“I’ll be in touch,” he says, rising.
“Great.” I watch him go, some combination of annoyed and relieved.
The waitress comes back to my table.
“Friend of yours?” she asks. Which is odd. Because I don’t know her.
“In a way,” I answer.
“He’s been around awhile,” she says. She picks up the check, the money, slips it into the pocket of her apron. “He’s staying at the Motel 8 just outside town.”
“How do you know that?” I have to ask. What I don’t ask: And why are you telling me?
“That big fancy truck he drives. Seen it around town. Seen it there. He’s not from around here.”
Neither am I, I want to assert. But it’s not really true, is it?
“I’d watch out for that one,” she says. “He’s trouble.”
Okay, I’m about to say, with just an edge of attitude. Thanks.
But when I look up at her she’s already walked back behind the bar. The bartender leans into her as she says something to him. They both turn to look at me.
As I pick up my things and exit into the dark, I can feel their eyes on me.
twenty-six
Then
The morning dawned wild with birdsong, waking me from the uncomfortable bed I’d made on the porch swing. Jay sat sentry in the old rocker, shoulders stiff and face drawn in the new light. My father had started drinking after dinner the night before, and what began as a peaceful evening, with him playing the guitar and my mother knitting, had soured.
Soured. Not the right word. That implies the slow turning of something good into something rotten.
Ignited.
My father’s rage was a fuse that took any excuse to light. It transformed him, made him huge, and cruel, brutal. Since the late-night trip to the bunker, things had been worse than ever. He never hit me, not once. Maybe because I made myself small, shrank myself down to nothing, hid. But my mother and Jay, they fought back.
The makeshift ice pack I’d put together from a bag of frozen peas and a dishcloth sat on the arm of the rocker. Jay rubbed at his jaw. Even in the dim light, I could see that the side of his face was purple and swollen.
He’d come out here last night to be ready if my father came back. I’d stayed with him; my mother cried herself to sleep in my bedroom. What had made my father so angry? I didn’t even remember. I thought about the garden we’d planted, the lunches I’d shared with him, his quiet in those moments, his strength, the way he understood the land.
“Put it back,” I urged Jay. A blackbird landed on the porch rail, cocking his head back and forth at me.
Jay had taken a handgun from the weapons cache the night before. It lay in his lap.
“He’s passed out somewhere now, probably in the barn,” I went on when he said nothing. “He won’t even remember what happened when he wakes up.”
Jay turned his head slowly to look at me. His voice last night, it had been high and desperate, childlike. Leave her alone, he’d wailed. My father hit him so hard that I felt it in my own jaw, started to cry.
The blackbird flew off.
“Don’t love him,” Jay said. “Even though he’s nice sometimes, and he’s our father. Don’t love him. He doesn’t deserve it.”
“I don’t,” I said quick, defensive. But I did. The man he was during the day, just like my mother loved the man he was “before.” The man in the photographs—young, brave, strong in his uniform, face fresh and eyes bright. Thank you for your service. The boy in the photograph, wearing his best suit. The man in the garden, with the sweat on his face, hands in the earth.
“Put it back,” I said again.
As long as Jay had that gun, I knew something bad could happen, something worse, any second. We’d both been learning to shoot, aiming at cans my father lined up on a rusted-out old tractor that sat in the clearing.
You’re a deadeye, son, he told Jay. My brother hit every can, every time.
I got a pat on the head. Keep at it, girl.
Girl. He didn’t mean it as an insult. But it felt like one. I vowed to get better.
Jay and I locked eyes now. The sun was breaking the horizon, painting the sky pink. He nodded, just slightly and rose, the rocker beneath him groaning. He stepped over the porch and took the path that led to the cellar where the guns were kept. God forbid, my father should find it missing.
I waited for him to return, listening to the morning cacophony, that sun salutation—chickadee, warbler, thrush, starling, northern cardinal. Back “in town,” in our other life, I never heard their song, not really. In the quiet, birds thrive. Noise is a kind of pollution; it silences nature.