by Joe Hart
Even though he was bracing himself for it, when his mother’s high-pitched scream of “Run!” broke the calm of the silence around them, he started and nearly tripped on his own feet. Before he began to run in earnest, he risked a look back at where his mother and father stood in the pale glow of the moon.
They were locked in a strange dance on the gravel of the driveway. His mother had her back to him, and both of her hands grasped the twelve-gauge, one on the barrel and one on the stock of the gun. His father was trying to wrestle the firearm away from her, his face lost in shadow with his back to the moon. They twisted and turned as if they were a single piece of sail caught in a tempest. As she tried to gain control of the gun, Molly glanced over her shoulder at her son, who was locked in place, roots of shock holding him firmly to the ground.
“Run!” she screamed again, and this time Lance didn’t hesitate. He spun on legs that felt like rubbery strips of jerky, and pelted away from the drive as fast as he could. Before he rounded the edge of the house, he heard a sharp crack, like the sound of a dry tree branch breaking, and couldn’t help but look back one last time.
His mother was lying, curled, at his father’s feet with one hand pressed to the side of her head. His father stepped over her body as she reached weakly toward one of his legs.
Lance turned his vision back in the direction he was traveling, just in time to see the house’s downspout catch the tip of his left sneaker. He went sprawling headlong onto the frost-covered grass. His breath whooshed out of his lungs like the air from a bellows, and his vision bounced as his chin connected with the ground. For a moment all he could do was gasp for oxygen, a fish flopping in absent surf, as he lay on the cold blanket of dead grass. But soon another sound overrode the thudding of his heart.
Footsteps stalked closer and closer, until he thought his father would walk right past him. Perhaps he would overlook the small boy-shaped shadow on the ground and continue on to search for him in the nearby patch of woods that led to the river.
All hope of his father failing to notice him in the gloom cast by the house was forgotten when the footsteps stopped a few feet away. Lance lay unmoving, as the frost from the grass melted and began to soak through the front of his jacket and pants.
“You can’t outrun me yet, boy, and I don’t think you ever will.”
Lance began to move to regain his feet when he felt something solid connect with the back of his skull, and then the darkness surrounding him became a deeper shade, and he knew no more.
Cold light poured through the nearby window, dappling Lance’s face as his eyelids eased open with the grace of a rusted set of shutters. At first, the room didn’t make sense. Not because he didn’t recognize it or the objects therein; it just had a terrible sense of wrongness about it. It was as though he had been away for years and had unexpectedly returned home to visit, spending the night in his old bed, his childhood years plastered across the walls in decorations of an innocence he had never truly known.
Pain spooled forth from the base of his skull, so thick and whole it was a solid hot stone nestled there waiting to hatch into something even more monstrous. Lance moaned and rubbed the back of his neck, which felt upraised and lumpy to the touch. As he massaged the swollen area, the memory of the night before came flooding back to him, and suddenly he knew why he felt strange in his own bed. The last memory he had was of lying, splayed out, on the ground in the darkness at the feet of his father. Then there was pain. Then darkness.
Lance tried to sit up but was immediately overwhelmed with dizziness and nausea. He leaned forward and grabbed the trashcan that sat near his bed, and vomited convulsively into it.
When his stomach tired of trying to turn itself inside out and a tentative calm settled into his core, he released his hold on the soiled wastebasket and lay back down in his bed. Sleep nudged at his mind and pulled him closer. There was something he needed to check, but the urge was fading along with his vision. Soon the only sounds in the room were soft snores and the occasional rustle of clothing as he twitched in his sleep.
When he woke again, his window was a dark eye gazing out at the night dappled with stars. A full moon shone in the silence-filled room and coated everything with a silvery glow.
Lance breathed heavily as he looked about his room for the second time that day. Each object he inspected threw deep shadows and the only other illumination came from the horizontal slit at the bottom of his door.
He blinked several times and picked the cutting grains of sleep from the corners of his eyes. When his vision cleared, he sat on the edge of the bed, recalling the pain and dizziness that had assaulted him so viciously earlier in the day. At least he thought it was the same day, but for all he knew a week may have passed. He waited for over a minute for queasiness to rear its ugly head, surprised when none came. A thought sprung into his mind, and his eyes searched for the familiar shape of his notebook. He breathed out in relief when he saw it lying half on, half off his desk. He got to his feet and took several unsteady steps across the threshold until he was able to grasp the gold door handle.
A glow emanated from the kitchen at the end of the hall, and although the light was dim, Lance still squinted into it. His head felt as if it had been put in front of a semi’s tire and run over violently, but he continued to make his way toward the light.
When he entered the kitchen, his thoughts had cleared enough for worry, his ever-present friend, to settle into its regular place in the base of his stomach. The room was empty, as he had feared it would be. His mother wasn’t there. He had hoped she would be sitting at the far end of the table, maybe bruised and beaten, but there. Perhaps sipping out of her worn coffee cup that said in bold letters Dance in the rain, revel in the sun! But there was only silence that met him, unhindered in the small room.
