Tommy's Window

On a cold, rainy fall night, a young boy named Tommy waited by his window. He didn’t wait for the “tooth fairy” or some other childish fantasy. No, he waited for his father, the alcoholic. He sat alone, with the clock ticking on his wall, and the constant shiver that comes from living in a home without proper heating. It didn’t seem to bother Tommy though, because while he waited, he drew, on a yellowed sheet of paper, the one thing he wanted most of all. He would stop, every once in a while, to rest his hand and look out at the dead, dirty leaves as they danced a silent waltz with the wind, through the streets and lawns of his town. He would look out at the street lights and watch the bugs as they flitted about carelessly, and wondered what it was like, to fly that is, and if his mother was flying too, even as he thought about it.

Tommy’s eyes were heavy, but he’d promised himself that he’d stay awake. He had finished his picture, and it lay facedown on his battered, wooden desk. His head lay on the desk too, with his head turned just enough so he could still outside his window. He turned his gaze to the street in time to see the approaching headlights. He watched as the headlights turned into the driveway and were shut off. A dark silhouette emerged from the vehicle and began shambling to the house. The figure stopped for a moment to pick up something from the lawn, but was soon back on track to the house once more. Tommy could hear the familiar sound of jingling keys going into the lock, and knowing what was coming, he hid, as usual, under the bed where he felt safe. The heavy thud of boots on the wooden floor echoed throughout the empty house until reaching the boy’s door, where they stopped.

Tommy could smell his father, even before he saw him open the creaky door leading into his room. The father turned on the lights, and called his son’s name softly. Tommy crawled out slowly, and stood with his head down. The father dropped the baseball he had found in the yard, and asked his son to pick it up and hand it back to him. Tommy obeyed, picked up the ball, and handed it to his father. Tossing the ball up and down for a few seconds, the father suddenly stopped, wound back, and sent the ball crashing through the room’s only window. The father went to the desk at the window and grabbing the chair there, proceeded to break the rest of the glass untouched by the ball. It never even occurred once to the father that Tommy never played baseball, let alone owned a baseball in his short life, but nevertheless, the man’s drunken tirade on the “importance of picking up after yourself” ended in the conclusion that the boy needed to be taught a lesson.

The shadows cast on the walls told the sad story to all the world, and when it was done, Tommy’s window, his only escape, was, of course, shattered. The cool breeze blew in through the jagged teeth of glass, blowing the child’s drawing to the floor and directly in front of the man Tommy had called his father. Seeing this, the man bent over with a grunt and picked up the picture. In it, there were three angels all flying together, hand-in-hand, and however crude the small child’s drawing might’ve been, the meaning was clear. In the end, the night’s earlier violence never even woke the neighbors, and most of the them never quite understood what happened either. All they really knew was what little the fire department told them the next morning, when the fire had finally died out. The news story on the suspected arson and the two lives lost to the flames was just as brief. The story barely made page three…