Fustercluck

by Jordan A. Thomas

The thing you must know about my mother is that she was at the core of her being a truly meek and pious women.

She didn’t drink, smoke, cuss or even have so much as a cup of coffee.

She was always frail and whispy with a beauty you might miss if you were in a hurry but couldn’t help but appreciate in still moments. She was dandelion bud of a woman. Her bald head covered in a yellow rubber rain bonnet at all times. 

 never knew it to be unusual until I got older and noticed no one else wore such things. 

I only ever heard her raise her voice that one night when I was a child and never since. 

I had opened my eyes in the middle of the night. Didn’t hear nothing but I knew something was wrong. 

I remember looking up at my Spaceship mobile hanging from the ceiling above the baby crib with the knocked out bars that couldn’t contain my growing boy legs. This old crib is what I had to sleep on. I didn’t know any different.

The outside light leaked just enough through the black mold lined window beside me for me to see around my room.

My father had been a hoarder and my room was filled with overflowing boxes of every plastic piece of trash you could imagine. Broken toys, newspapers, record alblums, magazines, books, clothing you name it my father kept it. The piles rose well over my little head and my mother told me every day not knock anything over. 

I was used to sneaking out of my crib because of this. I knew how angry daddy got when things got knocked over. I knew  he’d take it out on my mother and not me. 

Creeping toward the door I was almost to scared to move but somehow driven forward despite my fear. 

As I got closer to the opening I began to hear the faint gaspy cries I knew so well. They were more intense than I’d ever heard before and as I stepped past the threshold into the upstairs hall I heard her pant out the term I’d never heard before. 

“Fustercluck. It’s all a Fustercluck.”

I eased across the width of the cluttered hallway lined with hapzardly stacked books that towered over me to get to the rail of the stairs. 

She was at the bottom crumpled over a box of photos that I couldn’t make out.

Suddenly she reared back with a thundering sob as she held up on single photo.  

“You’re a f-fustercluk!”

She started to get up with the picture in her hand and I slumped back behind a stack of books. I listened and heard her heavy pants as she exited through the kitchen slamming the door behind her.

I don’t know why I didn’t run back into my bedroom and close my eyes until the sun came up. That had always work in the past when I had been scared. When my dad would come home angry. But this was something different. This was too serious to close my eyes. 

I was too curious about the photos at the bottom of the stairs. 

BACK STORY

She had shown me the pictures before. I loved looking at them. Old photos of my mother when she was young. Pictures of the place she lived in Utah. The big family she had. The church she said they always went to. 

These photos were the only thing that survived the fire when her parents house burnt down. 

That’s when she met my dad. While they were staying at the church. 

rThere was only one picture of my dad that I ever saw. It was from their wedding and neither of them looked very happy. It think it was the last photo taken at that church before it burnt down. 

I made it down to the bottom of the stairs eager to see the pictures of the family I had never met. Grandma, Grandpa and all my aunts and uncles in Utah. 

Mom said we’d go see them someday and they’d really love having us around.

I got to the bottom of the stairs and froze. I zeroed in on one of the dozens of polaroids scattered around the cluttered living room. These weren’t family photos. 

I broke my trance and eased closer to my target photo knowing that the image was not one I was supposed to be seeing. 

Picking up the photo I understood a little why mom had seemed so frazzled. The polaroid was of a naked young woman who looked like she was asleep in a dark spot of grass underneath a tree. A scan of the nearby photos revealed them to be similar. Either of the same yorung woman or different young women all undressed. 

I wasn’t supposed to see this and I was about to go back upstairs and try shutting my eyes until morning when…

The phone rang. 

This was back before cell phones so we only had the one landline in the kitchen and when it rang it rattled your ear drums. 

Ring, ring, ring. 

It was too late for anyone to be calling. 

Except daddy. 

The photo slipped from my hand. rr

Daddy would not like to see these photos scattered about like this. This I was sure of. 

