Capes and Cones for the Clothesmakers

    On a summer’s day, the type where the sun is up from six in the morning until nine o’clock at night, the heat becomes inescapable. The young man decided to take his only son to the park, a perfect walking distance of only four blocks for digesting a bit of lunch before an afternoon of playing. The early afternoon, some would say, is the silliest time of day for playing in the park, but the young man preferred it because the playground wasn’t overrun and it still allowed for plenty of time to play before the potential afternoon rain.
    “Jack, are you ready to go to the park?” the young man hollered down the hallway towards his son’s room.
    “Yeah,” screamed the voice of a five year old boy, followed by muffled words as he mumbled something and his voice faded.
    The young man went to the kitchen and added a few more ice cubes to their water bottle, knowing that an affirmative response from his son meant one minute, and silence, of course, meant he wanted someone to come find him.
    When the young man closed the freezer door, Jack was standing in the doorway in brown shorts, grass stained tennis shoes, and an oversized sweater with purple and green alternating stripes. The sweater was a handmade gift from the young man’s mother, given to Jack on his third birthday. Being made of wool and being perfectly sized for a seven year old, the young man saw the futility of the gift during the summer months, but showed little surprise when Jack opened the gift.
    “What do we have here Jack,” the young man exclaimed on Jack’s third birthday. “Oh, it’s an enormous, wool sweater.”
    Jack’s grandmother could hardly contain her excitement at her own gift, “Now I made it this w-.”
    “You made this sweater mom?” said the young man with wrinkled brow.
    “Yes, and I did it because, well, you see, our ancestors were some of the most famous clothes makers back in France during the eighteenth century and -.”
    “Who did what when?” the young man attempted to interject, knowing his mother would stop for nobody once she began one of her many indomitable tales.
    “- when explorers to the new world found cotton in America, well, everyone in Europe started wanting softer cotton clothing. It was an old form of keeping up with the Jones’ you see. This started putting our family out of business as the most prized of clothes makers. Nobody was buying wool, complaining of the unpleasant scratchiness. They of course, our ancestors, appealed to the courts to regulate the import of cotton so that they could stay in business. They went so far to save the family business that they proposed that police go around town tearing the cotton clothes off prostitutes to scare people away from wearing cotton. Alas, the Achilles heel of our family, the great cotton barons. None of their ideas panned out to save the business and our family lost most of their customers and work. So sad.
    Seeing the end of the story in his mothers distant gaze the young man asked with bafflement, “Mom, where did you hear all of that?”
    “Darling this is our family history. Tales as old as time. I could have sworn I told you before. Anyway, I made it in honor of our poor ancestors, and besides, wool will last much longer anyway. That’s also why it’s a bit too large for him now, so that he can wear it for years to come and grow into it.”
    That’s precisely what Jack began to do when he found the sweater a few months after his fifth birthday in the basement among unpacked boxes. On this exceedingly hot day the young man was not surprised that his son had followed suit with the past months, and chose to wear the sweater, hanging low enough to cover almost his entire shorts.
    “Got your sweater on again, eh buddy?”
    “Yep,” said Jack, staring his father directly in the eyes.
    “Let me help you with those sleeves,” said the young man as he reached out and rolled the boy’s sleeves above his wrists. “Now you’re ready for the park.”

    At the park the young man sat at a table by the playground where he could see Jack roam from swing to monkey bars and everywhere between. There was one other child, a girl of maybe two and her mother, following her every move with outstretched arms forming a bubble around the girl, catching her whenever she would begin to topple on weak legs. The young man set the water bottle and a book on the table.
    After five minutes at the table watching Jack move about with alacrity, with seeming assurance that the games in his head were as real as anything else, the young man’s pocket began to buzz.
    “Hello,” the young man said with the mock interrogative of the days before caller id.
    “You are not going to believe what happened today at the conference, well, not at the conference, but because we’re at the conference, it happened here in San Diego. So last night -.
    The young man switched the phone to his other hand and tucked his free hand under the bent elbow of the arm holding the phone. He mumbled something about lost pleasantries, but the woman continued, far too loud to hear him speak.
