Nathaniel's Regret

Cold October sunlight filtered in through the cracks between the boards in the side of the barn. Nathaniel took a bite from an apple he’d picked from one of the trees outside as he watched his father, Deke, finishing the work for the day. The large nails in the beams overhead were handmade, which placed the construction of the barn sometime in the early eighteen hundreds according to Deke. Nathaniel liked being inside its old walls. The aged, musty smell of ancient wood underlay the fresher, cleaner smell of new sawdust. The gaps in the floorboards were enough to allow the dust to sift through to the ground beneath without the need for a dustpan, and since he usually did the sweeping for his father, Nathaniel appreciated that. Today Deke was carefully sanding the arms of a wooden rocking chair for the third time with the finest grain of sandpaper, which was barely rougher than a piece of cardboard so far as Nathaniel could tell. When Deke determined that the sanding was done, they would go on their evening walk.

It was just the two of them, father and son. Nathaniel couldn’t remember what his mother had been like. She had gotten sick when he was still in diapers, and to his young mind, one day she had simply never come home from the doctor-place. He had been sad, but not old enough to be truly devastated. His father had been sad as well, but Deke Falloway was not a man ever accused of overthinking a problem. He had accepted reality with a bowed head and spent no time pondering the nature of his own mortality. His trade was in furniture making, and he excelled at it in his small corner of the world. He invested the time he didn’t spend in his workshop into his relationship with his son. Though he lacked the introspective nature or perhaps the desire to articulate it, his bond with his son was his most treasured possession. They took a walk every evening through the woods beside a creek that threaded its way through the trees on their property, treading the same ground often enough that they made a path. When he was eleven years old, it was on this path that Nathaniel found the first regret of his life.

They set out from the barn walking side by side. Deke was wearing a flannel shirt tucked into his jeans, as he always did, with his hands shoved in his pockets. Nathaniel was walking in step next to him, noticing for the first time that he was almost, but not quite, only taking two steps for every one of his father’s—instead of the usual three. If he lengthened his stride only a little, perhaps he could—

But his thoughts were interrupted by an uncharacteristically abrupt interjection from his father.

“Got a call from Sal Bridges today,” Deke said.

Nathaniel said nothing, but stuck his hands in his pockets uneasily.

“Said maybe his boy Will had been getting some trouble at school.”

Nathaniel’s mind raced. Will Bridges was a weird kid, but not so weird that he got picked on. Maybe he didn’t make friends so easily, that could be.

“You friends with Will?” his father asked.

Nathaniel shrugged. “Kinda.”

Will sat with Nathaniel and his friends every day at lunch, and every single day, Will got the same meal and ate it the same way. He’d get a slice of pizza, then go to the salad line, pump ranch salad dressing onto the side of his plate, and sit down with a plastic knife. Then he’d carefully peel back the cheese and pepperoni, starting at the back by the crust, until it formed a neat little roll. To Nathaniel, it looked like a bedroll that the cowboys in the old westerns always had behind the saddle. Having removed the toppings thus, Will would use the knife to carefully spread a thick layer of ranch on the crust, then unroll the cheese back into position. Having completed the operation, he would then carefully eat the slice of pizza backwards, crust first, ending with the tip.

Every single day, it was the same in every detail. The consistency alone was strange, but the sight and smell wafting over always made Nathaniel feel a little nauseous. He and his best friend Joey had taken to calling Will “Cowboy” because of the cheese bedroll he made out of his ranch-pizza. Will always smiled but carried out his pizza surgery daily without fail, even when Joey dared him not to one day just to see if he’d stop.

“Said some of the boys give him a hard time, maybe,” Deke said, clearing his throat. Wondered if you knew anything about it, he didn’t add.

Nathaniel felt his face grow hot. He and Joey didn’t give Will Bridges a hard time. They were just joking, and everyone always laughed. Nathaniel replayed their lunch that day in his mind. Had Will been smiling when they offered him a dollar to get a burger instead of pizza? He’d smiled, sure. He’d had his head down a little, hadn’t looked them in the eyes maybe, but... he’d been smiling. Hadn’t he?

The silence spun out between them. Nathaniel knew he had to say something.

“I don’t know,” he said, staring straight ahead. His eyes were starting to burn, but he wouldn’t cry. He would not.

“I told him sometimes boys have a way of talking when they’re together,” said his dad, looking straight ahead also. “Don’t mean nothing by it, but they have a way.”

Nathaniel was clenching his jaw. The shame was burning in his chest.

If Hidden Creek Elementary’s sixth grade class had a bully, then Travis Hawes was it. Travis tripped people and then got right in their faces and told them to “do something about it.” Just thinking about Travis made Nathaniel feel like he had a small, hot stone in the pit of his stomach. That wasn’t how anyone else felt thinking about him and Joey, no way.

