There was a very touching apology to a bandage-wrapped, black-eyed Mr. Carlson and his stony-eyed wife (” . . . distraught . . . haven’t been myself . . . sorrier than I can say . . . “), but I got no apology for being badgered in front of the chemistry class as I stood sweating at the blackboard with all the numbers looking like fifth-century Punic.
No apology from Dicky Cable or Dana Collette. Or from your Friendly Neighborhood Creaking Thing who told me through tight lips on the way home from the hospital that he wanted to see me out in the garage after I had changed my clothes.
I thought about that as I took off my sport jacket and my best slacks and put on jeans and an old chambray workshirt. I thought about not going-just heading off down the road instead. I thought about just going out and taking it. Something in me rebelled at that. I had been suspended. I had spent five hours in a holding cell in Placerville Center before my father and my hysterical mother (“Why did you do it, Charlie? Why? Why?”) forked over the bail money-the charges, at the joint agreement of the school, the cops, and Mr.
Carlson (not his wife; she had been hoping I’d get at least ten years), had been dropped later.
One way or the other, I thought my father and I owed each other something. And so I went out to the garage.
It’s a musty, oil-smelling place, but completely trim. Shipshape. It’s his place, and he keeps it that way. A place for everything, and everything in its place. Yoho-ho, matey.
The riding lawnmower placed neatly with its nose against the wall. The gardening and landscaping tools neatly hung up on nails. Jar tops nailed to the roof beams so jars of nails could be screwed into them at eye level. Stacks of old magazines neatly tied up with twine-Argosy, Bluebook, True, Saturday Evening Post. The ranch wagon neatly parked facing out.
He was standing there in an old faded pair of twill khakis and a hunting shirt. For the first time, I noticed how old he was starting to look. His belly had always been as flat as a two-by-four, but now it was bulging out a little-too many beers down at Gogan’s. There seemed to be more veins in his nose burst out into little purple deltas under the skin, and the lines around his mouth and eyes were deeper.
“What’s your mother doing?” he asked me.
“Sleeping, ” I said. She had been sleeping a lot, with the help of a Librium pre-scription. Her breath was sour and dry with it. It smelled like dreams gone rancid.
“Good,” he said, nodding. “That’s how we want it, isn’t it?”
He started taking off his belt.
“I’m going to take the hide off you,” he said.
“No,” I said. “You’re not.”
He paused, the belt half out of the loops. “What?”
“If you come at me with that thing, I’m going to take it away from you,” I said. My 105
voice was trembling and uneven. “I’m going to do it for the time you threw me on the ground when I was little and then lied about it to Mom. I’m going to do it for every time you belted me across the face for doing something wrong, without giving me a second chance. I’m going to do it for that hunting trip when you said you’d slit her nose open if you ever caught her with another man.”
He had gone a deadly pale. Now it was his voice trembling. “You gutless, spineless wonder. Do you think you can blame this on me? You go tell that to that pansy psychiatrist if you want to, that one with the pipe. Don’t try it on me.”
“You stink,” I said. “You fucked up your marriage and you fucked up your only child.
You come on and try to take me if you think you can. I’m out of school. Your wife’s turning into a pinhead. You’re nothing but a booze-hound.” I was crying. “You come on and try it, you dumb fuck. ”
“You better stop it, Charlie,” he said. “Before I stop just wanting to punish you and start wanting to kill you. ”
“Go ahead and try,” I said, crying harder. “I’ve wanted to kill you for thirteen years. I hate your guts. You suck. ”
So then he came at me like something out of a slave-exploitation movie, one end of his Navy-issue belt wrapped in his fist, the other end, the buckle end, dangling down. He swung it at me, and I ducked. It went by my shoulder and hit the hood of his Country Squire wagon with a hard clank, scoring the finish. His tongue was caught between his teeth, and his eyes were bulging. He looked the way he had that day I broke the storm windows. Suddenly I wondered if that was the way he looked when he made love to my mother (or what passed for it); if that’s what she had to look up at while she was pinned under him. The thought froze me with such a bolt of disgusted revelation that I forgot to duck the next one.
The buckle came down alongside my face, ripped into my cheek, pulling it open in a long furrow. It bled a lot. It felt like the side of my face and neck had been doused in warm water.
“Oh, God,” he said. “Oh, God, Charlie.”
My eye had watered shut on that side, but I could see him coming toward me with the other. I stepped to meet him and grabbed the end of the belt and pulled. He wasn’t expecting it. It jerked him off balance, and when he started to run a little to catch it back, I tripped him up and he thumped to the oil-stained concrete floor. Maybe he had forgotten I wasn’t four anymore, or nine years old and cowering in a tent, having to take a whiz while he yucked it up with his friends. Maybe he had forgotten or never knew that little boys grow up remembering every blow and word of scorn, that they grow up and want to eat their fathers alive.
A harsh little grunt escaped him as he hit the concrete. He opened his hands to break his fall, and I had the belt. I doubled it and brought it down on his broad khaki ass. It made a loud smack, and it probably didn’t hurt much, but he cried out in surprise, and I smiled. It hurt my cheek to smile. He had really beaten the shit out of my cheek.
He got up warily. “Charlie, put that down,” he said. “Let’s take you to the doctor and 106
get that stitched up. ”
“You better say yes-sir to the Marines you see if your own kid can knock you down,”
I said.
That made him mad, and he lunged at me, and I hit him across the face with the belt.
He put his hands up to his face, and I dropped the belt and hit him in the stomach as hard as I could. The air whiffled out of him, and he doubled over. His belly was soft, even softer than it had looked. I didn’t know whether to feel disgust or pity suddenly. It occurred to me that the man I really wanted to hurt was safely out of my reach, standing behind a shield of years.
He straightened up, looking pale and sick. There was a red mark across his forehead where I had hit him with the belt.
“Okay,” he said, and turned around. He pulled a hardhead rake off the wall. “If that’s how you want it. ”
I reached out beside me and pulled the hatchet off the wall and held it up with one hand.
“That’s how I want it,” I said. “Take one step, and I’ll cut your head off, if I can. ”
So we stood there, trying to figure out if we meant it. Then he put the take back, and I put the hatchet back. There was no love in it, no love in the way we looked at each other.
He didn’t say, ” If you’d had the guts to do that five years ago, none of this would have happened, son . . . come on, I’ll take you down to Gogan’s and buy you a beer in the back room. ” And I didn’t say I was sorry. It happened because I got big enough, that was all.
None of it changed anything. Now I wish it was him I’d killed, if I had to kill anyone.
This thing on the floor between my feet is a classic case of misplaced aggression.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get that stitched up.”
“I can drive myself. “