The Book of Jonas by Stephen Dau Read Free Book Online Page A

pulls it back, yanking his arm, trips him to the ground. The freckle-faced kid becomes an object, a talisman through which Jonas focuses his rage.
    He grabs a textbook from the floor and slams it edgewise down into the face, listens to the bridge of the nose snap, watches twin rivulets of blood flow over the mouth, spreading a red stain on the shirt. The freckled kid lies prone on the ground, holding his face, and Jonas stomps on his knee with both feet, jumps on it up and down, over and over, trying desperately to break the leg. The kid’s friends struggle to pull Jonas off, but he breaks free and kicks the freckled kid in the head, opening a gash along the top of his skull.
    From nowhere a teacher reaches in and, now with the help of the freckled kid’s friends, grabs Jonas and holds him down, pinning his outstretched arms to the ground.
    He is assigned to the school psychologist. There are concerns about post-traumatic stress.
    The next day he goes and talks with her. He is surprised by what they don’t know about him, by his constant need to explain himself in a way they might understand.
    “Where did you get that scar,” she asks, looking at Jonas’s arm.
    “I once fought a lion,” says Jonas, “and he gave me this.”
    She is not buying it, but doesn’t press the issue. Instead, she asks how he feels.
    Eventually, she will tell him that he is fascinating to talk to, that she wants to help, but that her field of expertise does not include him, his “situation,” she will call it. But she knows someone, someone good, someone experienced, someone Jonas really needs to see.
    “Based on what has happened, we can get a court order,” she says. “But I prefer you go voluntarily.”
    And that’s when he starts going to see Paul.
    But in the meantime, Jonas is happy to sit in her office and chat, and the conversation gets him out of gym class.
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    Another memory, like a faintly recalled dream. He is walking home from somewhere, across the rough, upturned sod, his breath forming the only clouds under the bright sun. As he approaches the house, his mother comes out the back door carrying a jug of tea and an earthenware cup. He vividly remembers that when she pours the tea, two streams come out: the liquid filling the cup, and the steam drifting up in a hazy mirror image, mingling with their breath.
    Later, his father arrives, eclipsing the front door’s rectangleof light as he stoops to enter it. He is bearded, and wearing his shalwar, and carrying a large duffel. He has fractured memories of a meal, of his father smoking a pipe at the head of the table. They laugh, but it’s an uneasy laugh, as though they know that it is all just temporary.
    After dinner, his father disappears into the back room. As his mother clears up, he rises from the table and creeps down the brief passageway, past a low, wooden bench, to peek his head around the corner and look into his parents’ bedroom. His father is laying his things out on the floor, shirts and belts, and the plump duffel is open and leaning against the wall. In his memory, the interior of the bag glows as though filled with fireflies, but he knows this is a trick of his mind, looking backward, long after he has peered into it and seen that it is filled with money.
    “Hey, get out of here, you little thief!” says his father, laughing. But this is where memory plays another trick. For is it a hearty, honest laugh? Does it not contain some hint of apprehension? Of frustration at the broken secrecy? Of irritation? Of anger? Or perhaps even hidden admiration for his son’s stealth, entering the room without being noticed?
    It is impossible for him to tell, to look back and see clearly, and each attempt he makes to do so, to clarify his memory, sharpen its lines, results only in further blurring the picture, smudging it like a clumsy child playing with finger paints.
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    The second time he makes the news, a reporter phones him after getting wind of his story. The city