Jack of Diamonds Read Free Page B

interior would somewhat deaden the beer fumes.
    Second was his size. He was six-foot-four and weighed 290 pounds. He’d brag about one day reaching the 300 pound mark.
    Third was his quick temper, usually as a result of drink, but not always. It could flare up out of nowhere; the smallest detail could send him into a fit of rage, often as not resulting in a backhander for my mother and sometimes, if I was foolish enough to try to protect her, for me. His hand was the size of a small dinner plate and his knuckles would make a mess of a face with one blow, like I said.
    Finally, there were his loud rasping snores, which came through the wall into our bedroom from the tiny room where he slept alone, and presumably clearly carried through the ceiling to the McClymonts upstairs. Fortunately, in the snoring stakes, the two families pretty well cancelled each other out. Dolly McClymont had a fairly severe snoring problem herself and must have looked like a beached whale in bed. The nights were never silent and I reckon as a kid I could have slept through an earthquake.
    My dad beat up my mom so often that my memory blurs just thinking about it, but there were two events of sheer bastardry that stand out from the many violent outbursts that resulted from his drinking. The first occurred on a winter’s night during a particularly severe January snowstorm. The streetcar was delayed forty-five minutes and then my mom, as usual, walked the last stop to save on the fare, struggling through the snow. She arrived home over an hour late, so that my pail of salty, pissy, peppery chilblain water was pretty much cold. I had to begin my routine all over, but I managed a small piss while she turned her back.
    She was barely seated with her steaming King George mug of tea warming her hands when my father arrived home, drunk and snorting from the cold outside. Kicking snow from his boots, he tossed his heavy council work coat, gloves, cap and scarf on the kitchen floor and demanded a mug of tea. I poured him one from the pot, black and heavily sugared.
    ‘What’s this, boy?’ he demanded, swaying slightly as he took the cup and raised it to eye level.
    ‘Your tea, Dad.’
    ‘Tea? I don’t mean the fucking tea!’ He stabbed a finger at the mug. ‘The queen? Where’s the king? A man drinks out of the king’s cup.’
    ‘Mom’s got the King George,’ I replied.
    ‘“Mom’s got the King George”,’ he mimicked, then added, ‘What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?’
    ‘She always has it,’ I blurted out stupidly.
    ‘That so, is it? Well, now  . . .’
    ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Harry!’ my mother interjected. ‘Here, I’ve barely touched it.’ Still sitting with her feet in the pail, she reached up and proffered the King George mug to my father, who accepted it but kept hold of the Queen Mary mug.
    ‘Barely touched it, have you? Shouldn’t have touched it at all!’ His voice rose as he indicated the mug I’d given him. ‘This is your mug, woman!’ he shouted. ‘That is mine!’ He nodded at the King George. Then he upturned it over my mother’s head and stood swaying as he attempted to pour the tea in the Queen Mary into the empty King George.
    My mom leapt up screaming, the almost scalding tea running down her face and neck. Some of the water from the pail spilled onto the kitchen floor as she stepped out of the pail, her dark eyes blazing and her voice a furious snarl I’d never heard before. ‘You bastard! You drunken bastard!’ she yelled. Then she picked up the pail and hurled the hot, salty, pepper-and-piss-infused water at his face and chest. He let out a howl and dropped both mugs, clutching at his eyes as he sank to his knees. My mother banged the upturned pail over his head and hands. ‘Bastard!’ she screamed again.
    My dad, sobbing and moaning that he was blinded, managed to shake the pail off his head, but he remained on his knees with his hands covering his eyes while we cleaned up around him.