In Harmony(4)

He was like the cars we scrapped and the gas station he sometimes operated—old before his time, broken down, and reeking of his favorite gasoline. He wasn’t getting out of Harmony, but I sure as shit was.

Someday.

I laid my palm on the cold windowpane. Icy tendrils of wind snaked their way in from cracks along the sill. I’d been saving up for better windows all summer—doing odd jobs for Martin Ford at the Harmony Community Theater when I wasn’t manning the gas station. When October rolled around, Pops promised to get to the hardware store for the new panes. But I’d given him the money and he used it to go on a bender.

That’s what trust’ll get you.

Pops stirred, snorted, and blinked awake. “Isaac?”

“That’s me. You want some breakfast?” Blowing on my chilled fingers, I moved to the small kitchen.

“Sausage,” he said, and lit a half-smoked Winston.

“No sausage,” I said, fixing us two bowls of cornflakes. “I’ll go to the store on the way home from school. Before the show tonight.”

“You bet your ass you will.”

He hauled himself off the couch with a grunt and lumbered over to sit at the foldout card table that served as our dining table. I sat across from him and tried to ignore him slurping cereal in between drags off his cigarette.

Pops hunched over his bowl, the weight of his own life dragging him down. He was heavy with years of struggle and poverty, harsh winters, heartache and alcohol. His jowls were unshaven, drooping like the bags under his watery eyes. Unwashed hair fell like gray straw over his forehead. I dropped my eyes, determined to finish my food in ten bites or less and get the hell out of there.

“What’s tonight? A show?” Pops asked.

“Yeah.”

“Which is it this time?”

“Oedipus Rex,” I said, as if it hadn’t been running for two weeks and in rehearsal four weeks before that.

He grunted. “Greek tragedy. I’m not all stupid.”

“I know,” I said, my hackles going up. He hadn’t had anything to drink yet, so the meanness was still slumbering. It was mostly nocturnal—the Jekyll in him—and I did my best to stay out of its way until he passed out.

“And what part are you?”

I sighed. “I’m Oedipus, Pops.”

He snorted, shoveled a spoonful of cereal into his mouth, dribbling milk down the gristle of his chin. “That Martin Ford really has taken a shine to you.” He jabbed his spoon at me. “You watch out. Turn you into a fag if you keep up this acting nonsense. If he hasn’t already.”

I clenched my teeth and hands both but said nothing. It wasn’t the first time he’d insinuated Martin—the director of the Harmony Community Theater—favored me for reasons other than my talent. Truth was, Martin and his wife, Brenda, had been more like parents to me than Pops could ever imagine.

But I didn’t tell him that. You don’t talk to a braying donkey and expect to have a real conversation.

“The play closes tomorrow night.” I hazarded a glance up. I wasn’t stupid enough to ask him to come, but the part of me that still wanted to believe he was a real father never fucking gave up. “Last show.”

“Yeah?” Pops said. “But how many more after that? You been doing this shit for years. Turn you soft, is what. I’m not leaving my business to a queer.”

The words bounced off me. I had a dozen girls’ numbers I kept on rotation in my phone, and the idea of him leaving me Pearce Auto Salvage or the Wexx franchise station was laughable. It had no business anymore, unless you counted the occasional stranded traveler who didn’t know better than to go five miles farther up to the shiny, big-name places in Braxton. We lived off Pops’ disability and my pay from the theater. Or rather, he lived and I existed. I didn’t live until I was on stage.

I could take his words. It was his fists I had to watch out for.

More than once, after one of Pops’ tirades that left us both bloody; I’d pushed my old blue Dodge pickup as hard as it could handle along the winding roads out of Harmony, intent on getting out of Indiana once and for all. Then I imagined Pops stuck here, alone, eating cold cereal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner until a bad winter gave him pneumonia. Or maybe he’d dive into a bucket of fried chicken and eat himself into a heart attack. Lay dead and rotting on our shitty couch with no one to check for weeks, if not months.

I turned my damn truck around every time.

That’s what you did for family. Even if your sole family was a piece-of-shit-drunk who didn’t give a damn about you.

“Gimme some more, yeah?” Pops said, as I rose to dump my bowl in the sink.

I poured him a second helping of flakes, then went to get dressed for school.

In my small room—bed, dresser, coffin-sized closet—I put on my best pair of blue jeans, boots, a flannel over my undershirt and my black leather jacket. I dug the wool cap and fingerless gloves Brenda Ford had knitted for me from under a pile of scripts and slipped a pack of my own Winstons from a secret stash Pops didn’t know I had, or else he’d raid it. I stuffed them into the jacket’s inside pocket.

Pops was peering blearily at the wall calendar a salesman had left us after a failed attempt at selling us homeowner’s insurance. “Today’s the eighth?”

“Yeah,” I said, shouldering my backpack.