The phone rang again and again. 

I didn’t know where my mom had go to but it was clear she couldn’t hear the phone ring. Daddy wouldn’t like it if she didn’t pick up the phone. 

The ringing stopped.

I stepped toward the kitchen. Every inch of the kitchen was covered in dishes. Some clean. Some not. The garbage overflowed out of the waste basket in the corner. Even at that young of an age I knew there was something wrong with the way we were living. 

I didn’t know what to do. Go outside and look for my mom or go back to my little bed and pray for daylight to come. 

Ring

My heart went cold. 

Ring. 

I didn’t know what to do. 

Ring

I wasn’t allowed to answer the phone. 

But what if it was daddy. 

Ring.

I picked up the phone and put it to my ear. 

I could hear my father breathing on the other end. Deep breathes, I could smell his breath through the phone. 

“Buddy, is that you?” he asked

“Yeah” I responded. 

I wasn’t allowed to be answering the phone. 

“Where’s mommy?”

“She’s outside. “

“What’s she doing out there?”

“I donno. She looked at your pictures and she ran outside” I said.

“Pictures?” he asked

“The naked ladies.” I said

Silence

Seemed like it lasted for a long time. 

“You go back to bed, son. It’s way past your bedtime.”

That’s what I wanted to hear. Somebody to tell me what was the right thing to do. 

“Ok, daddy.”

I hung up the phone and wondered why he hadn’t asked to talk to mommy. 

I stopped on my way back up the stairs and thought about it for a moment. Why hadn’t he asked to talk to mommy?

I knew my mother was in trouble with daddy. So as much as I wanted to go shut my eyes till dawn I had to go warn her.

Trying to run but my little legs felt weak. I went outside into the damp February air of the Snohomish country side. 

A single outdoor light gave just enough illumination to see the path toward the old woodshed where I could hear my mother shuffling around. 

I called out to her. She didn’t answer. I could hear her talking to herself in her panicked tizzy voice. 

I called out to her again as I stepped off the porch and crossed the muddy driveway toward the rickety two car shed.

My mother was babbling all kinds of crazy talk I didn’t understand when I crept into the shed. I stood at the door and watched her fumbling through the trunk of my dad’s old Plymouth Duster that nobody was supposed to touch. 

The rest of the shed looked the same as the house only with car parts, R.V parts, broken lawnmowers, weed eaters and lumber with lots of nails still sticking out everywhere. 

My dad used to tell me that he was going to fix that old Duster up and me and him would go out riding in it some sunny summer day in the near future. But until then I wasn’t to go near it. 

Dad was not going to like mom fiddling around with his Duster. I was just about to say something to get her attention when she came out from around the back of the car holding a long bone with some sort of a bracelet wrapped around the end of it. 

My eyes must’ve gone wide as she held the bracelet end of the bone up to the crappy shop light and held up the polaroid in the opposite hand. 

She compared the two for a moment before she crumbled in place in a sobbing mass. 

“That’s it. That’s it.” She cried 

I ran over to her not wanting her to cry. She recoiled as she saw me for a moment before simply surrendering to my hug. She cried deep helpless sobs of anguish that I’ve never witnessed since. 

I looked down at the polaroid in her hand and immediately saw the bracelet on the naked lady’s ankle. I knew it was the same one on the end of the bone she was holding. 

That lady in the polaroid was bones now. And her bones were in the trunk of my dad’s old Duster.

Headlights flashed across the dusty walls through the broken boards holding the shed together. My mother gripped me tight and muffled her cries into my chest as daddy’s old Ford pick-up truck rumbled down our driveway and came to a stop in front of the shed. 

My mother’s arm tightened around me to the point of discomfort. 

Her face contorted as her forced words out, “Stay by me.”  

My dad slammed the truck door shut and I watched his shadow ease across the ground in a slow deliberate approach. 

My mother released me and I stepped behind her as she she reached over to the wall and grabbed a weed whacker off a rusted nail. 

