Eli the Good (24 page)

And then I realized that my father was standing in the back doorway, stopped in his tracks between the kitchen and the screen porch. He had walked up just as Josie’s blow had landed on Mom’s face. He had been holding his metal lunchbox in one hand and his Thermos in the other, but he dropped both of them at the same time and they hit the floor — the lunchbox a muted clatter, the Thermos a dark thud.

He bolted across the room and grabbed Josie by the wrist. She struggled around, her hair thrashing about. Her voice was small and clipped: “Please” and “Daddy” and “Don’t.” But he paid no attention to her. He pulled her out onto the porch, threw open the screen door, and then they tumbled off the steps and into the yard. He was a ghost of himself, his eyes gone dead again, his face drawn up into that war look.

My mother and I were close behind. Once, when Josie was thrashing about, she came around to face me and two little breaths pumped out of her mouth: “Eli.” As if there was anything I could do to save her. But her eyes were looking at me as if to warn me, as if to say, “Run!” Maybe if I said “Daddy” in a small voice, the way I had that night when he was strangling my mother, he would snap out of it. But I didn’t think so. It didn’t even seem like I should try. Besides, Josie had slapped Mom. She deserved punishment. Still, though, Daddy had never spanked either of us that I could remember. Mom always did that. And wasn’t Josie too old to spank, anyway? I didn’t know what he was going to do. He stood there on the yard with Josie twisting around at the end of his arm like a huge, disobeying fish that didn’t want to be taken off the hook. She was a little girl now, terrified, begging him to let her go. And what was terrifying was that our father’s face had been overtaken by the war again. He wasn’t even there anymore, so we couldn’t predict his movements.

Mom put her hands out to Daddy, her eyes full of kindness and heartbreak. “Stanton,” she said, a coo. “Let her go. I’ll take care of it.”

At last Josie wrestled free. In her fright, off balance, she fell onto the yard, flat on her rump. She was too scared or shocked to move. She sat there with both hands on the ground on either side of her. Her hair hung down in her face, and long lines of it puffed in and out when she breathed. Only one of her eyes showed through the wild black mane.

“You slapped your mother,” Daddy said, amazingly calm, as if he had collected himself in the struggle to get outside. He stood over her with his hands on his hips.

“She slapped me first,” Josie said.

“Why?” Daddy said.

Josie put one hand up to her face and pushed her hair aside, hooking it behind her right ear. Her lower lip was trembling. Her face showed everything that was going through her mind: terror, defiance, sadness, anger. All these things played across her forehead and her eyes, in the way she held her mouth and managed to stop the trembling.

“Answer me!” he boomed. I saw then that he was breathing hard, too. Josie had given him a run for his money. Maybe her wild spirit had impressed him, had made him realize what he was about to do. Because it had looked as if he was going to get her out onto the yard and take his belt to her, but now he was listening. I didn’t want Josie to be in trouble, but I also wanted her to be set straight, once and for all. I was tired of her drama.

Josie pressed her hands against the ground and sprang up. She looked very tall and beautiful and grown. She wasn’t scared of anything anymore. “Why didn’t you tell me that I wasn’t your child sooner?”

I sat down on the steps. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to eavesdrop on all this or not.

“Because it didn’t matter,” Daddy said, becoming himself again, his face easing out. Quiet, but forceful, too. Each word a firmness. “Because you’ve always been my child, no matter what. I’ve never thought of you as anything less than my own child.”

“But I’m
not,
” Josie said, her hands cupped out in front of her, as if waiting to receive something solid and real instead of words. “I have a father out there somewhere, and you shouldn’t have hid that from me. I’m sixteen years old.”

Our mother took a step forward. “And when you turned sixteen, I told you.”

“You should’ve told me earlier,” Josie said, and looked away. She closed her eyes for a short time, breathing in the summer air, letting it fill her. “It’s my life, my
history.
”

“For the last couple of years you’ve been angry just for the sake of being angry, anyway,” Mom said.

“Wouldn’t you be?” Josie said, looking up as if startled.

“Even before all this, though,” Mom said. “Your generation doesn’t have anything to be mad about, so y’all are mad about
everything.
” Her words became quick little blocks now. “So I want you to go in the house and pull those pants off and end this foolishness.”

“Is that what this is all about?” Daddy said, as if he hadn’t even noticed the flag pants before.

My mother nodded. “It’s not right, her wearing them after you fought for this country —”

“That don’t matter,” Daddy said, cutting her off.

Josie stood before him, her elbows cupped in her hands. She massaged her elbows as if they had been harmed in their skirmish, looking at the ground.

“Josie,” he said. Her name sounded so tender coming from him, as if all his pain and sorrow were wrapped up in those two syllables. “Haven’t I been a good daddy to you? Haven’t I done everything for you?”

Josie paused, then nodded, two short bobs of her head.

“Are you mad at me about Vietnam?” he said, his voice full of expectation. “About me fighting in the war? Is that what you’re mad about?”

Josie seemed taken aback. When she answered — “No” — the word was nothing more than a curled exhalation of breath.

Daddy stepped forward and put his hand on Josie’s arm. She looked up at him as if she had no idea what he was about to do. I didn’t, either.

“The way you talk about everything — always saying all war is wrong, talking about all that history none of us can help. It’s like you’re saying it all to me. Don’t you know that I fought for this country?”

Each word rose in urgency, and I was convinced that he was out of his mind now. He never said so much all at once.

I had been mistaken; the war hadn’t left him. He hadn’t calmed at all. He had been like a kettle of water that boils before you realize it, and now he was at full boil again. The war slid right back down his body as if he were stepping into a new set of clothes. His hand was tightening on her arm; she began to twist under the grasp.

“You stand there and cry about not belonging to me. Don’t you realize that when I was over there — killing for my country — I was really killing for you, for Eli?”

