By Michael Lutz

When dad first explained the stunt to me, I didn’t understand it. I acted like I did, but I could tell he knew the truth. He left the dining room, came back with a piece of paper and a pencil and started drawing.  

“See, I’ll be riding the quad coming this way, hit the ramp here,” he said, drawing the way with a line, “And you’ll be laying down here, where this x is, in the ditch. And I’ll jump through the air over you. The best part is, we’ll do it right when mom is pulling into the driveway to pick you up, so she’ll get to see it.” 

I looked at dad’s drawing of the ATV—which was always what mom called it, for some reason. I imagined it flying over me, the metal frame and handlebars and motor and 4 big tires. We had just finished eating my favorite dinner, peanut butter and jelly crackers, which normally makes me happy, but dad talking about the stunt made my stomach feel sick. “I don’t think mom would like that.” 

“Bah!” dad said. “She might be a little nervous. A little. But she’ll be happy that you’re a brave boy.” 

Dad was breathing too hard like he does when he is excited about something. Even though he washed up before dinner he still smelled like motor oil and dirt, like he always did. 

“You’ll be able to go fast enough to just fly right over me? You don’t think you’ll come off the edge and land right on top of me?” I asked. 

“No way,” dad said, like I just asked the most stupid thing. “I’ve been riding a quad since I was about your age. I’ve done the same kind of jump more times than I can count. What do you think?” 

“Maybe,” I said.   

“There’s no maybe about it,” dad said, his voice a lot louder. “You need to do this. You can’t go through life scared.” He snatched my paper plate which still had two crackers left on it, which I was hungry for before he told me about the stunt, and threw it in the garbage. “If you’re gonna grow up to be a man, you have to learn how to be brave. It’s not something that just happens. You have to train for it. And mom will be proud to see that you’re doing it. You’ll see.” There were some swears in there, but I left those out. He said some more things, kept going on and on. That’s normal for my dad. When he does this, I just stay very still and shake my head yes and wait until the words stop. 

Dad sometimes says he is going to do things that he doesn’t end up doing. He will talk about doing the thing but then it won’t happen, and then I think maybe he forgot about it, but then he talks about it again. Taking me to the amusement park was one of those things. Also teaching me how to change oil in a car (which my mom says I am still too young for and he gets mad about). Sometimes he does the things he says he will, but most of the time he doesn’t. I usually don’t think very much about what he says he’s going to do. I just wait and see. The quad stunt became one of those things.   

But the next time I was at dad’s house, he tried to get the quad stunt to work. He took me to the backyard, where he had dug the ditch and made the dirt ramp. The ramp didn’t look as high or as big as I thought it would, by looking at the picture he drew, and the ditch wasn’t deep either. It was just long enough to hold me head to toe but didn’t go down very far. I felt like I was going to throw up. 

“What do you think?” he asked me. He was smiling really big and moving around fast. I shook my head yes again, even though I was not sure. But I told myself the things that dad said about bravery and becoming a man. This helped me feel like I could do it. I still felt sick but not as much. 

Dad told me to lie down in the ditch and keep as still as I could. While I waited for mom to show up and the stunt to start, I stared at the clouds and tried to think of what things they looked like. Mom and I did this game in the park. She said people have been doing it for a long time, way before kids had cell phones or video games. Mom likes old games more than new ones. Looking at clouds in the park was kind of relaxing but also kind of boring. When I looked at the clouds while lying in the ditch, it wasn’t boring at all because I knew what was about to happen.   

At least, I thought I knew.  I heard the quad start up and it was loud so I didn’t hear mom’s car pull in the driveway. But she yelled loud enough for me to hear over the quad.  Mom hardly ever yells but when she does, it feels like the world is going upside down and inside out.  She never yells at me or anyone else, only at dad.  Then I heard dad yelling back at her. When dad yells, it’s normal.   

