like a ripe and smelly cheese and Scott cooking the meals and washing the dishes (only he says 'warshing the dishees') and the sleet ticking off the windows and the country sounds of WWVA filling the house—Donna Fargo, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Conway Twitty, 'Country' Charlie Pride, and—of course—Ole Hank. Then one afternoon around three o'clock a brown Chevrolet sedan with U.S. GYPSUM printed on the sides comes up the long driveway, sending out fans of slush on either side. Andrew Landon spends most of his time on the living room couch now, sleeps on it at night and has been lying on it all day, and Scott would never have guessed the old man could still move as fast as he does when he hears that car, which is clearly not the postman's old Ford truck or the meter-reader's van. Daddy is up in a flash and at the window that looks out on the left side of the front porch. He's bending over with the dirty white curtain twitched a little to one side. His hair is standing up in the back and Scott, who is standing in the kitchen doorway with a plate in one hand and a dishtowel over his shoulder, can see the big puffy purple place on the side of Daddy's face where he fell down the stairs that time, and he can see how one leg of Daddy's Dickies is hoicked up almost to the knee. He can hear Dick Curless on the radio singing 'Tombstone Every Mile' and he can see the murder in Daddy's eyes and in the way his lips are pulled down so his lower teeth show. Daddy whirls from the window and the leg of his pants falls back down into place and he strides across to the closet like a crazy scissors and opens it just as the engine of the Chevrolet stops and Scott hears the car door open out there, somebody coming to death's door and not knowing it, not having the slightest sweetmother idea, and Daddy takes the .30-06 out of the closet, the very one he used to end Paul's life. Or the life of the thing inside of him. Shoes clomp up the porch steps. There are three steps, and the middle one squeaks as it has forever, world without end, amen.
'Daddy, no,' I say in a low, pleading voice as Andrew 'Sparky' Landon goes toward the closed door in his new and oddly graceful scissors walk, the rifle held up to high port in front of him. I'm still holding the plate but now my fingers feel numb and I think, I'm going to drop it. Mothersmuck'll fall to the floor and break, and that man out there, the last sounds he's ever going to hear in his life are a breaking plate and Dick Curless on the radio singing about the Hainesville Woods in this stinking forgotten farmhouse. 'Daddy, no,' I say again, pleading with all my heart and trying to put that plea into my eyes.
Sparky Landon hesitates, then stands against the wall so that if the door opens (when the door opens), it will hide him. And a series of knuckle-raps comes on that door even as he does so. I have no trouble reading the words that form silently on my father's whisker-framed lips: Then get rid of him, Scoot.
I go to the door. I switch the plate I meant to dry from my right hand to my left one and open the door. I see the man standing there with terrible clarity. The U.S. Gypsum man isn't very tall—at five-foot-seven or -eight, he isn't really that much taller than I am—but he looks like the very apotheosis of authority in his black billed cap, his khaki pants with their razor-sharp creases and his khaki shirt showing beneath his heavy black car-coat, which is halfunzipped. He's wearing a black tie and carrying some sort of little case, not quite a briefcase (it will be another few years before I learn the word portfolio). He's kind of fat and clean-shaven, with pink and shining cheeks. There are galoshes on his feet, the kind that have zippers rather than buckles. I look at the whole picture and think that if ever there was a man who looked meant to be shot on a porch in the country, it's this man. Even the single hair curling from one of his nostrils proclaims that yes, this is the guy, all right, the very one sent to take a bullet from the scissors-man's gun. Even his name, I think, is the kind you read in the paper under a headline screaming MURDERED.
'Hello, son,' he says, 'you must be one of Sparky's boys. I'm Frank Halsey, from the plant. Head of Personnel.' And he holds out his hand.
I think I won't be able to take it, but I do. And I think I won't be able to talk, but I can do that, too. And my voice sounds normal. I'm all that stands between this man and a bullet in the heart or the head, so it better. 'Yes, sir, I am. I'm Scott.'
'Good to know you, Scott,' he says, looking past me into the living room, and I try to see what he's seeing. I tried to pick it up the day before, but God knows what kind of job I did; I'm just a smucking kid, after all. 'We've kind of been missing your father.'
Well, I think, you're awful close to missing everything, Mr. Halsey. Your job, your wife; your kids, if you got em.
