Page 59 of Scoring the Player
“Now!” His sneering disgust coats every breath as I pass him on the way to the hall.
I grab the broom and start sweeping the living room again. He drags in behind me. I angle sideways, not to face him, but not to have my back turned either.
“Yer soft.” He reaches for the vodka bottle. “Got no teeth.” He tilts it toward the cup, and most of it splashes against the fireplace mantel.
He hates using the damn screen. Fire isn’t fire unless it rages out in the open.
And if I go over there and try to put it in place, it’ll give him ammo to keep me up all night to prove a point. The same point he always tries to make—that he’ll always be more of a man than I will.
Like that time he took me hunting, and I froze when he put the rifle in my hand and told me to shoot. Seizing my hand, his fingers locked around the stock, wrenched the barrel into position, and pressed down hard on my trigger finger. An ear-splitting crack tore through the air. Then he dragged me to the carcass, handed me a knife, stood back, and told me to get to work. I barely cut through the elk’s sternum before I keeled over, puking.
Hours passed, full of rambling insults and threats like he’d rather I die in the field than let me leave a coward. He started yelling when I asked what the point of dressing the elk was if the meat was already rotten.
I never understood why they call gutting an animal “dressing” and not something more accurate like “mutilation.” I still smelled the stench of sun-rot and death.
“…fucking coward.”
My head snaps to the side at the shatter of glass. Dad hikes up his pants and bends forward, swaying, his face close to the flames.
“Fuck,” he spits as a shard of glass nicks his thumb. “Look what yer did.”
I drop the broom and disappear into the kitchen for a towel. It happens so fast when I return. He’s unfolding to a stand, then rocking sideways, leaning arm-first toward the fire. I race over and grab his arm, my foot slicing open in the process, and I lose my footing. My back lands on the glass with Dad on top of me.
“G’off me. I’m f-fine,” he yells.
Maybe it is the sharp burn spreading over my back or the stench, but I snap and slam my fist into the glass.
His laughter disappears when he sees the threat in my eyes, and he sticks his face out, begging for me to act on my rage.
If I start, I won’t stop.
“Thas... wha’ I thought…coward.”
My muscles are on fire.Every punch a fresh puncture to my lungs. I seize up.
There are worse ends.
No more suns.
Or pills or headlines.
The endof having it all except a hospitable place in my own mind.
Warbled sounds.
It hurts.
The mallet-blow waves hurt.
A man with red trunks.
Darkness returns.
A door, tattered clothes, the stench.
I vomit.
Why can’t I hear the man?