I don’t know why dad didn’t just try the stunt, even though she was yelling at him. She wouldn’t have been able to stop him, the quad goes way faster than she can run. Dad could have jumped over me before you know it. But there was no stunt. Mom just pulled me out of the ditch and tried to pick me up like I’m still a baby, which made me mad. I’m not a baby anymore but sometimes it seems like she wants me to be. I am too old and big now to be lifted so she just walked with me to her car, holding my hand, which also made me kind of mad but not as mad as when she tried to lift me. 

Dad walked with us to the car too. I could feel him looking at me but I kept my eyes straight ahead.   

“See you in two weeks, ok?” dad said as I got into mom’s car. “Two weeks.” Like he was trying to remind himself.  Mom shut the door and then I heard them yell at each other a little bit more before she got into the car too and drove us off.   

Since mom and dad have been divorced, I go to dad’s place every other weekend, which used to be where we all lived together. But I am at mom’s place most of the time now, during the weekdays and the other weekends. Mom’s place is a lot different from dad’s. It’s a townhouse which means there’s no big yard, just a little square of grass next to the driveway. So there’s no room for quads like dad’s house, but even if mom had a place with lots of room and big yard, she would not have a quad. She thinks they are dangerous and mom used to get mad at my dad for riding one when they were still married.  She would get even madder when my dad would talk about maybe giving me a quad someday, even though that sounded fun to me. My room at my mom’s is small but clean because mom makes me keep it that way. She says she is trying to make me learn good habits by doing this. When my room gets messy at dad’s, he will yell at me to clean it, but sometimes I forget to and he yells more and louder when he notices that. 

At dad’s house, other than the big yard and quads, I also have video games.  He bought them for me because I wanted them but if I play them too much, he gets mad at me and tells me to go outside and play. He always reminds me that there is a big backyard and woods all around us to go explore in. I sometimes try to do this, and even though there is a lot of yard and woods to see, I get bored. It’s also lonely just walking around by yourself. If I had a sister or brother to do it with maybe it would be more fun. 

At mom’s house I just have some toys and books. Mostly she wants me to read books but I don’t really want to. Books are okay sometimes and when she makes me read them, I’m not mad about it but I’m never excited to do it. I’m never doing something else and wish I was reading a book. The toys are okay especially the remote-control cars. There are no video games because mom says they’re not healthy for my mind. There are also no woods to walk around in, but even if there were, she wouldn’t let me do it. 

Also, unlike dad’s house, it is quiet inside the townhouse because Mom likes the quiet.  Dad constantly talks to himself or yells at himself or yells at me. Mom will sometimes hum almost too soft to hear while she is cleaning but that is all.   

Mom has only done one thing sort of like dad.  A little while ago she gave me a key to get into the townhouse after school but before she gets home from work.  She seemed very sad when she gave it to me which I didn’t understand.  It made me feel grown up and like she trusted me and I don’t know why she would be sad about that. One day I will be an adult and have my own house with my own keys for and this is good practice for then. Giving me the key seemed like something dad would do to get me to practice being a man. But I guess since she didn’t really want to do it, it wasn’t all that much like dad anyway.   

After I spend time at mom’s house, I feel like I have an itch inside my body, one that I can’t scratch so it gets worse and worse. I think it’s because it is too quiet, and too safe, at mom’s place. She keeps me protected from everything. Even herself.  If I don’t clean my room or clear off my dishes from the dinner table, I can tell she’s mad but she won’t yell at me. I don’t like it when dad yells at me, and I get scared when he starts talking about the quad stunt, and sometimes I get nervous when I’m walking in the woods alone, like what if a bear or coyote or a snake attacks me? But then when I get back to dad’s, and nothing has attacked me, I feel good. When I am at mom’s, even though it feels less dangerous, it also feels like something is missing. That is the itch. 