    “- we decided, Karen, Jeremy, Bob, and I, that since we had been sitting inside listening to these speeches and doing these exercises in new methodology blah, blah, blah, we needed to go out to drinks, see the city. We have been here for three days now, and so we invite Adam, even though we think he’ll say no. Well, he comes, and we four get a little crazy, have way too many, nothing stupid, but we talk about all sorts of things, have some laughs. Oh, Karen finally told me what happened with Bryan by the way, what a story.”
    “Oh good, I was wondering about -”
    “Uh, don’t be a jerk. Anyway, point is that Adam apparently called Roger, who’s the regional director, who called Bill, who called all of us here, and now the board is having some meeting about a proper punishment for lack of professionalism at work, even though we weren’t at work.” She let out a dispelling sigh.
    “So should Jack and I start packing up the house, are you getting fired?”
    “Sometimes I just don’t understand you. You are so uncaring, it’s like you don-”
    “Hold on one second. I need to put the phone down to help Jack with his sweater.” As he put the phone down he could hear muffled noises from the phone. The young man grabbed the sweater from the bottom and pulled up while Jack lifted his arms above his head and simultaneously ducked down.
    “Got a little hot in that sweater huh buddy?”
    “Yeah,” said Jack as he broke his father’s gaze and darted back toward the playground. The young man hesitated a second, watched Jack run, and then picked up the phone again, resuming his position.
    “Sorry, but Jack needed help getting his-”
    “He’s still wearing that ugly sweater, why would you let him wear it, I don’t understand you sometimes. I told you to take it away from him. Nevermind, anyway, Bill says this meeting and our punishment is just a formality to appease Adam. They can’t really get mad at us for what we do after the conference is out for the day. I just could not believe that Adam would be such a pain in the ass, it makes me so angry.”
    “When are you coming home? You should start coming to the park with Jack and I on weekends, he loves when-”
    “I will be home on Thursday. I have to go, give the little rat a hug from me. Stop letting him wear that sweater also. I love you guys, bye.”
    The phone clicked before the young man could say goodbye, could say anything really. Jack was on all fours, stalking a squirrel. When the squirrel finally darted, Jack stood up, let out a loud whistle, turned on the spot and high stepped all the way to the slide where he plopped down at the bottom. The young man put the phone back in his pocket and picked up the book. After he stared at the cover for a brief time he set the book back on the table. At that moment an older man rode up to the table on a bike, wearing a small backpack and balancing a large garbage bag on the handlebars. He dismounted, leaning the bike against the table, setting the garbage bag on the ground, and removing his hat, he gave the young man a wide intermittently toothed smile that rumpled his already wrinkled skin.
    “Hey there! You writing a letter to your wife?” the old man nearly yelled.
    “Not exactly,” replied the young man, slightly perplexed.
    “Dear honey, I have to leave you. This won’t be the final goodbye.” The old man walked a circle around the table, looking up at the sky, stretching. He suddenly stopped, looked down as he lifted his right leg to the inside to inspect the bottom of his shoe. He huffed and sat down at the table across from the young man. “Someone didn’t attend to their dog. I tell you it’s that ten percent all the time god dangit,” the old man said as he wiped his shoe fiercely on the grass. The young man looked over at Jack who was still sitting at the base of the slide tossing rocks.
    “You got smokes?” asked the old man, bringing the young man back to the table.
    “No, sorry,” the young man mumbled.
    “Didn’t think so god dangit. Do you have any rolling papers?”
    “Nah, I don’t,” replied the young man, laughing to himself slightly.
    “Well, it’s been a long time since I got a letter from anyone,” said the old man as he picked up his garbage bag. He remounted his bike, balancing the bag on the handlebars once again and rode away, teetering through the park.
    The young man looked back down at the book once again and then up at the playground. “Hey Jack!” he hollered as he waved his hand toward himself once the boy looked. Jack dropped a handful of rocks and sprinted toward his father. “Here buddy, have a drink,” said the young man, handing his son the water bottle. Jack took a long drink from the bottle and put his other hand in his pocket pulling out a small brown stone with a single white streak.
    “Here dad, I found this for you.”
    The young man took the stone in silence, stared at it for nearly a minute while Jack took another big drink from the bottle. The young man put the stone in his pocket and tied the sweater around Jack’s neck by the sleeves. It draped back over his shoulders and down his back like a cape. The young man took the bottle and picked up the book he had yet to open. He took his son’s hand and the two left the park. They walked to the ice cream shop and got cones, not cups.