The cops? I swallow hard, remembering the way Officer Hickox eyed me that night, like I was guilty until proven innocent. I nod.
“I’ll be back before you know it.” He grabs the papers his grandmother gave him and slides out of the truck.
He edges up to his father’s body and taps an arm with his boot, squatting close. He says something, then grasps a shoulder and shakes hard. When his father flops back down, Doyle heads to the side of the trailer and comes back with a battered bucket. He sloshes water over his father’s face and jumps when the lifeless body reanimates, making furious dirt angels with his flailing arms.
Doyle’s boot catches on something and he scurries to keep on his feet as his father rolls to his knees and stands, sways, then lumbers toward him. I can’t plug up my scream. Doyle sprints toward the truck, his father on his heels, and I fumble to open the passenger door for him.
I’ve been angry at my parents before. Disgusted by them. Nervous they’ll be disappointed with or pissed as hell at me. But I’ve never experienced anything like the kind of terror that’s plain on Doyle’s face as this man—who looks like an older, beat-to-hell version of Doyle—storms toward the truck in a blind rage.
Doyle races to my side and, from the outside, slams shut the passenger door I just opened, then yells for me to lock it, which I do seconds before his father tugs it hard. When he realizes it’s locked, he smashes his palms against the glass, and I scramble back and slam the lock on the driver’s side too.
I stare at his father’s bleary eyes and bared teeth through the window, feeling like he’s some zombie in an apocalypse movie, and I’m an expendable character—a sexy black girl? Strikes one and two. There’s no script where I survive this situation.
“Keep the truck locked!” Doyle yells as his father spins around to face him. “Don’t unlock it, no matter what!”
Like a true coward, I sit up on my knees and watch in horror, face pressed to the window. My phone is gripped tight in my hand. I know he said not to call 911, but maybe I should.
I’m not sure what’s more terrifying…
The two men circle each other, Doyle quick and tense, his father loose and aggressive. I crack the window and scream, “Doyle! Please! Get in!”
“It’s okay, Nes!” Doyle raises one palm toward the truck, one toward his father, like a wild animal trainer attempting to keep a rogue predator at bay.
“What the hell you crawlin’ here for, boy? You need your old man for somethin’?” Doyle’s father speaks in slurred shouts. He runs a hand over his hair, exactly like the movement I’ve seen Doyle make a thousand times.
Doyle mirrors his father, maybe without even realizing he’s doing it. “I don’t need nothin’ from you.” His drawl comes on so strong now, I barely catch what he says. “Now I’m here though, might as well try and get done whatcha refuse to. Gramma wanted me to come by and drop this paperwork off, ’cause you don’t bother comin’ ’round to sign nothing when she begs. Got the accountant houndin’ her ’bout Pawpaw’s estate. She jest wants to settle and put things to rest. Give her some peace and sign.”
“Settle, is it, now? More like tryin’ to cheat me out of what’s rightfully mine, what Pawpaw wanted me to have more ’an the others who won’t ’preciate it none! Them brothers of mine got her ear and twisted things against me, I bet my life on it. Why the hell don’t she tell me herself?” He throws his arms wide. His shirt is filthy with crusted food dribbled down the front, and there are rings of sweat radiating from the armpits. There’s no way I should be able to smell him from this distance, but I gag on the acrid stink of days-old body odor.
“No one picks up at your number, ’cept a lady once in a while, and she claims she don’t know you.” Doyle kicks at the gravel in the driveway. “So Gramma sent me to drop off these papers. Don’t think she expected you to be around.”
Damn Doyle’s naïveté. After the “boo hoo family” speech his grandmother made, I have my doubts about what she expected would happen. I wonder if this is the heartwarming family reunion she had in mind.
“Fine mama I got, don’t even come see me herself.” His father paces like a caged animal. “Sends you like some messenger boy.”
Doyle holds out the roll of paper. “She’s had a couple bad spells.”
His father squares up. “Bad spells?”
“Doctor’s having a hard time regulatin’ her blood pressure, I guess.” Doyle shakes the papers, but his father ignores them.