“I told him I would tell you about it, so as you could keep an eye out for Will if anyone has it in for him,” said Deke. His voice betrayed no judgment and conveyed not even the slightest tone of reproach.

Nathaniel knew some kind of consent was required from him. He was desperately grateful to his father for handling it this way, but was suddenly very angry on top of that gratitude. This was’t his fault, or his problem. He wasn’t a bad person. He hadn’t done anything. Why would Will’s father call his father with this stupid stuff? There was no evidence! What could have caused this?

An image came to his mind, surfaced by his traitorous subconscious, of Will Bridges sitting on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands. Tears leaking down his face, shaking his head and saying no, no, don’t make me, I won’t go to school, I can’t, no, daddy, please—

“I don’t know anything about it,” Nathaniel said flatly.

His father nodded. Nathaniel felt helpless.

“I’ve never seen anyone going after him, I mean,” he clarified.

His father nodded again. “That’s good. Maybe from now on, you could—“

“I didn’t do anything to stupid Will!” Nathaniel burst out.

His father looked at him in mild surprise. Nathaniel stopped walking.

“I didn’t say you did, Natey,” said Deke.

Hot anger surged through Nathaniel. It wasn’t enough. He felt the overpowering need to yell and earn the scolding he deserved. “Will can take care of himself, I don’t care!”

Deke blinked. “What’s got you so bothered, Natey?”

“Don’t call me that!”

Deke gave a half-smile and ruffled Nathaniel’s hair. “Hey, take it easy, little man. I’m not accusing you of anything.”

Nathaniel ducked under the hand and stepped backward. “Don’t call me Natey! I’m not your little man anymore!”

The smile faded from Deke’s face and Nathaniel felt a moment of savage pleasure. His father didn’t recoil, didn’t show much of anything on his face.

“Okay,” Deke said, and nodded. He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and slowly walked on.

Nathaniel, standing with fists clenched and his heart pounding, felt all the fight drain out of him in an instant, the fire replaced with cold misery. He watched his tall, straight-backed father slowly walking on—not leaving him behind or storming off, simply continuing their evening stroll—and all at once was overwhelmed by the gravity of the moment. It was as if he was watching from a great distance, not measured in feet and inches, but in time. He saw the scene playing out between them and wanted desperately to run to his father, to grab him around the waist in a bear hug and sob into his flannel shirt, to tell him he could always call him Natey, that he’d always be his little man, that nothing needed to change between them. He felt this urge so strongly that he took a step forward with blurring vision and unclenching fists, the dry leaves crunching gently beneath his foot and making a noise that seemed amplified to his ears. He would do it--or rather undo it, undo it all.

But he hesitated. With a sudden flash of insight that turns intuition into knowledge, Nathaniel realized that it was done. What was said was said, and could never be taken back. It had to be said sooner or later, needed to be known by all parties involved, because even though birthdays are only celebrated once a year, growing up happens a little every day. The landmark moments don’t come when they are formally recognized, when a diploma is signed in ink or a learner’s permit is traded in for a driver’s license. Those are signposts on the road of life, to be sure, but not the meaningful ones, the really important ones. The important moments happen in the woods, on a walk like any other beside the stream that’s been walked beside a few hundred times before, where a young boy takes a large step towards becoming a young man in a way that is unrelated to the length of his stride or the size of his shoe, by telling his father a painful truth that they both already know but must be spoken aloud.

Nathaniel caught up to his dad and fell into step beside him, wanting to make it okay somehow. The old barn was back in sight, which meant the walk was almost over. He drifted closer to his dad and stepped purposely on the side of his dad’s large workboot. Deke walked a few steps and then bumped his elbow into Nathaniel’s ear. Nathaniel cried out, laughing and rubbing his ear, then punched Deke in the hip. Deke smiled and put a hand on Nathaniel’s shoulder and squeezed it affectionately.

So it was okay. And as Deke turned off the light in Nathaniel’s room and closed the door that night, Nathaniel understood that it was okay. Not the same, maybe, but… okay. He never forgot that walk or the day that his father used a handful of words to teach him a powerful lesson. He rarely thought of it without a pang of regret, however, knowing it was the end of a period of innocence that could never be reclaimed, a path that could never be revisited, unlike that path in the woods that became a hallowed place in his memory. Knowing that it was inevitable and unavoidable didn’t alter the feeling in his heart that on that day something had changed that could not be undone, and since he had brought it about himself, perhaps in another world it could have been avoided. As he grew older, that regret found its place as a longing, and in time, the longing became simple affection for his father, who in his eyes always remained the greatest of men.