The Dime

Part 17 - Pete

Who can go to the library when the sun is out, there's a breeze rustling the leaves, and there are girls in bikinis splashing in and out of the cold waters of the Great Sacandaga and then warming themselves on towels? Exactly. I spent the day at the lake.

At 4:30, I walked home. The old man was pushed back in his recliner. His eyes half open, he was tuned in to the Yankees game, just starting in Oakland. A can of Labatt's rested between his thick thighs. I tried to close the door quietly, but the wheezing squeak of the screen brought his eyes open with a start before he squinted them almost shut. "Son."

"Dad."

He reached for the remote and turned the television off. I started to walk toward my room while he drained his beer.

"Pete. Hold on a sec." It came out like a growl. I wanted to run, but I stopped and turned to him. "Nice shirt," he growled again.

I looked down at my shirt and didn't look back up.

"When'd you get it?"

"My birthday," I mumbled. It started then. At the back of my throat. Thump-thump-thump. In the pit of my stomach, a quivering mass threatened to erupt and one lonely tendril of doubt and self-pity escaped. Quivering and shimmying its slimy finger, a tentacle began to stretch out and another joined it.

"What, did your mother get it for you?" He took a step toward me. "A present?"

The tentacles quivered one last time before snapping back into my gut. I lifted my head and stared at my father. "No. It wasn't a gift from Mom."

"Then how'd you get it? You got no money. That I know." He took another step.

"I stole it."

"Stole it?"

"Yeah, because you're a drunk and Mom's an uncaring bitch, and neither of you can bother yourself with my birthday. I got nothing. So I stole it."

It's amazing sometimes how quickly he could move. He was on me with a roar, shoving me into the wall. Pictures fell, glass shattered. He followed with his fists. I covered myself up as best I could, what I had always done when he came after me, but in the fury of his attack, something clicked in me. One of those tentacles reached out and pushed at him. Or maybe he just tripped over himself in his drunken rage. Whatever it was, he fell to the floor.

In the space that followed, I kicked him as hard as I could in his soft center. The old man grunted and looked up at me in surprise before the darkness dropped over his face again. "You ready to have a go at me, are you?" he sputtered as he rose to his feet, wincing and rubbing where I had connected with my foot.

I stepped back and waited. When he lunged at me, I sidestepped him this time and he flew past me, falling into the end table where his beer and remote usually rested. It shattered under his weight. Grunting, he rose and turned to me. Without a word, he lowered his head and charged, hitting me in the stomach, wrapping his arms around me, and slamming me into the wall again.

As soon as he let go, he reared back and raked my face with his fingernails. I kicked at him again, connecting with his knee. He turned his hand into a stone and connected again.

It was a lost cause. I knew this. I couldn't hope to hurt him enough to stop his assault. He hit me one more time — I don't know where, at that point everything hurt, what did it matter where he hit me? — before I did the only thing I could think of. I ran. Out the front door and down the street. I went to the only place I could think of. I mean, I had a dance to go to.