The Mechanical Man

When I was twelve, my brother began building a mechanical man. He started by clearing a spot out behind the barn and rounding up all the busted parts he could find from old combines and tractor engines. When I wasn’t inside doing house chores or over at Marlena Ryerson’s house playing Barbies, I was out behind the barn, helping my brother with the man. Sometimes I roamed our family’s ranch scouting parts, sometimes I helped figure out what should be welded to what. I brought out plastic cups of Coca-Cola rattling with ice and sat on a stack of hay bales while my brother worked. He was devoted to the project and his devotion was moving to watch. The purpose of the mechanical man, my brother said, was to kill my father.

Sean was fourteen at the time, and small for his age. His arms trembled when he helped my dad load feed into our truck, and he was always picked close to last in sports at school. Sometimes I joked around with my brother and called the mechanical man “The Professional,” or “The Contract Killer,” because we both knew Sean was too weak to kill our father in any sort of a violent way. But I never said things like that in front of my dad. Back then, I loved my dad as much as Sean hated him.

Sometimes we’d be out behind the barn working on the mechanical man and my father would come out to see what we were up to. We’d have a mix of pop music blaring and the first thing my dad would do is shut it off. That’s how we’d know he was there. He would always say he didn’t know how anyone could stand that rap stuff. The music we listened to wasn’t really rap but it didn’t matter to my dad. To him, anything that wasn’t country qualified as that rap stuff. He’d switch the music off and then circle around the mechanical man slowly, making his inspection. Of course, he had no clue as to the mechanical man’s purpose.

“Hmph, it’s interesting,” my dad would say, his hands tucked into his armpits and his thumbs sticking out. Then he’d lean over and take a closer look at the quality of the mechanical man’s construction. “A little sloppy though. Look like some of your welds could use a more expert hand,” he’d say.

I knew that was my dad’s way of helping, but it usually missed its mark. It never made my brother feel very helped. Without saying a word, my brother would throw down the welding mask and marched into the house.

“You know if you leave that out it’ll rust,” my dad would say, as though I had been the one to toss the mask into the straw. “Better pick it up. Looks like rain.”

Once, I overheard my father arguing with my mother about the mechanical man. It was late at night, and we had all gone to bed when their voices began to rise out of the darkness.

“Nothing wrong with his having a creative outlet, James,” my mother was saying. She thought the family was on the verge of having its first-ever bonafide artist on its hands, and in her eyes this was a significant step up from the generations upon generations of cattle ranchers, military men, and auto mechanics that made up both sides of our family. My mother was somewhat artless herself but very sensitive and very bright, and she was eager to encourage any creative genius we might have in the family.

“It ain’t right, Colleen. Something unnatural about it and you know it. We need to think about whether it’s time we put our foot down.”

“James, that’s not fair. Besides, think of Cassie—she likes working on it too. It’s a way for them to still spend a little time together.”

At the mention of my name, my ears perked up even further. I sat up in...