Authors: Tom Spanbauer
I was in the loft of the barn scaring up pigeons when I heard the Oldsmobile drive into the yard, heard him shut the engine off, heard him slam the door of the Oldsmobile. I heard the screen door slam next, which I expected, but then I heard him yell something and the screen door slam again and then I heard my father below me unlocking the saddle room door. I got down onto the floor quick where there was a hole in the floorboards and I could see my father at the saddle room door in his Sunday suit unlocking the saddle room door with his right hand. In his left hand were two bottles of whiskey. At least I thought it was whiskey in those bottles, and as it turned out it was. It was Black Velvet, and when he got that saddle room door unlocked, my father walked in there and closed the door behind him, locked it, and started drinking that Black Velvet down. He didn't come out at six for supper, and as things turned out, he finished up both of those Black Velvets by suppertime at six o'clock the next day.
In the kitchen at suppertime that first night, my mother put the food on the table, the roast beef and the mashed potatoes, and the string beans and the coleslaw and the bread, and the gravy. She even started the coffee up for my father for after supper, her hair the way she always combed it out for him at suppertime, her lips with lipstick on them, the clean apron she
wore over her red housedress on, but my father didn't come in for supper still.
My mother stood at the kitchen window, the good one that faced out into the yard with the doily curtain and the red geranium in it, ready for him like that, her left hand drawing back the curtain, the hand with the wedding ring on it. My mother waited and the light changed from dayâblue and yellowâthrough the colors of the rose window at church: orange and light red, navy blue to black. My mother waited until nighttime.
When darkness fell, the light went on in the saddle room and you could hear my father singing,
“Du, du liegst mir im Herzen,”
the waxing moon, even fuller than the night my mother'd shot it, rising over the ridgepole of the barn.
There were big white fluffy clouds going over the moon, white like the moon, when the saddle room light finally went off. It wasn't long before I could see my father walking across the yard like he was trying to walk normal. I watched him from my window upstairs.
I wondered if my father could see usâhis wife and his son at the windows, her down in the kitchen and me in my bedroom. If my father could see us, I wondered what he thought of us then. Then I wondered what it felt like for him to see us watching him walk like that.
My mother came into my room like she had two nights before after shooting the moon, but this night it was different, that left eye of hers was so far gone it looked like the eye of a fish dead and floating in a fish bowl. My mother pulled the covers of my bed back and fluffed the pillow up and stood there waiting for me to get into bed like I was still a kid. I already had my pajamas on, and she said that I could brush my teeth in the morning. I got in bed and my mother pulled the covers over me like I was still a kid and she stood there for a while in the dark in the moonlight. From downstairs we heard my father open the door. We heard the screen door spring stretching. That night the
screen door spring stretching like that sounded like angels singing, glorious and sorrowful both.
“Looks like we've lost the farm for good,” my mother said, and I didn't say anything.
“Whatever happens tonight,” she said, “I don't want you coming out of your room. There's trouble enough without you two getting into it. Promise me,” she said, and I promised.
My mother left the room then and closed the door behind her and there was only darkness, save for the moonlight in the room. I could hardly make out my confirmation certificate and the picture of the guardian angel helping the two kids across the bridge.
Pretty soon I could hear them talking in the kitchen, my mother talking like she was whispering, though she wasn't, my father talking loud in the way I had never heard him talk in front of her before, saying those words in front of her and in a strange voiceâa drunken voice, I figuredâand the both of them were calling each other
Joe and Mary
. Later on, I could hear my father puking in the bathroom and then later I could hear my mother crying in the bedroom.
In the morning, I didn't go to school. Nobody even thought of it, including me. My father still had his suit on. He was sitting in the front room in the early-morning light that was the color of eggshells. There he was: in his suit, on the davenport like he was company, holding on to the second Black Velvet. The first Black Velvet was in the kitchen on the draining board. My mother had rinsed it out.
When I saw my father sitting there in his Sunday suit in that light holding on to the Black Velvet that way, and my mother wearing lipstick and her hair the way she wore it for him, and nobody even thinking about getting me to school, I got scared in a way I had never been scared before.
My father sat there in the front room through breakfast, passing up on the mush, the eggs fried just the way he liked them, and the toast. He didn't even have any coffee.
My father sat there through dinner, passing up on the roast beef from the night before when he didn't eat supper, the potatoes, the gravy, the string beansâreheated; the coleslaw, the baked bread, the peach pieâhis favoriteâand coffee again.
Even though it was Tuesday, my mother didn't bake bread. She didn't do the ironing. She just sat at the kitchen table smoking Viceroys, waiting for my father to eat.
My father sat there drinking from the second bottle of Black Velvet all through supperâno roast-beef sandwiches, no potato salad, no corn on the cob, no peach pie, still no coffee for him.
But then, just about the time that supper was usually over, my father stood up and drained the last of the Black Velvet from the bottle and let the bottle fall to the floor on the carpet. Just about the time my father usually took his paper into the front room or out on the front porch with his coffee, my father walked down the hallway of the butterflies and dice. He walked into the kitchen and my mother was waiting for him with the rolling pin. My mother was in the kitchen with her hair that way for him, lipstick on her lips for him, wearing her clean apron over her red housedress for him, with her rolling pin in her hand for him. When my father stepped into the kitchen, my mother unlatched and came on him fast from behind from where she had been standing. She swung a good one but missed him by a yard, lost her balance and fell down by the stove, her hair falling down in front of her eyes, her dress up, her legs bare all the way up to her panties. My mother stood up again real fast and cranked up for another swing, but my father stopped her, hit her in the mouth with his fist clenched tight. He hit her the way one man hits another man in a fistfight or boxing; the way Harold P. Endicott hit that woman Sugar Babe. My mother's nose and mouth went red and she went down fast into the pile of kindling by the stove.
