“Why, why hello, Will. Guess I didn’t see you come in. Just sitting here, thinking too much.”
“I heard you’ve … that you’ve been sick.”
The hard gleam returned momentarily, and Will stared as his father once again stiffened in his chair. “My business,” he spat.
“Mark is anxious to meet you.”
“So you brought the boy, did you?” Again the hard edge.
His father was rising from the chair; Will stepped back involuntarily. He followed the old man with his eyes, wary, unsure of himself, though this was an old man in front of him who could do nothing to him now.
His father had stopped in front of the bureau and was staring into the shadows by the bed, apparently oblivious to Will’s presence. Will could still see the faint gleam in the man’s left eye, and it occurred to him the eye just didn’t belong in that body. It was from another man, another time. But still, he couldn’t leave the old man alone with Mark, ever.
“Good night, Dad, see you in the morning.”
The eye suddenly changed; his father turned and looked at Will as if he had forgotten who he was. Then an unknitting of the brow, a loosening of the stooped shoulders, and, “Oh, yes. Good night, son.”
Before Will turned to leave he glanced at the easy chair. His mother had done a good job, but he could still make out the traces where the slashed upholstery had been repaired, almost twenty years ago.
The next morning was Sunday. June 15. Father’s Day. By the time Will got dressed and arrived downstairs, the entire family was eating breakfast, including his father.
“Will, Will, my boy! Good to see you! They wanted to wake you up but I told them, I said ‘Let the boy be, needs his rest!’ You got a fine family, son. Real fine.”
His father walked briskly over to Will and grasped his hand and arm tightly, then led him to the breakfast table. The old man was obviously in his glory. Will’s mother beamed. Both Amy and Mark laughed at his jokes, seemed completely charmed by him.
It never ceased to amaze him, the way his father could pull things together when he needed to. All it seemed to take was a special occasion, the right excuse. Will had seen it all his life, but still found it difficult getting used to.
Will caught his father looking at him out of the corners of his eyes. Sober, the old man almost frightened him.
“Hey, Will. We’ve been talking about going down to the park for a picnic today. But we need some food, paper plates, and things. How about if I stay here with Mark, and you and the women pick us up after you stock up?”
Will examined his father’s face, not sure what he was looking for. The eyes … they looked all right, but how could he be sure? “That’s okay, Dad. You go. I’ll stay here with Mark.”
His father pursed his lips wordlessly, then nodded curtly to Will. “Okay, let’s get going, folks! Day’s half over.”
Mark followed his mother and grandmother into the kitchen, leaving Will and his Dad still at the table, watching each other.
“Will?”
“Yes?”
“You know we haven’t always gotten along so well …”
“That happens sometimes.”
“I know, I know. I just want you to understand that I know I made a few mistakes, let my … emotions get the better of me.”
Will sat rigidly in his chair, unable to reply. He hoped his old man would talk about the attacks, the anger, even the animal eyes, but at the same time prayed he wouldn’t, afraid he might cry out if his father revealed anything, maybe even scream. He couldn’t believe his father was talking about this, and so calmly.
“Guess it’s a family thing, Will. My father was the same way with me, and I’ve heard that was the way it was with my grandfather as well. A bit too much spirit you know? So much … energy, I guess, that sometimes we’re not even sure quite what we’re doing.” He paused, and for the first time Will noticed some nervousness. “How are things between you and your boy?”
“Fine.” Will looked at his hands, the low burn beginning behind his eyes making it difficult to see; the hands appeared raw, swollen to his blurred vision. Then he felt a sudden shiver, as if something metal had been slipped under his skin, and up into his spine. “I have … a fine relationship with Mark.”
“Glad—to—hear—it. Glad—to—hear—it.” His father spoke rapidly, finishing his coffee and rising from the table. “Now let’s see if the women are ready.”
From the living room window Will watched his parents’ sky blue station wagon pull slowly into the highway off their long gravel drive. He watched his father’s head move about; he was obviously enjoying himself, being “entertaining.” Mark was playing with some of Will’s old trucks and cars on the front lawn.
Daddy.