Barely strong enough to hold it upright she inhaled several deep breaths to muster strength for an attack. 

Dad’s shadowy figure appeared in the doorway backlit by porch light. His face too darkened for me to make out any expression. 

A strange chemical smell that I’ve never been able to recognize waifed in behind him and mixed with the stench of the generic cigarette cherrying in his mouth. 

Smoke poured from his nose like steam from a cartoon Bull’s nose before he flicked the cigarette butt and descended upon us. 

“Stay back!” My mother moused out as she pulled the weed whacker up as high as she could.

Without so much as a word my father grabbed that weed whacker out of her hands before she could swing it. 

My mother reared back. She was shaking so bad it looked like she might fall. 

Daddy turned from her and placed his weed whacker back on it’s nail before shifting his focus to me.

“No. Please.” Was all Momma could force out as he extended his hand for me to take. 

My father was a graven image of a WW2 veteran ripped from the celluloid background of some John Wayne film. I was always a little mesmorized by his classic features that shadows just seemed to cling to. 

A trace of porch light lit the glass eye in his left socket so much you could see the hollowness within him. It was an old injury that I never learned the origins of. 

His one physical flaw. An everyday reminder of his imperfection. 

Eyes wide I stepped out from behind Mamma. Daddy was telling me to come to him the same way he always did. Without saying a word. 

“NO!”

Mamma threw out her arm to block me from going to him and I’m sorry to anyone who is triggered hearing this. 

I’m sorry but it’s true. It was the worst thing I ever saw. 

He hit her and it was the hardest I ever seen someone get hit in real life. 

It was so fast. Close-fisted. 

I thought he killed her.

Momma’s body just crumpled in place and I don’t remember the next few moments. 

I just stood there. 

I stood there until Daddy told me to move. 

Then I did what Daddy said. 

Daddy told me to 

I don’t remember coming back into the house. 

It was like one moment I was staring down at my mother crumpled against daddy’s duster and the next I was looking down on the pile of polaroids of naked women surrounding the box my dad kept the camera in.

My father knelt down beside me and held up a photo of a naked redhead for me to see. He gave me the odds look as he made eye contact and adopted a fatherly tone of voice I didn’t hear much of. The kind of voice a dad uses when he’s trying to teach his son. 

“She’s pretty huh?” 

I nodded. She was. 

“You like looking at these pictures? Because I don’t mind if you do. It’s only natural for a boy.”

I nodded again. I figured that’s what he wanted me to say. 

I wanted to ask if she was dead but I couldn’t tell how he’d react. 

“I think it’s time we took that duster out for a drive. Sound like fun? It’s just gonna be you and me for a while, champ. We’re gonna have to look out for each other.”

I asked about mommy and he just gave me a sorrowful expression. 

“We’re going to get you a new mommy. A real pretty one. One that still has her hair. I know someone who can’t wait to be your new mommy. You’re gonna love her.

I don’t know if I said anything or not. I just couldn’t process the idea of having a new mom.

He wave the photo of the naked redhead in his hand. 

“Someday you might wanna know about this. And I’ll explain it. I’ll teach you all about it and you’ll understand. I’ll teach you everything.”

FLASH

The polaroid went off in the box by itself. 

First time I ever saw my father look less than confident. 

A plain white photo scrolled out of the camera. Not yet developed. 

My father picked up the polaroid and looked it over not knowing what to make of it. 

“Old camera.” he said. “Must be defective.”

I could see the photo in his hand beginning to fade in. A black background. 

He turned to me and told me to get up to my room and go to sleep and no matter what you hear don’t come back down until he came to get me in the morning.

A warm breeze flowed through the living room causing several stacks of paper to scatter. 

Even at my young age I knew this wasn’t’ normal. My father looked shaken.

An explosion from outside shook the house around us.

A bright wash of yellow light poured in from the kitchen window.

