Fatherly Affection

His walls were covered with pictures of wolves. Crayon drawn and colored fairy tales pinned on the painted and chipping surface were hung with meticulous care. Timothy loved wolves. His shelves contained books about them—Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Little Pigs, The Goat and The Seven Kids . . . all with the last pages ripped out of them. He spent most of his days coloring pictures of wolves, playing near the forest, running and growling like a wolf and howling when the wolves in the nearby forest howled. His mother only sighed and smiled when Timothy talked endlessly of how wise and clever wolves were. She pretended to listen as she peeled potatoes, nodding with several ‘um hmms’ and ‘oh really’s dotted with a few concluding ‘How nice’s. She was sure it was one of his many phases that he went through.  Three months ago it was birds.

Timothy had always been a precocious child, curious and extremely attached to his mother. When he was born he would coo and caw like all children, and she would fawn on him with adoring pride.

His father had given him only one look and snorted. “He’s pasty.”

It seemed that Timothy did not grow fast enough for his father. When the boy had managed to walk, he was merely a nuisance. And when he was four, his father decided that it was time for him to earn his keep through chores. He was now eight.

When Timothy was barely seven he would eagerly scramble to complete his chores so that his father could see what a good boy he was.

It didn’t matter. Not really.

Each night when his father came home, half drunk and marching to the worn out armchair, he would glower at the boy.

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 13.11.2009
ISBN: 978-3-7438-5731-5

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