Aaron met his father's stare.
'You hear me, boy?'
Eugene looked away. The boy's big eyes made him sick to his stomach, more like a dog's eyes than anything human.
'I want him out of this house.'
'What's he done?'
'He doesn't need to do a thing. It's sufficient he's the way he is. They laugh at me, you know that? They laugh at me because of him.'
'Nobody laughs at you, Eugene.'
'Oh yes —'
'Not for the boy's sake.'
'Huh?'
'If they laugh, they don't laugh at the boy. They laugh at you.'
'Shut your mouth.'
'They know what you are, Eugene. They see you clear, clear as I see you.'
'I tell you, woman —'
'Sick as a dog in the street, talking about what you've seen and what you're scared of—'
He struck her as he had many times before. The blow drew blood, as similar blows had for five years, but though she reeled, her first thoughts were for the boy.
'Aaron,' she said through the tears the pain had brought. 'Come with me.'
'You let the bastard alone.' Eugene was trembling.
'Aaron.'
The child stood between father and mother, not knowing which to obey. The look of confusion on his face brought Lucy's tears more copiously.
'Mama,' said the child, very quietly. There was a grave look in his eyes, that went beyond confusion. Before Lucy could find a way to cool the situation, Eugene had hold of the boy by his hair and was dragging him closer.
'You listen to your father, boy.'
'Yes —'
'Yes, sir, we say to our father, don't we? We say, yes, sir.'
Aaron's face was thrust into the stinking crotch of his father's jeans.
'Yes, sir.'
'He stays with me, woman. You're not taking him out into that fucking shack one more time. He stays with his father.'
The skirmish was lost and Lucy knew it. If she pressed the point any further, she only put the child at further risk.
'If you harm him —'
'I'm his father, woman,' Eugene grinned. 'What, do you think I'd hurt my own flesh and blood?'
The boy was locked to his father's hips in a position that was scarcely short of obscene. But Lucy knew her husband: and he was close to an outburst that would be uncontrollable. She no longer cared for herself— she'd had her joys — but the boy was so vulnerable.
'Get out of our sight, woman, why don't you? The boy and I want to be alone, don't we?'
Eugene dragged Aaron's face from his crotch and sneered down at his pale face.
'Don't we?'
'Yes, Papa.'
'Yes, Papa. Oh yes indeed, Papa.'
Lucy left the house and retired into the cool darkness of the shack, where she prayed for Aaron, named after the brother of Moses. Aaron, whose name meant 'exalted one'; she wondered how long he could survive the brutalities the future would provide.
The boy was stripped now. He stood white in front of his father. He wasn't afraid. The whipping that would be meted out to him would pain him, but this was not true fear.
'You're sickly, lad,' said Eugene, running a huge hand over his son's abdomen. 'Weak and sickly like a runty hog. If I was a farmer, and you were a hog, boy, you know what I'd do?'
Again, he took the boy by the hair. The other hand, between the legs.
'You know what I'd do, boy?'
'No, Papa. What would you do?'
The scored hand slid up over Aaron's body while his father made a slitting sound.
'Why, I'd cut you up and feed you to the rest of the litter. Nothing a hog likes better to eat, than hog-meat. How'd you like that?'
'No, Papa.'
'You wouldn't like that?'
'No thank you, Papa.'
Eugene's face hardened.
'Well I'd like to see that, Aaron. I'd like to see what you'd do if I was to open you up and have a look inside you.'
There was a new violence in his father's games, which Aaron couldn't understand: new threats, new intimacy. Uncomfortable as he was the boy knew the real fear was felt not by him but by his father; fear was Eugene's birthright, just as it was Aaron's to watch, and wait, and suffer, until the moment came. He knew (without understanding how or why), that he would be an instrument in the destruction of his father. Maybe more than an instrument.
Anger erupted in Eugene. He stared at the boy, his brown fists clenched so tight that the knuckles burned white. The boy was his ruin, somehow; he'd killed the good life they'd lived before he was born, as surely as if he'd shot his parents dead. Scarcely thinking of what he was doing, Eugene's hands closed around the back of the boy's frail neck.
Aaron made no sound.
'I could kill you boy.'
'Yes, sir.'
'What do you say to that?'
'Nothing, sir.'
'You should say thank you, sir.'
'Why?'
'Why, boy? 'Cause this life's not worth what a hog can shit, and I'd be doing you a loving service, as a father should a son.'
'Yes, sir.'
In the shack behind the house Lucy had stopped crying. There was no purpose in it; and besides, something in the sky she could see through the holes in the roof had brought memories to her that wiped the tears away. A certain sky: pure blue, sheeny-clear. Eugene wouldn't harm the boy. He wouldn't dare, ever dare, harm that child. He knew what the boy was, though he'd never admit to it.
She remembered the day, six years ago now, when the sky had been sheened like today, and the air had been livid with the heat. Eugene and she had been just about as hot as the air, they hadn't taken their eyes off each other all day. He was stronger then: in his prime. A soaring, splendid man, his body made heavy with work, and his legs so hard they felt like rock when she ran her hands over them. She had been quite a looker herself; the best damn backside in Welcome, firm and downy; a divide so softly haired Eugene couldn't keep from kissing her, even there, in the secret place. He'd pleasure her all day and all night sometimes; in the house they were building, or out on the sand in the late afternoon. The desert made a fine bed, and they could lie uninterrupted beneath the wide sky.
That day six years ago the sky had darkened too soon; long before night was due. It had seemed to blacken in a moment, and the lovers were suddenly cold in their hurried nakedness. She had seen, over his shoulder, the
