Inheritance

by Joe McKinney

  Paul could hear his father breathing. It was the sound of man pulling himself together, dragging himself up from a depth.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Let me be.”

  He got to his feet. He straightened the black Stetson on his head. His white, long sleeve shirt was sopping wet with sweat. His face was milky pale.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “Go into that room up there and clear it all out,” he said. He was out of breath, but he managed to get that under control. “Everything goes. Pictures off the wall. Your books out of there. Everything.”

  “Clear it out? But why?”

  Paul watched his father’s face. He saw the man clenching his teeth. He could see the muscles twitching along the ridge of his jaw.

  “Goddamn it, Carol. Go clear out that room. I want all your junk out of there. Go, now!”

  Almost by instinct, Paul took a step back. He knew that look. Growing up, he had become an expert at reading his father’s moods, at studying the shifting emotional weather inside the house. He knew there was a point, a sort of middle ground between his father’s wide ranging plains of calm indifference and his sudden, mountainous peaks of inexplicable and uncontrollable rage. That middle ground came and went with the suddenness of a spark off a flint rock. Failure to catch that spark and back away in time meant you were gonna get hurt.

  He wondered what was wrong with his mother, why she couldn’t see it.

  And then it was too late for her. Martin Henninger shoved her into the wall. Slapped her face hard enough to send an echo ringing through the house.

  Her head hit the wall and her knees buckled. She slid down the wall.

  “Do it now!”

  When she still didn’t move fast enough for him, he grabbed her by the armpit and dragged her into the break room. He threw her onto the floor in the middle of the room.

  “All of this crap goes,” he said. “Get it cleaned out.”

  His mother held her bruised cheek in silence, not daring to look at him. He recognized the look on her face. Paul had seen the look plenty of times while out on patrol handling domestic violence calls. It was the look of a woman who’s been hit before. But it had been a long time since he’d seen it on his mother’s face, and it made something unpleasant move in his gut.

  “Move!” his father shouted.

  Martin Henninger crossed the room to the far wall and grabbed a framed photograph off the wall and threw it at his wife.

  “Get this crap out of here! All of it.”

  He began to dismantle the room, tearing everything off the walls, throwing books out into hall.

  “Martin, stop!” his mother cried. But it did no good. The man was possessed by rage. He was like a ferocious and terribly strong two year old in the middle of a fit. He didn’t hear anything. You couldn’t reason with him. His world had turned red.

  “Do it now!” he shouted, and took a small picture from the end table and slammed it down on the floor. The glass over the picture shattered, and Carol Henninger turned her face away from the spray of glass shards.

  “Pick it up,” his father said. “Get it out of this room.”

  Paul watched her scramble toward the busted picture frame. He saw her face as she picked up the picture and separated it from the wreckage. He saw the picture. It was him as a baby, sitting in the grass, his mother kneeling forward to touch the tip of his nose with her finger.

  “I’m gonna be gone for about an hour. Make sure this room is empty by the time I get back. You hear me?”

  Paul felt a mixture of love and fear and pain as he watched his mother tuck the picture up into the folds of her skirt.

  “You hear me?” Martin Henninger roared.

  She nodded.

  “Then say the Goddamn words.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I hear you, Martin.”

  “Better,” he said, and stormed out of the house, the screen door slamming behind him.

  ***

  The view shifted again, and this time Paul found himself on the opposite side of the room. Everything was bare save for the metal framed bed bolted to the floor. His father stood near the far wall, a paintbrush in his hand, a bucket of gray paint at his feet. He was working steadily, drawing the strangely curling gray lines onto the yellow field he had just finished painting.

  His mother stood in the doorway, crying quietly to herself.

  “Why are you doing this, Martin?”

  His father didn’t answer, didn’t even look at her, but Paul knew the answer. At least a part of it. He had felt it when he stared at the stick lattice his father had been working on shortly before he forced his mother to empty out the room. He had seen a flash of what his father had planned.

  “Martin, what’s happening to you?”

  Nothing.

  Just then Paul heard footsteps in the hallway. His mother turned. Paul was there. Paul as he had been at three or maybe four years old.

  “I taked out the feed like you said, Momma.”

  She made a furtive glance towards Paul’s father, then back to the boy.

  She said, “That’s good, baby. Why don’t you go outside and play for a little, okay?”

  “I don’t wanna.”

  “Please, baby. Just do as I ask.”

  But Paul walked past her and stared into the room. He stared at the sickly yellow and the gray lines his father was painting and he said, “That looks yucky.”

  “Baby, please,” his mother said, and grabbed him by the shoulder and guided him back to the hallway. “There’s some peach baskets out in the yard, Paul. Can you go gather them up for Momma and put them in the barn, please?”

  “Ah, Momma, I don’t wanna.”

  “Go, Paul. Do what Momma says.”

  The boy ran off. She watched him run, then turned back to her husband, who was still painting the gray lines onto the yellow wall.

  “It’s Paul, isn’t it?” she said.

  Martin Henninger went on painting.

  “What have you got planned for him? What kind of twisted shit are you planning to drop on our son?”

