Shadows Burned In (14 page)

Recognizing patterns, David had learned to categorize his
father’s behavior. An “A”-night would’ve seen that final beer lasting through
the sports; then his father would’ve raised himself up out of his chair, paused
to fart or burp or both—it varied—and stumbled to bed. A “B”-night meant he was
already asleep by the time the news was on and might very well sleep till
morning in the chair, or at least until his bladder woke him up. A “C”-night
meant he’d gotten bored with the television fare and decided to amuse himself
in other ways. David didn’t like C-nights. On C-nights, David thought of his
father as the devil incarnate, sent down by God to punish the boy for his sins.
So by comparison, B-nights were fine, although sleeping in his chair often hurt
his father’s back, and that made him irritable the next day. A-nights were
great . . . David didn’t have to talk to him at all—also a bonus of B-nights—and
his father was usually able to sleep off the beer, until he woke up early the
next morning and started again before heading to work.

David made his way back to his bedroom, making sure to leave
the door cocked open with a shoe. At least, with the door partly closed, he got
partial privacy, but the air could still flow. He tumbled into bed and turned
over on his back, watching the moonlight dance on the ceiling through his fan’s
rotating blades. He had school tomorrow, the first day of a new month. A
Thursday. “Thor’s Day,” whispered David as he thought of
The Mighty Thor
and the gods of Asgaard from the comic book. He never could quite understand
why a hero as mighty as Thor looked like a cross-dressing clown with big
muscles and wings on his head. And speaking of Marvel superheroes . . .

He thought again over the whole escapade at Old Suzie’s
house. He wondered why he’d let Theron talk him into it. He’d known that going
into anyone’s house without permission—particularly
her
house—was wrong.
Tricks were one thing. But they’d invaded her house, her
home
. He’d been
terrified, maybe more of doing what he knew he shouldn’t than of her. And
that
was saying something. And when he’d seen her standing there in the kitchen door
and felt his bladder empty, the flowing warmth had felt reassuring and
terrifying at the same time. He knew he’d remember her face as long as he
lived, that grunting grimace as she grabbed him to keep him from escaping. How
dare Theron laugh at him! How
dare
he! He was never in any danger.

He went right for the front door! And he called
me
a coward . . . Theron’s such a fucker
.

Theron didn’t know what real bravery was. Didn’t have a
fucking
clue
. He didn’t see her mouth. He didn’t see the hair growing on
her top lip. And maybe her husband hadn’t run off like everybody said. Maybe
she’d taken a hatchet to him and chopped him up

(all the better to eat him)

and put him in her cauldron

(with candy for flavoring)

and boiled him up for supper one evening. And her mouth—exuding
the smell of an old woman who’s got no reason to smell good anymore, who decides
not to bother because she’s accustomed to her own smells and the grainy touch
and dead-rodent taste in her own mouth. And Suzie was so big! She only had to
sit on you to snuff out your life, push the air out of your lungs like they
used to do to witches with stones.
Sweet revenge that, no doubt
, thought
David. And it was only by the grace of God and poor Made-in-China tailoring
that he was alive to remember it all now. No, they’d had no business going in
there at all. He had Theron to thank for that too.

Fucker
.

He turned over on his side and stared at the shoe-wide crack
of light cast by his door. He could hear the soft swooping of his ceiling fan
as it breezed his face with the cool, outside air.

Sometimes on nights like this, when he felt relatively safe
from his father’s intrusions, when the world seemed ready to sigh itself to
sleep, his mother would come and sit on the bed beside him. She wasn’t warm,
but then, on nights like this, cool was nice. Her mere presence reassured him
in a way that nothing—no other time of day, no other place, certainly no other
person—ever could. The first time she’d visited him, he’d been afraid. She
hadn’t spoken that time, just sat beside him stroking his hair as he slept. It
was like he’d watched the whole scene play out while hovering over his own bed.

Soon he came to long for her visits and how protected he
felt when she was with him. David would have quiet conversations with her and
tell her about his day and what had happened to him, how things had gone; and
she would smile and listen and look like she might be enjoying the sound of his
voice for its own sake. But she didn’t come now, and he blamed the noisy
television in the other room for disrupting the peace that seemed to draw her
to him on soft nights.

