Rock Springs by Richard Ford Read Free Book Online Page B

Woody’s chin, into the soft pocket behind the bone, so that Woody’s whole face rose, but his arms stayed at his sides, his hands open. “I don’t know what to do with you,” my father said. “I don’t have any idea what to do with you. I just don’t.” Though I thought that what he wanted to do was hold Woody there just like that until something important took place, or until he could simply forget about all this.
    My father pulled the hammer back on the pistol and raised it tighter under Woody’s chin, breathing into Woody’s face—my mother in the light with her suitcase, watching them, and me watching them. A half a minute must’ve gone by.
    And then my mother said, “Jack, let’s stop now. Let’s just stop.”
    My father stared into Woody’s face as if he wanted Woody to consider doing something—moving or turning around or anything on his own to stop this—that my father would then put a stop to. My father’s eyes grew narrowed, and his teeth were gritted together, his lips snarling up to resemble a smile. “You’re crazy, aren’t you?” he said. “You’re a goddamned crazy man. Are you in love with her, too? Are you, crazy man? Are you? Do you say you love her? Say you love her! Say you love her so I can blow your fucking brains in the sky.”
    â€œAll right,” Woody said. “No. It’s all right.”
    â€œHe doesn’t love me, Jack. For God’s sake,” my mother said. She seemed so calm. She shook her head at me again. I do not think she thought my father would shoot Woody. And I don’t think Woody thought so. Nobody did, I think, except my father himself. But I think he did, and was trying to find out how to.
    My father turned suddenly and glared at my mother, his eyes shiny and moving, but with the gun still on Woody’s skin. I think he was afraid, afraid he was doing this wrong and could mess all of it up and make matters worse without accomplishing anything.
    â€œYou’re leaving,” he yelled at her. “That’s why you’re packed. Get out. Go on.”
    â€œJackie has to be at school in the morning,” my mother said in just her normal voice. And without another word to any one of us, she walked out of the floodlamp light carryingher bag, turned the corner at the front porch steps and disappeared toward the olive trees that ran in rows back into the wheat.
    My father looked back at me where I was standing in the gravel, as if he expected to see me go with my mother toward Woody’s car. But I hadn’t thought about that—though later I would. Later I would think I should have gone with her, and that things between them might’ve been different. But that isn’t how it happened.
    â€œYou’re sure you’re going to get away now, aren’t you, mister?” my father said into Woody’s face. He was crazy himself, then. Anyone would’ve been. Everything must have seemed out of hand to him.
    â€œI’d like to,” Woody said. “I’d like to get away from here.”
    â€œAnd I’d like to think of some way to hurt you,” my father said and blinked his eyes. “I feel helpless about it.” We all heard the door to Woody’s car close in the dark. “Do you think that I’m a fool?” my father said.
    â€œNo,” Woody said. “I don’t think that.”
    â€œDo you think you’re important?”
    â€œNo,” Woody said. “I’m not.”
    My father blinked again. He seemed to be becoming someone else at that moment, someone I didn’t know. “Where are you from?”
    And Woody closed his eyes. He breathed in, then out, a long sigh. It was as if this was somehow the hardest part, something he hadn’t expected to be asked to say.
    â€œChicago,” Woody said. “A suburb of there.”
    â€œAre your parents alive?” my