“Misdeeds?” Mom scooted her chair out and stepped up beside my dad. “Your son cornered Joey in that rundown shack of a Haunted House and threatened to kill him.”
Her tone was fiery yet controlled. A flame eager to be stoked to a blaze. Sheriff Glover gave my mother an icy stare.
“Where I come from,” he said, “women still know their place.”
Sarah’s silverware clattered loudly on her plate.
“Where you come from is Planet Asshole,” she said.
I looked at my sister with shock and awe, and sudden respect. I barked a quick laugh before I could stop it.
The sheriff spun his head towards my sister. His face had gone from lava red to sun fire scarlet. I thought his cranium might blow as the volcano inside him erupted.
“Upstairs,” Dad said, pointing at Sarah.
She looked at him as if stung, but did as she was told, stomping away towards the stairs. The sheriff watched her go, eyes wide and angry, and then he turned them on me. A smile still split my face like a great fissure. I broadened it a little and showed my teeth for the sheriff’s benefit.
“You too,” Dad said, now pointing at me.
I followed Sarah without argument.
I climbed the stairs and saw my sister at the top step, sitting down. She shushed me with a finger to her lips and motioned for me to sit with her. I did, moving slow, so as to not cause any creaks or moans of the floor or walls or banister. We sat and listened, and the shadows of our parents, and the larger, rounder shadow of the sheriff, played on the wall below like a shadow puppet show.
“Mr. Hayworth,” the sheriff said, his voice trembling with embarrassment and anger, “you should really teach your family manners. They ought to respect authority.”
“You’re one to talk,” Dad said. “What have you taught your son, Sheriff? To pull weapons on people? Or just how to take a beating?”
I stifled another laugh, and Sarah and I turned to each other and mimed a high five, beaming at one another.
“Now you watch your mouth, mister,” Sheriff Glover said, and his shadow self raised an arm and pointed a finger at my shadow dad’s face. “I came here to try and make peace.” The shadow sheriff wagged a shadow finger like a wand. “It’s obvious our boys had a little misunderstanding. That’s what happens with kids.”
“Your kid’s almost eighteen, according to what Mr. Connolly tells me,” Dad said. “Not too much longer and he won’t be a minor, and then he won’t have to worry about my son at all. Next time, he ever comes around my family, I’ll wipe the floor with his ass and send you the cleaning bill.”
Mom’s shadow stretched an arm around Dad’s, as if restraining him. I thought that was a good idea. For the sheriff’s sake, not Dad’s.
“You threatening my son, Mr. Hayworth?” the sheriff said. His shadow moved a step closer to my dad’s.
“Yep,” Dad said. “And now I’m threatening you, Pillsbury.”
The laughter building inside of me almost made me stomp my feet in giddiness, and Sarah restrained me by pulling me close to her. Her red face revealed she was having the same struggle.
“Mr. Connolly told us how your son runs amok around this town,” Mom chimed in. “Don’t think our kids will stand by like some of the others around here.”
“That’s the third time I’ve heard that nigger’s name in five minutes,” the sheriff said. “I don’t want to hear it again. Niggers and cunts … they both ought to know their place.”
This time it was Dad’s shadow that stepped forward on the wall movie screen below us. Shadow Dad and Shadow Sheriff were now almost toe to toe.
“Did I hear you right, just now?” Dad said, his tone low and menacing. That tone reminded me of Bandit’s growl. “I think it’s time you left.”
He took another step forward, and the sheriff took a step back. Dad kept moving forward, and the sheriff continued falling back. The shadow show switched to real life as the two men appeared below in the foyer. Like a dog driving cattle, Dad herded the big, round man to the front door.
Mom was there to usher him through the threshold, giving a little curtsy as the sheriff stepped out onto the porch. Sarah and I moved up the top step and behind the banister to stay in view of the action.
“Thanks for the visit, kind sir,” Mom said and started to close the door.
