out of his mouth.
‘You want to stop it now,’ his father says. ‘Or I’ll beat the hell out of you,
Chico.’ He only calls him this when he is very angry indeed.
Chico turns and sees that Virginia is standing at the other side of the room,
adjusting her skirt minutely, looking at him with her large, calm, brown eyes. Her
eyes are beautiful; the rest of her is not so beautiful, so self-renewing, but those eyes will carry her for years yet, Chico thinks, and he feels the sick hate come back -So we tanned his hide when he died, Clyde, and that’s it hanging on the shed.
‘She’s got you pussywhipped and you don’t have the guts to do anything about
it!’ All of this shouting has finally become too much for Billy -he gives a great wail of terror, drops his plate of franks and beans, and covers his face with his hands. Bean-juice splatters his Sunday shoes and sprays across the rug.
Sam takes a single step forward and then stops when Chico makes a curt
beckoning gesture, as if to say: Yeah, come on, let’s get down to it, what took you
sofuckin long? They stand like statues until Virginia speaks–her voice is low, as calm as her brown eyes.
‘Have you had a girl in your room, Ed? You know how your father and I feel
about that.’ Almost as an afterthought: ‘She left a handkerchief.’
He stares at her, savagely unable to express the way he feels, the way she is
dirty, the way she shoots unerringly at the back, the way she clips in behind you and
cuts at your hamstrings.
You could hurt me if you wanted to, the calm brown eyes say. I know you know what was going on before he died. But that’s the only way you can hurt me, isn’t
it, Chico? And only then if your father believed you. And if he believed you, it would kill him.
His father lunges at the new gambit like a bear. ‘Have you been screwing in
my house, you little bastard?’
‘Watch your language, please, Sam,’ Virginia says calmly.
‘Is that why you didn’t want to come with us? So you could scr–so you could -‘
‘Say it!’ Chico weeps. ‘Don’t let her do it to you! Say it! Say what you mean!’
‘Get out,’ he says dully. ‘Don’t you come back until you can apologize to your
mother and me.’
‘Don’t you dare!’ he cries. ‘Don’t you dare call that bitch my mother! I’ll kill
you!’
‘Stop it, Eddie!’ Billy screams. The words are muffled, blurred, through his
hands, which still cover his face. ‘Stop yelling at daddy! Stop it, please!’
Virginia doesn’t move from the doorway. Her calm eyes remain on Chico.
Sam blunders back a step and the back of his knees strike the edge of his easy-
chair. He sits down in it heavily and averts his face against a hairy forearm. ‘I can’t even look at you when you got words like that in your mouth, Eddie. You are making
me feel so bad.’
‘She makes you feel bad! Why won’t you admit it?’
He does not reply. Still not looking at Chico, he fumbles another frank
wrapped in bread from the plate on the TV tray. He fumbles for the mustard. Billy
goes on crying. Carl Stormer and his Country Buckaroos are singing a truck-driving
song. ‘My rig is old, but that don’t mean she’s slow,’ Carl tells all his western Maine viewers.
‘The boy doesn’t know what he’s saying, Sam,’ Virginia says gently. ‘It’s hard,
at his age. It’s hard to grow up.’
She’s whipped him. That’s the end, all right.
He turns and heads for the door which leads first into the shed and then
outdoors. As he opens it he looks back at Virginia, and she gazes at him tranquilly
when he speaks her name.
‘What is it, Ed?’
“The sheets are bloody.’ He pauses. ‘I broke her in.’
He thinks something has stirred in her eyes, but that is probably only his wish.
‘Please go now, Ed. You’re scaring Billy.’
He leaves. The Buick doesn’t want to start and he has almost resigned himself