"No, Daddy," I say, "I didn't go anywhere, I was just - "
He bends over me, his hands on his knees, his face down in my face, his skin pale except for two balls of color high up on his cheeks and I see the way his eyes are going back and forth, back and forth, and I know that he and right aren't even writing letters to each other anymore. And I remember Paul saying Scott you dassn't ever cross Daddy when he's not right.
"Don't you tell me you didn't go nowhere you lying little motherfucker, I been ALL OVER THIS MOTHER-SMOCKING HOUSE!"
I think to tell him I was in the shed, but I know that will make things worse instead of better. I think of Paul saying you dassn't cross him when he's not right, when he's getting in the bad, and since I know where he thinks I was, I say yes, Daddy, yes, I went to Boo'ya Moon, but only to put flowers on Paul's grave. And it works. For then, at least. He relaxes. He even grabs my hand and pulls me up and then brushes me off, as though he sees snow or dirt or something on me. There isn't any, but maybe he does see it. Who knows.
He says: "Is it all right, Scoot? Is his grave all right? Nothing been at it, or at him?"
"Everything's fine, Daddy," I say.
He says, "There are Nazis at work, Scooter, did I tell you? I must've. They worship Hitler in the basement. They have a little ceramic statue of the bastard. They think I don't know."
I'm only ten, but I know Hitler's been one dead dog since the end of the Second World War. I also know that nobody from U.S. Gyppum is worshipping even a statue of him in the basement. I know a third thing, as well, which is never to cross Daddy when he's in the bad-gunky, and so I say, "What will you do about it?"
He leans close to me and I think he's going to hit me this time sure, at least start shaking me again. But instead he fixes his eyes on mine (I've never seen them so big or so dark) and then he grabs hold of his ear. "What's this, Scooter? What's it look like to you, old Scoot?"
"Your ear, Daddy," I say.
He nods, still holding his ear and still holding my eyes with his. All these years later I still see those eyes in my dreams sometimes. "I'm going to keep it to the ground," he says. "And when the time comes..." He cocks his finger and makes shooting motions. "Every smucking one, Scooter. Every sweetmother Nazi in the place." Maybe he would have done it. My father, out in a blaze of rancid glory. Maybe there would have been one of those news stories - PENNSYLVANIA RECLUSE GOES ON RAMPAGE, KILLS NINE CO-WORKERS, SELF,
MOTIVE UNCLEAR - but before he can get around to it, the bad-gunky takes him a different way.
February has been clear and cold, but when March comes in, the weather changes and Daddy changes with it. As the temperatures rise and the skies cloud over and the first sleety rains start to fall, he grows morose and silent. He stops shaving, then showering, then cooking our meals. There comes a day, maybe a third of the way through the month, when I realize that the three days off work he sometimes gets because of the swing shift have stretched to four...then five...then six. Finally I ask him when he's going back. I'm scared to ask him, because now he spends most of his days either upstairs in his bedroom or downstairs lying on the sofa listening to country music on WWVA out of Wheeling, West Virginia. He hardly ever says anything to me in either place, and I see his eyes going back and forth all the time now as he looks for them, the Bad-Gunky Folks, the Bloody Bool Folks. So - no, I don't want to ask him but I have to, because if he doesn't go back to work, what will happen to us? Ten is old enough to know that with no money coming in, the world will change.
"You want to know when I'm going back to work," he says in a thoughtful tone of voice. Lying there on the sofa with beard-stubble all over his face. Lying there in an old fisherman's sweater and a pair of Dickies and his bare feet poking out. Lying there while Red Sovine sings "Giddyup-Go" out of the radio.
"Yes, Daddy."
He gets up on one elbow and looks at me, and I see then that he is gone. Worse, that something is hiding inside him, growing, getting stronger, biding its time. "You want to know. When. I'm. Going. Back to work."
"I guess that's your business," I say. "I really just came in to ask if I should put on the coffee."