“No one saw fit to tell me? I’m her son!” His taunting voice switches gears, hot with rage now.
“Yeah, well, you coulda stopped by and seen her yourse—”
Doyle’s sentence is cut short by a hard backhand from his father. His knuckles smash against Doyle’s mouth, and my heart slams into my ribs before I even notice the blood gushing everywhere. I yank at the door handle frantically, then remember it’s locked.
It takes me a few seconds too long to fumble the door open. Doyle’s already stumbled to the truck and thrown his weight against it, slamming it shut before I can get out. I can see the spreading blood begin to stain his five o’clock shadow through the window.
“Don’t,” he mouths as his father’s hand closes around his shoulder.
His dad’s fists are huge boney weapons, and he lands punch after punch around Doyle’s head and on the curve of his rib cage. I beat on the window and scream with primal fear. The noises coming from my throat scare the hell out of me.
I need to stop panicking and think.
I’m ashamed of how scared I am to get out of the truck. I don’t even know what I imagine I can do, short of calling the police like Doyle asked me not to, but I have to do something, anything, because I know in my marrow that Doyle’s father isn’t going to stop until he beats the life out of his son.
I crawl frantically to the driver’s side, turn the key to start the ignition, and tumble out the driver’s-side door. When I come around the back, Doyle has rolled to the side to avoid any more punches, and he staggers to his feet, holding up both fists.
“Get back!” Doyle yells when he sees me, his eyes wild with terror. “You’ll jest get in the way!”
His father sways in a woozy circle, blinking at Doyle over and over, like he’s only just realized it’s his son in front of him, beaten to a pulp by his own hands. Blood pours out Doyle’s nose and mouth, and he’s hunched over like he’s protecting his ribs. Doyle’s hurt, and I take back every joke I’ve ever made about my bad nursing skills.
I’ve never wanted anything the way I want to help him right now. But I’ve never been exposed to this kind of raw violence close-up, and it shreds me into pieces, leaving me so shaky, I clutch the tire for balance.
Doyle squares his shoulders through a shudder of pain. “I never hit you back before this.” He speaks to his father in a clear, quiet voice stripped of any fear. “Granddaddy says one hit to the head’ll likely kill you.”
“Your granddaddy always talks like he knows every goddamn thing.” His father rubs his jaw, his face emptied of all prior viciousness. His shoulders fold forward over his chest like he’s a puppet with loose strings, and he sags to the dust like he couldn’t hold himself up if his life depended on it. I pray this means it’s over, that Doyle’s going to climb in and drive far away from this madman.
“Fair ’nough. Imma let you test his theory. I shouldn’t never’ve gone off on you like that, son.” He holds his arms out on either side of his body, like he’s about to be nailed to a cross. “I’ll give you one. Right to the jaw. C’mon, now. Don’t hold back.”
Doyle pulls the hem of his shirt up and wipes away some of the blood that’s clotting on his chin. “I don’t need you to give me one. This ain’t an exchange. I took what you gave me because I can take it.”
“What’re you tryin’ to say, boy? You don’t think I can take a punch from my own son?” His father’s rusty laugh rattles out from behind his broken teeth. “Come at me, little man. I taught you how to put ’em up.
Remember back that far?”
“I remember you givin’ me my first black eye the day after my eighth birthday.” Doyle reaches for the papers, dusty and spotted with a spray of his own blood. “Sign these. Now.”
“Don’t make a fuck of difference anyhow.” His father snatches the papers and scrawls his signature across the bottom. “They’re thieves and liars, the whole lot of ’em. You and Malachi and Lee think they walk on water. Guess what? They’re a bunch of robbin’ backstabbers.”
He tosses the papers back so Doyle has to bend down to pick them up. I finally get over my cowardice and rush over, throwing a hand out to stop Doyle from causing himself any more pain. I collect the sheets and wonder if that illegible scribble will count as a signature.