The itch gets worse when I go to bed because then it’s not just quiet, it’s also dark. When I am trying to go to sleep, I think about how it’s sort of like lying in the ditch. Both times I am lying. One is during the day, another is at night. One is outside, another is inside. But in one I am waiting for dad to go flying above me, for mom to see it happening, for whatever would happen next. It’s scary but also exciting. Seeing the shiny metal flying above me like a big weird bird. When I am lying in bed, I’m just waiting for sleep which is just like nothing, nothing at all. It’s scary but in a different way, boring scary, even though that doesn’t make sense. It’s a worse scary.  Waiting for nothing feels wrong, as wrong as it sounds when mom is screaming, as wrong as two different beds and two different places to live feels. 

The first Saturday after dad tried the quad stunt, it was a gray day outside. But I wanted to go to the park to look at clouds anyway. I was tired of being inside, stuck in my room. I didn’t want to play with any of my toys and definitely didn’t want to read.  

“It looks like it’s going to pour, kiddo,” mom said. She was looking out the window with the face she has when she doesn’t want to do something. 

“It’ll be ok,” I said. “Please, let’s just go, and we can come back if it starts to rain.”   

Mom gave me a sad look and I gave her a sad look right back. She finally said yes and I was happy and ran out to the car, ready to go with my seatbelt on before she even got out to the garage. 

When we got to the park it looked even darker than it was when we left the townhouse. There were not a lot of people around. The people who were there looked like they were going back to their cars to leave, not just getting there like us. 

We parked and walked to our normal spot, a big field that was behind a playground. It was mostly flat and good for laying and looking up. Mom carried a picnic blanket that she always used when we did this. She dropped it down and made sure it was spread out nice and flat before we laid down on it and looked up. 

For a while we were just quiet.  I picked one really big gray cloud to concentrate on. It took up a lot of the sky and had a funny shape to it. But I couldn’t really think too hard about what it might look like. Instead, I kept thinking about the stunt. Lying in the ditch and then the quad jumping over me, then imagining I was mom and seeing it happen, getting out of the car and dad flying by not far away, jumping over me. I was afraid mom knew that I was thinking about this instead of figuring out what the cloud I was looking at looked like. Sometimes it seems like mom can guess what I’m thinking or feeling.  

“This one over here, looks like a cat to me,” mom said. I followed her finger to the cloud she was talking about. 

I looked and looked for a long time at the cloud. “I don’t see that,” I said. 

“You don’t?” she sounded sad. “Look. You can see the tail there. And the head and the pointy ears. It’s looking at us.” 

I still didn’t see it. “Maybe,” I said. 

After we laid there for a couple of minutes longer, I felt a fat raindrop hit me right in the forehead, then another on my cheek. “Time to go,” mom said. 

“We can lay for a little longer,” I said.  But then it started raining harder and harder. We both got up, she scooped up the blanket in a ball and ran. I got up too but just walked. Just like that I was wet all over. When I got back to the car mom said to me very slowly that I shouldn’t mess around in the rain, now I’m all wet and I might get sick. It is the voice she uses when she wants to yell at me, but she is trying to hold back. The way she does this makes me mad. I stay wet until we’re back at the townhouse and I change clothes and then I am dry and everything is boring again and the itch comes back, stronger than ever. 

One day I was in my room just lying in bed not knowing what to do when there was a knock at my door. “Sweetie, I need to talk to you about something.”   

Mom’s voice sounded very small and quiet from the other side of the door. I wanted to keep lying there in my bed and not move and not say anything. Mom opened the door anyway and came in. She sat down on my bed, almost on top of my legs. “Sit up,” she told me, so I finally did. She took a deep breath in before she started talking. 

“I just wanted you to know that it’s going to be a little while until you see your father again. In my opinion, he put you in a lot of danger with that stunt of his. I don’t know how, but he thought it was a perfectly fine idea. Since mom and dad don’t agree on this, we have to go in front of a man called a judge, a person who’s an expert in these things, and they are going to decide whether or not it’s good for you to be seen by your dad.” 

