Chapter 20 Samson
The boat is warmer than usual and there’s more humidity in the air. It’s either from the bath or Dad’s shaving bowl by the fire. I’ve never seen him shave in here before.
Biology assignment. Photosynthesis. The process where plants convert solar energy into food.
An everyday miracle, so says Mrs. Patel.
Starlight to sugar. I study but I can’t not watch Dad.
He works slowly and deliberately, scraping the razor down his carved cheeks, up from the base of his neck to his prominent chin.
The steel blade catches the light from the woodstove and illuminates him like a performer.
I can hear every whisker being severed. The jawline, tracked.
He works at it like a concert pianist or a needleworker.
Muscle memory. Mom in the bathroom and Dad by the fire.
Me in between with Amber’s pink leather collar loose around my wrist.
It is quiet.
There’s a bird outside that swoops down from high branches and then returns. A raven or a jackdaw. Black as night.
Dad taps his razor and scrapes it along the edge of the bowl.
He sniffs.
I read about chlorophyll and what occurs inside a leaf cell. Part of me yearns to plunge my hands deep inside my LEGO box but I am trying to resist. I need to grow out of it, Dad says.
Condensation on the windowpanes.
I stroke the pink leather with the tip of my thumb.
When we found her on the towpath she was already stiff and cold; ice crystals sparkling on her gray whiskers.
Dad said she’d been poisoned, most likely rat poison from one of the nearby ranches.
I did my best to dig a hole on the embankment.
I cried as I dug, as I hit each root and stone, and her grave wasn’t nearly as perfect as I wanted it to be.
She deserved better. Mom tried to tell me she’s with Mr. Turner now.
All I know is I miss taking her for walks and stroking the tight skin underneath her chin.
Her collar fits on my arm but I have to be extremely careful in school so nobody notices it.
If Gunner or Hammer Adams spots it they’ll make my life ten times harder.
Dad shaves the top of his head, guiding the razor with his free hand, dragging steel blades slowly across the bumpy contours of his scalp. He works at it and I am mesmerized. He’s a living shadow.
“What are you learning?”
I look back at my books.
“Biology.”
He doesn’t reply.
The night sky is blank through our wet glass. Blank, with vague, moving clouds, and the wind is pushing against the long, flat side of the boat.
I think about Paul Pricklett and what his family might look like. How they live in their house. The tactics he employs to endure each school term.
Dad uses scratching movements with the razor at the crease where the back of his head turns into neck. Short, precise scrapes.
He checks the clock on the wall and he looks nervous.
Restless.
“Your mother want a cup of coffee in there, boy?”
I yell, “Mom, you want a coffee?”
There is no response.
He checks the clock again.
“Get off your butt and ask her properly.”
I pull Amber’s collar up my wrist and scoot out from the dinette. The air outside the sliding bathroom door is humid.
I knock three times. “You want some coffee?”
Nothing.
Dad wipes his face with a towel and looks at me, droplets hanging from his long eyelashes.
I look back.
He shrugs.
I shrug back.
“Mom?”
Dad looks into my eyes.
“Mom?”
He stares at me.
I look at the base of the door, at the sliver of light, and then I head back to the dinette. A few minutes later I return to the door. “Mom, do you know about cell membranes?”
Dad stares over at me again, then pulls his shirt on slowly over his head.
“Mom, are you OK in there?”
Dad wipes sweat carefully from his brow.
I knock again, three times, harder. “I’m coming in. I’m not looking.”
Dad frowns.
I collect a blunt knife from the kitchen and use it to slide the lock off and then I nudge the door open a few inches.
Steam in the air.
An intoxicating scent. Some kind of blossom.
“Mom?”
She says nothing.
“I’m coming in. I’m looking at the ground, I swear.”
I peer down at the linoleum.
The bird caws outside.
“You want anything, Mom?”
I glance up.
The water is red and her eyes are open.
I whisper, “Mom,” and then I fall to my knees with my face next to hers and push her hair from her eyes.
“What’s this?” he says, behind me, a pill bottle in his hand.
Dad pulls me out of the way and drags her effortlessly out of the tub, water pouring all over the floor, over his bare feet. He takes her out and he places her down gently on the dinette table.
I cover her up with a cushion.
He says, “What have you done, Peggy?”
He checks her mouth and listens for breathing.
“Mom, please.”
He puts his ear to her chest. She’s so pale. Thin. Veins and streaks of blood down her sides.
“Mom.”
He looks at me. “Get your sneakers on, Samson. Run to the highway. To the gas station. Call an ambulance right now. Run as fast as you can, son.”
I stare at her.
“Go!”
I trip over myself leaving the boat.
The night is empty.
Blank.
I sprint up the hill, through trees, tears still streaming down my cheeks, into my mouth. Salt. The air squeezed from my lungs. Heart pounding. Her, back there, naked, with him. Headlights in the distance. What has she done to us? To me? I can’t. I run, tripping, slowing, racing.
I run.