Chapter Two

CK stepped into the house, and from the living room he could hear his mom watching the TV.

        “Hey CK!” she shouted.

        “Hey Mom,” he said as he entered the room. “Dad upstairs?”

        “Yeah,” his mother said, rather inattentively.

CK proceeded to walk to the stairs and up them, the bottom three stairs creaking under his boots as they had since he was a young child. He reached the landing and walked to his father’s study, where he saw his father sitting at his desk, his favorite spot in all the house. His father looked like a scholar, even though he never had attended college. He had a romantic attachment of the idea of being a college man, and had decorated his study as a professor from a distinguished college would. He himself looked like a farmer, as his father and his father’s father had been, until they struck gold, or rather oil, when CK’s father was still young. It wasn’t much oil, but it was enough for the family to live comfortably after they sold the rights to the big oil company that now ran their farm.

His father was rough around the edges, in appearance and personality. He had leathery, hard skin, a memory of his childhood labor on the farm. For that reason, CK and his father had never really connected, and his father had pushed him to go to college so he could live through him. This was the only thing they ever really talked about, and while CK loved his father, he also understood that they were from different eras and had different experiences. He had never truly shared his experiences with his father, and only ever gave doctored versions of his stories of college, so his father could retain his idyllic picture of college life, of beautiful campuses and huge libraries, of dark wood studies and genius professors, the picture of a truly scholarly life. It was his fathers wish that CK would grow up to be a professor at a college himself, and he took control of CK’s studies with an iron fist to make up for the fact that he himself was not the man he dreamed to be.

CK thought this was silly, for his father was a very intelligent man, surely smarter than most of his professors. After the profit from the oil, his father had bought a large amount of books, and although he read slowly, he absorbed the knowledge like a sponge. His father was too attached to the labels, however, and surely, CK thought, would die still regretful that he never attained the status he held in his mind, no matter the lucky hand that he’d been dealt, much better than anyone’s besides the mayor and the rich widow. But he knew his father had struggled with his place in the town’s social classes after he became wealthy. His father had few friends in the town for he did not trust anyone not to talk about him behind his back. He thought almost everyone did. Luckily, he had married CK’s mother before he became wealthy. Otherwise, he might have never married. CK had a much more intimate relationship with his mother, having long conversations with her, but though he understood his father in a psychological sense, he never truly understood his mother. One topic they often conversed about was CK’s father, often talking about his father’s odd tendencies to make up what others thought of him.

CK thought all this as he stepped into the study and waited for his father to address him. His father turned a couple more pages in his book, looking for the page he’d last been on, for he never remembered to put in a bookmark in. But never would he lay it open and face down on the desk, for he valued his books too much to break the binding. He finally found his page, set the book down with his arm lying on top of it to keep it open, and took off his reading glasses, which he didn’t really need but liked the idea of needing them for whatever reason.

        “Hello, Son. How’s college?” he asked stately, turning his chair so he could properly look at his son.

        “It’s good, Sir,” CK said with an air of politeness and familiarity. “Found any new books lately?” One of his father’s hobbies was buying hard-to-find books, which he would pore over for months until he found another one that attracted his interest.

        “Yeah, I actually have,” he said as he stood up, letting out a sigh when he realized he had once again lost his spot in his book. He grabbed a book from his bookshelf. “Just got this one from Michael’s. It’s http://www.dictionary.com/browse/anthropology?s=tanthropology, a collection of essays from all over the world, different religions and cultures,” he said sounding interested as he opened the book, wiping off the sheen of dust on the page. CK, knowing he was dismissed, left the room, his last sight of his father one of him putting on his glasses.