Lance hobbled over to the entry, scanned it quickly, and made his way back down the hallway to his parents’ room. He reached out and grasped the knob, the memory of the last time he had entered their room floating to the surface of his mind.
He’d been doing almost the same thing that he was now, looking for his mother. He’d come home from school early, the trundling yellow bus that so often left him at the foot of their long drive over twenty minutes late had been sparsely populated that day. The stops had flown by until it was Lance’s turn to step down the three long steps onto the brown snow that coated the edge of the road.
When he had entered the house and looked into the kitchen, he was surprised at the absence of his mother. She was always there, waiting with a small treat for him when he arrived home. It was their ritual. One of the things he looked forward to on the weekdays when it was just the two of them in the little house. His father picked up odd handyman jobs with a local contracting company most days of the week and he rarely came home before suppertime most nights. That hour or so after each school day was precious to him. There was no yelling. There were no cold fingers gripping his arm as he was reeled inexorably closer to a mouth that breathed foul air and threats. There was only his mother, a cookie or two, and the silence between them. At times Lance wished that his mother would speak to him as she sat at the far end of the table, sometimes puffing mindlessly on a Virginia Slim, the smoke dancing around her blank features as it wove pictures before her that only she could see. But he knew it was fruitless to try. This was what they had. An hour, and a sugary sweet. Nothing more, nothing less.
On that particular day he had stripped off his outside clothes, hanging them up to dry near the door before walking into the kitchen. There was nothing on the table to signify that his mother hadn’t forgotten him and when he listened he heard no sound within the house but for the creaking of the rafters and floorboards as a particularly strong February wind buffeted the house from the west.
He had gone silently across the kitchen and placed his hand upon the cold doorknob of his parents’ room and twisted it. The door had opened only an inch before a sight that stopped his breath also stayed his hand.
/> His father stood motionless several feet in front of the bedroom door, his back to Lance. He was shirtless and barefoot but still wore a soiled pair of jeans that hung off of his stick-like frame as if he were more scarecrow than man. Lance’s mother was huddled beneath the blankets of the bed that ate up most of the small room, her bare shoulders hunched in fear, a line of blood running freely from the right side of her torn lip. Lance only glanced at his mother before returning his gaze to what had stopped him dead from opening the door in the first place.
A blanketed patchwork of scars so dense and thick that it looked as if his father were wearing a pink and puckered cape ran down the entire length of his back. They began gradually just below where the neckline of a shirt would ride and spread out in a sweeping swath that covered Anthony’s thin lats and disappeared, as if they had been tucked in to his pants line. Some of the scars were narrow and delicate like someone had done calligraphy there with razor, while others were wide and deep like the paths of ancient rivers, running seemingly without end from an inexhaustible source.
Lance gazed upon his father’s ruined flesh and wondered how a person could have survived after enduring something as such. Without realizing it, he drew his breath in sharply, partially in fear and partially in revulsion, and the wind passing his teeth made a small hissing sound.
Without pause, Anthony had spun and pulled the door fully open, exposing Lance in the doorway bigger and brighter than the sun in a cloudless August sky. There was no hesitation. There was no restraint. The blows that rained down on Lance came from all directions at once. His face was punched, his stomach kicked, his shins raked, until he no longer stood but lay folded against the opposite wall of the narrow hallway, trying in vain to fend off the strikes even as he squeezed his eyes shut so tight he saw glowing orbs of gold behind the darkened lids.
He learned later that his father’s truck had broken down at a job near town. Anthony’s employer had delivered him home early, unbeknownst to Lance. At the time Lance hadn’t understood what had been unfolding in his parents’ bedroom. Much later he realized it must have been what passed for sex between the elder Metzgers. His father first striking his mother and then moving on to perhaps more sinister tortures Lance preferred not to imagine.
These memories ran through Lance’s mind as his hand rested on the knob once again. This time he knew his father was somewhere nearby, he had seen the outline of the Chevy sitting blackly in the driveway, and he was older.
The first time he had been seven.
The doorknob turned once again, and Lance was struck by déjà vu so profoundly he imagined he could see the pink scars of his father’s back as soon as the door cracked open enough to reveal the room beyond. The door swung wider and light from the kitchen crept across the furniture and other objects, which looked like crouching beasts in the darkness. Lance let the door touch the wall before releasing the breath he was holding. The room was empty.
Lance pulled the bedroom door shut and ventured back out to the porch. He stood on his tiptoes as he looked out the darkened window, straining his eyes to see if the faint shape of his mother’s car was still parked on the far side of the Chevy. He couldn’t tell from where he stood. Lance turned to his left and made to look out of the window set in the middle of the front door, when he noticed shadows moving in front of the house. They were solidifying and shifting from side to side. Too late, he realized the shadows were the thin outline of his father hurrying up the last few steps to the door.
Lance stumbled back, a cry of fright caught in his throat, as the screen door was thrown back and the inner door thrust open to reveal the bony form of the man beyond. Anthony stepped into the entry, a thick woolen shirt buttoned around stooped shoulders, his unshaven face an oblong shape without emotion. He shut the inner door without turning from his son, who stood on the threshold of the kitchen, light sketching the boy’s outline and throwing his face into darkness.
