When he had entered the house and looked into the kitchen, he was surprised at the absence of his mother. She was always there, waiting with a small treat for him when he arrived home. It was their ritual. One of the things he looked forward to on the weekdays when it was just the two of them in the little house. His father picked up odd handyman jobs with a local contracting company most days of the week and he rarely came home before suppertime most nights. That hour or so after each school day was precious to him. There was no yelling. There were no cold fingers gripping his arm as he was reeled inexorably closer to a mouth that breathed foul air and threats. There was only his mother, a cookie or two, and the silence between them. At times Lance wished that his mother would speak to him as she sat at the far end of the table, sometimes puffing mindlessly on a Virginia Slim, the smoke dancing around her blank features as it wove pictures before her that only she could see. But he knew it was fruitless to try. This was what they had. An hour, and a sugary sweet. Nothing more, nothing less.
On that particular day he had stripped off his outside clothes, hanging them up to dry near the door before walking into the kitchen. There was nothing on the table to signify that his mother hadn’t forgotten him and when he listened he heard no sound within the house but for the creaking of the rafters and floorboards as a particularly strong February wind buffeted the house from the west.
He had gone silently across the kitchen and placed his hand upon the cold doorknob of his parents’ room and twisted it. The door had opened only an inch before a sight that stopped his breath also stayed his hand.
His father stood motionless several feet in front of the bedroom door, his back to Lance. He was shirtless and barefoot but still wore a soiled pair of jeans that hung off of his stick-like frame as if he were more scarecrow than man. Lance’s mother was huddled beneath the blankets of the bed that ate up most of the small room, her bare shoulders hunched in fear, a line of blood running freely from the right side of her torn lip. Lance only glanced at his mother before returning his gaze to what had stopped him dead from opening the door in the first place.
A blanketed patchwork of scars so dense and thick that it looked as if his father were wearing a pink and puckered cape ran down the entire length of his back. They began gradually just below where the neckline of a shirt would ride and spread out in a sweeping swath that covered Anthony’s thin lats and disappeared, as if they had been tucked in to his pants line. Some of the scars were narrow and delicate like someone had done calligraphy there with razor, while others were wide and deep like the paths of ancient rivers, running seemingly without end from an inexhaustible source.
Lance gazed upon his father’s ruined flesh and wondered how a person could have survived after enduring something as such. Without realizing it, he drew his breath in sharply, partially in fear and partially in revulsion, and the wind passing his teeth made a small hissing sound.
Without pause, Anthony had spun and pulled the door fully open, exposing Lance in the doorway bigger and brighter than the sun in a cloudless August sky. There was no hesitation. There was no restraint. The blows that rained down on Lance came from all directions at once. His face was punched, his stomach kicked, his shins raked, until he no longer stood but lay folded against the opposite wall of the narrow hallway, trying in vain to fend off the strikes even as he squeezed his eyes shut so tight he saw glowing orbs of gold behind the darkened lids.
He learned later that his father’s truck had broken down at a job near town. Anthony’s employer had delivered him home early, unbeknownst to Lance. At the time Lance hadn’t understood what had been unfolding in his parents’ bedroom. Much later he realized it must have been what passed for sex between the elder Metzgers. His father first striking his mother and then moving on to perhaps more sinister tortures Lance preferred not to imagine.
These memories ran through Lance’s mind as his hand rested on the knob once again. This time he knew his father was somewhere nearby, he had seen the outline of the Chevy sitting blackly in the driveway, and he was older.
The first time he had been seven.