Objects of Worship Read Online Free PDF Page B

got so tense and angry all the time.”
    “And all that over an animal! Over a ridiculous fad!
What were we thinking?” They laughed.
    Raymond clapped his hands to get the guests’ attention.
“Okay everyone, I guess we should get started!”
    George fired up the barbecue grill.
    Everyone grabbed their children. Raymond looked at
George, “He’s all yours, darling.”
    George dug his fingers into Scott’s skull and cracked it
open. He was looking forward to better and better times
with Raymond now that they’d worked things out. But ,
George thought, I’ll miss the screams.

HOCHELAGA AND SONS
    I slide open the door to my parents’ closet. I gather the clothes
that hang there and move them to the bed, laying them down
gently, making sure not to wrinkle them, just like my mother
would have done. From the top shelf, I take down the boxes of
old photographs, forgotten gifts, and useless knick-knacks and
pile them on the floor at the far end of the bedroom. I empty
the closet of belts, old shoes, ratty sweaters, and rarely worn
neckties. Once I’m done clearing everything out, I grab the
sledgehammer and start tearing the wall down.
    Because I can’t become intangible and walk through it.
Because I can’t teleport at will. Because I can’t even punch holes
in it with my bare fists.
    Because my father is dead. Because Bernard won’t do what
needs to be done.
    “In the Second World War, I was a corporal in the Black
Watch, the Royal Highland Regiment of Canada, which was
part of the 5th Infantry Brigade. On the 19th of August
1942, Canadian forces spearheaded an attack at Dieppe, in
hopes of establishing a beachhead in Nazi-occupied France,
and my squad took part in that operation.”
    It was 1988, and my brother and I were eight years old.
By that point, we’d been bugging Dad for this story for as
long as I could remember. He’d always put it off; he’d say,
“I’m not ready to talk about that yet,” but even then we knew
he meant, When you’re a bit older . Finally, he’d given in, and
he knew we didn’t want a kiddie version. He respected that,
so he told it to us as if we were adults.
    “The invasion was a disaster. War is always brutal, but
this was a massacre. The Nazi soldiers slaughtered us. They
started shooting at us even before we landed, and on the
ground they just kept mowing us down.”
    Dad was sitting at the foot of our bed, telling the story
with his hands as much as with his voice. Bernard and I hung
on his every word. Our father’s face was grim, shrouded
with sorrow; his fists were clenched, subtly shaking.
    “As we stormed the beach at Dieppe, artillery shells
exploded around us and machine-gun fire tore into us. All
the men in my squad were killed; friends of mine died that
day, next to me, in front of me, all around me. But I was
only wounded, unwittingly left for dead in the chaos as our
forces retreated after losing thousands of soldiers.”
    Mimicking
a
wounded,
unconscious
soldier,
Dad
sprawled himself on the bed; I remember his elbow digging
into my shin. Dad was never one to linger on tragedy; Dad
was all about fighting against tragedy, refusing to let it win,
and laughing in its face. Despite his promise to tell us the
story seriously, he couldn’t help hamming it up. Already, we
were so wrapped up in his narrative that we didn’t mind,
or even really notice. It’s not that he was treating us like
kids, it’s more that he was being genuinely himself: goofy,
fun-loving, and larger than life. Even while recounting
something this gruesome. Especially while recounting
something this gruesome.
    Dad stayed silent, eyes closed. Bernard and I exchanged
wide-eyed, worried glances, completely hooked not only
by the story but also by Dad’s theatrics. I couldn’t bear it
anymore. I shook Dad’s shoulder, “What happened? What
happened after that?”
    “The Germans must have seen that I was still alive.
They captured me, but they didn’t take me to a prisoner-of-war