My father hit me the same way when I went after him. I heard a loud buzzing and I felt like puking. I landed on top of my
mother by the stove. My father said something about the way the two of us, my mother and me, were lying there, and then walked out the kitchen door, slamming the screen door behind him as he left.
I just lay there for a while looking at things. I had never seen the kitchen door from that angle. Looking out the eyesore from down there, I saw more sky than I'd ever seen from inside before. Then one of those hawks flew byâframed for an instant by the eyesore. That bird let out a screech that was just like the screen door spring stretching. I don't know how I ever could have thought it sounded like angels.
I looked over at my mother. Her eyes were open and she was staring up at the ceiling, holding her hand over her nose and mouth. Her eye was worse than ever. It was like she had finally seen too much. I got up and got a washrag wet and gave it to her and she began to wipe the blood away.
“Go after your father,” my mother said. “He needs you now.” And after she said that, she crossed herself. Then she got up and walked into the hallway of the butterflies and the dice and into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.
THE DOOR TO
the saddle room was open and where the .25-20 usually hung was just the red outline on the wall. I ran to the river to old Harold P. Endicott's house. Everything along the way looked like that missing rifle; things were just outlines of themselvesâthe barn, the house, the toolshed, the trees, the pig pen, the river, even the clouds. As I ran I wondered why I was thinking that things looked that way. I figured it was because I was scared. Things always seemed different then. But I never stopped running, scared as I was. I never stopped even when the rain started. Even when the skies grew black and opened up. I never stopped until I got to Harold P. Endicott's, where Old Lard Ass had got his licking; never stopped until I heard the shot.
This is what I saw: my father holding the gun on Harold P. Endicott, who was sitting in a lawn chair under the eaves of his
house near the back door, his hellhounds surrounding him, all of them looking at my father like murder. I don't know why, but I was relieved for all of us that my father didn't catch old Endicott like I had caught him that day.
My father was standing there in the rain, holding the gun on Harold P. Endicott. He had Harold P. Endicott in his sights; he was looking down the barrel at him, at Endicott's round, bald head. A bull's-eye. My father was talking but I couldn't hear the words, so I ducked down and ran through the brush, up to a big weeping willow. I hid behind it.
“The next shot is between your eyes, Mr. Big Shot, unless you get those dogs inside,” I heard my father say in his drunken voice.
Harold P. Endicott looked at his hellhounds, that whistle dangling from his neck. Their ears were perked up and they stared at their master without moving a muscle, not one.
“And don't try anything funny. I know all about how you like to kill people with those dogs of yours. Just killed you a Bannock squaw, didn't you?” my father said.
Old Endicott got real stiff, as stiff as his dogs; then he stood up fast and my father cocked the .25-20 and shot it, hitting the stone wall behind Endicott. Pieces of stone sprayed out and Endicott sat back down. Those hellhounds didn't flinch, but you could tell they were slobbering to kill.
“Don't press me, you crooked son of a bitch!” my father said. “I've killed me a bunch of people in my time and I sure as hell can kill one more if it's you!”
Harold P. Endicott snapped his fingers and stood up, slow this time, walked to the back door and opened it, never turning his back on my father's gun. He closed the door behind the dogs after they filed inside, one by one.
I heard my father say, “Pull the door tight and lock it!”
I ran around to the front of the house because I knew the front door was going to be open, and sure enough it was. I ran to the door, Old Glory there snapping loud above me, and I pulled
the front door closed just as the first of the dogs got to it, murder only inches away.
I leaned up against the house for a while, so much sky in my lungs I thought I was going to float away, but then I ran to the back again, hoping there weren't any other doors or windows open too. When I got back to the back of the house, I couldn't believe my eyes.
My father had taken his suit jacket off and was rolling up his shirt sleeves. He had his chest puffed out and was muttering something, rolling up his sleeves.
“A fair fight,” my father said. “Like a man,” my father said.
“Where's the gun?” I said, but my father didn't hear me. Harold P. Endicott didn't hear me either; the rain had started down hard.
Harold P. Endicott took his hat off and took a few steps, his whistle bouncing against his chest. He and my father squared off, fists out in front of them. Endicott hit my father in the mouth and my father went flying like my mother had when my father hit her earlier that night. Endicott laughed and took a step back. My father sat in the wet grass, shaking his head and holding his jaw. Then my father stood up and Endicott hit him again, but my father didn't go down this time. My father came back with a punch in Endicott's mouth, then one in Endicott's big stomach. Then my father kicked him between the legs and Endicott doubled up, his nose bleeding, and held himself down there. I let out a cheer but I don't think either of them heard; the rain was coming down loud as the river.
My father dropped his arms and looked up into the sky like it was the first time that he realized that it was raining. He put his face into the rain the way my mother had stood herself into that wind the night of the chinook. As my father was looking up, Endicott hit him in the stomach, hard, swinging his arm into my father like a baseball bat. My father went sprawling out onto the grass, spread-eagled. He was out like a light, KO'd. Endicott kicked my father in the stomach the way I'd seen him kick that
woman Sugar Babe. My father let out an awful soundâa sound like water going down the drain. After that, he didn't move.
It was then I saw it, the .25-20. It was propped against a pile of bricks at the edge of the lawn. Endicott started to turn back to the house, holding up the whistle with his hand. I ran to the rifle, picked it up, and aimed at Endicott's head. Endicott had the whistle in his mouth. He was almost to the door. The cross inside the sights of the .25-20 was between his right eye and his ear. I pulled the trigger but nothing happened.