by Joe Hart
The snow had been light as of late, especially for January, but Lance was glad for the reprieve as he walked in the narrow tire track that ran on the right side of their long driveway. Less snow meant less wading through the drifts that inevitably piled up across the drive, and his feet stayed a little warmer as he waited for the long yellow bus that was now trundling purposefully toward him on the icy road.
Once Lance boarded the bus, he began to gradually sink in upon himself, bit by bit, until he felt as though he could have faded into the gray paint that covered the inside of the large vehicle. As he approached a seat that looked empty, a tenth-grade boy suddenly sat up and stared menacingly at him.
“Keep movin’, you frickin’ weirdo.” Several kids in nearby seats shouted laughter as Lance steered himself past them to an empty row in the very back of the bus. The other children moved away from him as if he harbored some type of contagious disease.
No one wanted to be associated with the weird kid that rarely spoke and never laughed. He sometimes wondered why he didn’t have even one friend within the school he spent so many hours each week. It seemed that in every story he’d read, the main character, no matter how outlandish or ostracized, always had a best friend. A sidekick. Someone who saw through the oddity of the main character and decided to stick with them through thick and thin. Granted, they were sometimes quirky or strange, but they were still a friend. He hoped that one of the other children would eventually reach out to him, as he didn’t know quite how to do it himself. The spastic hustle and bustle of the kids, and at times even the teachers, overwhelmed him to the point that he would gradually shut them out and recede until the words within his head replaced the conversations that he wished he could have. His hope of friendship had been fading over the years, and had nearly dried up altogether like a stream in a drought when his mother had vanished.
There had been questions about his mother. Hundreds of them, in fact. His teachers had barraged him with them until he just stared at the floor and gave the same answer each time she was brought up. She had left and he didn’t know where she had gone. Yes, maybe she would come back. Yes, he was all right. Could he go back to class now? It was the same for weeks, until everyone finally realized that they weren’t really getting anywhere and Lance became a backdrop for the classroom again, a fixture that neither existed nor disappeared entirely.
The bus shuddered to a stop outside the squat brick building that children flooded into in lines like ants filing into a hill. The walk to his homeroom was uneventful, and after depositing his tattered book bag onto a brass hook that bore his name in black Sharpie, Lance slouched into his seat and felt his stomach tighten as he noticed the sheriff sitting in a chair a few feet from Mrs. Murphy’s large desk. Their eyes met, the sheriff’s soft brown orbs probing at Lance’s with questions. Without thinking, Lance reached up and furtively buttoned the top of his faded flannel shirt, and he hoped that the collar was high enough to cover the spot where his father had punched him the night before.
A routine had developed over the past few months since Lance’s mother had disappeared. Anthony would be careful as his anger overflowed and he lashed out at his son. He kept his strikes consistently in areas covered by Lance’s clothing. There were days when Lance could barely stand in the morning as he pried himself out of bed, his legs cobbled colors of blue, black, and yellow. Lance would take the punishment silently, each time thinking of his mother, and then limp off to his room to write. His notebook was nearly full; several more short parables and stories had filled up the pages, and he began to wonder what he would do when there was no more room left. The routine wasn’t a comfort, but like all rituals, it held a pattern that Lance had gotten used to. Last night he had turned to ward off the blow of his father’s fist, and in doing so the punch had landed higher than Anthony intended, leaving a dark bruise that licked up the side of Lance’s neck like a tongue of purple flame.
Lance looked down at his desk and became very interested in a groove that had been worn with the pen of a student long since graduated and forgotten.
“Okay, class, we have a treat today! Our very own Sheriff Dodd is going to be talking to you about drug awareness. We all know how terrible drugs can be, so let’s listen closely to what our sheriff has to say!” Mrs. Murphy moved her considerable bulk to the side and unceremoniously sat in her chair, which squeaked its complaint.
“Hi, kids!” the sheriff said as he stood and walked to the center of the blackboard, gazing out over the thirty or so heads that turned in his direction.
