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FFF #11

A brief aside... I am bound and determined to damn well post my flash fiction effort BEFORE the deadline this week, so here it goes:

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The Den

"Why do I have to take out the garbage?" Mike said to his father, with a bit of a whine to his voice. His mother was at the sink washing dishes, and his younger sister, Olivia, sat in her high chair, coloring on a piece of paper she had been given after the dinner table was cleared.

"Do not be a pest about it...." started his mother from across the kitchen.

Mike's father held up his hand toward's his wife to indicate that she should hold off saying anything more.

"Because I am the Pater familias, intoned Augustus with deep, rich, round tones. "Do you remember what that phrase means, Michael?"

"Yes, dad." Mike sighed, "It means you are the head of the house. And, what you say, goes."

Mike's father grinned approvingly, with a furry-faced grin, because Mike had remembered the definition. "Exactly. Now, hurry and finish that task, and you can work on your homework with me in the den, or you can read one of my books."

Mike, being only eight years old, did not always have a full understanding of the vocabulary he used or knew, only that these were the terms he was familiar with for he heard them regularly. Mike's dad, Augustus, was a man of books and words, and found great joy in tying his tongue around as many syllables in a word as possible just for the shear joy of the experience. Augustus was an English teacher, with a robust, yet graying beard and mustache, and the requisite elbow patches on his sleeves. But, he was no stereotype filled with egregious and bombastic blustering. He worked long and hard to figure out ways to help his students see the beauty and grace found in words of all sorts and of all origins. It is through this background that Mike, even though only a young pup, still wet behind the ears, had a fairly sophisticated vocabulary... and an even more robust taste for adventure and experience.

Augustus had a den in his home that was his inner sanctum. It was a place where he would store his vast array of books, filling to the brim, wall upon wall of the room with knowledge acquired from all across the globe. Also in the den was a beautiful oak framed desk where Augustus worked and toiled late into the evening, reading the hard wrought essays of his students, trying to see beauty in their efforts. His pipe always nearby, he would toil and struggle with each page of each paper, making red marks when necessary, but offering ample encouragement as well with his comments.

Mike loved his father's den, and learned to quietly sit in the room when his father was deep in thought. Mike usually sat on the worn leather couch that sat facing the window looking out into the back yard as he would carefully pull out a book of one sort or another to examine and try to read. Mike also relished the odor of his father's pipe tobacco. In the closed, hushed space, the heavy, yet appealing odor of the pipe smoke that hung in the air reminded him of the incense used at mass on holy days of obligation. When Mike was not trying to wade through an adult text of one sort or another, he would quietly watch his father work using a side-ways glance, sitting perpendicular to his father's desk so his father would not feel his stare so readily. Mike was especially engrossed in watching his father as he smoked his pipe. He saw all manners of behavior with the pipe... often his father nurtured and coaxed his pipe into life in an almost absent-minded manner as he would focus primarily on his student's papers. Or, if frustrated at the words he read on the page, he would gnaw on the stem of his pipe with a furrowed brow as he decided how much red to slash across the page of the egregious effort. The sites and smells and different manners with which Mike observed his father smoking his pipe in the den made Mike grow curious himself about what smoking a pipe would be like.

"Schlemiel!" sputtered Augustus, as he read head-long into an especially onerous passage. Mike knew that the word his father uttered meant the student was being especially stupid, but Mike also smiled slightly, for even his father's cuss words always sounded more interesting than those of his friend's fathers.

Mike continued to read through the book he had selected, and also continued to try to watch his father surreptitiously, but the weight of sleep eventually got hold of him, and he nodded off on the couch and quickly was fast asleep. When his father noticed, Augustus went over, picked the boy up off the couch and carried him to his room and tucked him into bed.

"Robust and adventurous dreams, Micheal." whispered Augustus as he pulled the blanket up to Mike's shoulders and kissed him quietly on the cheek.

That night, Mike did dream, he dreamed about the adventure he would try to undertake the next day. He would try to get one of his father's pipes and try it.


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That is it for this week everyone. I hope you enjoyed the essay. It is actually setting me up for a story I'd like to write about Mike's first try at smoking one of his father's pipes. Perhaps it will be possible in next week's Flash Fiction. Today is my father's actual birthday. If he were still here with us, he would be 86 years old today. Happy Birthday, Dad! I love you greatly and miss you enormously! Please think of me often. And both you and Mom, please try to talk to me from Heaven, even if it is only in my dreams. Please.

PipeTobacco