'He didn't call you from Philly?' I ask. I have absolutely no idea where this is coming from, or where it's going, but I'm not afraid. Not of this part. I can make shit up all day long. What I'm afraid of is that Daddy will lose control and just start blazing away through the door. Hit Halsey, maybe; hit both of us, probably.
'No, son, he sure didn't.' The sleet keeps ticking down on the porch roof, but at least he's under cover, so I don't absolutely have to invite him in, but what if he invites himself in? How can I stop him? I'm just a kid, standing here in my slippers with a plate in my hand and a dishtowel slung over my shoulder.
'Well, he's been awful worried about his sister,' I say, and think of the baseball biography I've been reading. It's on my bed upstairs. I also think of Daddy's car, which is parked around back, under the shed overhang. If Mr. Halsey walked to the far end of the porch, he'd see it. 'She's got the disease that killed that famous ballplayer from the Yankees.'
'Sparky's sister's got Lou Gehrig's? Aw, shit—I mean shoot. I didn't even know he had a sister.'
Neither did I, I think.
'Son—Scott—that's a shame. Who's watching out for you boys while he's gone?'
'Mrs. Cole from down the road.' Jackson Cole is the name of the guy who wrote Iron Man of the Yankees. 'She comes in every day. And besides, Paul knows four different ways to make meatloaf.'
Mr. Halsey chuckles. 'Four ways, huh? When's Sparky gonna be back?'
'Well, she can't walk anymore, and she breathes like this.' I take a big, whooping gasp of air. It's easy, because all at once my heart is beating like crazy. It was going slow when I was pretty sure Daddy was going to kill Mr. Halsey, but now that I see a chance we might get out of it, it's going six licks to the minute.
'Aw, sugar,' says Mr. Halsey. Now he thinks he understands everything. 'Well, that's just about the worst thing I ever heard of.' He reaches under his coat and drags out his wallet. He opens it and takes out a one-dollar bill. Then he remembers that I supposedly have a brother and takes out another one. And all at once, Lisey, the strangest thing happened. All at once I wished my father would kill him.
'Here, son,' he says, and also all at once I know, like reading his mind, that he's forgotten my name, and I hate him even more. 'Take it. One for you and one for your brother. Treat yourselves at that little store down the road.'
I don't want his smucking dollar (and Paul has no more use for his), but I take them and say thank you, sir, and he says you're welcome, son, and he ruffles my hair, and while he's doing that I glance over to my left and see one of my father's eyes peering through the crack in the door. I see the muzzle of the rifle, too. Then Mr. Halsey finally goes back down the steps. I close the door and my father and I watch as he gets into his company car and starts backing down the long driveway. It comes to me that if he gets stuck he'll walk up again and ask to use the phone and end up dying anyway, but he doesn't get stuck and will kiss his wife hello that night after all, and tell her he gave two poor boys a couple of dollars to treat themselves with. I look down and see I'm still holding the two bills and I give them to my father. He tucks them away into his pants pocket without so much as a look.
'He'll be back,' Daddy says. 'Him or some other. You did a good job, Scott, but tape will only hold a wet package for so long.'
I take a hard stare at him and see that he is my Daddy. At some point while I was talking to Mr. Halsey, my Daddy came back. It's the last time I'll ever really see him.
He sees me looking at him and kind of nods. Then he looks at the .30-06. 'I'm going to get rid of this,' he says. 'I'm going down, that can't be—'
'No, Daddy—'
'—can't be helped, but I'll be sweetfucked if I'll take a bunch of people like that Halsey with me, so they can put me on the six o'clock news for the gomers to drool over. They'd put you and Paul there too. Of course they would. Alive or dead, you'd be the lunatic's boys.'
'Daddy, you'll be okay,' I tell him, and try to hug him. 'You're okay right now!'
He pushes me away, kind of laughing. 'Yah, and sometimes people with malaria can quote Shakespeare,' he says. 'You stay here, Scotty, I got a chore to do. It won't take long.' He walks off down the hall, past the bench I finally jumped off of all those years ago, and into the kitchen. Head down, the deer-gun in one hand. Once he's out the kitchen door I follow him and l'm looking out the window over the sink when he crosses the backyard, coatless in the sleet, head
