PART 1
Back those days the country wasn’t something you could just leave. Didn’t matter where you went, you’d end up back there. Hay fields and picked cotton and rusted metal sittin out there all forgotten. I ended up leaving but that’s a different story.
“Allen, are you listening to me honey?”
“I know. But I don’t want to see em. It’s been too long.”
“They’re your brothers and sisters. Can’t you at least stop to say hi?”
“They don’t want to see me and I don’t want to see them.”
“Nonsense. You hungry? Do you want anything to eat? ”
I was.
“No. I’m not hungry.”
Mama was a good woman. Least I thought so. There were times where she was good to a fault. Her hair had started to turn white at the roots. The drive home was quiet. Endless blurring pines sat in coordinated rows along the road. Out here, there wasn’t a traffic jam to see. Was hardly such a thing. Red lights were more of suggestions than law as long as the sheriff didn’t see you and he wouldn’t want anyone to know this, but I know that boy down there don’t listen to his own law.
“We’re here. Just like you remember it?” Mama said, unbuckling her belt.
The car rolled to a stop and the house sat with windows stuck together, the mold of time and birds nests stuck up in every corner of the porch; the deck wood was starting to rot and it looked like someone’s foot had already fallen through at some point. The house was different. I thought I was the only thing time had changed, but mama’s house was the same.
“Just like I remember, mama.”
“Come on, let’s go get you in some new clothes. I don’t much like looking at you in those.”
“Don’t think I got nothing that’ll fit mama.”
“Hush now, we gots plenty of things in your old daddy’s drawer and it ain’t doin nothin but collectin dust.”
I didn’t say nothing, I just followed mama up the old creaking stairs and held the screen door open as she tried to jostle the keys in the lock.
“Damn thing. Eyes ain’t like they used to be. This is what your father was good for. Least he didn’t need to see to open a damn door.”
“Here mama, I got it.”
I took the keys from her and unlocked the door and it creaked open.
“Thank you honey. There’s that sweet part of you.”
“And the rest of me ain’t?”
Mama didn’t say nothing; it wasn’t convenient. I just followed her in and didn’t bring it up. Wasn’t worth hurting her feelings and I wasn’t lookin to get mine hurt neither.
The room smelled like I remembered. I don’t think I’ll ever understand how something can still smell like it. Smelled like him. I closed the door behind me and looked up and saw the thick heavy dust sitting on the ceiling fan blade, looking all stupid and lazy.
“Oh, honey. Let me show you something. I found this the other day.”
“What is it?”
“Look it’s your old annual from school. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen you as a boy. You never did like takin pictures.”
“I don’t want to see that mama. Let’s just go and find me some clothes and be done about it.”
Mama didn’t say nothing but I could tell I hurt her feelings and when she turned around I almost said something but decided against it. She walked down the hallway and didn’t say nothing but I followed after her. The kitchen sink was filled to the brim with unwashed dishes and the stovetop looked crusted at the burners with food crumbing here and there. Several of the bulbs had blown in the light fixture hanging down and a heavy cobweb sat kingly between it and the spotted ceiling.
“Don’t Broughton come and help every once in a while?”
“Help?” Mama laughed, “That boy’s a busy man now, Allen. He’s got his own to look after and best you believe he ain’t got the time runnin the farm as he is to come and wash his mama’s dishes.”
“That don’t mean he shouldn’t come and wash them—come help. He don’t live but three minutes down the road does he?”
“Enough Allen. It’s tiring enough as it is to think about. You think I don’t know that? Think that it don’t bother me and that I don’t want my boys to come visit me? Well, they all done grown up and moved away or got locked up in prison. Left their mama here to die all by her lonesome. But that’s fine. That’s how life works ain’t it? No one ever takes pictures of these kinds of times. It’s always on Thanksgiving or Christmas. Guilty photos of this may be the last time I see her and shit like that. You think I’m ignorant boy?”
“Mama, that ain’t what I said. If you would just listen to me, then I could explain myself better. But where is all this coming from?”
Mama started to get red in the eyes and her face turned ugly and she up and left to the bedroom.
“Don’t you yell at me boy.”
I sat at the table holding my head in my hands wondering what could I have done or said better, but I didn’t know. I just sat there for a long while waiting for mama to come out her room but she never did. I couldn’t just sit there. Went into my old room and pulled out clothes too boyish and tight to fit, but put them on anyway. I hauled myself out the door feeling like a man in an extra small spandex and took the better part of myself on to Broughton’s. Mama’s old sedan kicked to life and I put it into reverse and pulled out into the road.
