Allison: Part One

            The hulking tree fell in a fog of exhaust and spinning metal.  A man stood to the side, waiting for the brush to settle so he could break down the trunk into sections.  He felt a sense of pride and superiority swell inside his middle-aged chest as the smell of fallen wood danced up his nostrils.  He had conquered the doomed pine, marked for its fall with fluorescent pink paint and yellow safety tape.  Even though his ratty boots were soaked through and he had the irreversible scent of two-stroke motor oil burned into his dull orange vest, he felt a strong pull to stay there long into the night.  The road home from the logging station was unusually short, set up closer to the local town than any he had worked at before.  The potholed roads got tiresome but he didn’t care for the way other loggers compared them to a kids face full of smallpox.  He was a long-time worker in the forest, a logger, and his name was Allison MacKinnon.

            When Allison finally made it home the sky was on fire and the sun was putting up one last fight before setting. Despite the few acres of land it was built on, the little blue house looked quaint and unassuming.  Richibucto, New Brunswick was a flat town, and that meant you could see plain field for half a mile each way, eventually broken by the horizon kissing the ground in the distance.  The house itself was a light blue with bright white trim all around, an old screen door on the front and a lot of peeling paint wherever you looked.  He made his way up the driveway, smacking his metal lunch kit against his thigh to keep time. As he opened the door, Allison slowly recognized the scent of his home, the kind of smell you can only catch when you’ve been away for long enough.  It smelled like cleaning solution, cigarettes, and whatever was going to be for supper.  Standing in the entrance, Allison slipped off his safety vest and caught the sweet scent of dying trees and oil.  

After a hot shower he made his way to the dinner table and made sure to let his wife, Clora and five kids know that he was too tired to stir up conversation: he shuffled a newspaper in front of his plate unreservedly.  When his stomach was full he threw his dishes into the sink and made his way to the dusty couch, tall drink in hand.  His wife would join him as they journeyed through an ocean of bad whisky and cigarette smoke. 

After a while he heard his son, John start to lift weights in the garage.  John was his middle son, a well built high school drop out with little to no potential, according to Allison. For the next five minutes all he could hear was the incessant clanging and screeching of metal on metal as John changed weights between exercises.  In the midst of drowsy alcoholic numbness, Allison felt waves of heated frustration pollute his tranquil sea of nicotine and booze.  He picked himself off the couch, swearing violently, kicked the dog out of the way and burst into the home made gym where his son was working out.  He looked at the shirtless dropout with the old barbell resting on his shoulders as a stereo playing some ugly tune blasted away in the corner. The heat and tenseness he felt on the couch burst out, and he threw his drink on the ground, making sure that the shattering glass reached John’s feet and got his attention.

“You know something” slurred Allison, “you’ll never be stronger than me.” He spat on the ground, told his son to clean up the glass and slammed the door.