From the hickory I could hear the sour mash spinning in the glass. The quicker cadence of the ice matched the piercing sarcasm in Pops’ voice. “Well, let’s see, he saw his brother die in a terrible accident, he’s watched his mother go crazy, and his father blames him for it all. Just the kind of character-building exercise every fourteen-year-old should experience. But, in spite of your every effort to separate his head from his shoulders, he’s doing great, making me real proud.” They were silent for a moment; then my father changed the subject again.
“I’ve tried to talk with her, but she just looks at me like one of those Stepford wives.”
“It’s gonna take her some more time to heal, but fortunately time’s something we have in abundance around here.”
I had to quit, had to get away from there. I traced the tree’s shadow toward the street, well past the possibility of detection, and ran around to the back kitchen door. The light from the kitchen’s single bulb spilled insolently into the backyard, broken by the slow turning of the ceiling fan. Up the steps and into the kitchen. I let the screen door slam to announce my return. Mom was at the table worrying a cup of tea, and the sound of the door made her jump.
“You startled me,” she said. The words drew out of her slowly, as if they were the last water in an old well.
“Sorry, Mom. I’m going to bed, good night.” All I wanted was my room and the quiet cocoon of Pops’ books, where I could lose myself for hours on end and not think about the past three months—or the last five minutes.
I was halfway up the steps when my father called. “Kevin, how was the ice cream?”
“Fine,” I said, continuing to the top.
“Come on out here, son. We’d like to talk to you.”
“I’m real tired. I’m going to bed.”
“Won’t take a minute.”
“I said I’m going to bed.”
Pops interjected, “Kevin, your father wants to talk to you. Please come out to the porch… now.”
I shuffled down the steps and poked my face against the screen door.
“What?”
“Come on out here, son.”
I pushed open the door.
“Pops tells me that you’re his assistant now. How are you liking it?”
“Fine.”
“Just fine?”
“Yeah, it’s fine.”
“Well, have you made any friends since you’ve been here?”
“No.” Didn’t look at him, couldn’t look at him. “Can I go to bed now? I’m really tired,” I said to Pops.
“Sure, Kevin,” he replied after a moment.
My father was fixed on me, and I could feel him scowling into my soul, searching for fodder to criticize. I looked up and scowled right back into his lies and selfishness and blame. I turned and pushed back through the screen. Halfway up the steps, I heard him say in muffled tones, “He doesn’t seem normal like you say.”
I crawled into bed, shelled and numb.
I had run through Treasure Island, Lord of the Flies, Last of the Mohicans, and took up the ancient copy of Gulliver’s Travels that Pops had given me from his bookcase full of first and second editions. The leather spine rasped as I opened the thick cover. The brittle pages smelled like cellar and the leather was warm to the touch.
“My Father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the Third of five Sons. He sent me to Emanuel-College in Cambridge, at Fourteen Years old where I resided…”
Lost.