The drive was three minutes. I came to a crawl and sat out in the middle of the highway and saw with my own eyes the great big house Broughton was livin in. The damn thing looked to be three stories and all plantation like. Watermelons growing round the house as far as the eye could see, big and green and yellow with people out there hauling them into the backs of wagons. Not the easy kind of work and not under the labor of this sun.
I turned in the driveway, passing the mailbox—the car tumbled back and forth on the graveled driveway and I veered onto the grass to stop the shaking. Wouldn’t hurt him. A little dead grass. I turned the car off a few feet from the porch and saw two little ‘uns playing round on the porch. A blonde headed boy and a blonde headed girl both less than ten with their teeth comin in and fallin out at the same time. They stood up speakin and looking out at me before they fled inside and shut the door. I spilled out of the sedan in my too tight clothes and scratched my neck.
I came up on the porch and knocked three times. Nothing for a long while. Then the door groaned and a woman in her late thirties stood there looking all skeptical. She never gave me the full runway of the door, poking her head out like a wary dog.
“Can I help you?”
“Where’s Broughton at?”
“Who exactly are you?”
“I’m his brother.”
“Only brother I know of his is upstate and the other ain’t no one seen in fifteen years—and for good reason.”
“Rhonda’s your name ain’t it? Broughton’s here isn’t he? I’m that other brother. For good reason. I want to see my brother.”
She didn’t say nothing but shut the door and I heard it lock and her footsteps were loud in the house. I heard Broughton’s name shouted and then a time passed. I looked out at the melons just sitting there all ripe and ready to rotten, bleached out and done in good by the sun, and thought to myself about how we had ended up.
I heard the door again and this time it came with heavier steps.
“Well, I’ll be. Allen!”
I turned around and saw my brother.
“Broughton.”
For a moment I wasn’t angry and hugged him and melted into his rotund belly and balding head. I hadn’t seen him in so long.
“Missed you, big brother.”
“You too.” I said.
“When did you get out?”
“Today. Mama brought me home.”
“And where’s she?” He looked over my shoulder.
“She ain’t here. Mama didn’t feel good so I wanted to ride on over and say hi.”
“Well, come in. No need to be a stranger. Dinner’s already on the table.”
I followed Broughton and the house from inside looked different from the outside. Real hardwood everywhere, colored and painted and finished all shades of naturals and brightened by incandescent light, filling all the rooms. A buck’s head sat over the long dining room table overlooking the many plates of food.
The kids were already eatin and watching things on their phones.
“Yeah, times have changed. The kids like to watch on their phones while they eat. Like how we used to watch TV and eat. It’s funny how each generation has something different, isn’t it?”
“Well, at least when we was watchin TV together—it was together. Now they ain’t. They’ll be watchin different things and never see eye to eye. That’s what I heard on the inside.”
Broughton nodded and turned to the table, “Why don’t you find a seat. Rhonda, honey, Allen’s going to be joining us for dinner. Will you turn on the player piano?”
“Player piano?”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t believe it. It plays by itself. No pianist needed.”
I sat down in the chair and sighed. The cushion was much too soft and more for sleepin than eatin.
“What’s the point in a perfect piano with no one to play it?”
Broughton just raised a brow at that, “You’ve been gone too long, Allen. The world has changed and I think it’s you that ought to get with it.”
“I’ve changed too.” I sat up.
Broughton chewed on his pork and shook his head, swallowing and saying, “Not for the better I’d say.”
We finished eatin and Rhonda came around and gathered our plates. There was this scowl on her face. Made me sit straighter and lean back into the sudden hardness of the chair and look at my brother again.
“What you been tellin these folk?”
“The truth.”
“The truth?”
“You know what you did, Allen.”
The room started to spin and I put my hands hard on the table. The kids jumped and shrank, finally looking up from their phones while Rhonda shot venomous eyes at me.
“The fuck do you mean—what I did?”
“Don’t you be swearin’ up like that in front of my kids!” Rhonda said.
“Ain’t they heard a man angry before or you mean to tell me Broughton suddenly grew patience round his ass?”
“I think you ought to leave.” Broughton said.
He was right. I ought to leave. But the anger in me couldn’t help, couldn’t fathom it. For all the things God put in the world and righted, he couldn’t leave without saying the words.