“Hello, Sheriff Dodd” came the reply from the students in unison. The sheriff smiled at them, his round face lighting up. The brown eyes that Lance had watched blacken in anger were now warm and twinkled even in the harsh fluorescent light. The sheriff looked at Lance again and hesitated. He blinked once, and then seemed to return to himself.
“I want to tell all of you about a couple of drugs and how they’re just like some poisons that can be found in your homes.”
Lance listened idly, at times glancing up at the man in the front of the classroom, as he imagined mixing up some of the household cleaners that the sheriff was mentioning and then slipping them into his father’s milk at supper. The sheriff was an animated speaker and roamed down the aisles, sometimes stooping over to ask a question or make a joke to one of the students. Laughter resounded in the classroom several times, and from the shine of their eyes and the attention his fellow classmates exuded, Lance could tell the sheriff had done this many times before.
“So in conclusion, kids, don’t let your parents, your friends, or anyone else you know down by trying methamphetamines, marijuana, or any other drugs.” The class clapped, making the room resound with the hollow slap of flesh upon flesh. Lance looked up from the spot on the floor he had been staring at. The sheriff was smiling and nodding, and Mrs. Murphy leaned over to whisper something in his ear. He nodded and grinned at her rotund face before stepping back and letting her assume the speaker’s position.
“Okay, class, let’s all think really hard about what Sheriff Dodd had to say today, and remember to say no to drugs. Now everyone, please get out your social studies books and turn to chapter four.”
The classroom erupted with the clatter of desks being raised and several groans, which Mrs. Murphy narrowed her eyes at as she walked down Lance’s aisle. His stomach again tightened when she stopped several inches from his desk and lowered her head to his level.
“Lance, the sheriff would like to have a word with you in the hall.” Lance’s stomach threatened to release the meager meal of stale toast he had consumed for breakfast. Without looking at anyone else or acknowledging what Mrs. Murphy had said, Lance rose from his seat and walked numbly over to the thick oak door that was partially open.
Sheriff Dodd waited a few feet outside the door, his hands hanging at his sides, and for the first time Lance realized he wasn’t wearing his uniform. Instead he had on relaxed jeans with a black button-up shirt that had the Elinex County Sheriff’s insignia on the left breast pocket. His face was stone-like and he stood motionless as Lance clicked the heavy door shut behind him. The hallway of the first floor was empty and silent but for the murmurings of other teachers behind closed doors of several classrooms and the occasional exclamation of a child too eager to answer a question.
“How are you, Lance?” The sheriff stayed where he was and did not kneel before him as he had in the driveway several months ago. Lance was glad. The tension in the air was already rising, and he didn’t want the sheriff to move closer to him and press any answers from him that he couldn’t divulge. Mustn’t divulge.
“I’m fine.”
“Are you?”
Lance nodded and looked at the pattern in the carpet at his feet. There were coils of red ivy mixed with black backgrounds. He wished the ivy would come to life and pull him down. Down into the darkness where he wouldn’t have to answer questions or look forward to a long bus ride home, to the fists that would eventually
meet him like old friends.
“Listen, son, I know what’s going on at your house. I know your daddy hits you. I know he hit your mom. I want to help you. I can bring you somewhere safe. You just have to tell me that you want help, that’s all. Just say the word.” The sheriff’s eyes were pleading now, full of concern. His eyebrows were drawn together and wrinkled up in the middle, as though they had collided and were smashed into a different shape.
Lance felt words rising up within him again. Words that were like poison, like the drugs Sheriff Dodd had just talked about in the classroom, loathing and vile things that only wanted to come out. Lance could imagine gagging as he tried to get his tongue to form them; he could see himself vomiting them on the red ivy at his feet. He could see the sheriff nodding and leading him away to an office somewhere, and then to a house that held other kids like him. He could see his father coming to pick him up and the sheriff avoiding his gaze as he was led away, his father’s hand already crushing and breaking the bones in his fingers. He could see a pale moon hanging over the low and dark curve of the Mississippi. His father straining to hold something on the riverbank under the flowing brown waters. He could see his face under the current, his mouth open in a scream and his eyes wide.
