We the Animals by Justin Torres Read Free Book Online Page A

making odd, wheezy, gasping noises. He slammed the dashboard with his palm, then closed his fist and really started thumping with force, but slow and steady, as if he was beating down a nail. Eventually, he fell into a three-beat rhythm, more like beating a drum, keeping time to some music only he heard. He wiped snot from his nose and water from his eyes, but went on pounding. Thump. Thump. Thump.
    "He crying?" Joel whispered.
    "What, with his fist?"
    It didn't seem much like crying, seemed like something else, meaner than crying; steadier, too, but not one of us had ever actually seen him cry, so we couldn't know for sure—and Paps, he didn't say a word about it, just the thump, thump, thump, for miles. When we thought he would stop, he didn't; when we thought he would speak or scream or cuss, he was silent. His breathing calmed some, but the water and snot kept coming, and the wheeze, and the gasp.
    After a while the pounding, so spooky at first, was just there, and a while after that, Joel started smacking his own fist against the window, in time with Paps.
    Thump. Thump. Thump.
    Then it was Manny against his window, matching the beat. Paps didn't turn back or acknowledge us at all; he just kept up his pounding, so I pounded on the hard plastic armrest in the middle, and it felt like we were building something, a tribe—us four together, us four angry and giddy and thump-crazy, together.
    Once we turned onto our street, we tried out little three-word chants to the beat of our pounding.
    "No More Work!" said Manny.
    "No More Floor!" I said.
    "No! More! Coffee Cups!" yelled Joel, and we all bust up laughing; even Paps spat out a little laugh of surprise.
    We rolled all over the back seat, slapping our thighs, trying to chant "No More Coffee Cups" but choking on the words, we were laughing so hard, until Manny said, "Stop, stop. I can't anymore. I'm crying."
    Joel responded by pounding out "No More Crying!" on the window. And soon we were all pounding it out.
    "No More Crying! No More Crying!"
    All the way down the street and into the driveway, we chanted, up the front steps and into the house, where Ma had already arrived and undressed for sleep and came now to the bedroom door in her bra and underwear, rubbing her eyes, asking what in hell was going on; we chanted and pounded the walls, we pounded the coffee table in front of the couch, where Paps had slumped and covered his eyes with the palms of his hands. "No More Crying! No More Crying!"
    Ma tried to holler over the noise; she kept asking what in hell was going on, calling on Paps by his first name to tell her what in hell was going on, sitting by him, putting the back of her hand to his forehead, and then to us saying, "He's just tired, he's just tired is all," and then looking at him, "You're just tired, baby, aren't you?"
    Paps kept his palms over his eyes; he spoke like that.
    "We're never gonna escape this," Paps said. "Never."
    We didn't know who he was talking to, but it hushed us. Our thumps softened to taps against the tabletop; we still chanted, but it was almost a whisper now and no fun.
    "You talking about escaping?" Ma asked.
    "Nobody," Paps said. "Not us. Not them. Nobody's ever escaping this." He raised his head and swept his arm out in front of him. " This. "
    Finally, we were silent.
    Ma stood and grabbed his outstretched hand with both of hers and pulled it down and buried it in the space between them.
    "Don't," she said in a voice more steady than we knew. "Don't you dare."

Big-Dick Truck
    P APS DROVE OFF to the car dealership, and the three of us staked out in the front lawn all afternoon, snapping the yellow dandelion heads off their stems and streaking them down our arms, painting ourselves in gold, waiting for him to return.
    Our old car had died the night before, on the way back home, after dropping Ma off at work. The engine just quit, right in the middle of the highway, in the rain. Paps had punched and punched the wheel, his fist cry,