He glanced down at the photo in his hand and froze.

The polaroid faded into the figure of my mother staring straight into the camera with her rubber bonnet off. Sweat washed over her hairless, razor scarred and cigarette burnt head. Daddy’s duster engulfed in flames behind her. 

A dandelion ready to blossom. 

“Go to your room!” Daddy yelled.

To this day I don’t know if my response was real or I reimagined it over the years. But I didn’t go up to my room. 

“NO!” I said with a defiance I could not imagine. 

Didn’t look like my father could imagine it either. His face morphed from surprise to hardened anger and I’m sure he would’ve hit me if the polaroid of mamma in his hands hadn’t burst into flames at that exact moment. 

Daddy dropped the photo just as the rest of the scattered photos in the box spontaneously combusted.

He made a strange barking noise that I’d never heard before or since before retreating into the bedroom. 

A stack of boxes against the wall behind me combusted with a whoosh and flames shot up into the air and bounced off the ceiling. 

Daddy came out of the bedroom holding one of his guns. He was gonna kill her. I knew it. He was gonna kill her. 

Every drawer in the kitchen flew open and all the contents shot out in a haphazard stream in the airspace of the kitchen. 

I couldn’t let daddy kill her. 

A box next to him combusted with a boom. 

I leapt at my daddy as he recoiled from the blast and grabbed the wrist of his gun hand. 

Several more explosions went off around us.

I yelled for daddy to stop but he threw me into the wall next to us. 

I hit so hard.

But I didn’t black out. 

I looked up at my father. The entire house was engulfed in flames. He held that gun of his to my head. 

Flashes of fire light illuminated the hollowness of his glass eye. 

I stared into the hollowness of that prosetic and back into his good eye. I saw nothing in neither.

My own daddy was going to kill me. 

“Fustercluck”.

The word came out as a command through momma’s voice from outside my peripheral vision. 

And that gun melted in daddy’s hand and he shrilled out a cry of pain as the slag encased his fingers.

“Fustercluk.”

She repeated with a cold, calculated dictation. 

Daddy’s hair burst into flames and he dropped to his knees as he tried to pat out the fire with his opposite hand. 

I turned and to see my mother standing in the kitchen surrounded by flames and floating kitchen utensils. She was a monster. No other way to put it. 

I was a child of monsters. 

I didn’t hold my gaze. I couldn’t see my mother like that. 

“Fustercluck.”

Came the next incantation. 

I didn’t wan to look but I couldn’t turn away. 

My daddy reached out to me as his lower back arched him upright toward the sky. His jaw locked in agony and he looked directly at me in a last gasping plea for help before his glass eye burst inside his head. 

In memory I see the fire coming through from the back of his head just before it shot out both of his eye sockets. 

He was hollow no more. 

In his last moments he was filled with the fire he kindled. 

It burnt for only a few seconds before disappearing completely in a sudden draft and the old man collapsed face first to the floor in front of me. 

I was afraid to face my mother. 

She had always loved me. But was that even my mother anymore?

The house had settled into a steady inferno. No more violent surges were coming. Everything would come down, but in it’s own time. 

I finally looked back at my mother who held her rubber bonnet out for me to see. Her eyes were wide and friendly.

She placed her bonnet back over her head in an exaggerated gesture to let me know that everything was going to be alright. 

I can’t say right here that I knew it to be true. 

Just didn’t have any other options. 

Walking over to her through the flames may have been the hardest trek I’ve ever made.

But when I reached her and she knelt down to embrace me it was just momma again.

She drove us out of there in Daddy’s truck. 

Life got better.

More normal.

Dandelions have a tendency to close back up in the darkness.

Never happened to momma. For the rest of her life she stayed happy, healthy and free. 

Never saw the fire blossom in her again. 

And she never saw the fire in me. 

I knew to keep it a secret until after she died. 

Because part of me knows that Im a little more like my father than I’d like to admit.