Then Brew showed him the cigarette burn and said, “One of these days you’re gonna test me, and there’ll be no one getting hurt but you.”
“Is that a threat, boy?”
“No, just the truth. I don’t know how I could go on caring about someone who won’t even let me have my own life.”
Even though it was my idea for Brew to tell Uncle Hoyt he wouldn’t like him no more, I never thought it would be such a big deal. Before it could get any worse, I shouted out, “Basketball! Brew and me are just going to the park for some basketball.”
Uncle Hoyt nodded but kept his eyes stuck on Brew. “Fine, then,” he said, but his voice didn’t say it was fine at all. “You want what’s out there, you go grab it, boy. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Ever since then things haven’t been right between them. They don’t fight, but they don’t talk much either; and when they’re in the same room, I feel like I don’t want to be there.
So anyway, it’s Thursday night, and it’s getting dark, and I come inside from tryin’ to fly that stupid kite again; but now it’s got so many holes, the wind couldn’t pick it up even if it wanted to cuz it would just blow through the holes. Once I’m inside, I can hear Uncle Hoyt all worked up on the phone. He’s pacing the kitchen, shouting about an accident he had the night before, explaining how it wasn’t his fault. A car veered over the cones and hit his steamroller, not the other way around. But I guess that doesn’t matter— someone has to get blamed. From what I can hear, a person is in the hospital. Stable condition, which I guess is better than dead. I did believe Uncle Hoyt when he said he didn’t do nothing wrong, because if there’s one thing he’s proud of, it’s the way he drives that steamroller. He drives it like there’s no one else in the world can do it as good as him.
So I’m standing in the living room, listening to him on the phone; but he’s already been drinking, and he’s slurring his words. I don’t think that helps things. From what Uncle Hoyt yells into the phone, I know that his boss has taken him off the roller and has given him the lowest job in road construction.
“Pushing tar?” he says. “I’ve been at this for years, and you’re making me push tar?” I hear some yelling on the other end of the phone, and then Uncle Hoyt says, “Fine, then I won’t come in at all.”
When Uncle Hoyt hangs up, he doesn’t just hang up; he hurls the phone at the refrigerator and it shatters into a gazillion pieces. That’s when he notices me standing there, watching him.
“What are you looking at?” he says. “Go do your homework.”
“I got none,” I tell him.
“Then just get out of my sight.”
“You gonna get fired, Uncle Hoyt?”
“Get outta here!”
I don’t need another invitation. I go to my room while Uncle Hoyt keeps on drinking. All the while I keep looking out of my window at the empty field and the fence and the houses beyond that, looking for Brew, hoping he’ll get home soon. I know he’s still out with Bronte. There’s no telling when he’ll get back. And I get to thinking that part of Uncle Hoyt’s bad mood is my fault, because I told Brew to say he wouldn’t like him no more. If I hadn’t done that, Brew would be home now instead of off with Bronte and if he was home, maybe Uncle Hoyt might not be so mad.
Right around sunset—the time Uncle Hoyt would usually be leaving for work—he goes out onto the porch instead. I can hear the squeak of the folding chair as he sits down and starts talking. He’s talking to nobody, having conversations with himself—all the things he wishes he could say to his boss and everyone else but doesn’t have the guts to actually say. He’s still chewing out his boss to the crickets when I get up to go to the bathroom.
I should have known what would happen next, and if I had been thinking ahead, I could have stopped it. See, he’s outside and I’m inside, and just last week our screen door handle busted. You can push it open from the inside, but once you’re outside you can scratch and paw at that door all you want; it’s near impossible to open—and totally impossible if you’re drunk.
“Cody!” I hear him call, but I’m still in the bathroom, taking care of business.
“Cody,” he calls again, “open the stupid door!”
And I’m hurrying as fast as I can to get off the pot, but there’s only so fast you can do such a thing. By the time I’m out of the bathroom, he’s screaming bloodymurder; and when I get out into the living room, I can see him through that screen.
His eyes.
I know those eyes.
Uncle Hoyt’s gone foul, and Brew is nowhere to be seen, and I don’t know what I’m gonna do, so I just stand there staring at him, afraid to open that door, knowing it’s only going to make it worse; but still I just stand there anyway, watching those eyes get fouler and fouler as he screams, “Open this goddamn door!” Finally he punches his fist through the screen and reaches inside, pulling the door open.
Now there’s nothing between him and me.
I start backing up—I think that maybe I can run out the back door—but Uncle Hoyt’s fast for a drunken man. Before I can make a move, he’s there. He grabs at me—missing mostly, but catching enough of my shirt to get me off balance. I fall, hitting the edge of the TV, and I know that Brew isn’t anywhere close because it hurts!
“You think that was funny, huh?” he growls. “Letting me stand out there? Had yourself a laugh, did ya?”
He gets a good grip on me this time, and I think, Rag doll, rag doll, be the rag doll, just like Brew always tells me; but I can’t do it because Brew isn’t here. Uncle Hoyt tosses me, though, like I really am a rag doll. I think maybe he’s aiming for the sofa; but I miss and hit the table beside it, knocking over a lamp. The bulb blows out, and I wish I woulda been more careful, because Uncle Hoyt’s gonna blame me for that just like his boss blames him for that car hittin’ his steamroller.
“You’re useless,” he shouts. “You’re useless!” because when he’s drunk, Uncle Hoyt says lots of things twice. “You and your brother, both! He thinks he can go out there and do whatever he wants? If it wasn’t for the two a you, I’d have a life! You both owe me! You owe me everything!” And now I know this is my fault, because it’s Brew he’s mad at even more than me, but I’m the one who’s here and Brew’s not, and it’s all because of me.
He moves closer. I can see his right hand clenching into a fist, and I know he’s gonna use it, so I reach for something—anything—and I find a glass ashtray on the table next to me, all square and heavy, and I throw it at Uncle Hoyt. I don’t know what an ashtray is going to do to stop him; all I know is I gotta do something.
It hits him on the forehead with a bonk that I can hear, and in a second there’s blood on his forehead. The way he looks at me now makes me think that maybe I just ended my own life.
“Did you just throw that at me?” he says, all amazed. “Did you just throw that at me?”
And my own mind is such a knot, I shake my head and say, “No, sir,” like denying it might calm him down; but I know it won’t do no good, because Uncle Hoyt had a bad day, and now my day’s gonna be even worse than his.
I scramble away toward that screen door. I can push it open from the inside easy, but he grabs my foot and pulls me back before I get there.
“You are going to be sorry you did that, boy,” he says. “I am going to teach you to respect me. You hear me? You hear me?”
He reaches to pull his belt out of his pants, but his belt isn’t there—and he knows if he goes to find it, I’ll get free, so he doesn’t let go. He picks me up, carrying me like a football. There’s nothing I can do but kick and squirm.
“I’m gonna teach you a lesson. Both of you. Two birds with one stone. He don’t want to be here; he’ll pay the consequences!”
In a second we’re outside, and I can see the screen door banging closed behind us, getting farther away.
“You’ll learn to respect me!”
The way he’s holding me I can see where we been but not where we’re going. But I know without having to see. It’s the same place he always takes me when he goes foul. There’s a shed way back at the edge of our property. It’s the place farthest away from any other homes, so you can’t hear much of what goes on in there. Not that our neighbors would care. Not that our neighbors even know us.
There’s no way out of this, and I’m scared. More scared than I’ve ever been in my life. Not even when they told me about Mom dying and all I wasn’t this scared because I didn’t understand that then—I was too little. But this I understand. And although Uncle Hoyt has needed to teach me lessons before, he’s never been this foul—and
