The Impossible Knife of Memory(77)

The body moved. Uncurled. It sat up, wiped its face on the front of its T-shirt, and turned to look at the wailing girl, pounding on the other side.





_*_ 79 _*_

“He’s dead,” Dad said.

I led him to a dining room chair and made him sit down.

The blood was coming from his nose and a long cut on his

chin.

“Who’s dead?” I asked. “Who did this to you?” He didn’t answer.

A burglary? I looked over my shoulder. The TV was still

in the living room. Wasn’t that what burglars always took?

Michael. I bet he owed money to a dealer or a shady friend

and he didn’t pay so the guy came to our house to look for

him. Dad had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But he burned his uniform and he said “dead.” Had he

killed the guy? Was there a body somewhere?

“Daddy, look at me. What is going on?”

He closed his eyes, moaned. I ran my hands over the

scars on his head. “Should I call the police?”

“No, no,” he said wearily. “It was over there.” He put

his head in his hands and rocked back and forth, breathing

hard, like he was in the middle of a race.

The war. Another dead friend.

“You have to tell me,” I said gently. “Who was it?” Dad gulped back a sob. “Roy.”

Is there anything worse than watching your father cry?

He’s supposed to be the grownup, the all-powerful grownup, especially if he’s a soldier. When I was a kid, I watched

him work out, scaling walls, lifting guys bigger than he

was, running miles in the heat wearing full gear and carrying extra ammo. My dad was a superhero who made the

world safe. He went overseas with his troops and chased

the bad guys out of the mountains so that little kids over

there could go to school and to the library and use the playground the way I did at home. The first time I saw him cry

wasn’t so bad because he still had metal rods sticking into

his leg. He was in pain. I understood that. After they pulled

out the rods, after Trish left, I’d wake up at night hearing

him sob, sniff like a child, like me, tears coming fast and

mixing with snot. He’d try to keep quiet, but sometimes the

sadness came over him as loud as a thunderstorm. Scared

the shit out of me, like riding a roller coaster and feeling

your seat belt snap just as the track turns you upside down. I patted his back, waiting for the storm to pass.

It took more than an hour and a lot of whiskey before he’d say anything more. Roy’s platoon had been caught in an ambush. Rocket-fired grenades, Dad said. Everyone who wasn’t killed was injured.

“They’ll never be able to complain,” he said. “How can you complain if you’re alive? Lose your arms, lose your eyes, a leg, or a foot; it doesn’t matter when you think about your brothers buried in the ground.”

L A UR I E H A L S E A N D E RS O N

He was drinking out of a plastic cup.

“Rotting in the ground,” he muttered.

His tears made tiny streams down the dried blood on

his cheeks. The stubble on his face was speckled with gray and white. The skin along his jaw sagged a little, making him look like he had aged ten years since breakfast. His hands were bruised, the knuckles oozing blood, probably from punching the holes in the drywall.

The dining room curtains had been torn down and sunlight flooded the room, bouncing off the glittering glass shards in the carpet. He had broken all of our glasses, all of our plates and bowls, too, thrown against the walls. The silverware drawer was in pieces and one of the pantry doors had been ripped off the hinges.

A monster had rampaged through the house. I picked up the dog and staggered to the door. It was a miracle he hadn’t cut his paws. The second he touched the ground, he started racing back and forth the length of our yard, from the house all the way to the cornfield and back, ignoring my calls to come, just running until he wore himself out and flopped by the fire pit where I was able to hook him to the chain.

Dad refilled his whiskey. I went for the broom to start cleaning. I swept up the big pieces of glass and china and drywall, hid the ax in my closet, set the couch back on its feet, and stuffed the guts of the couch cushions into garbage bags. I threw what was left of the recliner in the back of the truck. That would have to go to the dump. I cleaned for more than an hour and still he sat in that chair.

“A shower might feel good,” I finally suggested.

I crossed my fingers, hoping he wouldn’t start talking about how Roy would never shower again, Roy would never drink whiskey or love a woman or eat Thanksgiving at his mother’s house again.

“Nothing feels good.” His red-rimmed eyes didn’t blink.

I hesitated, not wanting to set him off. “How about something to eat. Eggs?”

He shook his head.

“Pancakes?” I asked. “Hamburgers?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You have to eat something. How about toast? I can make some coffee, if you want.”

“I just want some quiet, okay?” He stood up and patted my cheek. “But thanks.”

He grabbed the bottle and walked to the living room. The television was the one thing he hadn’t destroyed in there. He picked up the remote, turned it on, and clicked through the channels until he found a reporter talking about a late hurricane forming in the Gulf of Mexico. He sat on the cushion-less couch, poured himself another shot and tossed it back.