“Mama’s over there rottin and you’re in here surrounded by your perfect playin piano and big ole house and watermelons—but you can’t take care of your ole mama?”
Broughton put his fork down and rested it against the plate and wiped his mouth with a handkerchief and looked at me.
“And when in the past fifteen years have you done a damn thing for mama?”
I didn’t have a rebuke. I just stood there, face all strung up with an anger I didn’t understand.
“While you were rotting yourself in prison I’ve taken care of mama more than any of the family. For the first five years I came and helped her every day.”
“Then why not anymore? What happened? She’s older now you know.”
“Must I give an answer for everything for you, Allen? Am I expected to take care of mama cause you killed daddy?”
“That wattun me god damnit!” I slammed my hand against the table and all the plates and cutlery trembled. The kids shrieked.
“Alright out! Get out!” Rhonda said, comin around and pointin toward the door, “Get the hell out!”
“It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me, Broughton. I swear to God I didn’t kill daddy. I loved him just as much as anyone else and you know that!”
“Out!”
I was shooed all the way out the door and stumbled down the steps, catching myself on the railing with an anger searin hot right through me. I don’t know what took me but I ran on out there and started stompin his watermelons, turning them red and dead in the shaded afternoon sun.
It wasn’t till I heard the shotgun hollerin down through the air that I came from my daze and jumped into mama’s car, my shoes sticky and painted with the deadness of his melons. I put the car in reverse and slammed the pedal down and back into the road all mad like.
A god awful truck horn blared and the terrible crunching of metal and bags and the horrible blackening of myself took me under.
I didn’t do it. But someone did. They needed someone to blame. Wasn’t me. I swear it wasn’t. Why would I kill my own daddy? Didn’t make no sense. And then I woke from the swarm of a dream, gasping, the sounds of sirens all around me and red and blue flashing loud. I was hangin upside down up in this metal cage and blood running up my jaw, up my nose, and up my forehead to drip on the top of the cabin.
“Help.” I managed gravely out my throat. Not a second time cause it hurt too much.
I could hear them cuttin away at the car and rearin metal open to come and get me. Everything hurt and when the light pulled me out I saw mama standin there tears in her eyes and hands cupping her mouth and nose. I felt like the worst piece of shit in the world. Now, I know I’d at least made mama cry three times in fifteen years and I couldn’t stand the idea of a fourth.
They took me to the hospital and had me put up in there to make sure I was okay. Wanted me to stay a few days to make sure all the aches and pains worked themselves out and had to put a few stitches in my chin. They said I was lucky the frame didn’t pierce my throat. Funny thing was they said the semi was fine. The driver made his delivery. Now, who’d believe that? Company’s got money to make I suppose.
Mama come in not too long after I got put in and she was angry. I didn’t have nothing to say. What could I?
“I’m sorry, mama. I’m sorry about the car.”
“Don’t sorry me, boy. I don’t give a damn bout no car!” she slapped me, “thought I lost you—right after I’d done lost you once.”
I started cryin.
“Mama, I swear to god I didn’t do it.”
She held me and rubbed my head and hushed me.
I held her arm and cried till it felt wrong to cry anymore and take anymore of her time. Fifteen years of tears in one day was not an easy thing to get out.
“I know you didn’t, Allen. You was the most lovin of all my sons and daughters,” she cupped my face and made her look into her crow’s feet eyes, “you still are—your father may a’ been a mean man but you wouldn’t have done it. I know better than that.”
I closed my eyes and tried not to think about that horrible day.
PART 2
“Helen—you better get your ass outta that house right, goddamn now!” Daddy roared, cigarette between his lips.
Daddy’s skinny and lean frame paced back and forth with pure rage runnin through him and he looked at me and right through me. Didn’t see no boy. Just a thing. Like he always had. A thing to use and command and do as he pleased with.
The screen door yawned open and mama came out tremblin and scared, “Now, Eddie—don’t be mad. I swear I ain’t do nothin. I swear.”
“Whore! I get home from work—been bustin my ass and I hear from Willy Nelson that you been round and fuckin that boy Rutkins down the street?”
“I ain’t fucked no Rutkins!”
Daddy hit mama and she crumpled to the ground and she shielded herself from him and cried and sobbed in fear.
“Honey, please.”
“Why was you fuckin Rutkins?”
“I watt’n fuckin no Rutkins!”
I walked up and got between daddy and mama, bein the biggest and the oldest I hated feelin powerless. Especially in front of daddy. My eyes must have told him everything worth saying cause daddy didn’t stop to ask me what I was doin.