“Better not break them, son. Don’t mess up my things,” he whispered to no one.
Will walked around the kitchen, opening cupboards, sliding out drawers. The pain was moving out from his eyes, into the back of his head.
Daddy, please.
“You shouldn’t touch so many things, Mark. You’ve got to learn to behave,” he whispered.
He leaned a moment against the counter, feeling his forehead, wondering if it were beginning to expand.
I’ll find you!
“I just want to help you, Mark. That’s why I discipline you over these things,” he whispered.
He looked at his reflection in the shiny kitchen tabletop. His eyes appeared to be receding, becoming shadowy, darker, and more distant.
I said come out!
“You have to learn to obey, Mark. You need to do what they want,” he whispered.
His arms began to burn, the hair on his body tingling as if electrically charged. He walked to the kitchen window and pushed it open with an angry thrust.
“Mark! Come in here right now! I want to talk to you!” He shouted out the window.
He clutched his head and fell against the sink. He examined his arms: massive, hairy, the hands seeming larger than normal, his fingers burning, his muscles appearing to blur, seeking new positions along the bone of his arms. I’ll kill you boy …
“Mark!” he shouted at the ceiling.
Daddy …
He recognized his hands and arms. They were his father’s. He was his father’s son.
Daddy, please …
“Mark! Now!” He shouted at the top of his lungs.
Daddy, please …
He reached into the drawer by the sink and pulled out the heavy knife. He hefted it in his father’s hands, noting the delicate balance. It felt good. It felt natural. When Mark came breathlessly in, Will was thinking about how wonderful it was to be home again.
“Daddy?”
Daddy, please …
“Daddy!”
“Daddy!”
BRUTES
Each night, the faces in Simon’s windows grew broader, grew bolder. He had finally given up wondering who they were: burglars, the homeless, gang bangers out to shoot him, or just the curious. He saw a lot of the curious these days: cool, impassive faces, but eyes watching him all the time, their curiosity such a hunger it had become a habit, those wide white eyes a monkey’s.
But he didn’t know what any of them thought, what any of them wanted. He didn’t know what anybody wanted. And it didn’t seem to matter much anymore.
When Simon was eight, his father bought him a dog, paid some fellow who was going to shoot the dog five dollars to turn the mutt over to him. That dog wasn’t the pet Simon had wanted, not by a long shot. Simon had wanted something small, clean, sweet-smelling, something to cuddle. The dog—which Simon’s father had already named Brute—was fat, old, and ugly, with a mercurial temperament which ranged from a melancholy lethargy to an agitated, slobbering madness.
When his dad first gave him the dog he had told Simon that he was going to learn a lot from the animal. “Because he’s just like people,” he told him. “Some of them are born hard and mean, and some of them just get that way. You can’t trust th
em too far. You never know what goes on inside their heads. After a while they get to be unpredictable. They’re liable to do almost anything. Just as likely to bite you as to lick you.”
Simon hadn’t wanted to go near the dog. Instead he’d spent hours watching him out his bedroom window.
“He’s your dog,” his father had told him. “You have to spend some time with him. You need to get to know him—get to know when he’ll let you pet him, and when he’s gonna bite—that’s the only way you’ll be safe with him, you know.”
The first few weeks Simon had simply tried to avoid the old dog’s mouth. Occasionally he’d build up the courage to pet the dog, although he didn’t really know how you could pet a dog like that. Petting seemed too close to hitting; if he petted too hard maybe the dog would get mad and take his hand off. He didn’t know how he could stroke the dog. Brute’s hide was all stiff, tough folds that didn’t yield much when he touched them.
He soon discovered that Brute could be deceptively quick. He’d been standing by Brute—who’d appeared to be dozing—with a slice of pizza hanging from his far hand. Suddenly Brute had twisted and lunged, and the pizza was gone, the tip of Simon’s finger dripping blood.
“Watch him close,” his father told him as he bandaged the finger. “Watch him close enough and you’ll be able to tell pretty much what he’s about to do.”