Lance lurched forward, his legs turning to jelly beneath him, and the sheriff caught him before he fell to the floor. Lance blinked and drew in a deep breath as he looked into the sheriff’s face. Without thinking, he shook his head sharply from side to side and looked away, ashamed of nearly passing out in front of the older man. The sheriff’s hands gripped his shoulders, holding Lance there while the sheriff studied him further.
Before he could pull away or stop him, the sheriff reached up and tugged the collar of Lance’s shirt away from the white skin of his neck and shoulder. The sheriff’s eyes lost their dull look of concern and slowly began to gleam with a light of their own when he saw the edge of the bruise that crept up from Lance’s collarbone.
The sheriff released his hold on Lance and turned from him as he stalked away down the hall, his feet thudding down, crushing the red ivy. Lance put his hand on the wall to steady himself and tried to call out as the sheriff swung around a corner and disappeared out of sight.
The bus ride home was the longest of Lance’s life. The bus was completely full, almost to the point of spilling over. Each seat was stacked three kids deep, and even Lance had to share a space with a teenage girl who sat as far away from him as possible, nearly hovering in the aisle, her back turned to him.
The bus jounced and tilted as it rolled laboriously down the snow-scattered roads. Lance stared out of the sectioned window and watched the low-hanging gray sky. The clouds were thickening, and he wasn’t at all surprised when a few minutes later light flakes began to twist past and fall on the fields around them.
Stop after stop came and went, the bus steadily draining of its occupants until there were only three other children remaining in the rattling bus. The familiarity of contemplating his own death slid over him once again and the repeating thoughts strode out of the darkness like smiling demons.
His bowels were painfully full as the vehicle slowed and shook to a stop perpendicular to the long drive running across the fields to his left. The bus driver looked up expectantly in his overhead mirror, his eyes seeming to ask Don’t you live here, dummy? Lance rose from his seat and cinched his book bag tight over one shoulder.
The cold air met him with a push of wind and the stinging feel of ice crystals on his face. The clouds seemed to have dropped in altitude, as if they would eventually touch the ground and push their way into the frozen earth. The driveway stretched out ahead of Lance as the bus’s engine revved behind him, and the bus shot away down the road as though something were chasing it. Lance could see his father’s truck parked in its regular spot just in front of the garage. His let his head fall nearly to his chest as he began to walk up the drive, one foot after the other, treading now in the tire track opposite the one he had walked that morning. His breath puffed out before his face, obscuring the white ground he stepped on, but not before he noticed another tire track that was mixed in with the familiar Chevy tread. For a moment it seemed like all his blood had rushed up and congregated in his head, and his vision dimmed because of it. Had his mother returned? Had he been mistaken in thinking his father had done something to her? Lance resisted the urge to sprint up the hill and tried to calm his thoughts into a rational order. He looked again at the space near their garage and could now make out where the vehicle had stopped and then some time later jackknifed around and left the same way it had come. His excitement waned when he saw this. His mother wouldn’t have left once she came back, not without taking him with her or bringing an entire battalion of police to haul his father away.
The simplicity of the answer to his wondering stopped him in his snowy tracks. The sheriff had been here. He had known it all afternoon, deep inside where truth is the only thing that speaks. Why had he thought anything different? Why had he even hoped that his mother had come back? It was a foolish thought, and one he wouldn’t allow himself again. She was gone. Now his mind turned to what truly awaited him at the top of the hill, and the stone inside him that was his constant companion dropped lower and became hot.
When he neared the rear of his father’s truck, a smell began to permeate his nostrils. It was an acrid odor, a mixture of several things burning at once. He could pick out paper, plastic, and the charred smell of overdone food—his father was burning garbage.
