Greenville by Dale Peck Read Free Book Online Page B

the hose. But she beat him again when he got home from work that night and couldn’t produce any pay for the last two days, refusing to believe him when he said that Mr. Krakowski had docked his wages for coming in late. This time he had on just his undershirt, and he had to sleep on his stomach that night, and when at some point Lance’s arm fell across his back his own cry of pain woke him from sleep. She beat him the next morning when he asked her for money to replace the books that had been ruined the day before—undershirt, outer shirt, and his jacket worn in anticipation, but his undershirt was still stuck to his back when he pulled it off that evening after everyone else was asleep. He slept on his stomach again, to keep from staining the sheets with his own blood, and then the weekend came and he was mostly able to avoid her. Monday dawned a little cooler than the week before. There were still wisps of fog on the ground when the boy went to school that morning, and that afternoon Vinnie and Robert and Bruce ambushed him and cut his lip open and ripped a button off his shirt before he was able to wriggle out of their grasp and run away. They were more persistent that day. They chased him all the way home, and theyweren’t that far behind—those damn shoes!—when the boy dodged round the fallen shade tree and turned up the front walk, only to be stopped by the sight of his mother in the open door. She held the hose in one hand, the shirt he’d worn last week in the other, and like a dart to the bull’s-eye his gaze went straight to the bloodstain on the collar. Vinnie and Robert and Bruce literally ran into him as they rounded the fallen shade tree, knocking him to the ground and piling on him before Bruce noticed the boy’s mother in the door. The boys stopped what they were doing but didn’t get up. Instead they looked at her expectantly, and the boy on his back beneath his assailants looked as well, stared for a full second at the big woman standing in the entrance to the funny little eight-sided house before she threw his shirt on the lawn and turned her back on him and closed the door behind her.
    When the memory releases him from its grip the boy finds himself back in the strange house. He has kicked the quilt off at some point and lies in a ball, shivering, and he retrieves the quilt from the foot of the bed and spreads it over him, and then he peels his ears for some sound from his uncle or Aunt Bessie. He doesn’t know how long he’s been asleep. Perhaps they are sleeping already in the room behind his. Then:
    I suppose you’re right Bess. I’ll call Lloyd in the morning, tell him to come get the boy.
    There is another long moment of silence. Though Duke talks of nothing but leaving home the boy has never thought about it before, but now his first clear thought is that he doesn’t want to go back, and he even considers running to the next room to ask if he can stay. But he is held in bed by the same conundrum thatheld in his tongue when he wanted to ask for Mr. Humboldt’s help: he’s not sure if he wants to stay, or if he just doesn’t want to be sent away.
    Well let’s not be hasty Wallace. I just said it’s not right, what your brother done. I didn’t say he had to go back. He spoke very polite to me when I made up his bed.
    There is a creak from the room behind his.
    Anyway, and the boy can hear the yawn in his aunt’s voice. We can talk about it more in the morning.
    It seems only a moment later that the boy is awakened by a light knock at the door. When he opens his eyes he’s completely lost, and he stares blankly at the strange man whose face emerges in the gap between the wall and slowly opening door. The man opens the door all the way and then just stands there, looking at the boy, and then his eyes shift to the dresser beside the bed. Years later the boy, grown up, will wonder if his uncle was actually looking at him or if he was in fact looking for his only daughter, already