From the living room he could hear the echoes of the news
announcers as they promised the first half of the weather after the next
commercial break. Again his mind wandered back to his confrontation with
Theron. He thought he’d felt sorry about picking a fight with Theron, then
realized he didn’t feel sorry at all, not one damned bit. And he hadn’t picked
a fight either. He’d just picked up the gauntlet Theron had thrown down.
I’ll
never back down from anyone else, ever
, he fumed to himself.
Never ever
ever!
He closed his eyes, and thoughts of Old Suzie played against the
sparkly orange backdrop of his eyelids.

“In this corner,” began the booming announcer, “in the
workman’s boots and grass-stained overalls, weighing two hundred fifty pounds,
Old Suzie the Witch!” An invisible crowd broke out in wild applause. The kids
in the audience threw Halloween candy into the ring like rice after a wedding.

“In
this
corner, in underwear and with beer in hand,
weighing pretty much damned near the same, The Old Man!”

The crowd went cricket silent as the image of his father
raised his arms in the ring, though it sounded like someone farted approval
from the back row.

Now
that
would be a matchup
, David thought,
staring at the picture of the two of them in a ring together, pounding the tar
out of each other, fighting over a beer or maybe whose show they’d watch. He
was a long time getting to sleep.

On this night, his mother never came.

Chapter 13

David went to school sleepy on Thursday. All in all, it was
a very boring day. Theron wasn’t speaking to him, and he wasn’t speaking back.
Theron had evidently said something to the other kids, because they were giving
David a wide berth as well. That left focusing on schoolwork to pass the time
and that, by definition, nearly bored him to tears. But at least it was math
class, and he never got bored looking at Mrs. McKinley. So he passed Thursday
by doodling, answering questions when he absolutely had to, and sitting on the
low brick wall that fronted the playground. He watched the other kids play
kickball while he ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. All in all, a
very
boring day.

He walked home by himself. Theron took an alternate route,
cutting across the track and football field of Hampshire High. Along the way,
David decided again he hadn’t been too hard on Theron, not after the other boy
had started making fun of him. There were some lines you just didn’t cross, and
that was one of them. The thought was cold comfort as David walked with his
hands in his pockets, staring at the sidewalk

(step on a crack, break your mother’s back)

and the fractured patterns between the breaks in the
concrete. He wondered if they broke in some mystical pattern, some Ancient
Alien Code that, if read just right, would reveal the secrets of life to a
young boy.

He walked around town for a long time, studiously avoiding
Old Suzie’s street. As evening began to fall, he finally headed up his own
driveway. Going home didn’t seem like such a bad thing for a change, not after
school today.

It looked like his dad was home early. There was his work
truck, with the telephone equipment, extra line, splicers, circuit jumpers, and
all the rest of his tools. It would be time to wash it again soon, now that
November had arrived.

Oh boy, what fun
, thought David with fake enthusiasm.

He walked through the garage, stopped to pet Queenie and
give her water and food, then passed on into the house to get the evening’s
check-in over with. His father was in the living room watching the evening news
and drinking a beer.

“Hi Dad,” he said, poking his head around the corner. A
commentator’s deep and halting baritone spoke about the next election and how
the president and Congress were squaring off over tax issues. His father liked
to flip between news programs, trying to maximize his absorption of current
events, saying the commercials were a waste of his time and by God,
his
time was worth more than whatever a damned commercial had to say. Whenever the
Big Three networks had commercials simultaneously, he’d settle on one, usually
NBC, and curse the screen for wasting his time, then crack himself up by making
fun of the people in the commercials. Sometimes David thought he actually
enjoyed the commercials more than the news, despite his grousing. “I’m home,”
David said.

“Hi son,” came the gravelly voice.
Two beers
down
,
David guestimated. “How was school?”

“Fine,” lied the boy.

“Good. Grades okay? Test tomorrow?”

“Yes, sir. I mean no, sir. Grades are good, I mean. No test
tomorrow.”

“That’s good,” his father said, muting the commercial as it
came on. “Shouldn’t have tests on Friday. You ask me, the Bible’s all wrong.
God rested on
Friday
. To get ready for the weekend.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What are you up to tonight?”

“Homework,” the boy said immediately. “Math. We’ve started
fractions.”

His father made a noise. “I always hated math. Adding,
subtracting, and multiplying. Long division. Fractions, huh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, you best get to it then.”

“Yes, sir,” he said with relief, glad the interrogation was
over. With luck, after a little dinner, he might not have to talk to his father
at all again before tomorrow.

