in life.”
“It’s how you get off on each other. Parading your superiority, looking down your extended noses at people who have no chance because they aren’t given one. At least when you’re on your ass you aren’t up your own ass. survival of the fittest with those who have the advantage advancing further.”
“Then it’s evolution. Progress,” replied the father with a grand Beethovian gesture. Like a gasp from a silent movie.
“Our survival’s based on numbers not supremacy.”
“Numbers! The rising world’s population is going to starve us to death if we carry on the way we are.”
“Make you all the hungrier you mean. Your idea of profit is to make more than you made previously. You put people out of jobs from losses of profit rather than actual losses. It’s all accumulation for those at the top. Those at the top could feed the entire world no matter how populated.”
“People ought to feed themselves. It’s not up to those who’ve done well for themselves to feed them.”
“You’re not giving them a chance to feed themselves.”
“You’ve got to make your own chances by taking a chance.”
“You need to be given a chance to make your chances.”
“That’s just your problem. You’ve got to be given! Given your chances! You need to take a chance”
“Take implies stealing.”
“It’s not stealing. We take our chances.”
“Take...” snapped Joe, nodding his head with dismay. “It’s not stealing because you’re taking what you consider to be yours. You’ve got it made mate.”
“I’ve never heard so much drivel. If you came here to ask if I will give you my daughters hand you can forget it. You’ll never marry my daughter as long as I can help it.”
“But you can’t help it,” replied Joe hanging up the sentence with a tone. “Nicole wants to marry me and that’s all there is to it.”
“We’ll see about that. You’ll never have my consent.”
“I don’t need your consent. I know I’ll never be perfect for your daughter. Not that anyone’s perfect. It’s that they should stop pretending they are.”
“If she marries you, I’ll disown her.”
“Own. That’s your problem right there. You think you own everything. You may own all of this,” Joe gesticulated towards the walls as if throwing confetti, “but you can’t own people. You can’t own anybody.”
“Get out,” shouted the father stretching his neck sternly.
“My pleasure,” replied Joe pushing out his shoulders as he left the room.
“So, how did it go?” asked Nicole soothing her arm as she swayed it across the surface of the cool pond.
“It went rather well,” he replied, bearing the satisfaction of a burp that brings back the taste of a relished meal with a pinch of revulsion.
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