Jan 29th, 2015 - Joe Marshall

I’m driving my son to preschool along Fairview Road. It’s so unseasonably warm that but for the bare bone-tops of sycamores, it could be spring. Tasks run through my head for the few hours I shed my stay-at-home-dad duties. To start: drive to the commercial wood shop where I’ve rented a dark corner for one hundred a month, and there, begin my first commissioned table. Not my first table, mind you — I’d made a farmhouse style before and sold it at Plume — but my wife still harbored doubts.

“You’ve never made furniture,” she’d said, exasperated by my plans. “People don’t just wake up and make furniture.”

So I made her a table: a mid-century trestle in solid walnut with a curved edge, a style I hadn’t seen in magazines or illustrations, one purely my own. When I applied my blend of oils with glancing strokes, the woodgrain sang in a sudden aria. I stepped back, studied my work, knew I’d done good.

“Tools are expensive,” she said upon seeing it.

I looked from the table to her and smiled, accepting the endorsement.

“Tables are expensive,” I said.

A Facebook friend commissioned one upon seeing my post, and I’d fretted on how to price it, what profit was acceptable, how much my hours were worth, how long it would take. I suggested a cost I feared too high; they accepted immediately. But I’d made no drawings, having conceived the design in my head and building by feel and instinct. Now, my mind scrolls through another list: flickering memories of cuts and tenons and mortises and angles.

“Daddy?” my son says from behind me in the car; I almost don’t hear him over the churn in my brain. “Daddy, I want to tell you something.”

“Yes, son,” I say, a beat late.

“Dogs make poo, Daddy.”

I snort a laugh and half turn to look at him. “Really?”

“Yes, daddy,” he says, but his voice is deliberate, like I should be taking him seriously. “Dogs poo everywhere.”

“Everywhere?” I reply in a more serious tone.

“Totally,” he says, but he’s looking away, and I can tell he’s annoyed with me.

After dropping him off, I sit in the car and replay the exchange and laugh. I slip the car into gear but pause, shove it back into park, whip out my phone, and type our brief conversation into a Facebook post styled like a script.

Connor: Daddy, I want to tell you something

Me: Yes, son

Connor: Dogs make Poo daddy

Me: Really?

Connor: Yes daddy, everywhere

Me: Everywhere?

Connor: Totally Daddy

I tap share and watch for little blue thumbs. One. Two. Refresh. Two. Refresh again. Two. I put the car in gear and drive the mile to the shop.

As I turn into the lot, a ringtone blares from my phone: a video call from my parents. They share an account my sister recently created, so it could be either of them. I park the car and accept the call. The screen goes black, not fully black though, it flares with red and gray.

“Hello?” my dad yells. “Hello?”

“How-are-ya Dad,” I say, trying to figure what’s wrong with the screen.

“Jaysus, Joe. You’re there?”

“I am,” I say.

“That’s fecken hilarious,” he chortles. “Dogs pooh everywhere! Your poor mother almost peed herself laughing. And sure, isn’t the child right: you can’t take a walk into town without stepping over dog shites. Dirty polluting bastards.”

“He’s funny all-right,” I say, but remember the way he turned from me in the car and my stomach tightens.

My mother mutters something about incontinence and when my dad turns to look at her, his hairy ear fills my screen. He scolds her for ruining a good story.

“Are you sure this call isn’t costing anything?” he says to me as his ear expands and the screen fades to the same reddish-black. “Should I send you a few bob?”

“No, Dad,” I say. “Doesn’t cost a penny.”

“Would have cost a fortune before,” he says. “It’s completely free?”

“With a Facebook account, you can call as often as you like.”

“Facebook,” he says. “I’ll tell you something else about dogs now, Joe. I’ve been on the Facebook lately, for news and the like, and what did I see but dogs been stollen. They’re stealing dogs all over this country now.”

“Stealing Dogs?” I say. “Who’s stealing dogs?”

“Nobody knows. But I was chatting to Hellen next door - you remember Helen Corbet?”

“I do,” I say.

“And Jimmi Dunne too — you remember Jimmi?”

“O’course I do, Dad.”

“The pair of them said they’ve seen the same thing on The Facebook. We’re all terrified to let our dogs out of our sight.”

“You’re afraid of someone nicking your dog?” I say. “The one you said looked like a four-legged turd?”

“Don’t you be knocking my dog,” he counters. “She’s a grand dog. You’re a grand dog, aren’t ya,” he says into the room and their dog barks and whimpers.

“Dad, nobody’s stealing people’s dogs.”

“Amin’t I after reading it right here on The Facebook,” he says.

“Facebook isn’t the Irish Times,” I say. “It’s not the BBC. It’s stuff people make up. Any gobshite can say anything on there.”

“So none of it’s true?” he asks. “We’ve been fretting over nothing?”

“No, some of it’s true, some of it’s not. You have to use your judgement.”

“Judgement!” he says. “Whose judgement? Mine? How the feck am I supposed to know? That’s what news is for.”

“It’s not news,” I say, but a delivery van has pulled into the yard and I’m in the way. “Look, I’m going to have to go.”

“What about eejits with no judgement?” he shouts into the phone like I’m walking away.

“They’ll still be eejits. Dad, I have to go. I’ll call soon.”

“Right so,” he says. There’s confusion and doubt in his voice. “Bye, Joe. Bye-bye-bye.”

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Joe Marshall (Seosamh Liam O’Marascal) is from County Laois, Ireland, but emigrated in his mid-twenties to Missouri, USA. His writing is inspired by Irish rural life and seeks to discuss broad social issues through intimate stories told in long form fiction. He sits on the board of the Unbound Book Festival, an annual literary festival held in Columbia, Missouri. By day, he designs and builds high-end custom furniture.