I ran out of my room and down the stairs. I wanted to find the woods, any woods, and walk around in them. I wanted to lay down and have the quad fly over me. I wanted dad to yell at the judge. I ran out the front door and down the steps, but mom grabbed me by the arm and dragged me back inside and I started screaming. She sat me on the couch and asked me to please calm down, please be quiet. All she ever wanted was quiet so I screamed more, louder, and ran upstairs and slammed my door, breathing so hard like I had just run very far and very long, waiting for her to knock again and a small part of me wishing she might so I could ask questions about the judge, but she didn’t. No knock came.  

After a while the itch inside me was so bad that I didn’t know what to do. I thought about telling mom but didn’t think I could. I don’t know why. Mom says I should always tell her how I am feeling about things. I try to believe her but it is hard. Sometimes I also don’t know how to describe what I’m feeling. The itch is like that because it’s not really an itch. That’s just the closest thing it feels to. If it was just an itch I would know how and where to scratch it and it would go away. 

Then something lucky happened. One day I got off the bus from school and dad’s truck was in the driveway of mom’s place. Most of the time it’s dirty but that day it looked like he just washed it. It was nice and clean, the metal parts were very shiny, like it was brand new. Dad was standing there in the driveway next to the truck, smiling. It was weird seeing him after so long. I think it had been more than a month since the last time. 

“Hey, kid,” he said. It almost didn’t sound like my dad. He looked happy but at the same time sad. His face looked extra wrinkled, like mine does when I sleep the wrong way too long on my pillow. 

I said hi back but nothing else. Mom had been to dad’s place to drop me off and pick me up but dad had never been here, to mom’s place. Dad just kept looking at me.   

“Are we going to do the stunt?” I asked. 

Dad smiled, really wide and big. Probably the biggest smile I had ever seen him do.   

“You want to?” he asked me.   

I nodded my head. And the itch finally stopped. 

I said yes, even though part of me was still scared. It scared me probably as much as it ever did. But I said yes because I knew I had to do it. If it was up to her, mom would never let me be a man. So many things that she did or ways she treated me told me so.   

“Let’s do it, then.” Dad got in his truck, and I did too.   

By the time we got to dad’s house I was really nervous. “We should tell mom that you came to get me,” I said when we got there. I was worried that she would be mad, but I hoped that when it was over, she would know that dad was right, and then she wouldn’t be mad anymore.     

“Oh, don’t worry.  I didn’t forget about that. Your mom seeing is an important part to all of this. Maybe the most important part,” dad said. We walked into the backyard. Dad texted mom and almost right away, his phone started to ding and buzz. He pushed buttons until the phone went quiet and then put it in his pocket.   

“Ok, she’ll be on her way soon,” dad said. He sounded very happy, almost like he was pretending to be happy, because it was so much happier than I had ever heard him talk.  He went into the shed and pushed out the quad. Just like his truck, it looked like he washed it not long ago. The plastic was bright red, the metal parts extra shiny, sunlight flashing off it everywhere. 

And then dad told me to sit on the quad. I wasn’t sure why he wanted me to, but I listened to him. I had never sat on it before. I always knew the quad was big and heavy, but it seemed even bigger and heavier when I was on it. I had to stretch out to reach the handlebars. The seat felt too big. When I moved around it stayed completely still underneath me. 

“Do you really think I can have a quad like yours someday?” I asked dad. He was quiet for a second, but then said, “Yep.  Yes, you can.  You will.” He said this very serious. Then he told me a couple of the stories I already knew about when he got a quad when he was a kid, how he used to ride all the time with his dad. And then I realized that I would be the next dad. 

Almost like he heard my thoughts, dad asked if I was ready to do the stunt. I told him I was even though I wasn’t. I knew this was a lie, but it seems like sometimes you have to say something that is a lie at first before it becomes the truth. Dad must have believed me because he patted my head then, scruffing up my hair like people petting their dog when they’re good. My dad only does this once in a while, it kind of makes me laugh and also makes me feel good.  It made me feel really ready to do the stunt instead of pretend ready.   

