Violence Begets... (16 page)

Kevin

I tried to hide my irritation from the
guys the next morning at the corner when Rick lied to me in a text message. He actually
thought I was stupid enough to believe his lame-ass excuse for not showing up. I'd
expected the no-show, but I hadn't thought he'd feed me some line about not being
ready for a test. It just added to how pissed off I was at myself for letting my
emotions get so wrapped up in him. I'd even pushed back a little, but he'd stuck
to his story, and I ended up laying into Jeremy for no reason. When Rick pulled
the same shit the next morning it took a fuck load of self-control not to storm
over to his house and call him out on his bullshit lies. By the time he showed up
at lunch on the third day I had been damn near ready to fuck him up. I kept telling
myself that I wanted to kick his ass for lying to me, and I did. But I also knew
damn well that the real reason I was pissed was because I gave a damn about the
fuckhead.

Rick

“Three questions,” I suggested as Kevin
took a long hit on his bong. He held it in, then blew it in my face with a smile.
He’d been so tense the last few days that the smile was a welcome change.

“Okay.”

I hesitated, looking out the window
of my bedroom. I’d been turning over the same questions all week but hadn’t been
sure how to approach him. He wasn’t going to like what I had to ask. I started out
with the easiest one, not ready to jump into the hard stuff.

“How do you sneak out without getting
caught?”

“Years of practice,” he replied shortly.
As always it took him a bit to respond to my questions with more than his habitual
short answers. “My father has locks on all the doors and windows. They have to be
opened with a key.”

I looked at him with surprise. “So what,
you’re like locked inside your house like a prisoner?”

 “Pretty much. It used to be even harder.
Whenever he used to go out of town, when I was younger, he’d always have someone
from church come and stay at the house. One time, someone noticed the locks and
asked him if it was safe. After that, he didn’t like the idea of people snooping
around. So, when I was fourteen he started leaving me alone, of course asking the
neighbors to check in on me from time to time, but at least they’re not always up
my ass.”

“Wow, that’s pretty messed up.” I was
amazed at the lengths his father had gone through to maintain control over him.

“Anyway, long story short, one night
he left his keys home when a co-worker picked him up for a late-night dinner with
a client. I knew it might be my only chance, so, while he was gone, I called a cab
and went to a hardware store to make several copies of his master keys. Since then,
I come and go as I like. He sometimes locks me in my room at night as well. That
just makes it easier because once he locks the door, it doesn’t cross his mind that
I could leave through one of my windows.”

“Man, your dad is insane.”

“Literally, I think,” he replied evenly.

I closed my eyes so I couldn’t see his
reaction and forced out the words of my next question. “When’s the first time he
hit you?”

I could hear his deep intake of breath
and the whistle as he blew it out. I heard him inhale again like he was about to
say something, but didn’t. I opened my eyes just in time to see him shake his head.
“You sure like to go in for the kill, don’t you?” He exhaled again as he laid back
on my bed, staring up at my ceiling.

I shifted from the view of my window,
picking up a yellow ball and throwing it against my door, bouncing it back into
my hands. I kept throwing the ball as I remembered seeing Kevin take a pretty severe
belt lashing without much more than a wince. Yet when my dad took to pounding on
me I seemed to crumble in his hands.

“I was seven,” he finally broke through
the silence, and I stopped the ball. “My mom had already taken off. Bounce the fucking
ball would ya?”

I looked up at him quickly, then back
to the ball held firmly in my hands. When he didn’t say anything else, I obeyed
his command and began to throw it against the door again.

“It was really stupid. I’d been eating
lunch on a bar stool, and as I went to get off, the stool tipped over. He lost it;
I ended up in the emergency room. See, I think he was used to hitting my mom. She
could take a lot more than my seven-year-old body could. He learned quickly what
he could and couldn’t do, what would leave the least amount of evidence and still
cause the most pain. I mean, he still likes to see the blood sometimes, but he’s
careful.”

“And how did you learn to handle it?”
I knew it was always better just to let him talk, but I needed to know how he was
able to withstand the beatings like he did.

He rolled over on his side so he could
see me bouncing the ball and narrowed his eyes. “Is that what this is about?” I
sensed something in his voice, a return of the anger he’d been holding on to all
week. The ball bounced out of my reach, and I watched it roll across the floor.
I couldn’t bring myself to look at him.

“I’m so weak, Kev. I need to learn to
do what you do.”

“What are we talking about here, Rick?
Did something happen?”

I debated telling him how bad things
had gotten the other night, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was so scared
my dad would let loose on me with Sylvia and Emma home, and I knew I had to keep
it from them. I just didn’t know how to control it like Kevin did.

“Nothing really, it’s just, I need to
know.”

His voice was hard when he responded,
but at least he kept going. “I’ve had ten years of practice. You haven’t even had
a year yet. Not to mention, your dad hits out of emotion, not for fun like mine.
There’s a difference.”

I knew I should pay attention to the
tension in the room but didn’t know if I’d ever have the chance again. “I need you
to teach me.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, and I
could almost hear the astonishment in his voice. “Teach you what?”

“To take it like you do. The tricks
you use to deal with it, like how to keep quiet. I mean from the first night when
you got me to change out of my shirt and came up with a cover story for me, to warning
me the other night that he’d come after me soon.”

“And did he?” his words came quickly
and were sharp, like a slap to my face. I immediately looked at him. His eyes were
dark but not as angry as I’d expected from his tone. They were more like the sky
before a summer storm rather than the emptiness of night I sometimes saw. It caught
me off guard how incredibly attractive he was at that moment.

