his doorknob rustled. Early Daddy Defense System. In the light from the hall he saw his mother slip into the room. She knelt before his bed, face pitted from abuse. She kissed his forehead, sobbed, kissed his mouth. Her breath was copper-hot with blood and alcohol. Awkwardly, Eddie tried to embrace her.
That first time couldn’t really be called sex. But as she pressed herself against him, Eddie saw relief spill into his mother’s features. Terror replaced by a strange and haunting nothingness. Eddie decided he would do anything to see that look of peace on his mother’s face. In the morning he wasn’t sure if he had dreamed the episode.
“Eddie, get out of bed,” she called. “Oatmeal’s getting soggy.”
The puppy’s neck had been twisted so severely that its dead eyes were staring back at its haunches. Its body lay on the patio next to a scattering of dead leaves. A stain on the carpet and the smear on his father’s polished shoe told the story.
“I asked you to start picking up after your dog!” the old man yelled. “Now pick up your dog. Trash bag and shovel are waiting for you.”
His dog’s name was Bandit. Eddie had carried him home on his bike from the store, made a house out of cardboard and towels, snuck him in at night, and let him chase his toes under the covers. He tried not to look at the creature, whose only crime had been reliance on Eddie. Tears filled his eyes.
“Don’t you dare cry, boyo,” his father said. “Dog’s a lesson. Everything gets taken away.”
The house breathed pain. The wrongness of it stopped Eddie cold at the back door. Bandit must’ve sensed its threat too.
The dog sniffed and nipped at Eddie’s shoes, growling defensively as he tried to get past.
Eddie bent down and stroked Bandit’s fur, overcome by sadness at what was to become of his little friend. He thought of how the spade vibrated as he tamped down the dirt around the trash bag. He picked the dog up and pressed his face into its fur.
It took a moment for the significance of the gesture to register.
Eddie knew the horror show that awaited him inside. He was eight years old again, home from a half day of school with plans to dump his bag, snag a juice, and get gone.
He remembered the frigid blast of air-conditioning that froze the sweat on his back and legs, the gurgle of the fridge, and how the light from the boxed windows formed a floating cage across the kitchen. He saw the empty whiskey bottle on the table and his father’s gun belt slung over one of the chairs. He passed quietly through the light bars, aware that a low keening had interrupted the preternatural stillness.
It was coming from the end of the hall, his parents’ room, where Eddie found his father choking his mother blue. The old man was sitting astride her on the bed, still dressed in full uniform. Beneath him, his mother’s naked body writhed. She snorted for air, blowing snot and blood in an arc that reached almost to the ceiling. Her arms and legs pinwheeled and her bony ass bucked off the mattress.
Eddie remembered standing there, transfixed, doing nothing.
But in his memory he had not stopped to pick up the dog. Something had changed. For the first time since beginning his macabre descent into the wayback, Eddie had no compulsion to follow his past. He stepped out of it. Instead of walking through the kitchen, he went to the table and lifted his father’s gun from its holster.
The automatic was heavy. He held it two-handed, the way his father had demonstrated: Got to hold firm on those jigs. Eddie carried it like that down the hall, Bandit at his heels the whole way.
Eddie didn’t stop at the bedroom door this time. He raised the gun. “Get off her.”
The old man spun around, surprised and angry at Eddie’s transgression. “Do yourself a favor, boyo,” he said. “Whatever you’re doing, undo it. Pronto.”
“I’m trying.”
“You must be stupid sick—” The old man stopped when he saw the gun. “What in the fuck-all name of Christ are you thinking?”
“Ending you.”
Eddie backed away as his father rolled off the bed. His mother didn’t move. “So that’s your plan? You’re going to shoot your own father?”
“Y-Yes,” Eddie said.
“R-R-Really? You fucking whelp. I own you.” Booze fused with rage in the old man’s eyes. “Are you listening to me? You’re mine. I made you. Now drop that gun.