Lance walked past the Chevy and hauled himself over a large drift that had formed between the small garage and the house. Another set of footprints led the way, their deep recesses already beginning to fill in as the storm opened the doors overhead and released larger flakes among the ice crystals that pelted down. Lance rounded the garage carefully, not wanting to walk headlong into his father and suffer a worse fate than was already in store.
He stopped when he saw his father standing several yards away, tending to the garbage that burned voraciously in the half barrel before him. Anthony’s back was to Lance, his work coat hung across his shoulders as if a coat-hanger supported it instead of bones and muscle. The flames leapt and sputtered out of the barrel and outlined his father in a strange halo of fragmented colors, the fumes of the plastic and cardboard containers fanning out in a strangely beautiful pattern. Just as Lance was about to retrace his steps back to the house and disappear into his room, his father turned his head to the right, almost as if he knew Lance had been there the whole time. When Anthony’s head twisted enough for his eye to stare into his son’s face, the air left Lance’s lungs in a hollow keening sound that mixed with the howling wind and was torn away.
Anthony’s lower lip was split so severely that Lance could make out several teeth through the red flap of skin. Blood was still running from the wound and had pooled near his chin, giving the impression in the dying light that he wore a dark goatee. Another abrasion the size of a baseball circled his right eye, and Lance couldn’t be sure, but it looked as though his father’s nose was sitting at a wrong angle, but it could have been the failing light. When his father reached beneath his coat, Lance completely forgot about the mess that had once been his father’s face. With dawning horror, he saw what his father drew out from the inside of the old work jacket and into the flickering light of the fire.
Lance’s notebook was there, clutched in one bony hand that had smeared blood over the plastic cover. For a moment Lance hoped he was dreaming. He hoped he would awake in his bed, perhaps from another trauma-induced coma at any moment. And he would gladly sigh relief, the injuries he would have to deal with be damned. He would take them over this. His stories, all his ideas and feelings, were there in those pages that now flapped like a wounded bird in his father’s hand. He felt a cry coming from deep inside him, and although every cell in his body told him to still it before it left his mouth, he could not.
“No!” The anguish in his yell startled him. It was as though someo
ne else beside him had cried out. The maniacal smile that bloomed across Anthony’s face widened, and Lance saw the gory V of his father’s lip split even further, making the grin go vertical as well as horizontal. The crooked hands that held the notebook were now flipping lightly through its pages, as if his father were an interested teacher skimming the work of an especially gifted student.
“Oh, this is nasty stuff, my boy. Nasty stuff indeed.” Anthony’s voice floated over to Lance on the gusting wind. “Scarring your brain, boy. I told your momma that you shouldn’t read those books. And look at what we have here. A testament to how right I was.”
Lance gritted his teeth as he saw several drops of blood plummet down from his father’s injuries and splash onto the white pages. “Give it back!” Lance yelled. This time his voice had taken on an edge that he didn’t know he possessed. It held anger and hatred so deep that his father had no choice but to look up at him through the swollen lids of his eyes.
“That sounded like a command, boy, and I really don’t like being told what to do. You know that.”
Without looking behind him, Anthony whipped the hand holding Lance’s notebook in a short arc, and let go. The pages flapped once and the cover opened a bit as if to wave goodbye, and then it dropped out of sight into the flames licking hungrily out of the barrel.
“NO!” The word came again unannounced from Lance’s lips, and he felt the ground tilt. The flames in the barrel shot up higher for an instant like a cannibal raising its head from a feast. Lance realized his hand was reaching out toward the barrel, past his father, as though he might will the notebook out of the fire, whole and untouched. He let his arm fall to his side and felt tears begin to squeeze onto the ledges of his eyes. All his words were gone. All his stories were burning. His poems. His thoughts. The feelings that wanted to spew out of him night and day, transcribed there on the pages, were blackening and curling. They would soon be light enough to float on the heat. They would alight out of the inferno and glide away on the night setting in and he would never see them again.