Fragile Beasts Read Free Page B

things I’m supposed to be doing.
    I haven’t prayed for Dad’s soul yet. I haven’t even thought about heaven and, if it exists, if he’s up there lying on a couch made of clouds drinking from a solid gold beer cozy shooting the shit with Roberto Clemente. Or if it’s the kind of heaven where he wouldn’t care about beer and baseball and couches anymore and he’d just float around being blissful. I haven’t tried to comfort myself by believing that either one could be true and that someday I’ll see him again when I die.
    I haven’t cried yet.
    Klint did. He bawled like a baby. I couldn’t watch him. I walked away because I knew if I stayed, I’d start crying, too, but I would have been crying because my brother was crying, not because my dad was dead, and that seemed wrong.
    I haven’t let myself really think about what happened. I haven’t asked myself all the important questions, like once he missed the curve and lost control, did he know he was going to die? When his truck started somersaulting down over the mountain, did he have time to understand what was happening? Was he scared? Was he sad? Did he think about us? Was he worried about what would happen to us? Did his life flash before his eyes like it’s supposed to? Did he see a movie in his mind where he was a little kid getting tucked into bed by Grandma Bev, and then he was a young man marrying Mom, and then he was a proud father watching Klint get his first Little League MVP trophy?
    Did it hurt? The state trooper said he died instantly. Died instantly after having his neck broken. What about before he died instantly? What about while his neck was being broken?
    What if terror, pain, and loneliness were the last things he felt, and now there will never be a chance for him to feel anything else?
    I haven’t asked myself any of those questions yet.
    All I can think about are his plans. He had a lot of plans but no goals. Heand Mom used to fight about that, but they used to fight about a lot of things so I never placed more importance on that particular topic than any other. Maybe I should have.
    I remember when I started sixth grade three years ago, our new teachers gave us one of those getting-to-know-you forms to take home and fill out. It asked things like: What’s your favorite subject? and Do you have any special concerns about integrating into a larger student population? One of the questions was: What are your goals for middle school?
    I was reading that question out loud to Mom while I was sitting at the kitchen table and she was trying to tear open a bag of frozen french fries without breaking a nail and without letting the ash from the end of her cigarette fall onto the counter—a feat I always regarded as a skill—when Dad and Klint came through the back door. Dad was all smiles, which meant Klint had a good night in the cage.
    Dad had heard the question and he grinned at me and rubbed his knuckles on the top of my head as he passed by on his way to the fridge for a beer and said, “Goals are what you score in hockey.”
    Mom had resorted to trying to tear the bag open with her teeth. I saw her give him a nasty look over the top of the bright red Ore-Ida bag before she took it out of her mouth long enough to tell him that just because he was a loser without any goals didn’t mean he should try and make his kids losers, too.
    He slammed the refrigerator door hard enough to make the dishes in the cupboards rattle. Mom made a motion like she was going to throw the bag of frozen fries at him, but she thought better of it and put it back between her lips and he walked back outside.
    I didn’t think anything of it at the time. My parents were always loud and violent with each other, even when they weren’t fighting.
    Sometimes they were loudly and violently in love and Dad would chase Mom around the house roaring about what a lucky man he was, and he would catch her and she would squeal and shriek as he smacked her butt or planted loud