“Where the
l l e H
is my son? “ AND OTHER FUNNY TIMES I THOUGHT I HAD A SON
by james Sweeney
“Where the hell is my son?” I’m running through the mall screaming “Where the hell is my son?” and “Where the hell have you put him?” when I run into an old friend from high school who works at Orange Julius. “Whoa, this guy still works at the Orange Julius at the mall?” I think to myself. “He used to be my best friend.” I stare at him for a moment, my eyes narrowing to the point of being closed to the point of hurting my eyes. “Sir, can I help you with something?” My old nickname. That son of a bitch. I think about him for a moment, about our years together working at the CD Store, about Fountains of Wayne and “Rhinestone Cowboy.” I respond to him the only way I know how, by buying a cold drink named after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. My eyes open. My shirt comes back on, and I hobble arhythmically back to Pacific Sunwear where I work selling photos of “weed” at the mall. Everyone left at the drink store whispers to themselves, saying shit like “that was classic” and “whoaaa what the .”
“Show me my son or this whole hospital burns.” The cops are on their way; that much is clear as I roll around strategically in the ER with a gun. But I’m just not sure if I can
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wait that long. My son is missing, presumably in this large hospital, specifically in the section dedicated to ATV accidents and various Sprite-esque remixes of the Spanish Influenza. As a father, I must act under a superior law, a law defined solely by my love for my son. And as an agent of a law so singular in its devotion, it is doubly important for me to reference mentally the song words of Willie Nelson: “You gotta go all in when you have the right cards, you little cracker/ But you better factor in the variables and think critically/ My Great Planes bitch.” I slip out an emergency exit, but not before explaining my mistake to a woman who stabbed her husband and sure was acting like it.
“Release my little boy from your bank’s vaulted labyrinth.” A ballpoint pen pressed tight to a teller’s throat leaves little doubt that I’m gonna ruin someone’s day soon if I’m not truly listened to. “I know my boy’s in here learning about money,” I whisper to her, the clicking of my pen at her neck acting as a separate declaration all its own, one proclaiming a singular truth: I am sternly adverse to being fucked with. “No more games!” I shout. A security guard begins to rush me; unfortunately for him, I’m a father, and so I’m more than familiar with this move. Acting almost instinc-
tively, I pivot my hip upon impact, redirecting the guard’s momentum and sending him flying directly into the vault’s pressurized locking station. I toss the teller aside as the vault’s massive door unhinges, fully prepared to kill anything that stands between me and my boy. The door opens, and my humiliation is immediate and devastating. Dozens of children of all ages and religions come pouring out, all of them obese and filthy, a wave of jaundiced babies full of change. Not one of them belongs to me, I learn, as I’m conveniently pulled into their vicious and admittedly liberating rage syndicate.
“I’m flying this plane now, so everyone should probably just help me out if you can.” The pilot is unconscious, his bare feet rubbing against my soft, worried legs as I attempt to land this plane in the ocean, or perhaps at the mall, somewhere my son would like to be. I have a shift at PacSun in three hours where I’ll slip insulin candy to grifters and high-potential 40+ moms, but that’s not what this is about. Not now. “Attention everyone, this is your captain speaking,” I begin over the plane’s CV radio, the cord of which I earlier used to turn the co-pilot into dead. I want to use this opportunity to communicate with my son directly, to speak from my full, aching heart to his congenitally much smaller one. Still, I’m overcome with fear. What will happen once the passengers as a whole find out that I snuck onto this flight and used sociology classes to make the real pilot and co-pilot kiss? I can only hope that’s not where these brave travelers draw the line. I want to say something to them to the effect of, “will everyone’s son please report to my office for scoliosis check ups,” or maybe just a bellowed, lilting “BooooOOOoooooys!” It would need to be something clever and luring, something my own crooked boy will be drawn to without a doubt. It would need to be something personal. “Jaykomb,” I begin again. “It’s daddy speaking.” No longer am I speaking and acting as I believe a pilot would, contorting my voice to resemble that of a cyborg with a tracheotomy and a fondness for the self-pleasure technique known as edging. Now I am just myself: a worried father, an inexperienced Delta pilot, a former best friend. A man who is deeply, deeply embarrassed. I brace myself and breathe in slowly. I disengage the autopilot. I fuck the Orange Julius up so bad.