Chapter 36 Samson
They do not want me to live.
I never hurt them, did I? Never trash-talked any of them.
I don’t go around hiding their bags or stealing their belongings.
I have never sliced their bag straps with a blade or cut a gash in their shoes so the rain leaks in.
I leave them well alone. If they needed my help I’d probably offer it.
I’d do what I could. And yet they want me to cut myself?
Dad says she might not be out for months. Might not be until spring break. He says she’s not allowed to send letters, and we still can’t visit. It would set her back, the doctors reckon. It’d be too upsetting for her. But what about us?
Phoenix isn’t on his boat. He left two days ago and I’m not sure if he will come back.
Some kind of fishing vessel passes by and I plunge both hands deep into my LEGO box. I move my knuckles against the sharp plastic bricks and breathe in. They smell like when everything was better, back in Nanna Ruth’s bungalow, with Mom happy, me at elementary school, still mates with Eyebrow.
The razor blades are hidden inside the box.
They’re at the bottom, under all the bricks.
I push my fingers deeper until they graze the base but then I pull them back quickly.
Would they slice off my fingertips? Would they let Mom see me then?
I plunge my hands in again and move them around, the bricks crunching against each other.
“They want me dead,” I whisper through gritted teeth, pushing my fingers lower.
“They want me dead.” I swirl my hands through the sharp bricks, pushing my knuckles deeper, searching for the blades.
“They want me to die.” I ball my hands into fists, each one holding bricks, crushing them, and I push both fists to the bottom and scrape them around manically. “They want me…”
Dad clears his throat behind me.
I pull both hands out and sit frozen rigid.
“Samson?”
I look back over my shoulder at him. My heart is pounding.
He says nothing.
“How long have you been there, Dad?”
He frowns. He looks appalled and confused.
I turn my body to face him properly.
His eyes flit around the boat, to me, to the LEGOs, to the window.
“I know the boat’s better with your mother here. Creature comforts. She keeps it neat.”
I look at him.
He tightens his belt. It is the brown leather belt his father wore. Dad used to sharpen his knife on his stone, but he’d always finish off the edge with his belt. “I think we’re due some pizza. What do you say, son?”
“Really?”
“Why not? What’s holding us back?”
I stand up.
On the bus into town Dad coughs into his elbow. He coughs and coughs and people watch. Coughing isn’t uncommon around here what with all the old miners. Same goes for hunchbacks. I pat Dad once on the back and he stiffens at my touch. He withdraws.
We walk up the hill past Safeway to reach the best pizza place in town.
Joe’s. We stand at the counter together.
Gleaming stainless steel. A thickset man moves dough between his hands.
A woman wearing a hairnet restocks the drinks cooler.
A glass display with six kinds of hot slices.
A lineup of sauces and a napkin dispenser sponsored by the town’s football team.
“Two Cokes. Two large pepperoni pizzas with onion and peppers.”
They take his money.
“We’re going to the top of the hill.”
The man nods but does not look at my father.
Dad carries his and I carry mine. The cardboard box is hot and moist and it smells like all the best things ever conceived of.
We set off up the steepest section of the hill. The wind dies down as we approach the bench. We sit side by side and open our boxes.
Hot, spicy steam.
Neither of us says a word.
The view is half the town. Steep rows of one-story houses with chain-link fence yards.
The boarded-up factory with its brick chimney.
Spires and white church towers in the middle distance.
The tiled roof of my school. I can see the clock tower.
Buses, mostly yellow, all sizes, come and go at the station.
I can make out the old mine from up here, landscaped to create a wildlife preserve, but from this distance, on a clear day, you can see it was a mine.
Dad takes a bite of pizza.
“Not a bad town, is it?”
“It’s all right.”
He takes a second slice.
“My mother and father moved here from out East. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Chose it on account of the factory. Dad worked there twenty-two years. Mom never worked.”
I drink some Coke from the bottle.
“Would have liked you, Samson, both of them. Would have fussed over you.”
“Paul Pricklett’s still got four grandparents alive.”
“Who?”
“Guy at school. His dad’s Navajo and his mom’s from Kentucky.”
“Four alive?”
“Yeah.”
“Your grandpa, he left school at fourteen, but he was smart. Could have been a writer if things had turned out different. He was a tough man. A lot of the time he was too tough for his own good, just like his father before him. But he’d have been proud of you.”
“Me?”
“Who else?”
I eat another slice, grease running through my fingers.
We look straight ahead like we’re still on the bus.
“Would have brought you up here himself, I don’t doubt. Partial to a pizza and a cold beer, your grandpa was.”
