“Let me try!” I said as I grabbed at the tool chest.
“You can try, but let me pick out the right tool for you,” said my dad.
When I was a kid, I watched my dad toil in his small shop for hours. Once in a while, he would let me stay up late and help him nail boards or cut a piece of wire, or glue my mom’s things so they were like new again. Then we’d go home and I’d dream of tools.
“Here’s how you turn it,” he said, as he showed me which way made the screws tight.
“I know how to turn it,” I said with a sneer, “left for loose and right for tight.”
“Smart kid,” he said with a laugh.
It was like a dark crypt when the lights were off in the rooms down the hall from the shop and I was scared of them. The shop was hot that June night. There was dust all over the room, and it made a cone shape when it blew up and caught the light that shined from the bench lamp.
“Do you hate the dark?” I asked my dad.
“No, I don’t hate the dark. But it’s sure hard to see things in it. That’s why a lot of folks don’t like it. You just have to be safe, that’s all,” he said as he bent down to work on a board.
“God damn board,” he said as he tried to force the screw the wrong way. “This one’s stuck. Christ, come on!”
“You’ve got it wrong!” I said with a howl.
He looked up a smiled at me.
“Look at that, so I do. It was the weird view, I guess.”
“I’ll do it! Let me try!”
“That’s fine,” he said with a sigh. He wiped his face with an old brown rag. “We have to go after that one, though.”
“Oh, come on!” I whined.
“You heard what I said. Last one. Let’s not make your mom mad.”
I turned the screw the right way, and was in bed in no time.
It’s been ten years now. I had fun with my dad on those nights, and I look back on them all the time.
But how could I know? I was just a kid. How could I know it was him, of all folks? How could I know he was the one who made the bomb?