He is almost drunk.

He takes a sip of his beer and leans over to untie his boots. "When you were born," he says, still sweating from his ride home from work, "I was working in Lexington. Nicest boss I ever had. Your mom called, and he flew me down within the hour. I even made it to the birth." He loosens the strings, pulling them up from the tongue of the boot. I stare up at him from a pillow on the floor. He pokes me in the head with his thumb. "Do you remember that?" He pokes me again. "That's your old man." He kicks the first boot off and then leans up and lets out a big blow of air. "One down." He reaches down and loosens the shoestrings on his left boot and then kicks it off. Trickles of dirt spray the floor as the boot leaves his foot.

"How was your day?" my mother calls to him from the kitchen. He takes another sip of beer and turns to me. I look over at my mother, who sits at the kitchen table reading a magazine.

"Your mother was wearing a green dress. It was hotter than hell outside, and I could see the drips of sweat rolling off of her as she worked in the garden. I remember making you," he says.

"You made me," I say. He leans down and removes the first of his holey socks.

"Who do you think made you? What are they teaching you?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know. Are you skipping school?"

"No."

"Then you're not listening. They talk about those things, I am sure." He removes the second holey sock. He rubs his hands together trying to remove some of the dirt, then gives up and rocks out of the chair. He noogies me with his thumb again as he walks toward the bathroom.

"I guess," I say, not moving from my pillow on the floor. "I guess I come from mom."

"And me." He washes his hands, scrubbing them fiercely with the soap. I get up from the pillow and walk to the bathroom door. He never looks up from the sink. "And me," he repeats.

He unzips his pants and walks over to the toilet. I join him.

"Don't cross the streams," he says, as we stand beside one another over the toilet. I laugh and throw a giant jet stream across his. He acts as if it shocks him, which rolls me over with giggles. "You crossed them you fool." And he acts as if it electrocutes him even more, which only makes me laugh harder and bit of my piss flings against the wall.

"Hit the toilet please," he says laughing. When we are finished, he dampens some toilet paper with water from the sink and cleans my piss off the wall, then flushes the toilet.

"It's called conception, Leonard. When a man and woman make a child."

"Yes sir."

"When you are older, I will explain how." Our hands fight under the sink and soap as he washes his hands again, and I wash mine. When we are done, he flicks the water back in my face. He walks over to the mantle, grabs his lighter, and pulls a cigarette from his shirt pocket.

"I am you Creator, Leonard." He sits back down in his recliner and leans it way back. I sit back on my pillow and stare up at him. "And with you," he says. "I am well pleased."

 

Tyler Mason lives in High Springs, Florida.