“You best get the fuck out my way, boy, fore I take those two front teeth a’ yours and make you a goddamn mute.”
“She didn’t do it. She’s been here at the house all day with me and Broughton, daddy.”
“What would you know? You’re just a boy. Think since you’re old enough to buy a pack of cigs and got a little hair on your chest that you can go round tellin your daddy how things is now?”
“That ain’t what I said! I said she didn’t do it.”
“Honey, go inside.”
“You best believe she did.”
“No she didn’t.”
“Honey. Go inside.”
“She did.”
“She didn’t!”
Daddy socked me right in the jaw and I hit the ground hard and I felt his foot in my side over and over again.
“You ain’t nothin but a pile of fuckin dumb rocks. You stupid sonouva bitch!”
“Eddie! Eddie! Stop! Stop!” Mama cried, but it was no use.
There was nothing good about him. Not a damn thing. The pain sent white stars runnin across my eyes and I tried to crawl away but he dragged me back and stepped on me and got down on the ground behind me and pulled me up to meet his eyes.
“You understand now, boy?”
“I understand.”
He must have seen the anger in my eyes.
“That ain’t the kind of understandin we was s’pose to come to.”
He slapped me and I met the ground again and the world was nothin but the darkness of my daddy’s hands and feet on me until my skin was the same color as his heart.
Eventually, he stopped and beat my mother. Beat her so bad she limped down the hallway and groaned at every movement. But to the naked eye there wattun a lick on her. Her arms and ankles and face was clean of any bruisin. If there was anything Daddy understood, it was appearances.
Mama and I sat in the room with daddy while he smoked and watched the football game. Everything was normal to him. This was just another day. And that might have been the worst part of it all. Today bein today and tomorrow bein tomorrow. Daddy thought nothin of it. Which meant he would do it again.
“Allen, go and fetch me some cigarettes.”
I walked up to him and waited for him to pull his wallet out, but he just looked at me with those cruel eyes of his.
“Need money if I’m gonna get you a box.”
“You think this is a fuckin’ charity boy?”
“It’s your cigarettes—”
“And I best believe I had to put a damn whoopin’ to you earlier, didn’t I? I ain’t payin’ a grown ass man to live here in this house and not work. Go and get some dollars from your savins’ box and go and get me somethin to smoke.”
“That’s mine, daddy. That’s school money.”
“School money? Allen, you’re dumber than rocks. You ain’t going to school. Now get the fuck on.”
I took out my old shoebox and looked at the money in there. Whattun much. Maybe a hundred dollars in there. Daddy had been stealin it since I could remember. I kept moving the shoe box but it didn’t matter. Daddy always took the dollars when he found it.
I pulled out fifteen ones and folded them in my hand. Something he would probably smoke in a day. I didn’t want to think about what he’d do to me if I got a job. Would end up just fundin his smokin and drinkin all day and night.
I got in the truck and pulled my seatbelt over and drove down the road to the old gas station. Dickey’s Gas. When I pulled in there wattun much of nobody there. I got out the truck and locked it and walked through the chimin doors and didn’t hear no one. There at the counter was an old man, hunched over watchin the game and chewin tobacco. He gave a slight curt nod.
“Good day.”
“How’s it goin?”
He just looked at me and waited.
“I need a pack of cigarettes.”
“What kind of cigarettes.”
“Marlboro shorts.”
“Six eighty-five.”
He set the pack on the counter and I picked it up and placed seven of my dollars on the counter.
“Say, ain’t you Eddie’s boy from down the street?”
“Yes sir.”
“Tell em he owes me twenty. Buccaneers won.”
“I’ll let him know.”
I went to turn around and started to pass through the door.
“And you keep him in line now. Eddie ain’t never been known for his patience. Maybe that’s changed with age. Doubt it.”
“Yes sir.”
I unlocked the truck and got back behind the wheel and cranked her up till I could put her in gear and start hummin down the road. The ride back I cut off the radio and listened to the silence and the whistling of the wind round my ears.
I pulled in and slammed the truck door and opened the door of the house and when I got inside I saw daddy on the couch standin over mama with a gun to the front of her head.
“You never preciated a god damn thing I’ve done. Takin and fuckin and never lovin—stupid bitch!”
I came up behind him and did the only thing I knew how to do. I tapped him on his shoulder and he swung around and slapped me to the ground and put the cold barrel of the gun hard against my temple.
