By Nathan Bogart
Artie sat in his old beat up puke green Grand Marquis outside his father’s house, still wearing his Bagel Boy work apron, doing his best to compose himself before heading inside. He looked out at the dirty snow that lined the sidewalk to his father’s front porch. Winter had washed the sky of color and the trees stood leafless against the cold wind.
The house looked like all the other pre-war houses in suburban Detroit. Except his father’s house was in shambles: the roof was beginning to cave in, the porch steps were missing, and there were holes in all the window screens that let mosquitoes and wasps in during summer.
Artie’s cell phone rang. He hesitated for a moment.
“Hey, Laurie. I’m outside his house right now.”
“I just wanted to remind you…”
“I know.”
Artie stared up at the house, he could make out the electric glow of a television through the front window.
“Stop hesitating and just do it. Just tell him already. If you don’t do it, I’m going to.”
“He’s a difficult man.”
“That’s not an excuse, Arthur. Tell him. Jamie needed help with math homework and you weren’t here. Yesterday it was science. Enough is enough.”
“You know it’s complicated.”
“Tell him.”
“Okay, I’ll see you at home.”
He hung up the phone and sighed. Artie felt every night he visited his dad was like crossing a threshold into a different world, like landing on an unknown planet and realizing that not everything operated according to the laws of earth: there were places even gravity could not touch.
The porch creaked beneath him as he made his way to the front door.
“Pop, it’s me,” he called through the door.
“Who?”
“Me, Pop. Your son.”
“Well, come on in already.”
Artie opened the door. The floors were covered in empty whiskey bottles and unwashed clothes. The smell of cigarettes hit his nostrils. His father sat on a mustard-colored recliner, his feet up on a coffee table, eyes fixed on the television screen. A half empty pint of whiskey sat between his legs.
“Hey, Pop.”
He held up a yellow finger, cuing Artie to shut up.
“Look, kid,” his dad said and gestured at the television.
A line of muscular men flexed on a stage, their veins popping and their skin glistening with oil. Artie knew all of them by name.
“See him? On the left?”
“Yeah, Pop. I see him.”
“That’s Frank Zane. The man was a living statue. That’s art. Look at his posing. Beautiful front-double. See that?”
“Yeah, I see it, Pop.”
His dad lit a cigarette, handed it to Artie.
“That’s the art of bodybuilding right there,” his dad said, “not the bullshit you see nowadays. True bodybuilding is sculpture. Proportions, symmetry, flow. That’s what it’s all about.”
“Definitely, Pop,” Artie said and took a drag of his cigarette and tried not to cough. He made his way quietly to the couch, making sure he didn’t walk in front of the television.
“So, Pop. I’ve been talking to Laurie.”
“Please, son. Not now.”
“Well, it’s just that—”
“Your ears okay? I swear you can’t hear sometimes.”
Artie’s father leaned closer to the television:
“And there’s the man of the hour. You see who that is?”
A familiar man with a barrel chest and large arms made his way to center stage. The hair, the chiseled jaw, the mountains of muscle; he resembled Superman. Or at least that’s what Artie thought every time he saw him. He flexed his biceps, puffed out his chest. The crowd cheered and the judges marveled.
“Yeah, I see who it is. It’s you, Pop.”
“Damn right,” he said. A wide smile smothered his face. “This is the year I almost won the Mr. Universe competition. That’s what a real man looks like.” His eyes turned to Artie for a moment, then back to the television.
“Look at my transitions. People don’t know this, but it’s not just the poses, but how you move from one to the other. It’s like dancing. Look at that front-lat spread! I’m unstoppable.”
Artie looked from the television to his dad. His bloated stomach hung out from under his shirt and his legs were swollen and red. A once chiseled jaw was hidden beneath puffy cheeks and a scraggly gray beard.
“You know, Joe Wieder told me I would be the next big thing. That if I wanted I could become an action star, a real celebrity, a somebody. Maybe even get my name etched in one of those sidewalk stars. Everywhere I went, I kid you not, people stared. I felt like a god.”
