Calluses

by Tim Brown

I don’t want to be here. My fancy clothes itch, and Daddy insists this restaurant has the best food that money can buy… which means it’s terrible. If I behave, Mom promised me a Happy Meal the next time Daddy isn’t around to tut about the dangers of trans fat.

We sit at our table, and a woman’s slender arm appears behind me. Strange–I didn’t hear her footsteps. Neither Mom nor Daddy looks her way or acknowledges her existence. They’re too busy looking at each other. She bends forwards, a long match clutched in bony fingers. The flame warps around the match tip, refusing to touch the wood.

I’ve never seen fire move like this before. Like a cat judging its jump before leaping, the lick of flame flits back and forth before somehow shifting entirely from the match to the wick. Nothing of the fire remains on the matchstick. It looks like it hasn’t burned at all.

A waiter glides toward our table, offering another pour of wine. Mom holds her hand over Daddy’s glass. He’s had three already.

Now he asks me if I see the candle’s flame.

“I see it,” I say.

Mom covers her face with her hand and tells him to stop. She claims this is a Special Moment, an anniversary.

Daddy protests and claims that I’m bored out of my skull, which is true. He stretches his hand towards me.

“What are you going to do?” I ask.

I don’t know exactly what his job is, but I rarely see him. He leaves for weeks on end and comes home way after my bedtime. I peek through my curtains and see him being dropped off by a black van, dragging behind him a worn suitcase and looking like he might collapse at any moment.

Daddy holds his palm in front of my face. It’s calloused, covered with signs of hard work in places unknown to me. He smiles as I gaze at the hardened whorls of his fingertips, the scrapes and scars he has endured over the years.

He steadies his hand over the candle. The flame kisses and licks at his fingers. He smiles when he should be yelling in pain, pivoting his hand so each finger gets an equal share of fire. He’s so strong, so tough.

Mom rolls her eyes and pokes at her salad with a fork.

“You’re so cool, Daddy,” I say as I admire his fingers in my hands. They’ve been seared black. He holds up one blackened finger to tell me he isn’t quite done yet. With a flourish, he extends his finger and thumb and lowers them around the flame. Then he pinches them together and extinguishes the fire…

…or so he thinks. The candlewick flickers back to life after her removes his fingers. They remind me of the trick candles he used on my seventh birthday a few months ago, which only went out after being dunked in water.

He seems stumped, and I decide it’s finally my time to get one up on him. I stand on my chair, just above my parent’s heads, and with a grand sweep of my arms, I announce to the restaurant that I am going to do the same act.

“I’m sure you all are very impressed by what my daddy can do. But let me make the case for myself! His special power flows within me too! Even more so!”

Some roll their eyes at me, and I pay them no mind.

“Observe!”

I lower my hand onto the renewed flame with a flourish. The heat my father seemed so unconcerned with pierces my flesh and shoots up my arm. I holler in pain, and my arm spasms away from the hurt. It knocks the candle, and the fire catches the thin paper and the tablecloth beneath and quickly sets them both alight.

Flame spreads, and soon half the table is engulfed in my mistake.

My parents yell for a waiter and throw their water glasses towards the blaze. Their effort helps some, but the fires are still there, eating the cotton tablecloth. A young busboy scrambles towards us with a sweaty steel pitcher of water and drowns the rest of the flame.

Through my pain and the gasps and scrambling of the diners, I witness a single tendril-like plume of smoke. Something resembling a smirk etches itself into the rising blackness. I look around, and I’m the only one who seems to see it.

Just like the fire leaping…

The ride home is silent.

“I hope the rest of the restaurant got a good look at it,” I say, trying to enliven the mood. Mom and Daddy exchange looks from the front seat, and do not reply.

I look down at my hand. The pain has all but vanished. All that’s left is an itch deep beneath my flesh and a scrawling scar reaching from the base of my palm to the tip of my middle finger. I hold it up to the window and wait for a streetlight. One comes, and for a split-second I see a message etched into my hand.

KEEP TRYING.

I wait for another light. I have to show them. Another glides by, and the message is gone.

Keep trying… keep trying… I have to keep trying.

If I want to be tough like Daddy, I have to have skin like his. What does he do to get so tough?

I look around my parents’ bedroom while they’re downstairs watching television. All I find are clothes, a few bottles of mom’s perfume, and a set of Dad’s pajamas draped over the bedpost. Nothing in sight that would toughen me up. The words on my hand hadn’t returned since that night, and a part of me wonders if they were something I might have dreamt.

But I know tough people don’t hallucinate. The movies my dad shows me are filled with Tough Men. Indiana Jones punches Nazis, James Bond shoots international terrorists, Rocky Balboa fights championship boxers. None of them ever dreamt up something that didn’t exist.

Empty-handed, I go downstairs where Daddy watches a football game and Mom is scrolling on her phone. His bags are packed and waiting for him by the door. Another trip overseas. He expects to be back in a month or two. When a horn blares from our driveway, he kisses Mom goodbye, ruffles my hair, and leaves.

She tries not to cry, sees me watching her, and scurries upstairs. She usually tells me to go clean up my messes or simply to go away. Tonight is different, though. My mind wanders back to the restaurant, back to the candle.