I walked over to the ditch, and laid down in it. The dirt was hard and crusty, probably because it had not rained in a little while. It was a warm day. The sun was bright. I stared up into the sky and looked for some clouds, but there were none. Nothing but blue. Normally people say that is a good thing, like the best weather days are no clouds, because that means no rain, and the sun is out. But today it made me a little bit sad. I wouldn’t be able to play the cloud game while I was waiting.   

The quad started. The sound of the motor echoed through the backyard and all around me. Dad revved the engine and it made a louder noise. I tried to absorb down into the dirt, like how rain would do if it started coming down. Make myself as low and as flat as I could. I imagined myself like a piece of paper. And then the quad started off and came closer and closer real fast. I kept looking up at the blue sky for just a second longer but at the last moment I changed my mind about what I wanted to see.  It would be neat to see the shiny motor and the quad flying over me. But I wanted to see mom watch me do the stunt.  I wanted her to see me being brave. Maybe that would change everything. I turned my head and looked for her in the driveway and hoped that dad had timed it all right like he said he would. 

It happened quick and not how I thought. I couldn’t find mom and looked back up.  I heard the motor louder and louder coming toward me and then over me and saw a dark flash. The next second dad and the quad had landed on the ground far away. The stunt had worked. He turned off the quad, got off and was jumping around, hollering really happy, like the best thing he could’ve imagined just happened. I got up slow, my head feeling like it might float away. Then I felt mom dragging me back to the car. She wasn’t yelling or even saying anything. Dad ran toward us as mom pulled me away. Everything felt like it was happening fast and slow at the same time. 

“I told you, I told you he could do it! It was fine, see I told you it’d be fine. Don’t you feel good?” he said. I wasn’t sure what I felt but good wasn’t it. Mom pushed me in the car and shut the door and got in herself, while dad talked the whole time but she ignored him like he wasn’t even there. I kept waiting for her to say something, anything, but she didn’t.   

She got in and drove us off. I looked around to the back window. Dad was standing there in the driveway, watching us, not waving or doing anything. Just watching.   

The car was quiet, a scary quiet. I wanted mom to say or ask me something. I wasn’t sure why things felt so bad and weird. Dad was happy. I was going to become a man. But I didn’t feel like it. My head still felt floaty and my body felt shaky on the inside. I didn’t feel any braver than I was before. 

When we got back to her place, mom told me to go to my room. Her voice sounded like hers but didn’t. There was something missing. I didn’t want to go to my room but something about the way her voice sounded made me listen. So I did. I shut my door and laid on my bed. I could hear her walking around a little, and then she went into her room too. I heard her bedroom door shut and then I could hear her crying.  

After a while, my head finally didn’t feel floaty anymore, and my insides didn’t feel shaky. I felt something like the itch, but different. It was less like something was missing, and more like I knew it was there, I just had to figure out where it was. Maybe this was part of becoming a man, and the itch would always be like this now. I opened my door, as quiet as I could so mom couldn’t hear. She wasn’t crying anymore, but the door to her bedroom was still shut. I sneaked downstairs and put on my shoes and went out the front door. I thought about laying down in the little patch of grass next to the driveway. It looked smaller than ever, barely big enough to hold me. I remembered the stunt, how I thought it would be, seeing all the parts of the quad from below, and how it really was, just a big shadow above me for just a second, there and gone. I realized that maybe instead of laying down, I needed to do some exploring and finally find a bigger patch of grass, some woods. Like a blend of dad and mom’s places together making a different, other place. I started to walk off down the street, to somewhere that I had never seen.

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Michael Lutz lives and writes in Imperial, PA. He is a member of the Hour After Happy Hour and Writers in Pittsburgh writing groups. His work has been published in Allium, A Journal of Poetry & Prose and Edge City.