When I didn’t answer, he sighed and
rolled back over on my bed.

“You’ve got the basics down,” he grumbled.
I tried to reel in my thoughts, forcing the look in his eyes out of my head and
listening to the words as they came out of his mouth. “As you know, come up with
a story to cover your ass. You don’t want people to ask questions. Where’s that
goddamn ball?” I looked around in the direction I last remembered it rolling off
to, and found it nestled between a clothes basket and my desk. I scurried over to
it, but before I could start bouncing it again he said, “Give the fucker here.”
Once he got in a rhythm of bouncing it against my ceiling, he resumed. “Turn your
body during the beating, and keep the blows in places you can cover with clothes.”
He paused as he threw the ball over and over. “You’ve already figured out that it
always hurts worse the second day, but be careful with that. If you feel okay the
first day, don’t overdo it or you’ll be that much worse on day two.” I heard him
mutter a few swear words before he went on. “Get to know his rhythm.” Here he stopped
throwing the ball. “It’s pretty easy to sense. I mean, I’ve already picked it up.
I told you the other night he was going to come after you.” It was obvious from
the bruises that he had, but I didn’t have any plans to talk to him about it. The
ball picked back up, this time a little harder. “Just plan on it every four or five
weeks.”

As the ball bounced again and again
without further comment, I finally ventured, “Anything else?”

The bouncing continued as he considered
his thoughts. “Sometimes, when he starts getting edgy, you may be able to push him
and get him to snap early.” His tone changed, and I could hear the warning in his
voice. “You have to be careful with this. Sometimes it causes the fuse to burn quick
and then, boom, it’s done and over. Other times, it can just make it worse because
he has a lot more energy and he can keep going without ever exploding. This is a
dangerous spot to be in.”

“How can I tell when to push?” I asked
nervously.

“Practice. You just have to try it out
through trial and error. It’s not fun, but if you can get it down, it can help.”
He looked over at me and said, “I noticed a bruise he left on your arm from last
weekend.” I automatically pulled at the cuff of my sleeve to hide the evidence.
“If you get a brush, you can comb it out. I’m not sure what it does, breaks up the
blood or something, but it will help it heal faster.” I was surprised at how much
information he was giving me. I usually never got him to speak in more than one
or two clipped sentences, and he was giving me a book of rules.

“How do you take it without breaking
down?” I finally ventured.

I saw the muscles in his arms tighten
and his hands clamp tightly around the ball. He was fighting some serious anger,
and I figured I’d pushed too far.

“Again, practice,” he said slowly. “For
me, I found that my father got harder when I cried, so I learned to hold it in.”
He took a ragged breath. “I count. With each number I try to wash all thoughts of
a certain area out of my head.” I wondered if that’s what he’d been doing with the
ball as he bounced it repeatedly against my ceiling. “It’s not easy, and it took
me years to master it. Sometimes the pain is still too much though, and you just
can’t turn it off.”

“What do you do then?”

He let the ball fall and rolled over
to look at me, “Pray the fuck you don’t die.” I rocked backwards at his words, and
I knew he meant what he was saying. At my visual reaction he spoke a little softer
but still with an edge. “Relax,” he said, his eyes fixated on mine. “When he goes
to hit you, let your muscles go as limp as possible. The more you tense, the more
your muscles contract and the force of the blow will be worse.” He let that sink
in before rolling onto his back again, and resuming his cold stare-off with the
ceiling. "It’s not going to get much better between now and when you get out
of here,” he said after several minutes of silence. “The best you can hope for is
to roll with the punches, literally. Then we’ll leave and won’t have to deal with
any of this shit anymore.”

My heart stopped at the word “we’ll.”
I wondered if he’d meant to say it, and reminded myself that Kevin rarely said anything
he didn’t mean. Did he mean that we’d leave together or just that he knew we’d both
be taking off at some point? My mind raced through the possibilities, momentarily
forgetting what we were talking about.

When he broke through my daze, he asked,
“Any other questions?”

Knowing he’d answered more than his
fair share, I felt I was pushing my luck, but I needed to know what he’d meant.
As I started to speak, I heard myself ask him the first thing that came to mind,
rather than what I really wanted to know.

“Why are you answering so many questions
for me today?” It seemed like a simple question to me, much safer than the one I
was thinking, but he waited so long to answer that I’d pretty much decided he wasn’t
going to tell me.

“BecauseI knew you needed to hear them,”
he said shortly.

Something in the way he said it made
me suspect there was more that he wasn’t telling me. “Why today?” I pushed.

“Because you asked today.”

“You’re not telling me something.”

“I gave you the information without
a fight. What more do you want?”

“I want you to be honest.”

“Fuck, Rick, you’ve got room to talk.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Okay, why don’t you talk to me about
what happened between you and your dad the other night?” he asked, sitting up and
swinging his legs off my bed, glaring down at me on the floor. I was startled by
his sudden question.

“We got in a fight,” I stammered. He
knew this. The evidence was visible.

“Yeah. And?”

“And nothing.”

“How bad was it?” His words felt like
darts, stabbing at my defenses.

“Not bad,” I said, standing up and looking
for the ball, trying to play things off. The last thing I wanted was to go down
this road with him again.

“Exactly!”

“Exactly what?” I said, snagging the
ball off the end of the bed where he’d left it.

“You just lied to me,” he said bitterly,
and I couldn’t help but look at him.

“Why do you care? You lie all the time.”

“That’s different.”

“Explain that one to me.”

“I’ve been trying all week to get you
to tell me what the fuck happened between you and your dad.”