“By the way,” his father said, “don’t answer the phone
tonight without checking the caller ID.”

David blinked. “Okay,” he said.

“I’m thinking of taking a sick day tomorrow. If the company
calls, I’m not here. I don’t want you to tell ’em that or nuthin, just don’t
answer it if you don’t recognize the number. It’s safer just not to answer at
all. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m feeling downright croopy, I am,” the old man said with
a smile. His father made a practice of taking the odd Friday off. But he tried
not to do it too often, lest they get wise to him, he said. “Maybe a little
fishin’ll make me feel better,” he mused. He unmuted the TV. “Those tits ain’t
real,” he said, gesturing at the screen, “but you gotta squeeze to know for
sure.” He laughed at his own joke as David turned away, heading to his room.

He flipped on the fan as he walked in and tossed his book
bag on the floor next to the bed. The boy felt relieved to get it off his
shoulder. He had a test in history on Monday—not tomorrow, so technically he
hadn’t lied—and he’d brought some library books home today so he wouldn’t have
so much to lug home tomorrow.

He jumped belly first onto the bed and reveled in the secret
knowledge that, had his father seen him, he would’ve gotten in trouble for it
because “Beds cost money” and “When you get older and have to pay for it
yourself, you’ll appreciate it more.” He reached over to the TV and flipped it
on. Since it was coming up on six o’clock, nothing was on, save some lame
sitcom reruns and the local news, which was even more lame. He flipped around
from channel to channel, scanning Hitler’s secrets, the life of a three-legged
dog, why the Edsel had flopped, his local forecast, how to weave baskets from
old grocery bags, some lame cartoon with characters with angular faces and an
irritating soundtrack, and about thirty other boring programs.
That’s the
word for the day all right,
David decided. He finally settled on one of the
lame sitcom reruns and turned his brain off while the lame laugh track
patronized the lame jokes.

Unchallenged, his mind wandered again to his falling out
with Theron. David hated this about himself. He always wanted to make peace
with people. He always wanted to smooth things over, even if it was
they
,
not he, who needed to make amends. And so he started thinking about Theron and
how someone had to make the first move and how it wouldn’t be Theron, because
he didn’t think he’d done anything wrong

(did you tell him)

and that it was all David’s fault

(or did you just goad him into swinging first)

for spoiling their fun.

But truth be told, David hadn’t told him
why
he was
angry. And when Theron swung, David had his excuse to Hulk up. So who was at
fault here? Theron had been a dick, sure, but David had known what he was
doing. Even through his anger, through the raw hatred he’d felt for his friend
at that moment, he’d
known
. And today in school, neither had spoken to
the other because they both knew that Theron had been a dick and that David had
gone out of his way to provoke him, and that Theron had let himself be
provoked. Almost as if they both had been forced to perform the roles they had
to play out, each with his part, to usher in the finale of a fistfight. He
wondered who should call whom until the lame laugh track from the lame sitcom
was in his head, laughing at him. David thought about taking a swing at the air
that laughed at him, which only made it laugh harder.

He lay there staring at the TV and thinking about Theron,
with his eyes getting heavy, until a ringing woke him up. The show on TV was
different now, but the canned laugh track was the same. A new episode of
something was on, and it wasn’t the show he’d been watching, but the telephone
had rung and a character was answering it—

No, wait.

riiiiiiiiiiiiiiing

It was his phone that was ringing with that old Ma Bell
ringer his father preferred.

Maybe it’s Theron
.

The thought came to him, cutting through the laughter in the
room. Maybe Theron had bitten the bullet and decided to call. If so, David
would tell him how sorry he was—after Theron apologized first, of course—and
ask him what he wanted to do this weekend.

The bed creaked as he rolled over and swung his legs around
and reached for the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hi!” The exuberant voice seemed to reach out of the phone,
then withdraw, like something revving up and then easing off, an engine of
enthusiasm. “Can I speak to Mr. Jackson?” The question was chocked full of
goodness, downright friendly.

“Um . . .” David hesitated. He’d been sure it was Theron.
He’d almost answered the phone with “Hey, turdhead,” but decided not to at the
last moment. Now there was a man’s voice on the other end of the line. Men only
called here for four reasons—to invite his father out for a beer; to call his
father into work because a pole was down and somebody was pissed; to try to
sell his father something; or to try to get his father to pay for something
he’d already bought. David was desperately afraid it was Door Number Two this
time. He hadn’t checked caller ID first. “He’s not feeling very well,” he
finally eked out. “He feels real bad tonight.”