So Simon watched Brute. It was difficult to tell when the dog was going to be angry—sometimes there’d be a slight twitch in the jowls, or a sudden furious blink in one eye, but usually much less than that. Brute would move suddenly from sleep or a quiet sitting to furious barking and a snapping of teeth.
As Brute grew older, the mood swings became even more unpredictable. After a while, feeding Brute his daily grub became a risky endeavor.
“Can’t I just throw him something?” Simon stood at the screen door off the back porch, a bucket of scraps by his feet. His father was working on the kitchen sink, his back to Simon. Simon wondered briefly if he could hide the scraps, but if he got caught there was no telling what his dad might do to him.
“Throw ’im something? Is that any way to train an animal? You know what you’re supposed to do; it’s your responsibility.”
“He’s too old to train anyway. Too mean,” Simon mumbled.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing, Dad. I’ll take the scraps out.”
Simon pushed his face up against the screen. He could see Brute’s enormous head jutting out of the doghouse, but he didn’t think the dog could see him through the mesh. The battered summer screens for the windows were leaning against the outside of the house; Simon thought about using one of those for a shield. He wondered how close he could get before Brute figured out what was going on. The dog’s intelligence seemed to vary from day to day. But if his dad saw him he’d get mad—because he was messing with the screens without permission and because it was dumb. Simon knew it was dumb; he had sense. But sometimes Brute made him do some pretty dumb things.
Simon eased out of the door, being careful not to bump the can of scraps with his leg. He had accidentally jangled the can once before and Brute had gone straight for Simon’s leg.
Brute’s head did not move. Maybe he was sleeping. Thick folds of skin hung down over his dark eye holes, so you could never tell if his eyes were open or closed, and the open sores he always seemed to have on his head made him look forever angry. Actually, Simon didn’t know if Brute was ever angry. He didn’t know what Brute was thinking at all. Maybe he was just mean. And maybe “mean” didn’t mean anything to Brute. Maybe Brute just was.
“You going or not?” his father called out from the porch. Each time he had to feed Brute he hated his father just a little. He supposed after his mom left his dad didn’t have to stay—he could have turned Simon over to one of his aunts. But his dad kept him, and tried different ways of raising him. Experiments like Brute. He just wished his dad wasn’t so angry all the time. “I asked if you were going!” Simon felt himself shaking. He’ll wake the devil…
“Yeah, Dad…” He stared at Brute lying half out of his doghouse, but Simon’s vision seemed to lose focus. He couldn’t tell if Brute had stirred or not. Simon took a few steps forward, holding the bucket away from his body—his wrist strained painfully—so he’d be sure not to bump the bucket. He glanced cautiously at the dim sky, hoping the sun would stay behind the clouds. The bucket had a dull finish but now and then could reflect a sharp fragment of light. He also thought it possible that the dog couldn’t see as well in this kind of light, although certainly he couldn’t be sure. The breeze picked up slightly, stiffening the hair on his bare ankles. The breeze appeared to ripple the dog’s stubby fur, or was that anger?
Simon was only a few feet away from Brute when the old dog raised his head. Simon held his breath, gripping the bucket tightly, hoping it wouldn’t swing. As if Brute might think he was a statue or something. It was crazy.
Brute lowered his head. The folds over his eyes grew thicker. Simon could feel the old dog’s heavy breathing sigh even from several feet away. Simon took a few slow, careful steps.
Brute’s jaws snapped open. Simon stopped, holding himself up. He watched as Brute growled and snapped in his sleep, angry or mean or indifferent.
Simon looked down into Brute’s bucket of scraps. The meat was rotten. Maggots crawled in and out of volcanic sores covering the surfaces of several pieces. “They’ll eat anything,” his dad always said. “Even their own shit. Once a dog gets it into his head that what he’s lookin’ at is food, he eats it, no questions asked. Just like people. You tell them something, any damn thing, and nine times out of ten they believe it.”
It was true. His dad said Brute was going to be his best friend in the world, and no matter how frightened Simon was of the dog, he still believed it.
Finally Simon got to within a step of Brute’s huge, sore-ridden head. He stood slightly to the side to avoid casting a shadow on the dog.