Artie tried to muster the courage to break the bad news. He’d spent many late nights recently in front of the bathroom mirror, splashing cold water in his face and practicing what to say:
“Pop, we’ve got to put you in a home.”
“We’ve got to place you in an elderly care facility, Pop.”
“I can’t take care of you like this anymore. Your health is declining. You’ve fallen twice. You broke a rib last month. I no longer spend quality time with my children. I’m becoming an absent father like you were.”
“You’re fucking going away, Pop. That’s that. I’m tired of this shit. I’m not you’re fucking servant. I’m your son. I deserve better. Why don’t you respect me?”
Admittedly, he hated to think about his father at an elderly facility. Perfectly manicured lawns, soft-spoken orderlies, tiny paper cups filled with pills: all hiding the fact that it was a house of death. He wondered if he struggled to tell his dad for his own sake, his own fear of seeing Superman tumble from the sky.
“You know, bodybuilding used to be a circus act,” his father suddenly started. “Strong men were freaks, like bearded ladies or wolfmen. But Eugen Sandow changed that. He held the world’s first bodybuilding show, called it ‘The Great Competition.’ What we call bodybuilding now was born from this great man’s vision. Great men, Artie, shape the world.”
His father’s monologues still had the ability to move him. When he was a kid there was nothing he aspired to be more than one of the great men his father talked about.
“Well,” his father said, “I’ve got to hit the shitter. Don’t touch the remote.”
He went to sit up and failed. And then tried again.
Artie rushed to his dad’s side and grabbed his arm. His dad slapped his hand away.
“I don’t need your help. I’m perfectly capable of getting up on my own.”
He slowly pushed himself up out of the chair and then grabbed his cane and marched off to the bathroom.
Artie sat alone in the living room. The silver screen flashing with images of past muscle men, some long dead. He wondered where those still living were now. He closed his eyes and imagined all of them clambering onto stage in their old age, including his dad, barely able to make it up the steps. Gray hair, wrinkled flesh, hanging jowls. Each standing almost naked in their posing trunks, greased and tanned and not long for the world.
On the screen, he watched their former selves pose. He knew all the moves, all the various postures: front lat-spread, most muscular, side chest, crucifix, ab and thigh, etc. He was an expert in a subject he didn’t care about.
He studied his father’s face on the television. He looked exactly how he remembered him as a kid, when he was only ever a visitor in his life, always coming and going, always on the road competing, posing for magazines, running around with women that weren’t his mom.
The walls of the living room were filled with pictures from magazines of his father in the seventies, at the height of his career. Plus, any clippings from newspapers that happened to mention his name. In the center of it all, right above the television, was a picture of him holding up Artie as a baby on stage like a trophy, his father’s handsome face beaming. Artie was too young to remember the moment and his dad never talked about it, but it was the first picture his dad put up when he moved into the house.
Artie started to pick up some of the dirty clothes and empty bottles on the floor when he heard a crash come from the bathroom.
He ran towards the noise.
“Pop, you okay? Everything okay?”
“Everything is fine God damn it. I just slipped, that’s all.”
Artie threw open the door. His father was sitting next to the toilet with blood running down his face.
“I said I’m fine, God damn it.”
“Pop, you’re bleeding.”
Artie stared down at him. His dad suddenly looked small, frail.
He thought about all of the stories of great men his dad told him. Eugen Sandow, Frank Zane, Brian Buchanan, Lee Priest. ‘A great man takes no shit from anybody,’ his dad told him once. ‘He does what he must, he looks fear in the face and says fuck you.’ Artie slumped down on the floor next to his dad and handed him a rag.
“Pop, I’ve got to put you in a home.”
His dad looked over at him in silence, blood running from his forehead to his chin. For a moment nobody said anything. The only sounds were his father’s heavy breathing and the bodybuilders posing in the living room.
“Fine, but I’m taking my tapes.”
Nathan Bogart is a Pushcart-nominated writer from Detroit, Michigan. He’s been published with Flash Fiction Magazine and Macrina Magazine. He’s currently an MFA student at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.