By Jordan Witham
Ka drags her draw knife down the side of a large, rectangular piece of basswood. Chips fall around her feet like rain. A half-smoked cigarette sits on the edge of a cup halfway filled with ash. Smoke lazily drifts up from its dimly glowing end. Come on Ka, just let your mind drift and come upon a new idea. Ka thinks to herself, trying to forget the conflicting feelings she has running around inside her brain. What kind of daughter hates their father for something he did decades ago? She thinks to herself, asking a question she had been asking herself every day since her father explained his true past to her a week ago. I guess now I know for sure why he drowned that statue of himself. It didn’t sit right with him for me to portray him as a victim. She grabs a smaller blade and starts carving indiscriminately, searching her brain for a person, place, emotion, anything she could pull from her mind that this shape she is creating could be. As she carves, she gets lost in her thoughts. I’ve seen the faces of killers on the television before, but his face, I just don’t know if his face belongs among the others. Her hands move from tool to tool, shaping and molding the wood into that of a face, her mind is still elsewhere. How can I trust him? He kept this from me for so long. Who’s saying he’s not keeping more things from me? I just don’t know how to feel! I don’t know what I should do, what I can do, if I should do anything at all! Uh! I hate this! I hate not knowing what to do! Ka continues thinking to herself, her anger building up until she lets some out by slashing a large vertical cut into the wooden face. I don’t know, I feel like I can’t go on until I figure this out, but I don’t know if I’ll ever figure this out! Ka switches to using tools meant for smaller detailing but is not letting herself think about what she is actually carving. I feel hopeless, I feel this emptiness in me, guilt, it’s guilt for crimes I never committed. Can I be held responsible? Just by my blood? The half of the blood in my body that’s my father’s. What if people find out what he did? What if they take him away? Ka stops, she is surprised to feel fear towards her last thought. Why am I scared of the possibility of not seeing him again? I understand why I was scared when he disappeared with the statue but I feel the same fear even now. Now that I know who he was. Who he was, was, was. Ka thinks about the word ‘was’ over and over again. She decides to continue carving as she debates this word. He was an awful person, he was a torturer, he was a monster. But not anymore, I have not seen him hurt even a fly in my entire life. I guess the statue kina counts but he had a reason for that. Which is good, he knows he doesn’t deserve to be seen as a victim. Ka stops carving once again as she realizes something. He destroyed the statue because he loved me, he would rather show who he was than let me continue thinking of him as a victim. He knew I might hate him, but he decided to tell me the truth anyway, in his own way. Ka, now with a clear mind starts carving again, this time with an end result in mind.
Ka’s father pulls the keys from his car as he looks at his home. He signs as he exits his car and enters the upper portion of the house where he, his wife and daughter live. He knows his daughter is home, but has no idea what to say, if he should say anything at all. They have not spoken in a week and he does not know if she will ever speak to him again. If she decides to see me as who I was, as a death bringer, a dew breaker, then that is what she feels. He thinks to himself as he changes out of his work clothes and into a pair of older, more comfortable pants and a t-shirt. But maybe I can talk to her some more, explain how I no longer hurt others. How I have worked hard for decades to live a regular life. He thinks to himself, starting to pace in his room. Suddenly he decides he cannot waste anymore time. He bursts through his door with a fast paced walk to his daughter’s studio, where he knows she will be.
He walks to the door and stops, he thinks to himself; what am I going to say? She probably hates me, I don’t want to force her to feel any particular way but I don’t want her to hate me. I want her to love me, and I am willing to do what it takes to receive her forgiveness. After a few more seconds of building up courage he turns the knob and opens the door.
Wood scraps litter the floor, a cup mostly full of ash holds the remains of about a full pack of cigarettes, with one left intact and still burning. Ka is carving still, putting the final touches on her piece. She hears the door to her wood carving room open and she stops and turns around. Her father stands before her, his nose scrunched up from the smell of cigarettes which she herself has become blind to. She had been secretly hoping he would walk in on her carving the piece for the better part of an hour. She smiles, and sees her father’s eyes widen with surprise. She moves to the side of the piece to let him get a better view.
Ka cannot believe his eyes, in front of him is his own face. Unlike her previous carving of him, this one emphasizes his scar. The rest of the carving shows his face in a calm and peaceful expression.
“Do you like it?” She shyly asks, not sure of exactly what her father is thinking.
“I… I do,” he says, stuttering a bit due to his state of awe.
“I have not talked to you since I learned of your past. I didn’t know how to feel, honestly I was more angry at myself for not being able to make up my own mind than I was angry at you.” She says, blushing slightly as she realizes she overshard a little. Her father walks up to the statue, lifts up his left hand and runs his index finger along the scar.
“It represents how scars don’t go away, but that the rest of the face is not tied to it. The scar will stay there, but it does not represent all that the face is and can be. You will forever bear your scar, your actions cannot be undone. But you can and have moved on, and you are living an honest and peaceful life” she says, tears starting to fall from her eyes. Her father turns his gaze to her, his eyes also tearing up. They embrace each other, “I love you dad, I always will,” she says, her face buried in her father’s shoulder. “I will always love you too, Ka” he says in a broken, but happy voice.
Okay now that was fun to write, I particularly had fun breaking parts of the story into two different perspectives. I love stories about redemption and moving on from a bad past. To be completely honest with you, this reflection is gonna be a lot harder to write than the actual short story. I guess the first inspiration of my story is the book for which I am basing it off of. I enjoyed the book, but wished there was more about the aftermath of Ka discovering her father’s past. I can imagine her not knowing how to think after having her image of her father shattered. I can also imagine her carving a piece just to help her let out steam. I didn’t really know how to write to her father, I knew he did not really ever take responsibility or show remorse for his actions. So I decided to write to him as only feeling emotion for his daughter. I enjoyed writing him as emotionally repressing himself, and him letting it all out and showing emotion as he embraces Ka in the end of the story.
Another inspiration of mine is Return of the Jedi directed by George Lucas. In the movie Luke has to contemplate his mixed feelings for his father. He has to decide whether or not to join him, defeat him or even kill him in order to save the Galaxy. I always wished we got more insight into his internal struggle of accepting that his father is Darth Vader, and if he should forgive him or hate him. This story was a chance for me to explore that sort of struggle. To explore the mind of someone who discovers their father has done some very awful things. Them trying to figure out what type of relationship they want to continue having with said person. The movie also switches between many perspectives, especially the perspectives of Luke and Darth Vader. My third and final inspiration is the novel As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. I read the novel last semester and really enjoyed how each chapter of the novel is from the perspective of one of the 15 characters. I really enjoyed how each chapter was so different. The book dived into the minds and issues of each character and explored how they interact with each other. I wanted to emulate this in my story, by using the perspective of both Ka and her father. They are very different people, Ka can be very emotional and reckless (I made those traits more potent in my story). While her father used almost no emotion and never showed any guilt for his actions. I wanted the two perspectives to be as different as possible like in the novel I read last semester. However, I did want to show him as human, he knows what he did was wrong and why Ka is upset with him. He truly loves Ka, because he sees Ka as the representation of a new life. He was able to be a different person, a father, who cares for their daughter. So I decided to have him finally show emotion at the very end, breaking down and crying with Ka upon hearing that she still loves him. I love writing drastically different characters in the same story. It lets me not get bored with one character reacting the same way to everything. I particularly enjoyed the idea of Ka letting herself fall into thought while carving, letting the outcome of the wood piece be the same as the outcome of her feelings for her father. She sees him as someone with scars, someone who cannot undo what they have done. But that scar only takes up part of his face, like his actions only make up a portion of his life.
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Sprockets and Springes 