I shrugged.
It was a long time before he spoke again. At last he said, “Did he ever hit you?”
“Not for about five years.”
“Why’d he hit you— back then?”
I thought about that, and decided to tell him. He was old enough. “He caught me and Rubin Quintanilla in the bushes together.”
Keith shouted with abrupt laughter. “You and Rubin?
Really? You were doing it with him? You’re kidding.”
“We were twelve. What the hell.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t get pregnant.”
“I know. Twelve can be a dumb age.”
He looked away. “Bet he didn’t beat you as bad as he beat me!”
“He sent you boys over to play with the Talcotts.” I gave him a glass of cold orange juice and poured one for myself.
“I don’t remember,” he said.
“You were nine,” I said. “Nobody was going to tell you what was going on. As I remember, I told you I fell down the back steps.”
He frowned, perhaps remembering. My face had been memorable. Dad hadn’t beaten me as badly as he beat Keith, but I looked worse. He should remember that.
“He ever beat up Mama?”
I shook my head. “No. I’ve never seen any sign of it.
I don’t think he would. He loves her, you know. He really does.”
“Bastard!”
“He’s our father, and he’s the best man I know.”
“Did you think that when he beat you?”
“No. But later when I figured out how stupid I’d been,
I was just glad he was so strict. And back when it happened, I was just glad he didn’t quite kill me.”
He laughed again— twice in just a few minutes, and both times at things I’d said. Maybe he was ready to open up a little now.
“Tell me about the outside,” I said. “How do you live out there?
He drained the last of his second glass of juice. “I told you. I live real good out there.”
“But how did you live when you first went out— when you went to stay.”
He looked at me and smiled. He smiled like that years ago when he used red ink to trick me into bleeding in empathy with a wound he didn’t have. I remember that particular nasty smile.
“You want to go out yourself, don’t you?” he demanded.
“Someday.”
“What, instead of marrying Curtis and having a bunch of babies?”
“Yeah. Instead of that.”
“I wondered why you were being so nice to me.”
The food smelled just about ready, so I got up and took the bread from the oven and bowls from the cupboard. I was tempted to tell him to dish up his own stew, but I knew he would spoon all the meat out of the stew and leave nothing but potatoes and vegetables for the rest of us. So I served him and myself, covered the pot, left it on the lowest possible fire, and put a towel over the bread.
I let him eat in peace for a while, though I thought the boys would be coming in any time now, starving.
Then I was afraid to wait any longer. “Talk to me, Keith,” I said. “I really want to know. How did you survive when you first went out there.”
His smile this time was less evil. Maybe the food had mellowed him. “Slept in a cardboard box for three days and stole food,” he said “I don’t know why I kept going back to that box. Could have slept in any old corner. Some kids carry a piece of cardboard to sleep on— so they won’t be right down on the ground, you know.
“Then I got a sleepsack from an old man. It was new, like he never used it. Then I— ”
“You stole it?”
He gave me a look of scorn. “What you think I was going to do? I didn’t have no money. Just had that gun— Mama’s 38.”
Yes. He had brought it back to her three visits ago, along with two boxes of ammunition. Of course he never said how he got the ammunition— or how he got his replacement gun— a Heckler & Koch nine millimeter just like Dad’s. He just showed up with things and claimed that if you had the money, you could buy anything outside. He had never admitted how he got the money.
“Okay,” I said. “So you stole a sleepsack. And you kept stealing food? It’s a wonder you didn’t get caught.”
