“Goodbye Ronny!” Bobby yells, as my father wrenches back my hickey-
dotted wrist and paints it with the impression of his fingers. We stumble
toward Dad’s truck, fighting one another the whole way. He throws me into the
passenger’s seat and, with the turn of the ignition, pulls into the back road from
our house. We enter the highway that runs alongside the hills above the city; the
grocery store and hospital quickly shrink away as we speed past them; the amber
of the hospital’s parking lot melts into the natural glow of morning.
Then we’re in the countryside, with unending cornfields and pastures,
blushing in the still hesitant light of morning. The rural landscape is only
interrupted by the occasional stretch of fast food chains.
“You’re angry,” I say. His eyes slant toward me, his body straightening up.
“You’re pissed because Mom tried to kill herself and because I stole your gun.
Don’t pretend like that didn’t happen.”
46
“But it didn’t!” he screams. He slams his fist on the steering wheel,
sounding the horn for one long honk. A cloud of little black birds rises from the
passing cornfield and dissipates into the sky. “Damn it, Beaver! Your mother is
sick and you’re just saying these things to upset me. Your mother would never try
to kill herself and you would never touch my gun.”
“And Mom had such a tendency to bleed.”
“Shut your goddamned mouth when you’re being spoken to,” he says.
He grabs my jaw with his thick hand and crushes my face between his fingers.
Looking at me like that, he begins to weep and blink at the tears that crawl across
his face.
“It might be your fault,” I say through my clenched teeth. “But you have to
accept it for what it is and move on.” The car shakes to a stop beside a seedy little
gas station with dirt-caked pumps and a fluorescent sign.
“Fine,” Dad says. “You get out, and I’ll move on without you.” I shrug and
open the door, hopping onto the cracked pavement. I don’t think Dad expected
this from me. “Find your own way home,” he says. The car’s engine barks into
motion and turns down the highway, back toward our house.