Doyle’s father’s gaze bores into me as I scuttle in the dirt. “You’re bein’ brainwashed by every last one of ’em. You oughta wake up and see the truth. Hey, you look at me when I’m talkin’ to you, son!”
I try to steady my knocking knees as I stand. I want to leave, now, but Doyle glares at his father, hackles raised, not about to back down.
“Take a crack.” His father points to his chin and eyes Doyle’s fist, balled tight at his thigh. “I know you wanna. It’ll clear the slate.”
“Nothing’s ever gonna clear your slate, far as I’m concerned.” Doyle spits blood at his father’s tattered boots. “You ain’t worth it. Ain’t worth my time, ain’t worth my energy.”
The hate wells up in his father, narrowing his eyes—a paler blue than Doyle’s—into slits of granite. “You think yer somethin’ else, don’t ya? I don’t know how you come by that particular conclusion.” He slides his eyes up and down my body in a slow drag. “Can’t even getcha a white girl? You resorting to datin’ a n—”
My knees give out. I collapse into the truck, the back of my thighs singed against the hot chrome bumper. But I won’t step away from the burn. I can’t move any closer to the hate he spews.
That word. That ugly welt of a word.
When Jasper first had it hurled at him, we sat down as a family and talked about it. Dad had his story, Jasper had one too…and I hoped hearing that word was a big, terrible if that would never come. I should have listened to my father, who was telling us what to do when someone said it to us; to stand tall; to not let them see how it hurt; to talk about it with our parents, not let it boil and fester until it poisoned us with the power of its hate.
My father heard it directed at him the first time at a candy store when he was six and visiting a relative in Sosúa in DR, ten years before he moved to the United States. He swiped a peppermint from a big barrel, and the shopkeeper grabbed him hard around the wrist. My father remembered the man’s face contorting with rage—like Doyle’s father’s. “I don’t need little thieves emptying my shelves! Come back and I’ll have the authorities haul your ass away, n—” My father had panic attacks in every store he went in until he was a teenager. He still hates candy stores.
My brother’s first time was in the locker room of his tony middle school, which was ninety percent white. One of the eighth graders was benched for a game while Jasper, a lowly seventh grader, played and scored. “That should have been you,” the benched kid’s best friend said in the deserted locker room just as my brother went back in to grab his cleats. “Jasper only got to play because he’s a n—” Jasper brushed it off as dumb kids playing tough, trying out some swagger—like swearing for the first time. He changed middle schools the next year though.
So here’s my first time, out of the mouth of the father of the guy I’m falling hard for. I think I would have preferred a physical punch.
I cover my ears with my forearms, like that can erase it. I shrink down, crumple into something cheap and small, and at the same time, I’m possessed by a howling fury that rises in my soul even as my body fails to keep me upright. This pathetic, deranged drunk will not make me feel worthless with a single knife blade of a word.
“What the fuck did you say?” Doyle’s voice splinters with fury.
“Get used to hearin’ it. In this town, people ain’t gonna look the other way if a Rahn dates a—” He doesn’t say it this time, because Doyle’s already hurled himself at his father, slamming his fist into the older man’s teeth.
“Doyle!” I scream.
I propel myself forward, grab him by the back of his T-shirt, and yank him toward me with so much force, we both sprawl back into the dirt. My ankle twists at a funny angle, and the strap on one of my flip-flops snaps.
I put both hands on Doyle’s neck, turn his face toward mine, cup his jaw. I try to say the words without letting my voice crack into a thousand shards. “You were right. He’s not worth it. Let’s go. Please? Take me away from here.”
His father moans, dabbing with dirty fingers at the blood that trickles from the side of his mouth. I tug on Doyle’s elbow. He stares at me in a daze for a few agonizing beats, then snaps back to life. “Get in the truck, Nes. We’re getting the hell outta here.”
TWENTY-ONE
“Are you okay? Did’ya hurt your ankle?”
“Don’t worry about my ankle. Are you okay?”
Instead of answering me, he reaches in the back and grabs a pair of boots. “Malachi’s. They should fit you. And he’d want you to have ’em, after the way you stood up for him with my granddaddy. Rahns are good at knockin’ each other down, so a little loyalty goes a long way with us.”
