The Drought by Patricia Fulton, Extended Imagery Read Free Book Online Page A

thumped his bare chest. “Why don’t we get this over with right now!”
    Griffin smiled. His lids came down partially obscuring brown eyes that looked golden. He was handsome in a hard, uncharacteristic way—in that fleeting smile was a trace of the suitor who had pursued and caught one of the most beautiful women in town. “Barry, Barry. You know, I don’t get to choose the moments when you’re going to steal from my collection.” He tapped an envelope against the kitchen counter. “And I don’t get to choose which pieces will never be recovered.” His smile became larger, revealing strong white teeth. “If we’re going to play this game, certainly I deserve the right to enjoy choosing when to punish you for your indiscretions.”
    Barry backed away, shaking his head in disbelief. “You’re psychotic. I think it gets you off when I mess up.”
    Griffin had opened the cream colored envelope and now looked up from reading. “You’re the one who likes to pull the tiger’s tail, son.” He looked down again, dismissing Barry.
    Too proud to admit he was hungry Barry left the kitchen without his dinner. He went up the back stairs and into the upper hall that led to his bedroom. It wasn’t one of the bigger rooms in the house, but its location near the kitchen stairs allowed him to come and go without being seen by his father. The room could have been a guestroom. There were no posters on the walls, no sports paraphernalia, nothing to give any insight into the boy who occupied the space, except a silver, five-by-seven picture frame on the nightstand.
    Barry stepped into the room assessing the situation. The door didn’t lock. His father believed in privacy, but only his own. The only thing in his bedroom he could move was the dresser. In the past he had tried barricading the door. But the beating, when it came, was worse than usual. Exhausted, he lay down on the bed and grabbed the picture frame off the nightstand.
    A striking young woman stared back at him. At a glance the smile on her face made her look happy but he had spent hours staring at her picture and saw details in the print that gave her away. Her eyes were distracted, there were lines of tension around her mouth and it looked to him like she couldn’t breathe. It’s the glass , he thought, she’s suffocating under the glass . He ripped the back off the frame, slid the picture free. Her expression didn’t change. He held the photograph, smelled the chemicals in the paper, it was just a picture, that’s all it would ever be, that’s all he would ever have. He fell asleep holding the picture of his mother, thinking if there was anything worse than a beating it was waiting for it to happen.
    He was sleeping when the moment finally came.
    The first lash of the belt cut through the darkness and across his bare chest, wrenching him into consciousness. Crying out, he instinctively rolled over and into a fetal position, allowing his back to take the next lash. His father didn’t speak. There was no lecture to accompany the blows, just the sound of the belt whistling through the darkness until it made contact with a stinging smack.
    Cringing beneath each lash of the belt, he gripped the mattress with rigid fingers and bit into his pillow to keep from crying out. There was nothing he could do about the tears rolling down his cheeks, but he refused to give his father the satisfaction of any sound that signaled weakness. Instead, he concentrated on the rhythm of the beating . Eight, whistle, smack, don’t scream. Nine, whistle, smack, don’t scream. He counted each lash, mentally recording them, storing them in a vault of hatred he’d created in honor of his father. Ten. The whistling stopped. He drew in a ragged breath and his father spoke for the first time.
    “I have a little something extra for you this time, Barry.”
    Barry closed his eyes, tensing his body as he waited for the next blow. This time, the breath fled his body in a gasp. The metal