Welding
Anthony Varallo
When I was a kid, I missed a lot of school. Some days I just didn’t feel like going. Other days I was sick. Colds. Stomachaches. I was always getting stomachaches. Or I hadn’t done my homework. Fractions. Don’t ask me about fractions. Some days I’d get dressed for school, tie my shoes, heave my book bag across my shoulder, but find myself unable to open the front door. I’d just stand there, ready to go, but not going. I could hear cars passing on the street outside.
On the days I stayed home, I watched TV. There wasn’t that much else to do. I’d fill a bowl of cereal and eat it while watching The Price is Right or The Today Show. The TV was one of those old console ones you now see in thrift stores; the kind where, just walking by, you can sense all the misery the TV was asked to witness, year after year, including, in my case, all those times I sat in front of ours with a bowl of Trix when I should have been at school mastering fractions. There was no remote, either; you had to commit to your choice, at least for a little while. Up close, the TV gave off a faint smell like burnt wax.
It was usually in the early afternoon, after I’d switched from VHF to UHF to avoid all the soap operas, that the welding commercial came on. Do you have what it takes? a voice would announce, as the commercial showed men and women putting on welding masks. Get certified in less than six months! the voice would say, and then the commercial would focus on a solitary welder holding a bright torch to a shiny pipe. The welder wore dark coveralls and heavy work boots. Red sparks rained down upon his mask. When the camera drew close, the welder removed his mask and said, “Learn welding. It’s a good job with good pay.”
Whenever the welder said those lines, I always snapped the TV off. The afternoon sun suddenly made the room feel hot. No cars passed outside. I tried to do my homework, but it was no use. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I began to sweat. I kept hearing the welder say those lines. Learn welding. It’s a good job with good pay. Like he was trying to tell me something.
Like there was something about me he knew.
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Anthony Varallo’s second story collection, Out Loud, won the 2008 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. His first collection, This Day in History, won the 2005 John Simmons Short Fiction Award. He has received an NEA Fellowship in Literature, and his stories have appeared in Gettysburg Review, New England Review, Epoch, and elsewhere. Currently he is assistant professor of English at the College of Charleston, where he is the fiction editor of Crazyhorse.