Down in History
by Michael Czyzniejewski
My father had this joke: He’d be talking to people and he’d slip in something about Fred Flintstone being dead, then go on as if he hadn’t said it. Whomever he was talking to would interrupt, say, Wait, what? My father would counter, What? Then the person would say, Fred Flinstone’s dead? My dad would answer, Of course. He’s a caveman. He died over three thousand years ago. Then my father would keep on talking. Some people laughed. Most didn’t. I always laughed. My father didn’t tell a lot of jokes, but that was my favorite.
My father left when I was 16. I came home from school and he wasn’t there. He missed dinner. Before bed, I asked Mom what was up. He’d never not been home. Mom told me he was gone for good. I asked her what she meant. She said she meant exactly that, that he wasn’t ever coming back. She told me to go to sleep. She looked out the window. It was dark. All she could see was her reflection staring back, me over her shoulder. I didn’t bring Dad up again.
I acted out. My grades plummeted. I punched a kid in gym. I told the geometry guy to fuck himself. I smoked everything smokable. A vice principal called Mom. She went into her bedroom, as if I couldn’t hear through the door. She told the vice principal about my father. She connected the timelines, his leaving, my behavior. She stressed, No, he’s not coming back. She hung up. That night she bought me a car from a corner used lot, a rusty convertible that barely ran—I could see through the floor to the street. I stopped screwing up so much. My grades stayed shit, but I got a job. I met a girl. I moved out after graduation. And yeah, like Dad, I never went back.
Mom died on my thirtieth birthday. I attended her wake. We hadn’t spoken in months. I saw my relatives, aunts, uncles, cousins, for the first time in years. They didn’t look happy to see me, but who looks happy at wakes? There was a strange guy there. My Uncle Gary asked me, as the stranger knelt at the coffin, if I knew who he was. I said no. Uncle Gary said the kneeling man was my real father. I reminded Uncle Gary I knew my father, yeah, at least until I was 16. Uncle Gary said the guy at the coffin was my dad, married to my mom until I was 2. She got with the second guy, the one who skedaddled when I was 16, six months later. I would have told you, Uncle Gary said. I said, You just did. I took in the sight, mom laid out, this supposed dad at her side. I left, never seeing those people again.
I drove around that night and imagined my fathers, the man I only saw from behind and the man mostly who raised me. Birth Dad was some figure from the past, plucked out of time. He had to know I was there. I played out what he would say, if I’d stayed, how I would’ve answered. Maybe later, Until-16 Dad showed up, paid his respects. Maybe he’d look for me, too. Maybe he’d punch Real Dad. Maybe he wouldn’t know who Real Dad was. Maybe they’d go outside to smoke. Formative Dad would tell the Fred Flintstone joke, and like me, Real Dad would laugh when no one else did, a little funny bone genetics. Yeah, that’s what a dab will do.
Michael Czyzniejewski is the author of four collections of stories, including the forthcoming The Amnesiac in the Maze (Braddock Avenue Books, 2023). He is Professor of English at Missouri State University, and serves as Editor-in-Chief of Moon City Press and Moon City Review, as well as Interviews Editor of SmokeLong Quarterly.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Down in History”? I used that joke teaching a class before, about Fred Flintstone being dead, and got a good reaction. It’s kind of dad joke, but a weird, twisted one. I used it again in a different class and got a good reaction there, too. I don’t really write stories that start off as jokes, but I thought it would be a good segue into a story, someone hearing that joke as a dad joke, from their dad, and seeing what happened after. Eventually, it seemed like I needed to tie the joke to the story a bit, so I worked in some death, as well as some notions of realism vs. the fake. The last line came to me after I thought I was done and I smiled and knew I had to put it in, whether it worked or not.
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