Through the Cracks Read Free Page A

up. He slid the latch and stepped back, wary that his father would push the door into him. ‘I have the hose,’ he repeated.
    Adam opened the door. His father was lying on the floor. He wasn’t about to hurt Adam. It looked as though he was about to die. Adam shook his wrist to free the loop, and he let the hose drop. Behind the bruises, his father’s white face was back, the same face from that day in the yard. His mouth was puffed up and purple and one eye was swollen, half-closed. The crepe-like skin on his arms was battered, dark-red in places. Adam wasn’t sure when his father had got so thin, or when his shoulders had stopped being broad, and his fingers had stopped being thick and strong. The change had been slow. If it had happened overnight, or as quickly as Adam had gone from being a boy to a teen, Adam would have noticed and cottoned on quicker.
    ‘Give me a tablet, from the box.’
    Why was Adam’s vision blurry? Stupid tears. Why was he shaking? He brushed the hot tears away. His father put the tablet under his tongue and closed his eyes, slumped, held his forehead. Spit glistened in the corners of his mouth. Adam crouched. His father hadn’t washed. His shorts and shirt were creased from having been slept in. He had his sandals on. Beneath the grey hair his scalp was pink and shiny. If there was a family likeness it was lost under his father’s wrinkles and folding skin. Adam couldn’t say if their hair was the same colour. His father had been grey all Adam’s life. His father had blue eyes. Adam had blue eyes. A while ago, a man in a green cap had come to buy some chickens. He’d seen Adam and said,
Joe, is that your grandson? He’s a handsome lad
. After that Adam had looked closely at the boys on TV. He liked to think he looked most like the boy from
Skippy
. Adam would stare at the boy’s face on the screen, try to memorise it, and then later, in his bedroom, he would look in the mirror. He’d say some lines from the show and strike a pose. Recalling the details of the boy’s face was hard, though. He’d weighed up the idea of asking his father if he looked like the boy on screen. But if his father knew how much Adam wanted to look like other boys, and how much he liked watching
Skippy
, he’d use it. Adam’s face had changed since then anyway, along with his body. His nose had got longer, his eyebrows thicker. His jaw was wider. There were lumps under his skin across his forehead. His mouth had stretched.
    Colour was returning to his father’s face. He was breathing easier.
    ‘Pass me those.’
    He was motioning for the bottle. Adam misunderstood; he unscrewed the lid to pass him one.
    ‘No, give it here. Give me the box as well.’
    The sound of the rattle of the tablets in the glass, the smell of the tin lid, and the powdery coating sticking to it, those things seemed familiar to Adam, but he’d never seen the bottle of tablets before. Had he? He smelled the lid. A chill swept over him. He knew that smell. He knew the rattling sound.
    ‘What are these?’
    ‘Just give them here.’
    Adam stood up. ‘You gave me these when I was little.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘You did.’
    ‘You’re not remembering right.’
    ‘These are what I told you made me feel sick and tired.’
    ‘They’re not the same. They’re for me.’
    Adam looked up at the ceiling and over his shoulder at the open door. All morning he’d been feeling different. He’d been feeling lighter somehow, quicker. He’d thought it had been about hitting his father, the change that came with that, but looking now . . . were things closer, clearer? Was he thinking faster? Moving faster?
    ‘Why have you still got them?’
    ‘I told you, they’re mine.’
    ‘Take one,’ Adam said. He shook a tablet onto his palm and held it out for his father. ‘Take it.’
    His father closed his eyes and breathed out heavily. He wasn’t going to take it. They weren’t for him. What Adam felt then was pure and bright and it arced