The Best Contraceptive

It's usually more
like babysitting than work.
The pipes are mostly silent
but my buddy's son is not.
He's nine and precocious.
He likes feeling useful.
If I can keep him busy I try to
though most times he's bored
and gets in my hair. My friend
brings him along on our
moonlighting jobs to get one
of three young sons out of
his wife's weary lap. It's no wonder
that he's going gray and balding
prematurely. I used to be envious.
That all has changed.

"My dad pays you way
more than me," he whines
in reference to his three bucks a day.
"There's an aggravation tax involved,"
I tell him, sending the joke
clean over his short-cropped hair.
"Did your dad pay you a lot
when you helped him as a kid?"
I think back to my first paying job
trimming tree limbs from the massive
pines on his property
in the Adirondacks. Five an hour
for back-breaking work. I was the same
age as the squirt kneeling next to me
but I had no one around to pester
and mistakes have no siblings.
With my meager earnings
I bought a fox pelt at a taxidermy shop
on the ride home from the mountains.
I've always made wise purchases.
I've always had sweet gigs.
"No," I tell him through
my teeth while wondering
what those trees look like now.
The pelt is long gone
if not in his basement.
The trees might be, too.
He's bad with his money.

My diminutive partner won't let it rest.
"What'd you guys do?"
"Not much. He wasn't very
good with his hands," I reply
with an understatement
as the wrench slips a bit
"or much else."
Junior takes a moment
to ponder the strange existence
of a mechanically useless father
unheard of in his neck of the woods.
I tighten the screws in the floor drain
wishing more than dirty water
could be washed down its void.

A staticky country tune I've begrudingly
come to love blares in the other room
where my friend's setting fixtures.
Aside from the God part the song's
got it right: booze is good, people
are crazy.

"You don't talk about him much,"
the boy says. Clearly we've never
tossed cocktails back together
and if we're lucky we never will.
I don't want to be the same man
when he's old enough to drink.
The next inevitable question comes
timed perfectly with the dripping
of sweat from my brow--
"Is he dead?"

My answer lands before
he can refill his lungs.
It's no lie. There's more
to being alive than breathing.
You've got to have a soul
and not only worry about
whether or not it's Saved.
The kid pulls out his pocketknife
and cleans dirt from under his nails.
If only adults could have the same
detached responses to answers
that made their questions regrettable.

I chisel out some tile to make room
for the drain. The floor guys never
remove enough. It's hard to willingly
destroy your own work, especially
when on your knees.
"Can I do that?" he asks, his knife
no longer relevant.
"No," I say in as kind a voice
as I can fake. "Go help your old man."