The door stopped short of shutting, a large boot in its way. The sheriff looked through the opening and shared a glance between my mom and dad. Then he cast a sly, furtive glance up and over and past Mom and Dad standing there at the door, and his eyes found mine, peeking through the uprights of the banister. He smiled at me, winked, and then looked back at Mom and Dad. He put his wide-brimmed hat back on and tipped it to them.
“I’ll see you folks around,” he said.
He removed his boot from the doorway and walked away.
3.
For the next couple days I wasn’t allowed to leave the house. I wasn’t too happy about this turn of events, and I let my parents know it by stomping around and slamming doors and giving them evil eyes that would do a gypsy proud. I even performed a little mental curse against my dad involving explosive diarrhea, hopefully in a public place. There was no shrine or sacrifices involved, though, so I doubt the dark gods were impressed.
Dad said it was just for a few days to let things cool over. He didn’t think Sheriff Glover was foolish enough to act on a grudge, at least not openly. Even if he was a major asshole, as Sarah had rightly judged, he was just one man in the department. And there were county and state police to worry about should the good sheriff bring any undue attention his way, Dad elaborated. Local law enforcement were notorious for wanting to maintain autonomy in their little corners of the world.
This was all well and good, but a few days may as well have been a hundred years. This was summer, school a distant and unfathomable notion, with long days of doing whatever I wanted, and there was the fair still going and I hadn’t done the rollercoaster or Ferris wheel yet. There was a certain girl whose lips still lingered on mine with a vague electric feeling every time I thought about it, which was just about every other second.
And those odd seconds? Those were taken up by the memory of the blade against my throat, its cool touch and sharp edge. I wouldn’t admit this to my parents, though. They’d probably insist I see a therapist, where I’d be pressed into admitting how many uncles had touched me (none) and how often I put on women’s panties (never). I’d then be told it was alright for a guy to cry, whereupon my masculinity would be forever lost as quickly as if a surgeon had clipped off my sack.
I tried to occupy myself by reading, trying to lose myself in comics and Bradbury stories. The events of the past few days had been more exciting and yes, frightening, than any fiction, however, and the stories only fleetingly held my interest. Even the terrifying aspects of the experience at the fair only added to the exhilaration of it all.
Fear made the blood pump and rush, letting you know you were alive. Likewise, the smell and kiss of a young girl screamed alive. I wanted to be out there with my friends, and I thought about the car in the woods and what was in it and how, as long as I was in here, I’d never know.
I ran about the yard with Bandit, tackling him and wrestling him down, and though it was fun for awhile as all things with my dog were fun for awhile, it wasn’t as fun as being out there with him and my other friends.
Fat Bobby came over a couple times, and he sported a freshly busted lip, only just scabbing over. He read my comics, and added a few he’d somehow bought on his own to his collection in the box in my closet. He even tried some short stories by Bradbury and Matheson and King, but it seemed he liked the pictures and always went back to the comics and graphic novels. We played catch in the front yard, and he even tried chasing Bandit around a couple times, but Fat Bobby got winded easily and that didn’t last long.
Then, one day, the third of my house arrest or quarantine or whatever my parents thought of it as, we were on th
e porch, Fat Bobby and I, and that old familiar sad, depressed look came over his face. The sour expression scrunched up his features, like he’d bitten into a Ho Ho full of shit.
“What’s up?” I asked, leaning back on Bandit’s curled form behind me like a backrest.
“I was thinking about the Haunted House.”
“Yeah. Pretty crazy stuff, wasn’t it? But we got through it.”
“No,” Fat Bobby said. He kind of stomped his foot like he was on the verge of a tantrum. “You and Jim … and even Tara … got us through it. I didn’t do anything.”
“You ran down pimple face,” I said.
“You pushed me into him,” Bobby said, giving me a look that said: Don’t throw me any bones.
“The point is he went down,” I said, knowing it sounded lame even as I said it.
“The point is he went down because of you, not me.”
The point he was making was obvious, and the hard fact was that I couldn’t really argue against it. He had done nothing, and if it wasn’t for Tara’s quick thinking when the knife had been pulled away from me, and me and Jim reacting … well, let’s just say that the night could have ended very differently.
