By Devin James Leonard

Daryl was in the backyard splitting firewood with his father when he brought the ax down on a log, and the steel head snapped off the handle. 

“Nice going, dipshit,” his old man said, raging at the eyes. “You clipped it on the heel instead of the bit.” 

“I what?” Daryl said, though he knew what his father meant. Thaddeus Fox had taught him all the proper names of an ax’s components. The sharp front part was called the bit, the bottom the heel, the back the butt, the side the cheek, and so on and so forth, until you got to the handle. What Daryl thought should have just been called a handle had many names, depending on what part you were, well, handling. The shoulder was at the top, followed by the throat, then the belly, and finally the knob at the bottom.

Christ, what was wrong with just calling it what it was?

Thaddeus Fox fetched the steel ax head that had gone flying across the yard, and when he picked it up, there was a jagged chunk of hickory sticking out of it. He aimed the top part of it toward Daryl and said, “What’s this part called, dumbass?” 

Daryl could see the top edge of the handle in the center of the head, cut flush with the steel. He knew what it was called, but only shrugged, and his father pitched it at him. Daryl ducked, and the ax head flew a mere couple of inches over his mullet, where it went spiraling into a thick patch of nettles and Hawthorne plants and disappeared. 

“Useless turd,” Thaddeus said. “Fetch us another ax.”

“We don’t have another ax. You let the Neville boy borrow the spare, remember?”

“Ah, shit,” Thaddeus huffed. He wiped his sweaty brow with his gloved hand and looked out at the yard, considering things. “Well,” he said, “you best go on over there and get it back.”

“Why me?”

“You broke it. You replace it.”

“But it’s three miles away,” Daryl said. “What am I supposed to do, walk?”

“Shoulda waited till you were old enough to drive to break my tools,” Thaddeus said, and as he turned away, heading for the house, he added, “Better get going. Take too long, I might be too drunk to help you finish.”

Daryl sighed and hollered, “I wish you’d stop being so cheap and buy a gas splitter!”

Thaddeus kept strolling away, and without looking back, said, “Yeah, well, wish in one hand and—” He waved his arm lazily, as if too tired to finish his statement.

If Daryl could wish for anything, a gas-operated log splitter would be on the list, but it wouldn’t be at the top. There were other things, like not having a mom and dad who drank every night and showed him how much they loved him with the back of their hands. A dinner that wasn’t cooked in the microwave would be swell, perhaps some clean clothes that fit, and the proper school supplies every eighth-grader required. He’d like to have a girlfriend, but he supposed he ought to add Learn how to talk to girls to the list first. Also, he dreamed of murdering his folks, and plenty of other people, too. 

That was the one thing he truly desired more than anything else in the world: To kill—and to get away with it. 

But this was all wishful thinking while he set out on the road and walked along the scorching hot asphalt under the heat of a blistering summer day. Wishing in one hand and whatever he was supposed to do in the other. He should have been rushing, and yet he took his time. There was no way he was racing the three miles and damn near killing himself from heat exhaustion just to hoof it back to find his dad passed out in his recliner. Daryl could teleport to the Neville boy’s house and return five seconds later, and his father, he knew, would be done splitting for the day.

It took him over an hour to get there, another ten-fifteen minutes for the Neville boy to locate the ax, and another hour-plus ordeal to walk back.

What Daryl did when he got home—

He hefted the ax up the back porch, cataloging the names of the parts in his mind, the same way he would memorize answers for a school test: Head, cheek, shoulder, throat, belly, butt, heel, knob, toe, and—“What’s this part called, dumbass?”—the eye. The top part was called the eye.

He strolled inside and, sure enough, his father was snoring in his chair, a cigarette filter pinched between his fingers with three inches of ash still clinging to it, and an empty bottle in the other hand. Three o’clock in the afternoon, and the son of a bitch was passed out, his breath chugging along like a worn-out engine.

Gripping the ax with both hands, Daryl positioned himself in front of his dozing father, raised the instrument high above his head, and brought it down on his shoulder. He reared back and struck him in the neck with the butt, crushing his throat. He smashed his old man’s cheek, shattered his heels and his toes, chopped into his stomach, and to finish him off, he buried the bit so far into his father’s skull that they’d need a tow truck to pry it out.

—was wish in one hand while resuming his wood-splitting duties.