Lisey's Story(168)

"He'll be back," Daddy says. "Him or some other. You did a good job, Scott, but tape will only hold a wet package for so long."

I take a hard stare at him and see that he is my Daddy. At some point while I was talking to Mr. Halsey, my Daddy came back. It's the last time I'll ever really see him.

He sees me looking at him and kind of nods. Then he looks at the .30-06. "I'm going to get rid of this," he says. "I'm going down, that can't be - "

"No, Daddy - "

" - can't be helped, but I'll be sweetf*cked if I'll take a bunch of people like that Halsey with me, so they can put me on the six o'clock news for the gomers to drool over. They'd put you and Paul there too. Of course they would. Alive or dead, you'd be the lunatic's boys."

"Daddy, you'll be okay," I tell him, and try to hug him. "You're okay right now!"

He pushes me away, kind of laughing. "Yah, and sometimes people with malaria can quote Shakespeare," he says. "You stay here, Scotty, I got a chore to do. It won't take long." He walks off down the hall, past the bench I finally jumped off of all those years ago, and into the kitchen. Head down, the deer-gun in one hand. Once he's out the kitchen door I follow him and l'm looking out the window over the sink when he crosses the backyard, coatless in the sleet, head still down, still holding the .30-06. He puts it on the icy ground only long enough to push the cover off the dry well. He needs both hands to do that because the sleet has bound the cover to the brick. Then he picks the gun up again, looks at it for a second - almost like he's saying goodbye - and slides it into the gap he's made. After that he comes back to the house with his head still down and ice-drops darkening the shoulders of his shirt. It's only then that I notice his feet are bare. I don't think he ever realizes at all.

He doesn't seem surprised to see me in the kitchen. He takes out the two dollar bills Mr. Halsey gave me, looks at them, then looks at me. "You sure you don't want these?" he asks.

I shake my head. "Not if they were the last two dollar bills on earth."

Chapter 27

I can see he likes that answer. "Good," he says. "But now let me tell you something, Scott. You know your nana's china breakfront in the dining room?"

"Sure."

"If you look in the blue pitcher on the top shelf, you're going to find a roll of money. My money, not Halsey's - do you understand the difference?"

"Yes," I say.

"Yeah, I bet you do. You're a lot of things, but dumb hasn't ever been one of them. If I were you, Scotty, I'd take that roll of bills - it's around seven hundred dollars - and put my act on the road. Stick five in my pocket and the rest in my boot. Ten's too young to be on the road, even for a little while, and I think the chances are probably ninety-five in a hundred somebody'll rob you of your roll even before you make it over the bridge into Pittsburgh, but if you stay here, something bad's going to happen. Do you know what I'm talking about?"

"Yes, but I can't go," I say.

"There's a lot of things people think they can't do and then discover they can when they find themselves tight-wired," Daddy says. He looks down at his feet, which are all pink and raw-looking. "If you were to make it to the Burg, I believe a boy bright enough to get rid of Mr. Halsey with a story about Lou Gehrig's Disease and a sister I don't have might be bright enough to look under the C's in the telephone book and find Child Welfare. Or you might could knock around a little bit and maybe find an even better situation, if you wasn't to get separated from that roll of cash. Seven hundred parceled out five or ten bucks at a time will last a kid awhile, if he's smart enough not to get picked up by the cops and lucky enough not to get robbed of any more of it than what happens to be in his pocket."

I tell him again: "I can't go."

"Why not?"

But I can't explain. Some of it is having lived almost my whole life in that farmhouse, with almost no one for company but Daddy and Paul. What I know of other places I have gotten mostly from three sources: the television, the radio, and my imagination. Yes, I've been to the movies, and I've been to the Burg half a dozen times, but always with my father and big brother. The thought of going out into that roaring strangeness alone scares the living Jesus out of me. And, more to the point, I love him. Not in the simple and uncomplicated (until the last few weeks, at least) way I loved Paul, but yes, I love him. He has cut me and hit me and called me smuckhead and nummie and gluefoot mothersmucker, he has terrorized many of my childhood days and sent me to bed on many nights feeling small and stupid and worthless, but those bad times have yielded their own perverse treasures; they have turned each kiss to gold, each of his compliments, even the most offhand, into things to be treasured. And even at ten - because I'm his son, his blood? maybe - I understand that his kisses and compliments are always sincere; they are always true things. He is a monster, but the monster is not incapable of love. That was the horror of my father, little Lisey: he loved his boys.

"I just can't," I say.

He thinks about this - about whether or not to press me, I suppose - and then just nods again. "All right. But listen to me, Scott. What I did to your brother I did to save your life. Do you know that?"

"Yes, Daddy."