BILLY KNOX HAD been drinking bourbon at his desk for so long that he’d started talking to the big stuffed razorback standing against the opposite wall. Forrest had planted the spear in that animal’s back as deeply as he’d planted the metaphorical one in Billy’s. Surely there was a rule against asking a man to betray his own father in order to succeed, or even to survive? But rules meant nothing to Forrest. They never had.
Billy had expected his dad to give him hell when he heard the chopper taking off without being told why, but all Snake had done was walk into the study and ask where the bird was headed. When Billy denied knowing its destination, his father had accepted his answer and disappeared. But Billy had known that couldn’t be the end of it.
Sure enough, as he sat staring at the glazed eyes of the hog, the study door opened and Snake stepped into the room wearing a black sweatshirt and weathered Levis. He raised his right hand in greeting, then took a seat across the desk from his son.
“You’ve made a hell of a dent in that whiskey,” Snake said. “Something bothering you?”
“Nah,” Billy lied.
A fleeting smile crossed his father’s features. “Listen to me, boy. I’m not gonna fill you with a bunch of bullshit. I’m here because we’ve come to the fork in the river.”
Billy stirred from his anesthetized stupor. “What do you mean?”
“No games, son. You know what I’m talking about. We’re at the place where some go one way, and the rest go the other. Forrest means to leave all this behind him. And by ‘this’ I mean ‘us.’ He wants to go with the moneymen and the power whores in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. He thinks he can step right up into that life and it will be great. And he’s gonna tell you that you can do it, too, if he hasn’t already.”
Billy wished he would simply pass out, so he wouldn’t have to lie anymore. He could hardly believe that three days ago he’d been trying to hire Jimmy Buffett for his forty-fourth birthday party. Now he couldn’t imagine celebrating anything, except staying out of prison.
“The truth is,” Snake went on, “you’d do better in that world than Forrest ever would. Because Forrest has got something in him that you don’t.”
“What’s that?”
“Self-destruction.”
Billy blinked and leaned forward. “What are you talking about? Forrest is the most careful guy I know.”
“You think that because you don’t really know him.”
“What? I’ve known him all my life.”
Snake reached out and took a slug straight from the bourbon bottle. “How much do you remember about Granddaddy Elam?”
“Not much. I remember that weird hat he’d wear, like something from pilgrim times. The Scarlet Letter or something.”
Snake chuckled darkly. “Yeah. He was a lay preacher, and he wore that thing to impress the suckers. God only knows how many offering plates he robbed and children he fucked in that old hat.”
Billy blinked in surprise, unsure that he’d heard correctly. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing but life. The truth of it. And one truth is, when your own daddy fucks you in the ass, you ain’t ever the same.”
When your own daddy fucks you in the ass . . . ? “Are you saying Uncle Frank was molested by Granddad?”
“Not just Frank. Frank, some of the cousins, God knows how many kids in Elam’s various flocks . . . and me, of course.”
It was all Billy could do to stop himself from disgorging the liquor he’d drunk. “You?”
“Sure. I was there, wasn’t I? And I was too little to stop him. That’s all old Elam needed, boy.” Snake shook his head and sucked his teeth the way Robert Duvall sometimes did in the movies.
As far as Billy was concerned, this was no longer a two-way conversation. His father had the floor. Snake seemed to sense this, because he began to speak without prompting.
“When that kind of shit happens to most people, they either bury it and move on, or it buries them. I’ve seen it bury people. We had a cousin who killed herself when she was fourteen. But Frank . . . he buried it. Most people never suspected a thing.”
“And you?”
Snake waved his hand. “I’m different. I didn’t have to bury it. It’s like prison, you know?”
Billy’s stomach rolled again. He did know, and he didn’t want to be reminded.
“That kind of shit’s generally gonna happen when you’re inside,” Snake said, “and if it does, it does. Ain’t no different than getting stabbed or having your head stove in, if you look at it right. Except it tends to happen regular until you find yourself some protection. Anyway . . . Frank buried what your granddaddy done and moved on. But it was always part of him. You follow?”
“I guess.”
“See, what people sensed in Frank was this burning thing, but cold at the same time, like a cold flame. Some things he did during the war—crazy, heroic things—I knew it was that pain driving him. Even if he didn’t know . . . I did.
“But it’s a funny thing, Bill. You can hate the person who does that to you, and yet still become like them. It’s like you absorb part of them with their damn spunk—part of their black soul. Especially if you’re young.”
“Daddy, I don’t think I—”
“Oh, you’re gonna listen,” Snake said. “You’ve got to hear this. See, when your old man does that to you, the way Elam did us, it can turn you inside out. At some level, you realize that you came into the damned world through that man’s dick. Then you find yourself lying under him with a pillow or a sock stuffed in your mouth, screaming while he’s shoving it into you. . . . That’s about as painful as it gets, in every meaning of the word. That’s what taught me the first law of the damned universe.”
“Which is?”
“Pain begets pain, boy. If that ain’t in the Bible, it ought to be.”