The words appear on my arm again.

IT’S BECAUSE YOU WERE WEAK bubbles up on my skin in carved lettering and vanishes just as quickly.

An ad plays for a hardware store. A man sporting a few days’ stubble and an ear-to-ear grin saws through a piece of wood. He mops his brow with his sleeve and gets back to work. That’s how I know where to go next.

Daddy keeps a collection of tools in the basement. Hammers and drills. The things down there would make me Tough. Why didn’t I think of that before? Tough people should be smart, too.

I flick the basement light on, and a musty smell greets me. I don’t come down here often, but when I do, all the things down here overwhelm me. Stacks and stacks of ancient newspapers bundled up in a corner. Dad’s tools on a hutch against a wall. Our washer and dryer against one another.

My eyes are guided towards an unassuming plastic tray. I pull out the drawer and find sheets and sheets of sandpaper. I graze the tips of my fingers on them. The coarseness of the paper sends bumps up my arms and down the back of my neck. I know this is it, and I stuff as many sheets as I can in my pockets and scurry back upstairs, past the shut bedroom door where I can hear mom’s sobs.

I’ll have a great surprise for Daddy’s return.

I’m shocked by how quiet it is at first. I expected a sound from the sandpaper like it makes when my dad smooths down a piece of lumber. Scrubbing my weak skin, the only sounds I hear are my own grunts of pain. I slide the paper as quickly as I can across my fingertips, the meat of my palm, even the webbing between my fingers. Flecks of skin rise up from my hands, and soon those pockmarks fill with blood. I haven’t seen myself bleed this much before, but Tough men don’t back down from a bit of blood.

Instead, I grit my teeth and tough it out as best I can. I’ve seen people in movies bite down on a chunk of wood to endure pain. I don’t have any wood on me, but I find a t-shirt I roll up into a rat’s tail, and that does the trick okay.

I scrub and scrub until I can no longer wipe away the blood fast enough. It seeps through the paper towels and gets onto my clothes. I grow dizzy, and my eyelids feel like they were injected with lead. It hurts less than the candle’s flame. I must be getting stronger already. My body (flame) tells me that’s enough for now. I wrap up the wound as best I can and lie back in bed. Motes dance around the corner of my vision.

As I lie in bed, swaddling my hands in my spit-soaked shirt, the writing appears on my forearm. I hold it up to the nightlight by my bed.

I’M PROUD. YOU DID GOOD. YOU’RE ON THE RIGHT TRACK.

But why stop there? Why stop with my hands? Right track means I should keep going.

I do it methodically, working on another part of my body each night. The skin on my hands begins to go soft again so I give that a quick polish before I start on the real work. It gets easier with each subsequent day. I start to bleed less and get better at managing any injuries.

Slowly, my skin grows taut, stiffer. Moving becomes harder.

Dad’s away for work again, working those calloused hands as hard as he can. It’s just mom, and she can’t watch me all the time. She showers in the evenings, and I use the opportunity to get the Bic lighter in the kitchen and stow it beneath my pillow. After bedtime I retrieve it. It takes a little while to get used to the motion, but eventually my fingers find the right movement, and I’m able to roll the wheel and press the button at the same time. The little flame spurts out, and I watch it dance in time to my breath.

I hold my index finger out and draw it closer to the lighter. It doesn’t hurt like it used to. I’m able to keep the lighter still as my finger comes down, down on the flame and eventually snuffs it out.

I smile and look at the tip of my finger. It’s been coated with soot, but when I brush the soot away, the skin beneath is good and hardened.

I repeat the process with the rest of my fingers, switching the lighter from one hand to the other. Then I get to work on my palms… my arms… my legs… my torso…

Eventually I stop, black smudges of soot streaking my bare skin. I lick the tips of my fingers and rub them hard against my hands. Eventually the soot comes away, and the fractures in my skin begin to show. They don’t hurt anymore. They haven’t for a while. All the pain in me has dulled.

I feel so little, and it feels so good.

The message is there, encouraging as always.

I’M PROUD OF YOU. KEEP AT IT.

These are uncommon words. I don’t hear them at school or at home. Only from my flesh do these words appear.

I think I’m almost ready… yes… almost ready to show Daddy how strong I’ve become. How he should give me the praise and affection I deserve. Even when he’s gone again on business, he’ll think about how great I am and how he can show photos of me to his coworkers and tell them with bravado that I’m his son and he’s happy to have had me.

Soon… soon you’ll see.

It’s seven-thirty.

Mom said that Daddy would finally be home from his trip overseas by eight. Not much time left. It’s the middle of summer, paint on the living room walls peeling from intense moisture and heat.

I need something to prove my worth to him. I need it fast. I think back to dinner, the tiny flames. It would have to be our fireplace.

Studded with brick and little tiles depicting scenes of farm life, it juts out slightly from our living room wall. The chimney reaches up through the house, and though I try to see up and through it to the sky above, I can’t for some reason.

Behind a rotating steel stand with a poker, shovel, and tongs, almost out of sight, stand several boxes with pictures of flames on them. I grab one and open it, my hands savoring the cool metallic feel of the tube contained within. Getting the cap off is easy, and I hold the tube over the log and squeeze as hard as I can.