So I didn’t throw Bobby anymore bones, but just let the quiet linger between us for a bit. I knew he wasn’t finished. I had an inkling of where this was going, but I felt it was important for him to say it, not me.
“I was wondering …” he said, staring out off the porch at the yard and the butterflies fluttering about over the grass like they were spelling out a secret message just for him. “Your dad showed you how to fight, didn’t he?”
I nodded, said: “Yes.”
“Do you think he’d show me?”
I put an arm around him, clapped him on the back. I told him I’d ask, and we sat there for awhile on the porch, under the sun, with the blue sky like a blanket over it all.
* * *
Day four of my “just a couple days” incarceration and I was starting to lose patience with my parents. I knew arguing with my dad wouldn’t do any good, so when he got home from work in the early afternoon, I asked him about showing Bobby some moves. Dad considered this for a moment, his eyes occasionally drifting to Bobby’s fat lip, and then he nodded. Bobby smiled, and we followed my dad out to the garage.
With my parents’ cars always kept in the driveway, the garage was free for other purposes. From one end to the other, corner to corner, the four walls showcased hammers and spades and drills and saws hung on hooks. The whole center of the garage was taken up by exercise equipment. At the forefront of the garage was a cleared area of the floor covered by blue tumble mats. Beyond that there was one of those Bowflex machines, a stationary bicycle, a treadmill, and free weights resting on a mat. In the middle of all this, like the centerpiece of a shrine, was a man-sized punching bag, supported by a weighted base at the bottom, and tied to rafters at the ceiling for extra support. Dad worked this bag at least an hour a day, and there were duct-taped areas where his punches and kicks had eventually torn holes in the bag’s hide. I worked the bag with him sometimes, when I wasn’t lost in between the covers of comics or other books.
He led Fat Bobby with a hand on the kid’s shoulder over to the mat that surrounded the big bag. My dad took off his work shirt and underneath he was wearing a T-shirt, and his biceps and forearms looked like granite wrapped in flesh.
“Okay,” he told Bobby without preamble. “Show me what you got. Hit the bag.”
Fat Bobby looked at me, then at the bag, and he kind of cocked his head at it like he didn’t know what it was or what it was for. Then he let out this sigh and wound his arm about and swung it at the bag, and it was like watching a fat bear just out of hibernation throwing a lazy paw at a tree. His fist bounced off the bag with a pathetic sound like a sweaty butt cheek peeling off a leather seat. Fat Bobby’s face reddened with shame.
Mine did too.
Dad didn’t miss a beat though.
He moved behind Bobby and squared the kid’s shoulders, showed him how to balance and carry his weight. He turned Fat Bobby’s torso this way and that, back and forth in little semi-turns like a spindle. He told Bobby how to throw the punch with all his weight, to lean into it for momentum. Dad went through the motions with him a couple more times and then stepped away and gave Bobby the go-ahead.
Bobby kept his feet anchored like my dad had shown him, cocked his arm back, and threw a jab while turning his upper body with the punch. This time the bag shook with the impact, and Dad slapped my friend on the back.
Fat Bobby’s face colored again, this time with pride.
They went at it for awhile. Dad showed him how to stick and move, to keep your opponent off balance; how to move in with a blow for maximum impact; how to feign low and come back high. Pretty soon Fat Bobby looked like a greased ham, sweaty and glistening. Dad called for a break and fetched water from the nearby fridge, gave a bottle to Bobby, and leaned back against a wall.
“You want to watch me and Joey go a round?” Dad said to Bobby. Bobby nodded eagerly, and Dad looked over at me, kind of smiling. “You up for a round with the old man?”
“Sure,” I said, and I stepped over to the wall where some gloves and headgear were hanging. I took them down, threw the larger pair to my dad, pulled the padded headgear over my head, and put on the smaller pair of gloves. “One condition.”
My dad was already dancing around the area at the forefront of the garage, where the free mat space was. He threw a couple jabs, a few kicks that cut through the air like bullets, and he smiled at me.
