Bus. Shed. Sleep. Another day passes unseen.
I wake up that afternoon, having forgotten that I’m out of cream. I spoon some coffee granules into a mug then pour hot water. I open the bar fridge, and that’s when I realise.
I’m furious. I tip the black coffee out in my bathroom sink and stand there, fuming, an idiot looking at his idiot cup. The anger is irrational and pointless but so very real. All I can think to do is break that miserable cup and it’ll be done. I look for somewhere I can throw it and really there’s nowhere that won’t cause more problems and that just makes me angrier so I think fuck it and turn and throw the cup at the wall as hard as I can. It shatters into pieces that rain down on my bed.
I feel no better. Just angry. I’m standing there, looking at the shards of porcelain and the dent in my wall, when an unbidden memory of an axe and broken glass flashes into my mind.
Jesus, why am I thinking about that? I squint like there’s light in my eyes but the image only comes on stronger.
I must have been eleven, or thereabouts. I got up that morning and the first thing Clem said to me was, “The wood box is empty,” like it was on his mind. Like he’d been brooding on it. I said, “Yeah, I know, I’ll get it in a bit, Dad.” He didn’t say anything. He went out the back.
I knew it was my responsibility to keep the box full, but the fire wasn’t even going, and it was almost nine. Pinky and the Brain was about to come on. It’s not like I was one of those kids who sits inside all day. I’d watch one cartoon then I’d get the wood and I’d be outside until evening.
Clem came in about halfway through the episode. Brain had devised yet another ingenious plan to take over the world. Oli was in his pyjamas, sitting beside me on the couch.
Clem looked at me and looked at the TV and said, “Got that wood yet?”
I said, “No, I’ll get it after this. It’s almost over now.”
It wasn’t five minutes later when the back door flung open and this time Clem had the axe in his hand.
“Got that wood yet?” he yelled.
I just looked at him. I didn’t understand.
“Got that wood yet?” he repeated in the exact same voice, like he hadn’t said it the first time.
I said, “No,” in a little voice that makes me angry when I think back to it.
Clem walked across to the TV and swung the axe. The screen exploded. He turned and stared at me and didn’t blink.
“Got that wood yet?”
Oli burst into tears. Mum came in and saw what Clem had done. She screamed at him. He screamed back, and then Mum was in tears, too. I took Oli to his room and told him he could listen to the Walkman I got for my birthday, then went and got the axe. I went to the wood heap and cut the wood and filled the box.
There was a replacement TV by the next day. Not new, but not much different to the old one. Clem never said anything. It was like it never happened. Like a lot of things never happened.
That was fourteen years ago. Standing here, looking at the broken pieces of that memory, all I want is to be able to go back to that time as the man I am now. Then I’d have a place for all the anger I can summon. Instead, I walk across to my bed and start cleaning up my mess.