“Oh, son, I’m sorry to hear that!” The voice sounded
genuinely depressed at the news. “But I tell ya, I promise not to take up too
much of his time.”

He felt his father behind him before he heard him. He
must’ve missed the warning of the A/C intake. Too sleepy, maybe, to notice it.
David turned around slowly, with the phone pressed to his ear. His father stood
in the doorway. David looked at him first out of the corner of his eye. The old
man was just standing there, staring at him.
Willing
David to put down
the phone, turn back time, not answer it at all.

“Hello? Son, you there?”

“Um—”

“Who is it, boy?” his father hoarse-whispered. He stretched
out the last word, as if emphasizing David’s place in the food chain.

“Yeah, I’m here.”

Out of the corner of his eye he could see his father move.
It was like he was spreading out to fill up the doorway. “I
said
who is
it?”

“Are you from Dad’s company?” David asked. He was scared
now. Between a rock and a hard place.

“No, son,” said the voice, laughing on the other end of the
phone. It felt to David like the voice knew the punch line to a joke but was unwilling
to share it with him. At his age David felt that a lot when he talked to
adults.
You’ll understand when you’re older
. “No, son, I’m not with your
dad’s company.”

“Okay, so you’re not with his company,” David repeated for
his father’s benefit. The mass in the doorway seemed to shrink a little. “Who
are you, then? Why do you need to talk to my dad?”

“Well, son, no need to—”

“And stop calling me that. I ain’t
your
son.”

“All right, Mr. Jackson’s boy—”

“And don’t call me
that
, neither. My name’s David.”

“All right,
David
,” said the man. His happy-happy
voice seemed to be losing some of its phone-smile. “I’m not from your father’s
company. But I
do
need to speak with him.”

“Like I told you, he—”

“Gimme that.”

The receiver was ripped out of his hand.

“Hello?” came the gruff you’ve-invaded-my-territory voice.
“Who is this?”

“Mr. Jackson?”

“
Yes
.”

“This is Ford Motor Company, Finance Division. We’re calling
about your car note.”

He rounded on David, who had retreated to his bed and sat
down. The boy saw the furor rising in the old man’s eyes. He looked from his
father to the door and wondered what kind of chance he had of making it out of
the room before the old man caught him. But his father was hunched like a
spring. David thought the receiver might break in two, he was holding it so
tightly.

“Yes, sir, I’m so glad you called,” his father said, glaring
at David. He had put on the fake phone voice people get when they’re in the
middle of something unpleasant and yet feel the perverse obligation to stop being
shitty and answer the phone. “I was planning on ringing you up myself
tomorrow,” he lied.

“Oh, great,” said the man. David could hear the tinny, faked
brightness from where he sat on the bed. His father continued staring at him
with volcanic eyes. The room was a pitch blackness of silence but for the phone
conversation. David heard as much as felt the throbbing in his ears. “Then I’ve
saved you the trouble!”

“Ah,” said David’s father, and his guard went down a bit,
his voice betraying a bit of the anger he truly felt, “so you have.”

“Well, it’s about your truck payment, Mr. Jackson,” said the
man, his voice sounding concerned again, like when David first told him that
his father wasn’t feeling well. “It’s three months overdue, you see.”

“Ah,” Jackson said again. “Yes, that
was
what I
wanted to call you guys about.”

“Well, again, I’ve saved you the trouble then. Mr. Jackson,
I’ll be frank with you . . . your credit history isn’t what we’d call first
rate. And the fact that you’ve missed payments before—”

“I always made those up,” Jackson said, defensive now. He
hated no-nuts salesmen. He fucking hated them. Either they tried to screw him
out of money or they bitched because he hadn’t given them enough of it soon
enough. He fucking
hated
no-nuts salesmen.

“Yes, so you did,” acknowledged the man, a prosecutor
allowing a small point in favor of the defense because he knew it wouldn’t
matter to the case. “But it’s in your file here that you agreed that the last
time
would be
the last time. And here we are again, Mr. Jackson.” Now the
district attorney had shown up. He had the evidence. The violation was clear.
There was no way out for Mr. Jackson, no sir.