We look at the town and we don’t say anything for a long time.
A plane leaves a mark on the sky. I watch as it fades.
Canada geese glide overhead in formation like it’s been orchestrated, planned out, rehearsed. Heading up toward Mark Twain National Forest.
“Boys bothering you at school?”
“No.”
He nods and finishes his slice.
“Had some trouble when I was your age. Never spoke of it before. Problem with some older kids. Real knuckleheads. Rough school, rougher than yours is.”
He always says that.
“What happened?”
“This is between you and me. Do you understand?”
I nod and he turns to see me nodding. He looks back at the town.
“Boys messing with my mind. Punching me when I wasn’t looking, stupid stuff like that. If I’d had a fair fight I’d have knocked their heads off but it’s never fair in high school, is it?”
“No, it’s not.”
He swallows hard. Sighs. Chews.
“Between you and me, they roughed me up badly, some of them. Cuts and bruises. Broke my rib one time, the bastards.”
“Did you get them?”
He inspects the next slice. Folds it a little.
“Not right away. I bided my time. They weren’t good years for me, Samson. I know this’ll be a shock for you to hear, your old man getting messed with and boys beating on me. I know you never thought you’d hear such a thing.”
I take a deep breath.
I look right at him.
“I knew you were bullied.”
“No.” He smiles, shaking his head, chewing more vigorously. “I never told a soul, in fact. Not even my own father. Not your mother either. Nobody knows about this.”
I swallow hard. “I knew.”
He stiffens up, straightens his back. “No, boy.” His voice is deeper. “You never did.”
“I did.”
He turns to me, frowning. “Cut that out. You never.”
“I could tell, Dad.”
He turns away and starts shaking his head, muttering.
“I could always tell, Dad.”
He looks back toward the factory, and frowns so intensely I can feel it in the air. He takes in the trailer park outside the town, the traffic on the highway.
I eat a loose slice of pepperoni from my pizza box.
We don’t say anything more for a long time.
“How did it end?” I ask.
“How did it end?”
“Yeah.”
He chews on his lip, sniffs, closes his box. “Just did. They moved on to some other fool. Soon as I got out of that school I shaved my head so it would never happen again.”
“What do you mean?”
He pulls out his worn billfold, its leather form contoured to his backside, and shows me a small, wrinkled photograph of him as a child with Grandpa Bill and Grandma Evelyn. It’s the first photo I’ve ever seen of him as a boy. All three of them have red hair. Dad’s hair looks like mine.
“You’re my son. No doubt about it when you look at that picture, is there?”
I smile. “Nope.”
“My boy.”
I move a little closer to him and he coughs and moves farther away. Some instinct.
“Struggling with my novel, Samson. Not as good as it ought to be. Flawed. I should burn the damn thing and move on.”
“You’ll get there, Dad.”
He squeezes the box in his hands. Holds it tight, sinews protruding. “We’ll see.”
I turn to him. “Why don’t you, you know…?”
“What?”
“Why don’t you… like me?”
He snorts. “What did you just say?”
“I said, Why don’t you like me?”
“Turn to face the town, stop gawping at me like that.” He tuts. “Why don’t I like you? What is this? Like you? Jesus wept, boy, I’m your father. It’s nothing to do with liking or not liking.”
“I know Mom likes me.”
“She’d better.”
“But you don’t.”
He coughs into his elbow. Spits on the ground. Tuts again.
“You enjoy this, don’t you? All this modern talk? Feelings.”
I shrug.
“Look at the town, boy,” he says, sternly.
I focus on the transmission towers: electric overhead cables streaking across the horizon.
“My dad never talked to me the way you’re doing,” he says.
“Never had a hug off him, barely even shook the man’s hand.
There was no talk of emotions, anything like that.
Day’s work then supper then TV then bed.
One day, then the next. The bar near the Goodwill, when you come of age.
He never grasped why I wrote what I did.
Never understood my interest for Hemingway. Thought it was soft.”
“Hemingway wasn’t soft.”
“Damn right.”
I smile. After a few minutes, I say, “Thanks, Dad.”
He frowns, still staring forward at the town.
“Thanks for the pizza.”
“Why do you think these cowards want you hurt?”
“What?”
“Boys at school.”
“I don’t know. Because they have money. Because they’re too scared to fight with the real tough kids, the kids from the other schools.”
“They’re jealous, Samson, that’s why. They know you’ve got something they haven’t.”
I pause. “What?”
He turns and looks at me properly for the first time. The wind picks up and moves his collar against his neck. He says, “Talent, boy. Dreams.”