He reached into the bucket and pulled out a piece of meat. Something wet crawled up onto the back of his hand. He gasped and let the scrap go.
It flew end-over-end and landed on the front of Brute’s face, by the network of wrinkles hiding the left eye. The wrinkles exploded and a redlined, jellied eyeball fixed on Simon. But the rest of the dog’s features showed no movement.
He waited for Brute to leap and take him with those huge jaws. The eyeball remained rigid, as if carved, painted, and glazed. He grew faint from the effort of holding himself still.
The screen door slammed behind him. “Ain’t you fed that dog yet?” His father’s voice: raw and edgy.
Brute rolled past him, a sudden squall. Simon looked up just as the huge dog covered his dad. For just a moment there was a faint red mist where the two made contact, and the rest happened as if in slow motion: the lunge, the gargle, the bright red jets as his father’s face dissolved into Brute’s head, jaws, and rust-colored fur, growing brighter each second as his father fell to the ground.
It didn’t take long, and after it was over Brute went over to the shade tree and lay down in the shadows. Simon stayed on the ground for about an hour, waiting for his father to get up. When his father didn’t get up Simon went past the body and into the kitchen, where he made himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. After he finished his sandwich, Simon went back to the screen door and pressed his face there, watching his father’s body, and the red that grew darker as the shadow under the tree spread to cover the yard. Eventually Brute got up and went back to his doghouse and finished off the scraps.
Simon watched some TV, and then he watched his father some more, then he watched Brute as the dog slept. When it got to be his own bedtime he decided he didn’t want to sleep in a dark house by himself.
“Aunt Betty? This is Simon. I think something’s wrong with Dad.”
Brute was simple. He wanted to eat. When the time was right, he wanted to fuck. And he wanted everything his bloody eyes could see.
�
��They ain’t gonna let you be, Simon. You gotta choose. Every kid comin’ up in this neighborhood gotta choose. No other way.” Shakey was scared, but then as far as Simon knew, Shakey had always been scared. He scraped three claw-like fingers through his shiny red hair.
“I’m no gang banger. You know me. I watch, I don’t do. Learned that a long time ago.”
“They don’t let you sit it out—you oughta know that. You’re there to recruit or to overcome. No other way.”
Simon knew, but the idea of talking over the finer points of gang politics with Shakey was nothing short of ridiculous. He watched as Shakey gnawed the end of his cigarette into oblivion. The rest of the cigarette tumbled to the rug.
“Damn…” Shakey went to his coat for the pack, ignoring the butt smoking on Aunt Betty’s rug. Simon scooted his foot over and crushed it out. Aunt Betty wouldn’t know. Even if she made it out of the hospital this time—which seemed unlikely—her eyes were too bad to see the smudge. Aunt Betty was a good lady. Things shouldn’t have to go down that way for someone like her. Simon felt guilty, knowing there wasn’t much to do for her. He owed her everything.
Brute wandered out of the back bedroom.
“Jeezus! Ain’t that dog dead yet?” Shakey went to stand behind Simon’s chair.
Simon took a pull on his bottle. “Too mean to die,” he said, watching as the old dog wandered to the center of the rug before plopping down. Brute lay with his eyes open, red rims fixed on Simon. Still waiting for me to slip up, aren’t you, Brute?
“I don’t like dogs,” Shakey said. “Never have. And I especially don’t like that dog.”
“Nobody does.”
Brute shifted his head slightly to the side, as if trying to see what Shakey was up to. Simon could feel Shakey growing smaller behind him. Simon had lied to everybody about Brute and his father, from the day it happened. He’d never known why. He’d told Aunt Betty that some other dog did it, that a Great Dane had entered their yard in a rage—he must have been crazy or rabid or something—and that was the dog that killed his dad. Brute had tried to stop the other dog, but Dad had him chained up that day. To protect that lie he’d had to get close enough to Brute to wash him down with the hose, get all his father’s blood out of Brute’s fur, then attach the chain they’d never used to his collar. And Brute just stood there and let Simon do it, as if he actually understood why it had to be done.
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