issue 24 > fiction > rogers

I go to sit in the dark nursery, contemplating my son's crib. I hope the doctors don't conclude that he has a serious condition, but if he does have a medical condition I hope it is nothing to do with his brain.

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If something is wrong with his brain, then I hope it isn't an emotional disorder that one day makes him shatter drinking glasses and kick through windows and chase the family dog with sharp scissors. Although if he does have issues with rage, I hope he at least doesn't turn his rage on other children and blind one with a chopstick and puncture another child with an electric stapler. If he does injure other children, I just hope he doesn't kill one of them.

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But if he does kill a child, I hope it's at least kind of accidental instead of an obviously premeditated killing of the sort that would mark him as evil, such as holding a smaller child under water until she drowns. If he is guilty of such brutality, then I hope it's just a phase and he outgrows it.

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If he does kill as an adult, I hope it's just the one time. But if he turns out to be a psychopathic serial killer, I hope by then he is no longer living at home and is not committing these killings with the Harrington and Richardson model 676 .22 caliber revolver that I inherited from my grandfather and keep in a locked gun safe with the rest of my collection. If he does discover where I keep the key, though, and secretly borrows the gun for his crimes, I hope I won't be called upon to testify when he is caught.

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If I am forced to take the witness stand, I hope some sly defense attorney doesn't try to lay all the blame on me because of my permissive parenting or because I wasn't strict enough or because I collected guns. If the defense does turn the trial against me, then I hope at least the press doesn't run with the story until I'm the object of public hatred.

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But if I am scorned everywhere, I hope at least the boy's mother, my wife, will stand by me and we can hold out here in our home, our little fortress, with only our love to sustain us and a cache of ammunition to protect us from an angry world, but if our marriage is not destined to survive, I hope I find ways to bear up under the strain of my loneliness.

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Should my isolation be more than I can live with, at least let the police return the Harrington and Richardson model 676 .22 caliber revolver after the trial, because otherwise I will have to use the shotgun or the .45 or even the Smith and Wesson model 500, any one of which will leave a terrible mess.

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I stand up and go to the crib. I feel the cool fabric of the little sheets. One day, my son's mother and I will put our baby in his crib for the first time. I hope he goes right to sleep. And one day when I meet her, the woman who will become his mother, I hope we both feel the tingle, the electricity of fate.