“Name it,” he said.
“I land one hit,” I said, smiling back at him, “even just one, and I get to go out with my friends.”
He was already shaking his head before the words were out of my mouth.
“It’s too soon, son—” he began, and I cut him off.
“Scared I’ll knock you a good one?” I threw a few jabs of my own, then followed with some of my own kicks, which whizzed through the air pretty good if I did say so myself.
He was still shaking his head, even beginning to unlace the gloves he’d just put on. Unperturbed, I went for a cheap shot.
“Don’t want to pull a muscle?” I said, and that stopped him. He gave me a stare across the garage like a gunfighter giving someone the once over in a dusty saloon.
Dad had pulled a muscle in his lower back the year before while working the bag. It wasn’t something he liked brought up. It reminded him he was getting older.
“What counts as a hit?” he asked me, lacing the gloves back up, pulling them on tight and snug with his teeth.
“Head, face, and body,” I said, making my way to the mat and kicking off my shoes. Dad did the same, his bare feet padding on the mat as he shuffled about.
Fat Bobby watched all this from the sidelines, eyes wide and mouth agape.
“You know you’re not fighting some punk kid this time, don’t you?”
Dad smiled down at me, dancing around, circling me.
“Yeah,” I said. “This time I’m fighting a cripple who should be in an old folks home.”
His smile widened and he began to move closer, his circles tightening.
“I’ll try not to spank you too hard,” he said and threw an intentionally slow jab, testing me.
“I’ll try not to knock out your dentures,” I said and moved quickly in with a flurry of jabs, some low kicks, and an uppercut.
My dad dodged these or batted them away like annoying insects buzzing about him. He gave me a little shove that sent me off balance and tumbling to the mat. I rolled into the fall and came back rabbit quick on my feet.
I danced around him, watching his legs and arms, trying to find the weakness in his defense, watching, waiting. I was still watching, waiting, when his right leg darted out and caught me high on the shoulder. Though he checked the kick at the last moment, it sent me sprawling on the mat again.
I rolled again to my feet, this time not so gracefully.
> Dad smiled at me, slapped his gloved fists together.
“Let me know when you’ve had enough, little man.”
“Let me know when you’ve crapped your Depends diapers, old man,” I said and darted in for another flurry. He batted them all away again, and gave me a couple rabbit punches to the back and top of my head just for fun.
I snarled and went for some kicks to his thighs and belly. He pushed these away. Stepped close and ruffled my hair in that way I hated and then shoved me away again. I kept my balance this time, but just barely.
He laughed at me and did an impression of me stumbling about that looked like a drunken wino tripping along a street corner. Fat Bobby burped out a small laugh, too, and I turned to him and stared him down and he shut up fast.
“Fine,” Dad said, and relaxed his stance, started for the laces of his gloves with his teeth. His chuckles died down as he freed his hands and, hanging up the gloves, he turned back to me. “Fine, go out with your friends. But you all stay together, and Bandit still goes with you.”
Still wanting to fight, but visibly letting my face settle and relax, I worked at my gloves and went past my dad to hang them up. I turned around and made as if to head back to the house. Dad was already headed that direction. I jogged to catch up to him.
“One thing, Dad,” I said.
“What’s that, son?” he said and started to turn to face me.
“I still want my one hit,” I said and cold cocked him on the chin.
I didn’t hit with all my strength, of course. I wasn’t stupid. I put just enough behind the jab to startle him. But it was like hitting a brick, and probably hurt my hand more than it did his face.
Surprise rolled down his face like a curtain, and then a smile. Like the champion and winner that I was, I ran away fast, laughing and taunting my dad all the way.
Not until later, when I needed him, did I realize I’d left Bandit behind.
4.
Fat Bobby told me how he and Jim had told Tara about the abandoned car in the woods and that they’d been spending a lot of time down there together since the night at the fair. He said there was probably a good chance Jim and Tara were there now, and that got me all nervous and angry inside, thinking of Tara out there alone with another guy.
If You Go Down to the Woods Page 10