  Martin Henninger didn’t answer. Never even looked away from the wall. But he didn’t have to. Paul knew the answer to that question, too.

  ***

  A power drill went off behind him. Paul turned and saw his father tightening down the screws on one of the metal rings on the wall next to the bed. His mother sat on the edge of the bed. She had lost weight. Her hair was unwashed and straggly, and in the dusty shaft of sunlight that came through the window Paul could see that it was starting to turn gray.

  His mother was staring at the rings on the wall with a sick look on her face. “What are those for?” she said. “You don’t need those.”

  Paul looked away. The yellow wall was already starting to show black scuff marks where his mother had rubbed it with her hands while pacing back and forth. He sensed that the wall was like a movie screen, showing his mother visions of her future. Something his father had created as a constant reminder of his power over her. Paul knew that she had spent long hours in this room, and the images she had seen in that wall had left her shaken. It was the gateway to her depression. She had seen herself sapped of vitality, of life, estranged from her child, bled dry by depression. She had seen so much that it had become her reality.

  “You don’t need those things,” she said again to Paul’s father. Paul turned back to the two of them. “I’m not going anywhere, Martin. You know that. I can’t.”

  He finished mounting the ring and put away his drill and got up and crossed to the doorway, leaving her on the side of the bed without looking back.

  “I don’t understand you, Martin. Why are you doing this to me? Why are you taking our son away from me? Why don’t you just kill me and be done with it? I don’t fight you anymore.”

  And then the four-year-old version of Paul came running down the hallway and stopped in the doorway. He tried to enter the room, but his father put a hand on his chest and held him back.


  The child version of Paul looked at his mother sitting on the edge of the bed and said, “Momma, I’m hungry.”

  But Carol Henninger didn’t look up. She was staring down at her hands in her lap. She sagged into herself like she was drugged, a limp shell, empty on the inside. But the adult Paul knew better. He could feel what his father was doing to her, holding her down, forcing her to be silent with the strength of his mind. Paul winced. All this had been going on, would continue to go on, for years, and he would live in the same house with this and never suspect a thing. How could he have been so blind to it?

  Martin Henninger pushed his child back into the hallway. “Go outside for a bit,” he said.

  “What’s wrong with Momma?” the boy said.

  “Momma ain’t feeling good, Paul. Go on now. Get yourself outside for a while.”

  The boy looked from his father to his mother and then back to his father, his expression uncertain. “Yes sir,” he said, and gave his mother another worried glance before walking away.

  ***

  Paul felt dizzy. He put a hand to his head and blinked, and when the feeling left him, the phone was ringing. He was still in the old house, still in the vision, but things had changed. The house was dirty, the floors littered with machine parts. It was dark, too. Heavy drapes hung over the windows, and the air was thick and musty with the taint of a protracted sickness.

  Paul walked out of the room with the yellow wall, down the hallway to the living room, and saw his mother curled up on the couch. Twelve year old Paul was standing in the kitchen next to the screen door in his football gear, waiting on Steve’s father to pick him up.

  His mother said if the phone was for her to tell them she wasn’t feeling up to talking.

  His father was outside, yelling at him to answer the Goddamn phone.

  The boy answered, and Paul remembered it all again as he watched the boy try to make sense of the Spanish Magdalena Chavarria was firing at him.

  And then his father was standing in the doorway, demanding to know who it was.

  Paul watched his father take up the phone and fire back in Spanish, speaking it like a native. He watched his father lean back against the wall.

  He heard him say, “Si, te oi. Yo tengo que guardar un cargo,” and the words shot a chill down his spine.

  I have a charge to keep.

  And then his father hung up the phone. The twelve year old Paul said, “Daddy, I didn’t know you could talk Mexican.”

  “Go outside, Paul.”

  “Huh?

  Martin Henninger’s eyes flashed. “I said, go outside! You’re waiting on Steve. Go do it in the driveway.”

  Even from across the kitchen, the older Paul could hear his father’s teeth grinding.

  The twelve-year-old Paul just looked confused, and a little sad now that he knew they weren’t going to talk about how his father knew Spanish.

  He hung his head and said, “Yes sir.”

  When the boy was gone, Martin Henninger stepped into the living room and stared at his wife on the couch.

  “Get up.”

  His mother stirred. Paul watched her move. She was so sluggish, like her body was stiff and achy. Every move seemed to bring her pain. He watched her, and he realized something. She had been reduced to a puppet. Her body had been broken. Her thoughts were not private. Her will was almost completely gone. His father controlled her absolutely. She was basically a faucet that he could turn on and shut down whenever he needed something from her. Clean the house. Cook for the child. Feed the child. Put the child to bed. Dress it, care for it, maintain it for the greatness it will one day inherit. She was a slave to her husband’s will, and in that horrible moment Paul realized that his father had been keeping her around solely to care for him, and the knowledge made him want to vomit.

  When she was on her feet, he said, “I want the kitchen cleaned. I want everything in here cleaned up. You hear me?”

  “Yes, Martin. I hear you.”

  “You’ve got two steaks in the freezer.”

  “Yes.”

  “Cook them both. One for me, one for Paul. He’s got a big night ahead of him.”

  A long pause. Too long.

