("If I'd tied my sneakers," he will tell his wife much later as they lie in bed on the second floor of The Antlers in New Hampshire, "we're most likely not here tonight. Sometimes I think that's all my life comes down to, Lisey - a pair of untied Keds, size seven.")
The thing that was Paul roars, stumbles backward with a hug of pants in its arms, and trips over the chair in which a handsome young fellow sat down an hour previous to map Cartesian coordinates. One sneaker falls to the bumpy, hillocky linoleum. Scott, meanwhile, is struggling to get going again, to get up to the second-floor landing while there's still time, but his sock feet spin out from under him on the smooth stair-riser and he goes back down to one knee.
His tattered underwear has been pulled partway down, he can feel a cold draft blowing on the crack of his ass, and there's time to think Please God, I don't want to die this way, with my fanny out to the wind. Then the brother-thing is up, bellowing and casting aside the pants. They skid across the kitchen table, leaving the algebra book but knocking the sugar-bowl to the floor - knocking it galley-west, their father might have said. The thing that was Paul leaps for him and Scott is bracing for its hands and the feel of its nails biting into his skin when there's a terrific wooden thonk! and a hoarse, furious shout: - Leave 'im alone, you smuckin bastard!
You bad-gunky f**k!
He forgot all about Daddy. The draft on his ass was Daddy coming in with the wood. Then Paul's hands do grab him, the fingernails do bite in, and he's pulled backward, his grip on the banister broken as easily as if it were a baby's. In a moment he will feel Paul's teeth. He knows it, this is the real bad-gunky, the deep bad-gunky, not what happens to Daddy when Daddy sees people who aren't there or makes a blood-bool on himself or one of them (a thing he does less and less to Scott as Scott grows older), but the real deal, what Daddy meant all the times he'd just laugh and shake his head when they asked him why the Landreaus left France even though it meant leaving all their money and land behind, and they were rich, the Landreaus were rich, and he's going to bite now, he's going to bite me right now, RAH-CHEER -
He never feels Paul's teeth. He feels hot breath on the unprotected meat of his left side just above the hip, and then there's another heavy wooden thonk! as Daddy brings the stovelength down on Paul's head again - two-handed, with all his strength. The sound is followed by a number of loose sliding sounds as Paul's body goes slithering down to the kitchen linoleum.
Scott turns over. He's lying splayed out on the lower stairs, dressed in nothing but an old flannel shirt, his underpants, and white athletic socks with holes in the heels. One foot is almost touching the floor. He's too stunned to cry. His mouth tastes like the inside of a piggybank. That last whack sounded awful, and for an instant his powerful imagination paints the kitchen with Paul's blood. He tries to cry out, but his shocked, flattened lungs can produce only a single dismayed squawk. He blinks and sees that there's no blood, only Paul lying facedown in the sugar from the now defunct bowl, which lies bust in four big and change. That one'll never dance the tango again, Daddy sometimes says when something breaks, a glass or a plate, but he doesn't say it now, just stands over his unconscious son in his yellow work coat. There's snow on his shoulders and in his shaggy hair, which is starting to go gray. In one gloved hand he holds the stovelength. Behind him, scattered in the entry like pickup sticks, is the rest of his armload. The door is still open and the cold draft is still blowing in. And now Scott sees there is blood, just a little, trickling from Paul's left ear and down the side of his face.
- Daddy, is he dead?
Daddy slings the stovelength into the woodbox and brushes his long hair back. There's melting snow in the stubble on his cheeks - No he aint. That would be too easy. He tromps to the back door and slams it shut, cutting off the draft. His every movement expresses disgust, but Scott has seen him act so before - when he gets Official Letters about taxes or schooling or things like that - and is pretty sure that what he really is is scared.
Daddy comes back and stands over his floorbound boy. He rocks from one booted foot to the other awhile. Then he looks up at the other one.
- Help me get him down cellar, Scoot.
It isn't wise to question Daddy when he tells you to do a thing, but Scott is frightened. Also, he is next door to naked. He comes down to the kitchen and starts pulling his pants on. - Why, Daddy? What are you going to do with him?
And for a wonder, Daddy doesn't hit him. Doesn't even yell at him.
- I'll be smucked if I know. Truss him up down there for a start while I think about it. Hurry up. He won't be out long.
- Is it really the bad-gunky? Like with the Landreaus? And your Uncle Theo?