“What’re you doin’?”
Lance stood stock-still, every muscle locked in place as if he had been encased in concrete and left to cure. A hundred phrases and questions ran through his mind as his father stepped closer and squinted into the light from the kitchen to read his features. He could smell the older man—a mixture of sweat and clothes worn too many times without washing.
“You still knocked silly?” Anthony asked as he stopped a few feet from Lance and glared down at him, the scowl pulling his angular face into a rough point. Lance found the strength to shake his head, but no more.
“Well get the fuck out of my way then.”
Lance stood fast. His feet weighed a thousand pounds apiece, and he felt his fists clenching in on themselves. Not for the first time he felt as if he were watching his own life transpire from the sidelines. He watched from the bleachers of his mind as heat swelled within his own chest and his heart began pumping double time. Just before his father was about to sweep him aside like refuse from the garage apron after a storm, he spoke. “Where’s my mom?”
His father stopped before he had taken a step, and stared at Lance with almost a newfound realization. The boy can talk. He can think on his own. Well, isn’t that something?
“She ran off. Now get out of my way.”
The first words were flat and without emotion, and as Lance heard them, he knew that they were anything but true. The last were full of menace and poison, like a ripe hornet sting. His mind screamed at him to step aside and let the older man pass, but something deep in his chest kept his legs at bay. That something was solid and whole, like a slab of granite. It was sound and resolute, and it would not let him move.
Anthony needed no further prompting. His right hand shot out and grasped Lance’s upper arm with five bands of cold steel. Anthony was a skinny man, but years of working on the farm and manual labor had left him sinuous and strong. The grip on Lance’s arm was familiar, if nothing else, and because of that, when his father’s knee came up to meet his chin in a graceful collision, he wasn’t in the least surprised.
Lance heard, more than felt, his jaw break as his aching head rocked back on his neck. It reminded him of when he had seen a boy light a firecracker beneath a tin can last Fourth of July. He wanted to fall then, as the pain began to flood the right side of his jaw. He wanted to lie on the stained and pitted linoleum floor and let the night melt away into dreams where his father couldn’t follow him. He wanted to fall, but the bands around his arm wouldn’t let him.
Anthony snapped a short punch at his son’s face and blood began to flow from Lance’s lower lip. Another punch opened a slight cut over his right eye, and after that, Lance lost the will to keep track of the injuries. Before his vision became too red to see through, he noticed the glint of light that kept flashing off his father’s wedding ring and wondered where his mother really was.
Finally, the blows began to taper off, like a heavy rain receding with a passing storm. The hand released its iron-like hold on his upper arm and allowed him to collapse. As he fell gracelessly to the floor, Lance noted that he hadn’t made a sound throughout the assault, and somewhere amidst the swelling sea of agony, he believed his mother would be proud. The pain was all-encompassing, a writhing mask that crawled across his ruined face and crept down into his neck. Blood pooled in a dark corona around his small head, and when he tried to open his mouth, his jaw moved barely an inch, then stopped.
Without thinking, Lance began to try to stand in an attempt to make it to his room, where he could at least lie on his bed. He had barely gathered his hands beneath him when a hard-soled boot skipped off of his temple, and for the second time in twenty-four hours, Lance dropped into the unfathomable depths of unconsciousness.
Chapter 2
“It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences.”
—Henry David Thoreau
The next week was a surreal passing of time that Lance faded in and out of. At times he would awake to the pitch blackness of his room in the middle of the night, his desk and chair
strange shapes beside him that seemed to move and undulate in the darkness. At other times he would open his blood-encrusted eyes to a blindingly white day that made him turn to the shelter of the wall and wonder if the world was made entirely of razor-shafted light. His dreams became reality, as one trailed into another like a looping reel of movies played constantly on the backdrop of his mind. Creatures reached out to touch and prod him as he crossed burnt landscapes of piled corpses. Hands grasped at his pant legs as he stepped on the rotting dead, and he knew he shouldn’t look down, couldn’t look down. And at last, when he could resist no more, he gazed at the body gripping tightly to the cuff of his jeans, and his mother’s bloated face stared up at him with pleading in her filmy eyes. He had come hurtling out of the dream as if flung by the hand of God himself, and nearly ruptured a vocal cord as the hoarse scream tore out of his throat with talons of glass. No one had come to see if he was all right, not that he truly expected a visitor. In reflection, he was glad that no one had checked on him, considering his father was the only human being close enough to hear him cry out.
Sometimes there were bits of food and glasses of water on the chair near his bed, most times not. Time ceased to have meaning as the days passed for him in his pain-induced coma, and it was only when his father finally shook him awake one afternoon that Lance realized how long he had actually spent in his room, alone with his wounds and deep dreams.
“You’ve been shittin’ the bed for a week, get yer ass up and get on the pot from now on if you have to go.” Anthony stood staring down at him from his bedside, his thin arms planted on narrow hips.