Scars

By Ashley Niedzwiecki

A man sits in a bar surrounded by empty beers
and cigarette butts.
He tells the crowd that gathers about his scars,
making up every word.
He tells of the one he got in Korea,
“The chinks had me surrounded, and I had to fight
them off on my own,”
he says,
“One got close enough to stab my shoulder,
and it was the last thing he ever did.”

Meanwhile, his wife is at home, putting their six children
down to sleep.
The baby cries in her arms as she tries to wrestle
her three boys into their pajamas.
Their oldest daughter marches past the chaos and
rolls her eyes,
muttering under her breath about the party she
wanted to go to.

He tells of the one he got hunting grizzlies
with Smitty and Clyde.
“The bear charged at us and then stood on his hind legs
and let out a roar
louder than Smitty’s snoring,”
he says, pausing to appreciate the laughter.
“Then he took a swipe at me and got my chest,
ripping through my jacket. He came back
for more, but before he could, I blew his head off.”

His wife glances at the clock, blaming it for her
husband’s absence.
She goes to his tool box with a sudden resolve and
grabs a screw driver.
Without a word, without even an expression on her face,
she changes all the locks.
Goes into the bedroom they’ve shared for 14 years
and packs all his clothes.
She puts them on the front lawn, with a note.

In the bathroom of the bar, he stares at his reflection
in the mirror, leaning on the sink to
hold himself up.
He stares at the scar above his left eye, remembering the
time his father grabbed him and threw him into
the wall because he took too long to milk the cows.
Anger boils up inside of him, and he punches the mirror,
so that broken glass and blood litter the floor.
The bartender cuts him off and offers to call a cab, but he just
yells at him to mind his own goddamn business,
grabs his keys and staggers out to his truck, almost hitting
a group of men as he swerves onto the road.

She changes into her nightgown, making sure to face
away from the mirror so she won’t have to look
at the bruises on her back from the night before.
Goes into the bathroom to wash away the make up
she used to cover the scar on her cheek
from his wedding ring.
She checks to make sure the kids are all asleep, shuts off
all the lights, and climbs into bed alone,
crying herself to sleep,
his gun on the nightstand, just in case.

He sees his suitcases on the lawn and reads the note,
and yells “bitch” at the darkened house
until his throat won’t let him anymore.
When he gets no answer, he drives off into the night
and stops at the railroad tracks where
his mother, drunk with pain,
raced a train to her death.
He throws his beer at the tracks, remembering everything
the booze was supposed to help him forget,
and cries more freely than he has since
he was eight years old.

He spends the next year getting dry, and then another
six months begging for forgiveness.
He doesn’t talk about his scars anymore,
truthfully or otherwise.
Just changes the subject angrily whenever they are
brought up,
and finally, looks the other way when his grown son
goes to the bar every night
to drink away the scars his father gave to him.