In only my boxers, which were argyle and hand-sewn and stupid expensive, I ran after him, my legs and back atrophied after two days on the ground. I picked up the knife along the way, cutting my hand as I did. My other hand went through the framed Emmitt Smith jersey in the hall as I tried to make the corner, and we barreled through the house, him ahead, me behind. In the kitchen Trenton crunched over emptied drawers and broken glass, then I crunched over emptied drawers and broken glass, only I didn’t have any shoes on. I finally tackled him when we got out front, the sprinklersspraying us every few seconds as they made their rounds.

“What do you want from me?” Trenton shrieked. A milky booger blew out over his lips as he tried to catch his breath.

There was a light on at the Adams’s house down the street, but no one was in the window. I tried to shush him, shh shh shh, I said, you’ll wake my neighbors. You’ll ruin everything, and I gritted my teeth as a wave of pain rippled down my body. You’ll have witnesses, I said, trying to put the knife back in his hand, but he slapped me. He didn’t bother even making fist, he just slapped me with his open palm, hard enough my eyes watered, my grip on his collar loosened so when he did it again, when he slapped me a second time, then a third for good measure, I fell off him. He scuttled away on all fours until he was running and screaming down my street.

Another light at the Adams’s turned on. So did a light at the Gregory’s. Two witnesses behind two curtains, watching the climax of my decisions. Watching Trenton Levitt run through our quiet neighborhood and me in my front yard, little Timmy in his expensive underwear, a one-thousand, six hundred, ten dollar and eleven cent knife in his grip, the sprinklers raining over him as he curled up and cried. As I wept like a newborn, but not from the glass in my hands and feet or the pain from Trenton’s slap or the failure at his task. Not because of the sirens in the distance or the headache since Amarillo. Not even because Beth left with our one and only child.

I cried because it was eleven-thirty at night. I cried because I was supposed to be at the airport in another five hours and I cried because I knew no matter what, I would go inside and get the tweezers and pull out the glass and take a shower and pack my bag and make that flight. That I would come back in three-to-five days to an empty home but a fat check in my account. That I would make my next flight, and my next. That I would make every flight.

“Come back,” I called between sobs, maybe to Trenton sprinting a quarter-mile away or Beth at her father’s with our baby. Maybe someone else entirely. I cried out again but only I was there to hear, and I wouldn’t have listened to me either.

 

Jonathan Danielson is a frequent contributor to the award-winning Feathertale Review, and his work has been published in The Saturday Evening Post, Juked, Southern California Review, Monday Night, The Santa Fe Writers Project, Gravel, Fiction on the Web, Able Muse, and others. He received his MFA from University of San Francisco. He is currently an Assistant Fiction Editor for Able Muse and teaches English and creative writing at Scottsdale Community College in his home state of Arizona.