The Glass Castle Read Free Page A

as new. "Your mother should have taken you to that witch doctor the day you got burned," Dad said, "not to these heads-up-their-asses med-school quacks."
    * * *
    The next time they visited, Brian's head was wrapped in a dirty white bandage with dried bloodstains. Mom said he had fallen off the back of the couch and cracked his head open on the floor, but she and Dad had decided not to take him to the hospital.
    "There was blood everywhere," Mom said. "but one kid in the hospital at a time is enough."
    "Besides," Dad said, "Brian's head is so hard, I think the floor took more damage than he did."
    Brian thought that was hilarious and just laughed and laughed.
    Mom told me she had entered my name in a raffle at a fair, and I'd won a helicopter ride. I was thrilled. I had never been in a helicopter or a plane.
    "When do I get to go on the ride?" I asked.
    "Oh, we already did that," Mom said. "It was fun."
    Then Dad got into an argument with the doctor. It started because Dad thought I shouldn't be wearing bandages. "Burns need to breathe," he told the doctor.
    The doctor said bandages were necessary to prevent infection. Dad stared at the doctor. "To hell with infection," he said. He told the doctor that I was going to be scarred for life because of him, but, by God, I wasn't the only one who was going to walk out of there scarred.
    Dad pulled back his fist as if to hit the doctor, who raised his hands and backed away. Before anything could happen, a guard in a uniform appeared and told Mom and Dad and Lori and Brian that they would have to leave.
    Afterward, a nurse asked me if I was okay. "Of course," I said. I told her I didn't care if I had some silly old scar. That was good, she said, because from the look of it, I had other things to worry about.
    * * *
    A few days later, when I had been at the hospital for about six weeks, Dad appeared alone in the doorway of my room. He told me we were going to check out, Rex Wallsstyle.
    "Are you sure this is okay?" I asked.
    "You just trust your old man," Dad said.
    He unhooked my right arm from the sling over my head. As he held me close, I breathed in his familiar smell of Vitalis, whiskey, and cigarette smoke. It reminded me of home.
    Dad hurried down the hall with me in his arms. A nurse yelled for us to stop, but Dad broke into a run. He pushed open an emergency-exit door and sprinted down the stairs and out to the street. Our car, a beat-up Plymouth we called the Blue Goose, was parked around the corner, the engine idling. Mom was up front, Lori and Brian in the back with Juju. Dad slid me across the seat next to Mom and took the wheel.
    "You don't have to worry anymore, baby," Dad said. "You're safe now."

    A FEW DAYS AFTER Mom and Dad brought me home, I cooked myself some hot dogs. I was hungry, Mom was at work on a painting, and no one else was there to fix them for me.
    "Good for you," Mom said when she saw me cooking. "You've got to get right back in the saddle. You can't live in fear of something as basic as fire."
    I didn't. Instead, I became fascinated with it. Dad also thought I should face down my enemy, and he showed me how to pass my finger through a candle flame. I did it over and over, slowing my finger with each pass, watching the way it seemed to cut the flame in half, testing to see how much my finger could endure without actually getting burned. I was always on the lookout for bigger fires. Whenever neighbors burned trash, I ran over and watched the blaze trying to escape the garbage can. I'd inch closer and closer, feeling the heat against my face until I got so near that it became unbearable, and then I'd back away just enough to be able to stand it.
    The neighbor lady who had driven me to the hospital was surprised that I didn't run in the opposite direction from any fire I saw. "Why the hell would she?" Dad bellowed with a proud grin. "She already fought the fire once and won."
    I started stealing matches from Dad. I'd go behind the trailer and light them. I