The Only One Who Knows

Then

I can never think of my father without a knife in his hand.

He’s sitting at the dining table, wet waders on, dripping salt water. I’m watching TV on the floor while he sharpens the knife behind me. I keep looking over my shoulder at him, terrified he’ll catch me looking.

My father had many kinds of silence, and I’d learned how important it was to analyze them all.

Fish can tell a storm is coming days in advance.

Can sense a change in the pressure system long before there’s any sign of rain.

We were like that. So sensitive to any changes in my father’s moods.

For us, our father was the storm and the sea.

Perhaps if we were quick enough, vigilant enough, we could swim for calmer waters.

But most of the time, I remained on the floor, silent and frozen stupid, wondering, What do you want from me, Dad? What will make you stop? Name your price, I’ll pay.

Maybe then he would see how willing I was. How obedient. How goddamn good.

His silence after my mother left us was something different, something new and dangerous. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I can still hear him sharpening that black blade.

If there was one thing he was proud of, it was his fishing knife. He made it himself. The handle, the blade.

“See this?” He’d point proudly to that sharp, black tip. “This was an old padlock I found near the train tracks. The thing about steel, Minnow, is that it can live a thousand lifetimes. It might look like nothin’ at the start, but you gotta wear it down, put it through the fire…”

He turned it over and over, marveling at it like I wasn’t even there. “Then you can turn it into anything you damn well like.”

And I sat there and thought, That’s what he does to me.

Holds me to the fire and watches me burn.