I kick my tattered flip-flops off my feet, which I stick in the too-big boots. I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around how we went from prom talk and peach cobbler to…this. I think about how we discussed Grimm fairy tales earlier, and I realize I’m living a real-life version of one, with the violence and ugliness snaked tight around the romance and beauty.
Doyle drives silently, blood and tears dripping down his face. We switch onto the main road, then amble down back roads I didn’t know existed. When we finally rumble to a stop, it’s in a deserted field overgrown with grasses and low-branched, shadowy trees. Doyle leans forward till his head’s pressed to the steering wheel, and he sobs so hard, I can hardly hear the insane buzz of the bugs that never seems to die down.
I hold my hand out to touch him, but pull back, unsure if he needs space more than he needs comfort. Anyway, I’m not confident I even know how to comfort him, or how to process the domestic violence I just witnessed.
“I can drive you back to your grandparents’,” I offer, because I want to make up now for not helping enough when he needed me, when his father was using him as punching bag.
“I’m such a fuckup.”
I think that’s what he’s said. I can barely understand him, and it gets harder with every second that trips by. I slide out of the passenger seat and run around to his side of the truck fast, like I’m afraid he’ll take off before I get there. I manage to swing open the door, and he’s hunched over the steering wheel, blood crusted around his lips, bruises already purpling his arms.
I’ve never felt hate so smooth and sure, like the edge of an ax fresh from being sharpened, the metal still hot to the touch. I want to murder Doyle’s father. Screw that he’s incapacitated, sad, uneducated, addicted—a whole string of sorry excuses that will never make me forgive what he did to Doyle.
“Look at me.” He won’t, so I put my hands on his cheeks, not sure if I should press hard to get him to look my way or handle him gently so that I don’t do more damage to his broken, bruised skin. His face turns in my direction, but it’s a blank mask, like he doesn’t hear a thing, doesn’t see a thing. “He’s the fuckup, Doyle. Not you. Never you.”
“I shoulda beat the shit out of him for sayin’ that ’bout you. I shoulda kept punchin’ and never stopped. I can take what he throws my way, but he’s out of his damn mind if he thinks he can get away with talkin’ to you like that. I’m so sorry, Nes. You have no idea how ashamed I feel—”
And that’s when I stand on my toes and tug down on his neck.
Because I’m about t
o make our first kiss happen.
In the middle of all this craziness, all this pain, this kiss is a chance for a singular glimmer of good.
I wonder what the hell I’ve been waiting for.
Suddenly life feels more urgent, less like some game we can take our time playing.
Half an hour ago, Doyle was whole and fine. Now he’s broken and sobbing. There isn’t a thing I can do to reclaim what was lost. But I can be brave enough to give us what we both want in this moment.
I know what’s in his heart because it’s the same thing roaring through mine—it’s love. And that love makes us want to protect each other, whether or not we can.
I know the honest truth is we can’t, not always.
But we can be there for each other when we get knocked down by forces completely out of our control. Right now, in the stillness of this dark night, we’re far away from anything that can hurt us. Safe.
I lick my lips, then I lick his, salty with blood or tears or both. He turns to the side, plants his boots on the running board, and leans down so that he can put his hands behind my neck, down my shoulders, and pull me against his body. I think he might still be bleeding, so I lean back and lay hands on him to check. He turns his head to the side, against the seat rest.
“I’m embarrassing myself, right? ’Course you don’t wanna make out with me. I guess sobbing like a damn baby ain’t a turn-on.”
I climb onto the running board, my feet set wide on either side of his, yank the sleeve of my hoodie over my hand, and set to work mopping his face with quick, light swipes.
“You’ll ruin your sweatshirt. Stop. Nes, stop.” He tugs on my sleeve, but I pull it back and ignore him.
“It’s okay. It’s black. The blood won’t show.”
“I can’t fuckin’ believe what he said to you. I can’t believe what I let ’im say—” The last word catches on a sucked-in breath.
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