A medicinal smell comes forth from the bottle. Amber gel coats the log. It drips off the wood and the iron grate. I think I’m ready and can only hope I’m tough enough to impress dad.

A pair of headlights turns into our driveway. He’s here.

Mom comes down the stairs. She wears a long black dress for his return. I’d noticed a recurring pattern. We’d all talk for a bit before they’d decide they were exhausted and retire.

I don’t know what happens in there, not really. Just a lot of panting and moaning, like exercise in gym class. I do know that it’s what all the tough men in movies do. They kiss the woman, and then there’s usually a long, boring scene of them lying in bed together, talking. None of the explosions or shootouts I love.

Mom has her hand on the post as Daddy steps through the threshold, bags under his arms. He kisses her and looks towards me with an expression I’ve not seen before. One of confusion, of panic.

He must see the Bic in my hand, hovering over the dripping log.

Daddy starts towards me, but he doesn’t make it in time.

I lower my hand towards the log, and the fire ignites the gel, sending a swizzling pattern of flame across the fireplace. It illuminates the living room with an orange glow.

My chance has arrived.

“I got tougher since you were here last, Daddy,” I say, holding my callused hand over the high flame.

I don’t quite catch what he says in response, only that I don’t know what I am really doing. The orange tip of fire caresses my fingers, and I don’t feel a thing.

“See? No pain at all.”

I lower my hand until it almost touches the blue base of the fire. At this point the log is fully engulfed, and smoke fills the living room. Mom and Dad stoop beneath the smoke.

But I’m not done yet. I see the other bottles next to the fireplace. I grab them both and twist the gel onto my arms, my hands, my body, rubbing it on like sunscreen. It tingles a bit on my pocked skin. The tingles and the nearby heat almost feel good.

“Watch, Dad! I’m tough now. Watch me. Watch me.”

I lower my hand into the fireplace. And still… nothing. No pain, no hint of danger. The writing on my skin was right. I am someone people should be proud of.

The fire spreads to my arms and middle. It licks away at my clothes, eventually consuming them. But I still don’t notice.

I step towards my parents, unafraid of the smoke and the fire I trail behind me. Distantly, they beg me to roll around, put out the flame and come with them outside. But I say nothing. Instead, I walk towards them, showing off how unaffected I am by the inferno. My clothes fall away, and still I walk.

“Watch me! Watch me!”

They skitter away on hands and knees towards the front door, but I don’t let them leave. Not until they tell me that they’re proud of me. Like the writing on my hand did so many times.

The smoke has gotten very thick. It’s easy to get ahead of them. I’m short enough that I don’t need to crouch beneath the dark cloud. Somewhere the alarm goes off with blaring beeps. I get to the front door before them, slam it shut, and block it with my body. Behind me the door succumbs to the fire.

“I won’t move!” I say. “Not until you tell me you’re proud of me! That I’m tough like you, and I can do what Dad does and even more!”

Mom huddles against Dad, her long black dress curling around them.

I hear the words from both of them, but they mean nothing. They tell me I’m tough and that they’re proud of me, but the words ring hollow.

“Say it like you mean it!” The last of my clothes burn and fall away, and now I’m naked before them.

They do, yet it still feels wrong. There’s some… block in the way. The flames swirl higher than the stairs. The entire house is engulfed. A rogue ember catches the hem of my mom’s dress. It scorches it, turns it a deep sooty black.

The two of them watch the fire creep towards them with a look of helpless terror. It swallows them whole. A part of me, the part that got used to hearing myself being called weak and worthless, wanted to help them pat out the flames… find a bucket of water and douse them in it.

But I look down at my tummy, and those words appear again. THEY DON’T KNOW YOU LIKE I DO.

And I know the words are right.

Off in the distance, I hear my parents’ voices hit registers I’ve never heard before. Soon they go silent for the final time.

The smell of cooking meat fills my lungs, and a deep hunger comes over me. I realize how long it’s been since I’ve eaten.

I… I do not know what happens next. The voices stop.

I only know that my hunger is sated.

They find me outside, rain drenching my back. I realize I’m lying face down in the muddy lawn. Lights blare at the corners of my eyes. I realize I’m being lifted up by my arms, placed on a stretcher by EMTs with looks of horror on their faces. They look at the remains of the house, pieces of wood stretching towards the sky like ribs.

A blanket drapes over me. I clutch it around myself and stand. There’s nothing left of my home, only smoldering wreckage. Steam from the rain mixes with the smoke from the house.

They ask me my name, if my parents were in there, if I’m okay. I answer their questions without hesitation.

I can walk, but they insist on taking me to the hospital on a stretcher. I do not feel any pain. Instead, my skin feels lightly roasted. It crackles beneath my touch. I’m alone in my room, a curtain drawn around my bed for privacy.

“Did I do good? Are you proud of me?” I whisper low and fast.

The familiar tingling does not come. I ask again. Again. Again and again.

“Did I do good? Are you proud of me? Are you? Please tell me… please…”

But the voice living beneath my skin has gone silent.