Working Class Hero: a serial novel(Chapter 1: Life Span)

When I was nineteen my father dropped dead of a heart-attack. He was at work, alone in the thin-film room at Western Electric, inspecting silicon chips with a microscope. It was late Friday night and he was checking the quality of gold plating when a spasm ran up his left arm and wrapped his heart with a bear hug. He fell off his chair and died on the tiles five minutes later.

I was to start work at Western Electric that very next week. He dropped me off at my apartment earlier that same day and reminded me that he had helped get me the job so dress nice and act responsible. “I’ll pick you up Monday at three so don’t be late my prodigal son.” Of course I had no idea those would be his last words to me. I said something clever in response I know, but dammed if I can remember what.

Later that night Annie and I went to see some movie, but I was home alone at eleven when the bell rang. I skipped downstairs and opened the door. My brother pushed me back upstairs ignoring all my protests and pointed questions. Jack is ten years older than me but he’s not the variety of older sibling that shoves his younger one around, or at least he hadn’t been since I had turned thirteen or thereabouts. He closed the apartment door behind us. “Sit down brother”, he said. It wasn’t a request; he never called me “brother.”

“Hey, what the hell did I do now,” I asked. But I could tell from his troubled expression and swollen bloodshot eyes that I hadn’t done anything, but something was about to be done to me. I know it’s just a cliché, but the room closed in on us. The light grew clear and darkly intense and the beige walls came to life. I was looking at a long white crack in the aging plaster.

“It’s dad,” he said. I measured the next seconds as if they were slow cold drips from a faucet. “He’s dead.”

We didn’t hug. We’re not that kind of family. But after my brother left I drank a beer and tried to reminisce about my father. I couldn’t remember the last time I hugged him or told him that I loved him. I remembered him embracing me though. He had a few too many one night, grabbed me in a bear hug and said “I love you, you know, you lazy long-haired hippie college drop-out.”

I squirmed uncomfortable in his arms. “Jeez, Dad, I’ll get a job soon enough,” I answered.

“Well, I won’t be alive forever,” he said somberly. My father could get quite maudlin after several Budweisers. In fact I can still see him at our summer cottage, at twilight, a glass of beer in his hand, looking out the bay window at a swarm of insects and holding forth on the life span of a moth. It was more amusing then of course than it sounds right now.


copyright 2004 Gregory Perry


I'm attempting a novel in serial form. I'm not sure where it's heading although I have some direction in mind. I've never done this kind of long form writing before, but thought the demands for a daily entry in this blog would provide some impetus to attempt a short weekly chapter. Any feedback would be appreciated. And could veer this work in progress into unforeseen vectors.