Dreadful Summit Read Free Page A

head.
    Flanagan thought my father was just about the greatest man in the world. He would say to the regulars when my father wasn’t around, ‘Andy LaMain is good-looking and smart and he has more brains than the Pope,’ and if one of them asked why, Flanagan would say, ‘Because he keeps his mouth shut.’
    Sometimes the guy would want to argue about this, but Flanagan would just say, ‘Aw, you got stones in the head,’ and wait on somebody else.
    It was all right with me because I thought the same way. My father was small, a head smaller than me, but he was nice-looking and he had a good build. He had smooth black hair just getting a little grey in front, and a little moustache he used to trim by himself every morning in front of the mirror. And Flanagan was right about my father keeping quiet. He was the quietest man I ever knew.
    He could stand behind the bar all day, and never say more than hello to the regulars. If they got into a battle about politics or something, he would just go to the other end of the bar and read the paper. Mostly, if there wasn’t trade, or just enough so Flanagan could handle it all right by himself, my father would stand looking out of the window.
    He was like that with Frances too. She would walk along holding his arm and talking away a mile a minute, and then when she stopped he would say maybe one, two words, and that was all. I think he gave her the feeling sometimes that he wasn’t listening, because once she got me alone up in the rooms.
    â€˜Listen, George,’ she said, ‘I want to ask you something and I want it to be just between you and me.’
    â€˜Sure,’ I said.
    She was biting her thumbnail and looking at me like she was trying to figure out how to say it. ‘Look,’ she finally said, ‘does your father ever talk about me? I mean, does he ever say anything about me when I’m not around?’
    I said, ‘No,’ and then she got scared and said, ‘Now remember, George, this was strictly between us.’
    She didn’t have to say that, because I wouldn’t have told him anyhow. I mean, you didn’t just go and tell my father anything until he asked you, and even then he didn’t seem interested. About once a month he would say to me, ‘Is everything all right at school?’ and I would say yes, it was, and in between those times he would just give me my allowance or tell me to get a haircut. I hardly ever talked to my father. I think I was a little afraid of him.
    But when he was laying on the floor with Flanagan slopping whisky over him, everything turned upside down in me. I wasn’t afraid of him any more. I didn’t even have any use for him. A guy had walked in out of nowhere and handed him a licking and he just laid down and took it. With everybody looking at him he stripped down and took a beating like a kid. When I got up from the table and saw all the people pushing around and him laying there, all I thought of was if he couldn’t handle Al Judge, I could.
    I wasn’t a kid any more. I was big. Bigger than anybody standing around there with their stupid mouths hanging open, because I knew something they didn’t. I knew that I was going to kill Al Judge. Kill him right away so there wouldn’t be any mistake about why it happened, but do it so smart and slick that nobody in the world could put the finger on me.
    And the biggest thing. Al Judge had to know before he died why it was happening. He had to get down on his knees in front of me just the way the Jews used to get down in front of the Nazis when they were going to get theirs. And he had to slobber all over me before the finish. Maybe I would get him all undressed first so that’s the way the cops would find him.
    Just that idea made me feel bigger than the whole world. My glasses were bent anyhow. I stuck them in my pocket and I went over to the people standing there and started to shove them.