Josie tried to pull away. She kept twisting, but she couldn’t get out of his grip. “Daddy, please,” she said.

“You think you have it all figured out and you don’t know
shit,
” he said, little specks of spit spraying from his mouth. Angry now, his whole body changing, becoming larger and more solid. “I’m always listening to you, Josie. When you say you hate this country, you’re saying that you hate me.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Josie said each word separately, searching for the next word without knowing what she actually wanted to say. “I don’t hate it. That’s not what I mean.” Screwing her face up into a mask of confusion. It seemed that our father had melted down inside this man talking here on the yard, that he had been overtaken by someone else. He had lost his mind.

“Stanton,” Mom said, “what are you talking about?”

He held on to Josie’s arms, staring into her face as if he wanted to memorize her, then his whole face contorted and he started yelling. “You. Don’t. Know!” he screamed, shaking her so hard that her hair snapped out behind her and slapped her back.

Then Mom was pulling at him, saying his name over and over, the way he had repeated her name while in Vietnam, but this time it wasn’t a prayer. It was a pleading.

I thought he was going to shake the life out of Josie. I thought he’d break her neck. And then he released her only long enough to grab her face within both of his big hands. He cupped her cheeks, bringing himself closer to her, looking her right in the eye, his own eyes gone, dead, black.

“You shouldn’t,” he said, a ghost.

My mother was at his back, hollering his name over and over, as if it were the only word she knew how to say.

All I could see was her face, scrunched up into that look of complete terror and disbelief. I knew how she felt; I had been there before. So I had to do something.

I raced up behind Daddy and hit him as hard as I could in the small of his back. This didn’t faze him, so I ran around and scurried up his leg just enough to sink my fingernails into his face. I tugged my hand down. I could feel his skin peeling away, glanced at the two little lines of thin blood that were appearing on his cheek. His hand came out, nothing more than a reaction, really, and slapped me away. His knuckles caught me across the bridge of my nose, so that I actually saw stars for one smarting second. Then I fell to the ground, face-first, although I didn’t feel anything.

I thought I heard my mother cry out “No!” but I couldn’t be sure.

I wasn’t even aware of scrambling up and standing again, but by the time I had, everyone had grown completely still.

Daddy stood before me, taking in great breaths of air. Mom stood near him, but her eyes touched mine. He was still hanging on to Josie, but after what seemed a long time of us all looking at one another — everyone’s breathing filling the quiet — he pushed her away and she dropped onto the grass near me. She fell into a heap there, her legs out beside her, leaning on one arm, crying into her other hand.

Daddy turned and sauntered away. He disappeared around the corner of the house, and then we heard the engine of his truck firing up. He sped out of the driveway, and then the sound of his truck was gone, lost to the thick summer air.

“Go pull them off,” Mom said to Josie, sounding as if her mouth were full of dirt. “Right now.” As Josie stomped into the house, Mom crumbled down onto the grass before me, her skirt riding high up above her knees. She took the sides of my face in her hands, turning my head this way and that to look over my injuries.

“There’s no marks on you,” she said, speaking quick, as if she might not have time to say everything she wanted to. “See, now? Look. You’re fine. He didn’t mean it, baby.” Her eyes darted here and there, trying to cover every square inch of my face. “Are you hurt?”

I shook my head no.

The gloaming began to settle around us there on the yard, the air pulsating with a purpling light that smoothed out the edges of the world. Everything became very quiet, and a cool curtain — not a breeze; more like a wall of air — moved past us. I looked up to the ridge, feeling animal eyes upon me. I thought the little fox might be observing all this and trying to figure out what had just happened. But a child-fox would have been grown by now. Born in the spring, he would have already left childish things behind.

After a time she spoke toward the ground. “Do you know where Nell is?”

“Probably went walking by the river.”

“Go find her.”

M
y legs were filled with an urgency I didn’t completely understand. Maybe I knew that I had to hurry and find Nell before the gloaming seeped away and night overtook the world. Perhaps I thought that, somehow, Nell would be able to fix everything. I didn’t completely understand what had happened between my father and Josie anyway, and Nell always helped to put things into perspective for me. But maybe a part of me knew that my father had completely lost it, that he was heading for a breakdown. A part of me even knew what I was about to find.

I pumped the pedals of the bicycle the way I did when I raced Edie down this same stretch of road in the mornings, when the mist was breathing out of the hillsides. I rode past Stella’s and she called out to me — “Where are you going in such a hurry?” — as she watered the flowers on her front porch, but I didn’t even acknowledge her. Then past the old couple who always worked in their gardens in the cool of the day. They glanced up at me, then back to their hoeing. And then to the part of the road where the woods took over, dark green leaves making a roof over me. Here it was cooler, almost autumn-smelling, and especially quiet. There were no night sounds yet; the cicadas and crickets seemed to rest up during twilight.

I didn’t know if I was searching for Nell or my father. But I found them both at the high bridge where the little boy had died, where Daddy had paused that day on the way to the station. Daddy’s truck was stopped right in the middle of the bridge, the driver’s door open. If another car had come racing down the road from the opposite direction, it would have torn the door right off, as the bridge was narrow and long.

My father was standing on the bridge’s concrete railing, balancing himself there like a tightrope walker as he looked down at the place where the river began to rush and turn white with speed. His arms were down at his sides, and his face was peaceful, accepting. There was something like hope and something like despair all mixed up in his eyes. Nell was running up the road on the other side of the bridge, her mouth opening to holler. I stopped as soon as I saw him and stood with my legs planted firmly on either side of my bicycle. I didn’t know what to do. Approaching him might make him jump. If I stood there and didn’t move, I would watch him take one beautiful step off into the air and fall straight down and I’d blame myself forever.