He's never taken a life, your father. No higher mammal at least. Egglayers and rodents only. Perhaps a porcupined dog in his youth in some mucked up mercy ritual written about in magazines you'd find only in waiting rooms and church lobbies. I am more deserving of your love than he is. My heart beats twice the size of others.
In love with stories of angry men, your father sits across the dinner table and taps the bottom of his beer bottle along the bullnose and tells me about Alexander, his horde, horseback and polycratic. Stony eyed nomads hardened by their time on Earth. Angry men who've done great things with their anger and for great things we thank God.
Your father doesn't belch but only because he doesn't need to belch. We are in your father's home, thus he thinks he is welcome to belch, but I'm twice the size of your father. And though I would never hurt him, the knowledge that I could hurt him if he were to belch should keep any potential belch at bay.
He's a devotee to history he tells me and then asks me my position. I tell him that History's an ample god but has no room left on her tit. He doesn't say another word the rest of the night. Just steadies his eyes on the ballgame stretching out from the television set.
Just to be clear, I've never taken a life either, but that's because I do not adhere to the same value systems as your father, and not due to some deficiency in me nor my life taking abilities. You see, your father is the type of man who believes in death as a dictum. A right ordained only to His highest priest, to be used sparingly, with discretion, but a right nonetheless, a right meant to be exercised, as proof of order and hierarchy and as testament to savagery subdued.
Your father belches but it is the half belch of the meek, the rat tone, or some strange creature that could be carried around in a handbag. My belch would be twice the size of your father's if I too had spent the evening imbibing the rusted cans of light beer served in the rubble of another collapsed coliseum.
History charts the turn from cat o' nine cocks to the meager minded has-beens who limply grunt in dissent of the umpire's call. Like I said, I am more deserving of your love than he is.
