it never happens without Brew.
Tonight it’s going to be bad.
Uncle Hoyt opens the door to the shed with his free hand and closes it behind him. Then he pulls a string dangling from up above and a light comes on. The first things I see are the tools on the wall: hammers, screwdrivers, shovels. A wild part of me thinks that Uncle Hoyt might use them; but there’s crazy and there’s crazy, and Uncle Hoyt isn’t crazy. He ain’t no murderer. Or if he is, he’s an accidental one, because although I know he means to teach me proper respect, tonight he might teach it too well.
“Please, Uncle Hoyt!” I beg. “Wait till morning— lessons are best in the morning, right?”
“You’ve got it coming,” he says, staggering. “You got it coming now!”
I try to hide underneath the workbench. It’s full of webs and bugs down there, but I don’t care about those, not now. I squeeze all the way into the corner, but he reaches right in and grabs my leg, and drags me out. I feel the concrete floor scraping my elbows; and as he pulls at me, I bite his arm with all the force that I can, figuring it might sober him up. He curses and swings me a backhanded slap across my face. It’s the first time he’s actually hit me tonight; but it won’t be the last, because I know the first one makes all the rest easier. My face stings, and I’m crying now, which is bad because my eyes are all clouded and I can’t see straight enough to move out of the way of his swinging hands. I think if I’m fast enough and he’s drunk enough I can dodge the worst of it, like in dodgeball. I never get hit in dodgeball, but I can’t dodge nothin’ with blurry eyes.
“I never wanted you,” Uncle Hoyt slurs. “Neither of you. Neither of you.”
Hearing it woulda hurt awful if he hadn’t already said that a hundred times—and if I didn’t know that only a part of him means it anyway. “It shouldn’t never have been this way,” he says as he grabs me again. “But if it’s got to be, then you’ve got to learn to treat me the way you woulda treated your own father.”
I push out of his grip again and bounce against the wall. Tools fall around me, clattering to the ground. My back should hurt from hitting the wall so hard, but it doesn’t. Not just that, but the stinging on my face from the slap is fading much faster than it should.
And that’s when I know.
That’s when I know he’s there.
Brew’s come home to save me! I look up to the little window, and I can see him there outside. Just a hint of his face in the darkness, looking in on us.
He doesn’t kick down the door or nothin’. He doesn’t come in to stop Uncle Hoyt. He never does. He says he can’t, but what he can’t do don’t matter. Just what he can do. And he’s doing it now.
But Uncle Hoyt doesn’t know yet.
“Get up!” Uncle Hoyt says to me.
But I don’t. Instead I do what I have to do. I become the rag doll, falling limp on the floor, pretending I got no bones. Pretending I got no flesh—just stuffing sewed up in cloth.
A second more and Uncle Hoyt knows Brew is there, because that little cut on his forehead where the ashtray hit him slowly zips itself closed. It don’t happen as fast as it does for me, because Brew don’t care about Uncle Hoyt as much as he cares about me. But he cares about him enough, because that wound is gone; and Uncle Hoyt knows it, because now his anger moves away from me to Brew, and Uncle Hoyt sees him in the window.
“Finally came back, did ya!” Uncle Hoyt growls like a bear if a bear could speak. “Well, you’re too late! Let the boy take his own due.”
But Brew stands there, stone-faced, and won’t say a word.
“Just as well. This is for both of you then.”
That’s when Uncle Hoyt starts to use his fists, taking everything out on me, but it’s nothing to me cuz I’m the rag doll.
I hear grunts from outside. Not screams, because Brew, he’s good at holdin’ it all in, keepin’ it all to himself. I know how much it must hurt, and it just makes Uncle Hoyt angrier that I’m not getting his lesson. He screams and curses, wishing I was, but knowing I’m not.
I close my eyes and stay limp, bouncing and flopping around the shed, lettin’ him kick, and hit, and pull, and tug. I even start smiling, like it’s all just a whole lot of rocking in a crib. You can’t hurt me, Uncle Hoyt, no matter how foul you get, because I’ve got Brew to protect me. And he’ll never let you hurt me. Never never never.
BREWSTER
36) RECEIVER