“Where the fuck you been? I been callin you for half a god damn hour!”
“I went to go get your cigarettes!”
“Eddie! Stop. Put the gun down.”
For some reason, daddy did put the gun down that night. He put the safety back on and snatched the cigarettes out my hand.
“Y’all get outta here. Scram! I’m pissed. Fucking Buccaneers.”
PART 3
The twilight of early morning shone through the forest of pines and oak and poplar, creating a sorta beautiful thing to walk through in the bitin cold. Daddy walked ahead of me and didn’t talk much. Wasn’t s’posed to talk when huntin. He slowed down and turned to me.
“Fore’ we get there I want you to know somethin Allen. I love you, boy. I know it don’t always seem that way and I hate that it comes to what it is sometimes but life’s been hard to your old pops. My daddy whattun easy on me so I can’t be easy on you. Broughton’s gotta have a big brother to look up to. A man. Not some pussy who can’t even pull the trigger. I’m hardest on you cause you got the hardest job.”
He thumped my chest and looked back up at the deer stand comin up in the distance and grinned back at me. I grinned back but my mind was still on what he said. I gripped my gun a little harder.
“I love you too, daddy.”
“When we catch us an eight point this mornin,” his breath blew out like fog, “we gone have to show the whole town. Get it cleaned and cook us up somethin good. When’s the last time I went huntin with you?”
“Season before last. You took Broughton last year. Y’all didn’t seem to never kill nothin though.”
“Broughton can’t pull the trigger. He had many opportunities but he’d shake like a leaf. That’s why you’re here with me this season. I can’t raise no bitch. Right?”
“Right.” I said, agreeing just to agree.
“Here we are. Hold my gun.”
He put it into my arms and he climbed up the ladder up in the deer stand. A cold wind came up on me and made me shiver. I handed his gun up to him and he caught the end of the barrel and pulled it up. Pulled mine up too and then I climbed up after him.
“No more talking from this point on. We’re huntin.”
The dark of the morning died and with it the cold warmed. I sat there with my daddy thinkin a long while. Not about the deer or huntin or how beautiful the day looked with the sun rising up between the pitched up trees scattered round the forest floor. All I could think about was the cold barrel of the gun on my temple. Daddy holding it against mama’s head. Screaming at me and her. Threatening to kill us. Beating us. And like it was all a sort of kind of normal.
I didn’t know a daddy wattun s’posed to hit his boy hard in the face till the fifth grade when my teacher had this real concerned look on her face. Some men came by and questioned mama and daddy that day as far as I can remember. Something about child protective services or some crap like that. Sure nough’ daddy beat me that night too. He ain’t never smiled once in his god damn life as far as I can remember.
We used to go to church and shit. Not long though. Broughton don’t remember, but I do. Daddy loved God more than he ever loved us. Then all of a sudden we stopped going and daddy never talked about God again. Maybe he forgot about God or gave up on him. It was hard to say. Daddy never talked about his feelings.
I felt a tap on my arm and saw Daddy shakin me out my daze and pointing down the clearing where a buck was craned over sniffin down at the ground. And by all golly it was a damn buck. My daddy put his hand on the back of my shoulder as I aimed down the sights and my heart skipped up and down and left and right—like a goddamn angry alarm clock.
I fired and jumped and the round went off plasterin itself in the pine tree beside the buck. It scrambled off hopping and jumping and prancing fast between the trees and out of sight.
“God damnit! You fuckin piece of shit who the fuck taught you to aim? You know what? I ain’t takin not one of you huntin never again. You ain’t my boy shootin like a bitch.”
Daddy kicked me out the deer stand and came down in his own anger after a while and sighed. His jaw was set tight and he walked down the way we came.
“Gone have to chalk up some money from that shoebox boy. No deer so we can’t eat.”
I didn’t say nothin. There was no point.
“When we get home I want you to go buy me some cigarettes too. Football game’ll be comin on later tonight.”
I kept pace with him but walked behind him.
“Maybe…I was thinkin once all this blows over we could share a beer over the game and talk about things. I—I hadn’t been good to you Allen.
I’m sor—”
Daddy’s head snapped and he crumpled to the ground. The sound of my rifle echoed through the forest. The birds flocked from the tree and painted the sky in droves of migration. Daddy laid dead at my feet in his own blood. And I couldn’t believe it. My heart raced. I didn’t understand. It was my gun that was smokin. It was my daddy that was dead.
I didn’t kill daddy. Daddy killed himself.