Page 6 of The Bad Weather Friend

“Handy was torn up by it. Full of regret.” Benny sighed and drank some beer. “Anyway, I’m not so nice. I can be a real bastard.”

Fat Bob laughed. He stopped laughing long enough to chew and swallow. Then he laughed again. “If you’re going to be nice even to people who spit on you, then you’ve at least got to acknowledge what swine they are. Otherwise, you’ll just put yourself in a position where they can spit on you again.”

“What is this obsession with spitting?”

Fat Bob shrugged. “It’s a world of spitters. How’s the omelet?”

“It’s good. Except ...”

“Too much hot sauce?”

“No. But now I keep wondering if maybe someone in the kitchen spat in it.”

DRIVING HOME, BENNY REMEMBERS HIS FATHER

At ten o’clock on a rainy night in May, when Benny was seven years old, his father—Albert, Big Al to some—came home drunk and belligerent, which was the case at least twice a week in those days. His dad was a teacher and a coach who, although young, had held half a dozen positions in public and private schools from which he either quit or was fired before being tenured. The principal or headmaster or district superintendent was reliably an “asshole” or a “control freak” or “as dumb as a brick of shit,” and Al hadn’t gotten an education just to be bossed around by fools. That year, he had found employment in a public high school so racked by student violence that his formidable size and his inclination to punch people were considered essential qualifications for the position.

They lived in a two-bedroom rented bungalow with occasional cockroaches that moved so slowly you could make a game of stalking them and capturing them with a jar, in which they exhibited no frenzy typical to their species, but instead crouched in resignation for a day or two, until they perished for lack of oxygen or from a cause undetermined. Most often, when a bug appeared on the scene, it was already dead. Benny’s mother, Naomi, believed the bungalow—in fact the entire neighborhood—had been built on toxic fill and that every day they lived there tooktwodays off their lifespan. She wouldn’t allow the dead roaches to be thrown in the trash or flushed down the toilet; she buried them with sympathy in a corner of the backyard.

Naomi, who worked in a vintage clothing store, was a dedicated vegan, although once a month she would fall off the wagon, buy a box of Entenmann’s chocolate-covered doughnuts, give oneto Benny, and eat the rest in a single sitting, washing them down with a quart of whole milk. Sometimes this descent into sin would so distress her that she would fling herself into an hour-long crying jag. On that night in May, when Big Al came home drunk and bloody, Naomi was lying down in their bedroom, suffering through a migraine.

Benny perched in a chair at the kitchen table, plugging LEGOs into one another. His grandma Dora, Big Al’s mother, had sent him a large box of them at Christmas. The kitchen contained a TV and a radio, but they both stood silent. Often the bungalow was full of too much noise, and sometimes Benny needed quiet. He was awake at that hour because he set his own schedule, sleeping in as late as he wished, staying up until he grew bored with being awake. He wouldn’t be going to school until September; even then he might not conform to the hours of the education establishment, because his mom hoped to homeschool him.

When Big Al threw open the back door with such force that it slammed into the side of the refrigerator, Benny wasn’t frightened or even startled. His father usually came home with a sense of drama from a night of hard drinking. A bruise darkened half Al’s forehead, and blood dripped from his split lip, but those details didn’t alarm Benny, either, for they were almost as familiar as the crash of the door bouncing off the fridge. His dad was a bar fighter whenever he could find another drunk who was willing to put up his fists.

“Thatsonofabitch got what was coming to him,” Big Al declared, raising a fist full of skinned knuckles, grinning broadly. “He’ll be crawling home, spitting out teeth all the way, and spend the night puking in the toilet.”

His adversary disproved this prediction by stepping through the open door behind Big Al and shooting him once in the back. Benny’s father fell facedown on the kitchen floor, and Benny put aside the LEGO block he had been about to snap into his construction.

In truth, the shooter looked like he’d taken quite a beating. His left eye had swelled shut. His nose seemed to be askew. Half his face was dark and swollen. Standing just inside the door, he kicked Big Al twice, seemed to be satisfied, and then turned his attention to the heir of the family misfortune. “So what the hell is that?” he asked, pointing to the curving structure on the table.

“LEGOs,” Benny said.

“I know they’re goddamn LEGOs,” the killer said, words issuing from him with flecks of blood. “What’re you making with ’em?”

“Stairs to the moon,” Benny said.

“Stairs to the moon?” The idea appeared to anger the stranger. “There aren’t any stairs to the moon.”

Benny said, “There will be when I make them.”

Taking two steps toward the table, the killer raised the pistol so the boy could look down the barrel.

Benny didn’t try to run because he knew he wouldn’t get far. He was scared, but he wasn’t terrified. He’d been witness to more than a little violence before this. You got used to it. He was only four feet tall, weighed maybe sixty pounds. When you were his size, you couldn’t do much but wait to see what would happen.

He looked up from the muzzle of the gun and said, “I think it’s quiet on the moon. I like when it’s quiet.”

The stranger stared at him for a long moment, then lowered the gun. “Shit, you’re just some kind of dummy. You won’t even remember I was here.” He returned to the night.

After counting to ten, Benny got off his chair and went around the table and looked down at his father. There was no doubt about Big Al’s condition.

Benny went to his parents’ bedroom and eased the door open. The knob made a scratchy sound. The hinges creaked. He stepped across the threshold.

The room was mostly dark. One lamp glowed. A towel had been draped over the shade. His mother was lying on her back, on the disheveled bed. It was always disheveled.

When she was deep in a migraine, it was as if she’d stepped out of this world for a while. If she’d heard the gunshot, she probably thought it was just Big Al slamming the door shut after he’d crashed it open.

Naomi moaned softly. The sound had an impatient quality, which meant she wanted Benny to go away without having to speak the words.

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