Chapter 1
Standing by his mother's grave, hatless, in a navy-blue suit and loosely knotted blue-and-black striped tie, the little man shivered slightly in the cool fall air. His sister, mistaking the reaction as sorrow, searched his face then took his arm in hers. Conrad, Gary, Dorian and Linda had moved some distance away, waiting anxiously, as usual, until the little man decided to leave and get them back home. The other mourners, what few there were, had long since gone.
Five days ago the little man's sister had phoned him from their mother's house. Their mother was sick and wanted to see him, she had said. Though his sister hadn't told him so, he thought his mother must be dying. All he'd felt since he told his sister he would come was dread—not sorrow, but dread. The feeling sat like a leaden weight in the pit of his stomach all the while he was packing.
On the drive down, the thought occurred to him that it might be better if his mother died before he got there. Seeing his mother again, after these several years with no contact, would bring it all back. Just going back to that house might bring it all back. He had managed to fashion his life somewhat back to normal—at least as normal as he thought it might ever get. Seeing his mother again was the last thing he needed.
It was for the sake of his sister that he said he would come. For her he would take the chance. She met him at the car when he pulled to a stop in the graveled driveway of his mother's home.
"I think she's dying," his sister said. "She just wants to see you."
He nodded. "I know." He kissed her on the forehead, as he had always done, and they walked arm and arm into the house.
His mother was sitting at the kitchen table, propped up by pillows, still in her robe, a cup, half full of black coffee, sat near her hand. Bluish smoke from a cigarette in an ashtray curled upward in a shaft of sunlight from the dirty kitchen window. Her half-closed eyes looked at him through a morphine fog at first, until she seemed to recognize him. They had hugged awkwardly, ritually, and he smelled the familiar cigarette smoke in her hair and on her breath. Except for the pillows and her cheap, thin terrycloth robe (a turquoise green, with red and pink bas relief flowers), it was as though the day he'd left this house for good (or so he'd thought) was preserved across time.
In the days that followed, what he'd feared would happen, did. His mother wanted to reminisce and as he shook old photographs out of a cardboard box, his life cascaded across the laminate surface of the kitchen table. In one of the faded Polaroids, he was a four-year old, sitting beside a Christmas tree holding a toy six-shooter, his eyes red and his face too bright from the camera's flash; in another, of a birthday party, he sat at a table in a paper hat, with cake and candles. Seeing these photos, a stranger would have commented on his happy childhood.
Then his mother pulled another photo from the pile that showed him squinting in the sunlight, standing by the then-tiny evergreen tree in the front yard with his "new daddy." His "new daddy's" hand was on top of his head. His bird-dog pup, "Bobo," stood in the background watching the family's other dog, "Lady," the cocker spaniel. At sight of the photo there was a lurch in his chest that nearly brought him to his feet and he felt prickly sweat on his forehead as memories flooded back:
"Daddy" is coming. He hears the heavy shoes plodding up the steps. They stop. He knows why. His "new daddy" is taking another drink from the bottle. If he drinks it dry before he reaches the top of the steps it will clatter down. His "new daddy" will have thrown it away. He doesn't hear the clatter this time, but he hears the footfalls begin again. "Daddy" is coming. The door opens. "Daddy" grunts, takes another drink, sets the bottle on a table, removes his belt, folds it in half, then raises it to strike... .
It was all he could do to keep from jumping up and screaming. But he had become expert at controlling his inner passions. His reaction went unnoticed by his sister and mother. He sat passively, as if nothing had happened.
As in the past, try as he might, the little man couldn't finish the memory. He could only take it up again at the point when he would become aware of red welts and blue bruises on his arms and legs. Nor could he remember the actual whipping itself. He couldn't remember why he was whipped, either, except that he knew, somehow, he'd been bad.
Looking at those photographs as he sat beside his mother, her eyes glazing over from time to time, her body leaning uncontrollably until his sister pulled her erect again, the little man had tried to remember what he'd been like back then, before his new daddy had shown up. He wondered what he might have become, instead of what he was, and his heart broke.
Other memories came seeping back: memories of bullies, of a forlorn and lost kid always on the margins, of lying on his bed staring at the walls and ceiling instead of playing outside, dreading when his new daddy would come home. Lying on that bed staring at the same spot in the patterned wallpaper where, as a boy, he'd thought he could discern a face that seemed to always be watching him (it was still there), he'd tasted the tears again. But that hadn't been the worst of it.
***
Now, here, at his mother's graveside, the images and sounds of his past repeated themselves in the little man's brain and the emotions he'd felt back then recurred in full strength. From beneath the tent covering his mother's grave, the little man peered out at the sky, tears, anger, and hatred in his eyes. His diminutive body shuddered visibly. His small hands clenched into fists.
From a short distance away—standing with Conrad, Gary and Linda—Dorian's mouth set in a hard line, his eyes narrowed. "Here it comes," he whispered to Conrad. "Trouble."
Linda, standing next to him, scanned Dorian's face to be certain of his meaning, then shifted uncomfortably.
Gary raised his fingers to his lips and frowned at Dorian.
Conrad just stood there, towering above the others, watching.
"It always means trouble when he gets like this," said Dorian, despite Gary's admonition, "and I'll be the one to have to take care of it."
The tent swayed from a gust of wind. A loose corner flapped. Massive thunderheads, brilliant white, were piling higher and higher in a slow-motion, restless drama, as if vying for a limited space. The earth was tilting away from the sun, and winter would be coming soon.
The little man's mother had lapsed in and out of consciousness before she died three days ago. On the last day, she had awakened and, drawing his ear to her pale, thin lips, she whispered the news: his "new daddy" wasn't dead as they had thought. After years of silence, with no word of his whereabouts, he had contacted her again. He was alive. He was still out there ... somewhere.
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