The doorknob turned once again, and Lance was struck by déjà vu so profoundly he imagined he could see the pink scars of his father’s back as soon as the door cracked open enough to reveal the room beyond. The door swung wider and light from the kitchen crept across the furniture and other objects, which looked like crouching beasts in the darkness. Lance let the door touch the wall before releasing the breath he was holding. The room was empty.
Lance pulled the bedroom door shut and ventured back out to the porch. He stood on his tiptoes as he looked out the darkened window, straining his eyes to see if the faint shape of his mother’s car was still parked on the far side of the Chevy. He couldn’t tell from where he stood. Lance turned to his left and made to look out of the window set in the middle of the front door, when he noticed shadows moving in front of the house. They were solidifying and shifting from side to side. Too late, he realized the shadows were the thin outline of his father hurrying up the last few steps to the door.
Lance stumbled back, a cry of fright caught in his throat, as the screen door was thrown back and the inner door thrust open to reveal the bony form of the man beyond. Anthony stepped into the entry, a thick woolen shirt buttoned around stooped shoulders, his unshaven face an oblong shape without emotion. He shut the inner door without turning from his son, who stood on the threshold of the kitchen, light sketching the boy’s outline and throwing his face into darkness.
“What’re you doin’?”
Lance stood stock-still, every muscle locked in place as if he had been encased in concrete and left to cure. A hundred phrases and questions ran through his mind as his father stepped closer and squinted into the light from the kitchen to read his features. He could smell the older man—a mixture of sweat and clothes worn too many times without washing.
“You still knocked silly?” Anthony asked as he stopped a few feet from Lance and glared down at him, the scowl pulling his angular face into a rough point. Lance found the strength to shake his head, but no more.
“Well get the fuck out of my way then.”
Lance stood fast. His feet weighed a thousand pounds apiece, and he felt his fists clenching in on themselves. Not for the first time he felt as if he were watching his own life transpire from the sidelines. He watched from the bleachers of his mind as heat swelled within his own chest and his heart began pumping double time. Just before his father was about to sweep him aside like refuse from the garage apron after a storm, he spoke. “Where’s my mom?”
His father stopped before he had taken a step, and stared at Lance with almost a newfound realization. The boy can talk. He can think on his own. Well, isn’t that something?
“She ran off. Now get out of my way.”
The first words were flat and without emotion, and as Lance heard them, he knew that they were anything but true. The last were full of menace and poison, like a ripe hornet sting. His mind screamed at him to step aside and let the older man pass, but something deep in his chest kept his legs at bay. That something was solid and whole, like a slab of granite. It was sound and resolute, and it would not let him move.
Anthony needed no further prompting. His right hand shot out and grasped Lance’s upper arm with five bands of cold steel. Anthony was a skinny man, but years of working on the farm and manual labor had left him sinuous and strong. The grip on Lance’s arm was familiar, if nothing else, and because of that, when his father’s knee came up to meet his chin in a graceful collision, he wasn’t in the least surprised.