Men, Women & Children by Chad Kultgen Read Free Book Online Page A

men who were abandoned. Tim recognized this as well. He thought about agreeing to play catch with his father, and not telling him that he’d quit the football team a few hours earlier, but was unable to. He didn’t want to lie to his father or to participate in any form of charade with his father. He had respect for his father and that respect, he thought, deserved the truth. He said, “Dad, I, uh . . . I quit the football team today.”
    The words were difficult for Kent to hear coming from his son’s mouth, but he wasn’t surprised. Since Lydia left, Kent had sensed his son pulling away, becoming more introverted, losing interest in the things that had always held his attention. Kent’s normal reaction to his son’s news would have been anger. Kent would have screamed at his son and threatened punishment unless his son rejoined the football team. But, like his son, since his wife had left, he found it more and more difficult to feel anything other than a certain hollow sadness. Kent said, “Oh. I see. Are you sure?”
    Tim said, “Yeah. I just . . . Yeah. I’m sure, Dad.”
    Kent said, “Well, I’m obviously not going to force you to play. I mean, I can’t force you to, but I think you should think about it. And I don’t want this to be because of— Just think about it.”
    Tim said, “I already quit.”
    Kent said, “I know, but, just think about it. You can go back, I’m sure.”
    Tim said, “Okay.”
    Tim passed his father on his way to the kitchen, where he threw his empty nugget box in the trash and went to his room without saying another word. Kent threw away his own trash, opened the first of what would be seven Bud Lights that night, and sat in for a night of watching the World Series of Poker and, at several specific moments, wondering what his wife was doing in California, which resulted in him imagining her having sex with Greg Cherry, a man Kent had never met or even seen. He pictured him as being small and intellectual, physically weak, probably wearing glasses and appearing slightly effeminate—the opposite of Kent. Kent had difficulty imagining that his wife would leave him for a man who was similar to him in any way. He could only reconcile her decision to abandon her family by assuming she had realized that she wanted something completely different, at least for the time being.
    Kent turned his thoughts to his son. He recognized that Tim had become more introverted and moody and rationalized that all kids his age must go through similar periods and that his mother’s absence probably wasn’t helping the situation. He held on to some hope that, after Tim emerged from whatever he was going through, he would return to football. Beyond directly illustrating the benefits of playing football, Kent assumed he could say nothing else to his son to speed this process up, so he decided to leave him alone to work things out on his own. Kent found that dwelling on how badly he wanted his son to rejoin the team left him with less time to think about his soon-to-be ex-wife, Lydia, living in California with Greg Cherry who was in marketing.
    Tim sat down at his computer and logged on to World of Warcraft , the Shattered Hand server, five minutes before his guild was scheduled to raid Ulduar, the highest-level end-game dungeon in the game at the time. Tim’s main character was a frostfire specced mage named Firehands who regularly had the highest damage-per-second in guild raids. He was a valuable member to his guild, which required his damage output to defeat all of the bosses in Ulduar.
    As soon as he logged on, he was greeted in guild chat by other members who would be joining in the raid. At the bottom left of Tim’s screen in the green guild-chat text a series of phrases appeared: “I thought your mom sucked my dick last night but when I reached down and felt stubble, I realized it was your dad. My mistake.” “What’s up, nigger?” “You fuck any junior high pussy yet?” “I wish I