Lee Harper

Lee Harper was not convinced. He came from Alabama and had the high, twangy voice that was pleasant in slide guitars but not always in people. He kept his hair cropped to his head, which made his ears seem that much bigger, but reinforced his utilitarian good looks. His shoes were durable, and his clothes were flashless. His one indulgence in life, the one place he forsook the commonsense which acted as his figurehead in all things, was with his family.

He met his wife in college because her hair was the same rich black of bottom land soil. Feeling out of place and incapable in the Northern school, self conscious of his accent and dress, he found a little bit of home with her. Inseparably they proceeded together, planning the life and family they would one day share.

His wife had many ideas with how they should raise their only son, Simon. She was a proponent of gender neutral toys, so Lee made wood blocks with his own hands. She wanted Simon to have meat only once or twice a week Before Simon was born they ate meat almost every night, and Lee didn't quite understand what had changed. But he certainly didn't want his boy tainted with hormones that didn't belong to him, or a xenophobic culinary view. Simon had play dates instead of knocking around with the neighborhood kids. Lee had once suggested in front of other parents that the children were playing "Cowboys and Indians," which brought horrified stares.

Lee wondered if it used to be easier to be a good father because his father didn't know all the different ways you could screw a kid up. Or maybe he looked at his dad differently because, as a child, he never saw him trying his best, he always just did the best. His friend had a little girl so allergic to peanuts he had to act as an advance team in every restaurant, scrutinizing the dining area before he could bring her in. His neighbor's boy stuttered, and his neighbor worked a second job to afford better speech therapy. Lee worked with a blind woman who had a newborn, and the idea that every time she heard her baby cry it was out somewhere in the dark sent chills up his spine.

Simon had been crawling around on his hands and knees all day, perching in windows and sitting in his mother's lap. She explained that Simon was identifying very much with their pet cat, and it was stifling to suggest he was a little boy. Lee shrugged his shoulders. At the top of the stairs he found Simon napping softly in the warm sunlight thrown in a window shape on the carpet. He smiled and thought of the month his mother had let him wear his plastic Lone Ranger six guns to school, scratched Simon behind the ears, and went into his bedroom to change.