Material by Kenneth Jakubas
Associate fiction editor Madeline Hernstrom-Hill on today’s bonus flash: Every move this piece makes knocks me out. Beautifully constructed and unexpectedly tender, Jakubas’s scrapbook snapshot of fatherhood across three generations meditates on metaphor, connection, and the comfort an ending can offer. It made me want to call my Dad.
Material
My dad had to write something in the scrapbook honoring the retirement of his dad. Everyone in the shop wrote something, and most of what everyone wrote was heartwarming and stale, in beautiful cursive, like the quotes tattooed on the living room walls of moderate white women. After a week, the deadline was here, and he called me. Dude, he said. How do you write a story? He’d forgotten, and all he needed was a little advice. I’ve got a space the size of a postcard to work with, was all he kept saying. I thought it was brave and unconventional of him to write a story instead of a generic thing. Have you thought much about symbolism? I asked him, and I could hear the panic of silence on the other end of the phone, or the silence of panic. Write a story about an experience you had with him at the shop, but frame it in a way that makes that experience a metaphor for your relationship with him. Make it symbolic, I suggested. This really got him going. Goddamn, is what he kept saying, and he nearly hung up on me.
The next day, at the retirement party, everyone in the shop presented my grandfather with the scrapbook, at which point my grandfather cried. My dad sat without being able to uncross his arms from his chest, or keep his tongue from moving in his mouth. Later, I gave my dad a congratulatory handshake, commending him on his published story. I could tell he wanted me to read it, but didn’t know how to tell me. Then I went and hugged my grandfather for the first time in my life.
The scrapbook was in the corner of the room on a table, and I snuck over there to read the story, which was written in block lettering, the handwriting of an engineer. I knew right away it was a story I had never heard, and that I wouldn’t see it ever again after this. Anything you give to my grandfather disappears into his large, incomprehensible house. It was about the time when my dad was a child and they were pouring the first layers of concrete for the shop. My dad fell into the concrete while it was still wet, and a hand appears in the last line of the story to help the little boy out (this is the symbolism). It’s almost too much, that tenderness in all those block letters. And for some reason, my chest swells with blood, and I remember, for some reason, that we die, and I’m happy for it.
Kenneth Jakubas holds an MFA from Western Michigan University, where he continues to serve as the assistant poetry editor for Third Coast Magazine. His poetry and prose have appeared or is forthcoming in RHINO, The Atlanta Review, Birdcoat Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review, Zone 3, Sundog Lit, and Everyday Fiction, among others. He lives and teaches in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with his wife and son, and is currently at work on a mini-series for the website shitlitfic.com.
