Knockemstiff Read Free

the little mound we were parked on and fishtailed down the aisle. Loose gravel splattered against the other cars. An old man and woman tripped over each other trying to get out of our way. Horns began blowing, headlights popped on. We tore out of the exit and skidded onto the highway, heading west toward home. An ambulance sped by us, its siren blaring. I looked back at the theater just as the movie screen flickered and went black.
    “Agnes, you should have seen him,” my old man said, pounding the steering wheel with his bloody hand. “He busted that goddamn brat a good one.” He grabbed his bottle from under the seat, uncapped it, and took a long slug. “This is the best night of my fucking life!” he yelled out the window.
    “You got Bobby in a fight?”
    “Damn straight, I did,” the old man said.
    My mother leaned over the front seat and felt my head with her hands, peered at my face in the dark. “Bobby, are you hurt?” she asked me.
    “I got blood on me,” I said.
    “My God, Vernon,” she said. “What have you done now, you sick bastard?”
    I looked up just as he bashed my mother with his forearm. Her head bounced against the window. “You sonofabitch!” she cried, covering her face with her hands.
    “Don’t baby him,” the old man said. “And don’t call me no bastard neither.”
    I scooted across the seat and sat behind my father as we raced home. Every time he passed a car, he took another pull from the bottle. Wind rushed through his open window and dried my sweat. The Impala felt like it was floating above the highway.
You did good
, I kept saying to myself, over and over. It was the only goddamn thing my old man ever said to me that I didn’t try to forget.
     . . . . . 
    L ATER THE SOUND OF AN APPROACHING STORM WOKE ME up. I was lying in my bed, still in my clothes. Through my window, I saw lightning flash over the Mitchell Flats. A rumbling wall of thunder rolled across the holler, followed closely by a high, horrible wail; and I thought of Godzilla and the movie that I’d missed. It was only after the thunder faded into the distance that I realized that the wail was just the sound of my old man getting sick in the bathroom.
    My bedroom door opened and my mother walked in holding a lighted candle. “Bobby?” she said. I pretended to be asleep. She leaned over me, brushed my sore cheek with her soft hand. Then she reached up and closed my window. In the candlelight, I sneaked a look at the bruise spreading across her face like a smear of grape jelly.
    She tiptoed out of the room, leaving the door ajar, and walked down the hall. “There,” I heard her say to my father, “is that better?”
    “I think I fucked it up,” my father said. “That bastard’s head was hard as a rock.”
    “You shouldn’t drink, Vernon,” my mom said.
    “Is he asleep?”
    “He’s wore out.”
    “I’d bet a paycheck he broke that kid’s nose, the way the blood came out,” my father said.
    “We better go to bed,” my mom said.
    “I couldn’t believe it, Agnes. That fucking kid was twice Bobby’s size, I swear to God.”
    “He’s just a boy, Vernon.”
    They walked slowly past my door, leaning into each other, and went into their bedroom. I heard my mother say, “No way,” but then after a few minutes, their bed began to squeak like a rusty seesaw. Outside, the storm finally cut loose, and big drops of rain began pounding the tin roof of the house. I heard my mother moan, my father call out for Jesus. A bolt of lightning arced across the black sky, and long shadows moved about on the bare plaster walls of my room. I pulled the thin sheet over my head and stuck my fingers in my mouth. A sweet, salty taste stung my busted lip, ran over my tongue. It was the other boy’s blood, still on my hands.
    As my parents’ bed thumped loudly against the floor in the next room, I lapped the blood off my knuckles. The dried flakes dissolved in my mouth, turning my spit to syrup. Even after I’d