  “You hear me?”

  “What are you gonna do, Martin?”

  “That ain’t your concern. Just get this place cleaned up.”

  “Martin, that’s my son. I won’t let you corrupt him. I won’t let you make him into what you are. You’re evil, Martin. You’re a sick, evil man, and I won’t have my boy being anything like you.”

  Paul’s mother was breathing hard, her mouth twitching with barely contained rage. But his father was calm. He almost looked amused.

  “I got big plans for Paul, Carol. He’s gonna be powerful one day. You don’t know how powerful. When he’s a man he’s gonna lead nations. Nations, Carol! Do you understand that? He will be a prophet, and his words will be as sweet in their ears as honey on their tongue. Can you picture that? Can you picture this world passing away, and my boy ushering in a new age?”

  “I don’t want him being anything like you.”

  Martin Henninger did something then that surprised Paul. He walked across the room to where his wife stood cowering and he put a hand on the back of her head and he stroked her oily gray hair almost like a master strokes a dog.

  He said, “Carol, he ain’t gonna be like me. He’s gonna be bigger, stronger, more powerful. And sweetheart, it ain’t your decision to make.”

  She pulled herself away from him.

  “It is, too. I’ll take him away from here. Away from you!”

  “What you’re gonna do is clean this kitchen. After that you’re gonna—”

  “You go to hell, Martin Henninger!” She was nearly spitting the words at him. “You go to hell, you bastard!”

  “Carol, you’re gonna clean this kitchen up. Now if you wanna get the shit kicked out of you before that happens, well, that’s your decision to make. Either way it’s fine by me. The job will get done regardless.”

  They stood there, staring at one another. Paul watched them both. He could feel his father exerting his power over her, and he could feel her fighting against it. Her whole body was quivering with the effort.

  Finally, she broke.

  Her shoulders sagged.

  Her eyes turned down to the floor.

  Martin Henninger smiled, turned, and walked out the door.

  His mother left the kitchen and went to the room with the yellow wall. Paul followed her, wishing that he could say something to her. He wanted to tell her that he had misunderstood, that he had screwed up so very badly. He had no idea what she had been fighting against, and the fact that she had lasted as long as she did spoke to the depth of her feelings for him. All this time, she had been acting as a buffer between him and his father, keeping the man at bay by sacrificing herself. She had fought to save him, and all he had thought to do was hate her for taking the coward’s way out.

  She went to the bed and reached under it and came up with the picture Paul had seen her secret away in the folds of her skirt. She sat on the edge of the bed and held the picture in her lap and sobbed quietly. Then she sniffled and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and flipped the picture over.

  She took a pen from her blouse and started to write something on the back of the picture.

  She was writing from memory, and writing quickly.

  He only saw the first line before the room around him started to shift, but that first line was like a punch in the gut.

  They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

  ***

  Whatever it was she had written on the back of that picture had been some sort of victory for her. Every stroke of the pen had been another step towards standing up straight and taking back a piece of herself from the black pit that was her marriage to Martin Henninger. She was stronger now. Paul could feel her strength echoing through the house. And it wasn’t just coming from her as she walked through the kitchen, cleanin
g, smiling, even whistling a tune that, to Paul at least, sounded like vintage Patsy Cline. It wasn’t just that. He could also feel it as a sort of positive energy, an eddy breaking the smooth flow of his father’s power. Martin Henninger watched her moving through the house, and he was trying to reassert his sway over her, but somehow the connection had shorted out. His control was slipping, and he knew it. He was flustered, uncertain, even a little scared of her now. She was still a dog in his eyes, but a dog who no longer cowers just because the master raises his fist.

  Martin Henninger came up behind her as she did the dishes and stroked the back of her hair. She stiffened for just a moment, an almost imperceptible moment, but never stopped scrubbing the pot in the sink.

  He said, “You don’t like it when I touch you like that, do you?”

  “I’m working.”

  “That ain’t what I asked,” he said. And as Paul watched, his father curled his mother’s hair around the back of his fist and yanked her head back until her face was pointed up at him.

  In a breathless whisper, she said, “You’re gonna do whatever you want to do.”

  He didn’t let go. He said, “That’s right,” and grabbed one of her breasts with his other hand and squeezed. It was a violation, a prelude to a rape. Paul felt his arms tremble with rage, his fingernails digging into the palms of his hands as they curled into fists.

  His mother remained perfectly still. Her arms stayed limp at her side, and white, sudsy water dripped from her fingertips and onto the floor.

  Just then there was the sound of a truck slowing out on the road.

  Paul looked up. Steve Sullivan’s truck. I’ll be coming home soon. I’ll find her in here, and she’ll be smiling. She’ll say, “Hey baby. Hello Steve,” and I’ll think something is wrong because for the first time in God knows how long, she won’t be a wasted vegetable curled up in the shadows. She’ll look almost healthy, and I’ll think something is wrong, but I’ll think what’s wrong is that she looks healthy. I’ll never guess the truth. My God, I never had a clue.

  Martin Henninger’s lip curled into a sneer of frustration. Carol Henninger just laughed. He said, “Damn it,” and threw her to the floor.