Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories

BREAKFAST

The son cracked an egg, expecting yolk and egg, but instead dropped his father’s impossibly small corpse into the mixing bowl. The son was only mildly surprised. His father had died eleven years earlier, so grief had become a predictable clown.

But what should the son have done with his father’s body? He couldn’t recycle it or toss it into the trash or compost bin. And he didn’t want to wear it around his neck like jewelry or hang it from the rearview mirror like a dream catcher.

The son wondered what advice his father would have given him.

He would have said, “Don’t embarrass me.”

He would have said, “What kind of warrior are you?”

He would have said, “Put on the war paint, you faggot, and ride your pony into battle.”

So, like his father would have done, the son added onions, green peppers, diced ham, and egg yolks and whites into the bowl, folded his father into the mix, poured it into the oiled frying pain, and cooked it golden.

One would have expected the omelet to taste bitter, but the son only thought that it needed salt — more salt — tons of salt — all the salt in the world.