Missing Pieces(90)

More silence. Encouraged that he was gone, Calli descended the stairs, carefully stepping over the fourth step that creaked. The bulb from above the kitchen stove cast a ghostly light that spilled onto the bottom of the stairs. She just needed to take two large steps past the kitchen entry and she would be at the bathroom. Calli, at the bottom step, her toes curled over the edge, squeezed the hardwood tightly, pulled her nightgown to above her knees to make possible a bigger step. One step, a furtive glance into the kitchen. No one there. Another step, past the kitchen, her hand on the cool metal doorknob of the bathroom, twisting.

“Calli!” a gruff whisper called out. Calli stilled. “Calli! Come out here!”

Calli’s hand dropped from the doorknob and she turned to follow the low sound of her father’s voice. The kitchen was empty, but the screen door was open, and she saw the outline of his wide shoulders in the dim early morning. He was sitting on the low concrete step outside, a fog of cigarette smoke and hot coffee intermingling and rising above his head.

“Come out here, Calli-girl. What’cha doing up so early?” he asked, not unkindly. Calli pushed open the screen door, careful not to run the door into his back; she squeezed through the opening and stood next to her father.

“Why ya up, Calli, bad dream?” Griff looked up at her from where he was sitting, a look of genuine concern on his face.

She shook her head no and made the sign for bathroom, the need for which had momentarily fled.

“What’s that? Can’t hear ya.” He laughed. “Speak a little louder. Oh, yeah, you don’t talk.” And at that moment his face shifted into a sneer. “You gotta use the sign language.” He abruptly stood and twisted his hands and arms in a grotesque mockery of Calli. “Can’t talk like a normal kid, got be all dumb like some kind of retard!” Griff’s voice was rising.

Calli’s eyes slid to the ground where a dozen or so crushed beer cans littered the ground and the need to pee returned full force. She glanced up to her mother’s bedroom window; the curtains still, no comforting face looked down on her.

“Can’t talk, huh? Bullshit! You talked before. You used to say, ‘Daddy, Daddy,’ ’specially when you wanted something. Now I got a stupid retard for a daughter. Probably you’re not even mine. You got that deputy sheriff’s eyes.” He bent down, his gray-green eyes peered into hers and she squeezed them tightly shut.

In the distance she heard tires on gravel, the sharp crunch and pop of someone approaching. Roger. Calli opened her eyes as Roger’s four-wheel-drive truck came down the lane and pulled up next to them.

“Hey, there. Mornin’, you two. How are you doing, Miss Calli?” Roger tipped his chin to Calli, not really looking at her, not expecting a response. “Ready to go fishing, Griff?”

Roger Hogan was Griff’s best friend from high school. He was short and wide, his great stomach spilling over his pants. A foreman at the local meat packing plant, he begged Griff every time he came home from the pipeline to stay home for good. He could get Griff in at the factory, too. “It’d be just like old times,” he’d add.

“Morning, Rog,” Griff remarked, his voice cheerful, his eyes mean slits. “I’m goin’ to have you drive on ahead without me, Roger. Calli had a bad dream. I’m just going to sit here with her awhile until she feels better, make sure she gets off to sleep again.”

“Aw, Griff,” whined Roger. “Can’t her mother do that? We’ve been planning this for months.”

“No, no. A girl needs her daddy, don’t she, Calli? A daddy she can rely on to help her through those tough times. Her daddy should be there for her, don’t you think, Rog? So Calli’s gonna spend some time with her good ol’ daddy, whether she wants to or not. But you want to, don’t you, Calli?”

Calli’s stomach wrenched tighter with each of her father’s utterances of the word daddy. She longed to run into the house and wake up her mother, but while Griff spewed hate from his mouth toward Calli when he’d been drinking, he’d never actually really hurt her. Ben, yes. Mom, yes. Not Calli.

“I’ll just throw my stuff in your truck, Rog, and meet up with you at the cabin this afternoon. There’ll be plenty of good fishing tonight, and I’ll pick up some more beer for us on the way.” Griff picked up his green duffel and tossed it into the back of the truck. More carefully he laid his fishing gear, poles and tackle into the bed of the truck. “I’ll see ya soon, Roger.”

“Okay, I’ll see you later then. You sure you can find the way?”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry. I’ll be there. You can get a head start on catching those fish. You’re gonna need it, ’cause I’m going to whip your butt!”

“We’ll just see about that!” Roger guffawed and squealed away.

Griff made his way back to where Calli was standing, her arms wrapped around herself despite the heat.

“Now how about a little bit of daddy time, Calli? The deputy sheriff don’t live too far from here, now, does he? Just through the woods there, huh?” Her father grabbed her by the arm and her bladder released, sending a steady stream of urine down her leg as he pulled her toward the woods.