1

The father asked the little boy to fetch the basket of eggs in the fruit cellar. The boy went down to the fruit cellar. Seeing that the basket of eggs was very full, the boy took one egg from the basket and dropped it on the concrete floor, where it cracked. Then he took another egg and dropped it on the floor. And he dropped a third egg and a fourth. And then, finally, he dropped a fifth egg. The broken eggs stickily pooled together. When the boy brought up the basket, his father frowned and marched down to the fruit cellar. When he came up, he beat the boy. 

2

The father asked the little boy to get him a glass of water in the kitchen and to let the tap run so the water would be cold. He told him to hurry it up. He was thirsty. The boy went to the kitchen sink but did not let the tap run. He filled a glass with cloudy water and brought to his father who lifted the glass and studied it. Then he put down the glass and beat the boy. 

3

The father asked the little boy to shine his brown broughams and to use brown shoe polish and not black like he did the last time when he made the shoes look like hell. Do it right or you know what’s coming, he said. The little boy said he would do it right but he still used black shoe polish on the broughams. When his father saw what he had done, he beat him. 

4

When the father died not long after that from a heart attack, the little boy found himself being fitted with a black suit at the tailor’s. The suit fit him loosely and he felt stupid. Later he was made to stand with all the mourners who were carrying on at the funeral parlor, their grief almost violent. When the mourners asked him why he wasn’t crying—after all, his father had died—the little boy said, “I felt sadder about the eggs.”

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