Summer 2007

Gorilla
Catherine Doty

He held his head in his hands and wept into it. No window
gave back his image; he’d smashed them all: through splits
in the thick black leather padding his fists the white stuffing
poked like smoke. Don was drunk, of course, and on Halloween,
and had spent all the grocery money that was left after Sissy bought
and ate and bought again the Milky Ways she’d love to give the kids
who come to trick or treat, but they don’t come, on renting this stupid
costume. Oh, bum, creep, weakling, lousy dad. The head rocked on his
knee and caught his tears. What hurt him so: that we, his neighbors,
were gone when he needed to show us his hairy, primate self, covered,
this time, in a pelt of rented fuzz? Did he need so badly to scare us, did
he know he always did when he hollered and slammed up the stairs at 4
am to wake up his boy and girls who wailed to break glass that they
didn’t want to sing, didn’t want to bang on a pot til the dogs all howled,
wanted only to sleep through the years til they could leave, wanted only
to be like the kids who lived downstairs, lucky, their father dismissive,
silent, scornful: a better drunk.