Men Behaving Badly

A Flash Fiction

Flash fiction

“Men Behaving Badly”

This begins with a 1967 red Chevy Malibu parked on a perfectly manicured suburban lawn, its front left bumper and headlight demolished.

It’s about noon, very hot, when my sister douses my face with a Dixie Cup of water.

“Dad says he’s going to hang some kid,” she says.

“Jesus, Karen! I was sleeping.”

“No, you’re just hungover. I can smell the booze emanating from your sweat.”

“Emanating?”

She purses her lips. “Did you hear me? Dad’s going to hang some kid. You better get downstairs before someone calls the cops. It’s embarrassing living with you two. One fucking drama after the other.”

“You know the rules, Karen, only men can swear in this house.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

By the time I splash cold water onto my face and reach the scene of the possible hanging, my father’s surrounded by about eight locals. He’s yelling, but I can’t make out his complaint.

“What’s up?” I say, forcing my way through the circle, almost knocking two of the kids down.

My father turns. He glances at my car and smiles.

“Your dad said he’s going to hang Johnny,” some kid with a black mullet and skinny arms says.

Johnny looks pissed. He’s a big kid with a shaved head and a lame temporary tattoo of a third eye on his forehead. A real asshole—his only claim to fame being that he was once arrested for shattering the headlights of his ex-girlfriend’s father’s car with a baseball bat.

“Where’s he going to hang you from, Johnny?” I ask matter-of-factly.

“From that tree over there,” he says, pointing to a tall maple about twenty feet away.

“Why’s he going to do that?”

“Because he was staring at your mother’s ass,” my father interrupts, “and because he made a lewd comment about her.”

I had never heard my father use the word “lewd.”

Emanate? Lewd? The day is suddenly becoming more complex, more interesting.

“What comment?” I ask, and he repeats it for me.

I stare hard at Johnny. His eyes won’t stop darting around, and he keeps blinking, as if he’s been downing homemade cocktails of caffeine and speed all morning. I consider hitting him in the face, but then this drama will end, and I’ll have to go back to bed.

“How did you hear what he said?” I ask my father.

“I was hiding in the downstairs bathroom, listening,” he says.

I imagine him standing on the toilet seat with his ear to the screened window.

“Ingenious,” I say trying not to laugh, before taking a deep breath. “Dad, would you mind waiting by the car for a couple minutes so I can talk to these guys?”

“You mean the car you parked on the fucking lawn when you came home drunk last night?”

“Yeah, that one.”

He walks toward the Malibu, checking out the damage to its front end, falling to one knee and trying to straighten out the bumper, all the time shaking his head.

“Johnny,” I say, making sure I have his attention, “I think it’d be a good idea to apologize to my dad and make sure you call him Mr. Hamilton when you do it.”

Johnny and his goons get a kick out of that and start elbowing each other.

“Oh yeah?” Johnny says. “How ’bout I tell tell him to go fuck himself instead? You really think he has the balls to hang me?” This boast makes his goons laugh harder.

“Not today, Johnny, but if you don’t apologize, I promise that when you least expect it, like when you’re jerking off in your car outside the Catholic girl’s high school, one of us will fuck you up. You’ve lived here long enough to know what we’re capable of.”

Something seems to click in Johnny’s lantern-shaped head, and a few minutes later, after some dumb meeting between him and his friends, followed by a half-assed apology, it’s just me and my father staring at the Malibu resting sadly on the front lawn, looking like the dead carcass of a once beautiful animal.

Apparently satisfied with Johnny’s apology, my father squeezes my forearm, then heads toward the front door, and, with his back to me, never breaking stride, says, “I’d get that car off the grass if I were you.”

“If I say no, are you going to hang me?”

“Always best to keep them guessing,” he says, letting out a hoarse laugh that’s so loud even Johnny, who’s now halfway down the street, can probably hear it.

You can find Peter Johnson’s books, along with interviews with him, appearances, and other information at peterjohnsonauthor.com

His most recent book of prose poems is While the Undertaker Sleeps: Collected and New Prose Poems

His most recent book of fiction is Shot: A Novel in Stories

Find out why he is giving away his new book of prose poem/fragments, even though he has a publisher for it, by downloading the PDF from the below link or going to OLD MAN’S homepage. His “Note to the Reader” and “Introduction” at the beginning of the PDF explains it all: Observations from the Edge of the Abyss

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