Drawn Into Darkness(58)
I took a long breath and a short step.
A floorboard creaked under my weight. I froze.
Stoat kept sleeping without even a hitch in his breathing.
I ventured another slow, soft step, then another. Around the corner of the crude table and bench I crept. Just one more step. Noiseless, thank all the deities. Close enough at last, I tensed to try for the shotgun—
My fingers never touched it. I never even saw Stoat uncoil; the bastard must have struck like a rattlesnake, only harder. I felt his fist impact my eye and the back of my head impact the floor, equally hard. But I was not knocked out, which might have been preferable. I could see only something like sparklers on a very black Fourth of July night, and I could hear Stoat laughing.
SEVENTEEN
First thing Thursday morning, early enough to avoid Birmingham’s rush hour traffic, Chad set off on his drive home, with Dad in the passenger seat and Oliver standing on the backseat, his big, shaggy head thrust happily over the console, between their shoulders.
Without taking his eyes from the road, Chad acknowledged the dog. “Oliver, I wish I had half your optimism.” Amy had reacted better than he had expected when he had phoned her last night, but still, Chad didn’t feel much hope that Dad’s plan would help the marriage. Mostly because he didn’t dare. Hope was scary.
Ned asked, “You sure Amy doesn’t mind that I’m bringing the woofhead along?”
“Oliver? No problem. Amy loves animals.”
“That’s a sign of a good heart.”
“You’ve got that right. Dad, I don’t deserve her.”
Peripherally, he saw his father stiffen as if he had struck a nerve. “Now listen here, son.” The intensity with which the old man spoke would have compelled Chad to listen anyway. “You gotta stop thinking like that. Life isn’t about what you deserve or what you don’t deserve. Did you deserve to lose Justin that way? Do you deserve to get him back?” His father didn’t pause for an answer to either question. “You take what you get, not what you deserve or don’t deserve. That’s just another way of being a self-centered jackass.”
Self-centered? It was the last thing Chad would have thought of himself. On the other hand, he was definitely capable of being a jackass. Trying to define what he thought a jackass was, Chad didn’t say a word, but Oliver whined as if he had been scolded.
In a much more subdued tone, Dad added, “I been there. Damn martyr who didn’t deserve this and didn’t deserve that. Just an excuse to keep drinking.”
“Huh,” Chad remarked, processing information that was entirely new to him.
His father rumpled the fur on Oliver’s head, then patted it smooth, reassuring the dog that everything was okay. And maybe reassuring himself as well. “I’m nervous about meeting Amy,” his father admitted.
“What the hell, Dad? So am I.”
• • •
Stoat ordered me, “Git your fat butt the hell up off the floor and get me something to eat. I’m hungry.”
I could hear him, all too loud and clear, but I could not see him. One of my eyes was swelling shut and the other had not yet made sense out of anything.
“Oh, hi, Stoat,” I mumbled.
“Hi, hell,” he barked. “I’m hungry.”
“That’s good. I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
“Bullshit. You were fixing to shoot me dead. Git me something to eat!”
“Well, what would you like?” I asked ever so politely, heaving myself to my feet and making a mighty effort to focus my one viable eye. “We have cold canned lima beans, cold canned okra, chunky peanut butter—”
He invoked his patriarchal deity loudly, at length, and by various names, while I stood watching his grotesque face come into focus, one side swollen like a football and turning black, the other side ugly enough to start with. “Jesus jumpin’ on the water,” he yelled in conclusion, “I want fried eggs and grits and coffee! Git going!”
In order to show my willingness to oblige, I wobbled over to the flat boxes in which the canned goods were stored. My legs buckled just as I got there, but I guess it looked as if I was kneeling in order to get at some food. I had to act as if I were catering to Stoat; my life depended on appeasing him. “There are some canned grits,” I reported, “and instant coffee. I could make a campfire and heat some water in a can or something.”
Only a foreboding silence answered. Pain from my insulted eye seemed to radiate through my skull; my head throbbed, and I noticed the taste of blood in my mouth from further damage not yet identified. I swiveled to check my whether report: whether Stoat was going to finish the job and kill me now. I saw what looked like two cartoon eyes, round and black, until I realized they were two shotgun barrels pointed straight at me. They held my attention so thoroughly that I barely saw Stoat behind them.