It was like the inconsolable scream of a teething infant. It was like the sound of distressed metal, of breaking machinery.
They all came, then, when it was clear he was going to resist. The shopkeepers, his parents, the police, the devil. They offered taunts, violence, warm milk and cookies. He had a Swiss army knife in his pocket. He teased out the blade and started to etch his name into the bench.
“You coming back for tea?” his father asked.
Jake did not know how to answer. It seemed important to keep scratching his name, though. The rationale for his rebellion could not be vocalised, his father would never allow himself to be reasoned with, but the seam within his spirit that was driving him would not allow him to stop. He had completed the “J” and the “A” and was starting work on the “K”.
I can’t conjure this confrontation between Jake and his father. The only thing I really remember of the man that might have some bearing is later, wondering how it was that a man so lacking in substance and weight could have borne down so oppressively on a child. Jake kept whittling and his father dissolved until only memories of phrases remained:
“You’ve let us down again.”
“I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to.”
“You are this. You are that. You do this. This is what you think. This is how it hurts us and the world.”
It was like the water in your ear after you have been swimming, dulling the sound of the rest of the world, claustrophobic and uncomfortable. It was like gunfire in a school canteen. It was like listening to your mother crying of a broken heart. It was like the whisper of your subconscious fears. It was like a radio, partially tuned to a station playing non-stop Latvian folk-rock. It was the dry snap of a shin bone breaking under sustained pressure.
Jake’s head was spinning, and he felt a warm puddle spreading across the front of his jeans. He had nearly finished the “K” now. His right shoe squelched. He could not stand any more. He could barely sit up straight.