Chapter Twenty-Four
Jason-One month after Prom
Unsteady-X Ambassador
“I have a fucking faggot and a mute for sons, Lois,” my father screams at Mom in the kitchen while Dylan and I sit on the porch listing to the bullshit our father is spewing.
“What the hell do you want me to say? That I’m happy with our life?
That I’m okay with this shit? Neither one of them are right.
Maybe I should send them to the cabin this winter to become men. No help from anyone except themselves.”
The look Dylan and I exchange says it all. That doesn’t sound too bad, actually. At least we’d be away from him.
Mom uses her passive, tender voice that she always uses to pacify our father. “They have school, Phil. They need their education.”
“Fine.” I hear his thunderous steps get louder as they head our way. “Then maybe I’ll toughen them up myself.”
“Phil,” Mom shouts. I hear her little footsteps follow our father toward us and jump to my feet to stand between the son of a bitch and my brother.
He’s plenty tough from wrestling, but they kicked him off the team this year when they found out he was gay.
Not that he was interested in anyone on the team.
But they don’t give a shit. He doesn’t think the same as them so he’s a threat, a danger.
The door flies open so hard I’m surprised it doesn’t come off the hinges.
As soon as our father locks eyes on me, smoke comes out of his nostrils.
He drops the cigarette he was smoking inside and smashes it under his boot.
He’s preparing for a face-off. He’s been waiting for a reason to hit me again and I just gave him one.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Our father grits out in a strained voice. All the years of smoking make him sound like rocks in a blender, now.
When I don’t answer—like he knew I wouldn’t—he takes a step closer. “You trying to stand up to me, huh? Trying to be the man, now? Protect your fucked up brother?”
He’s not fucked up. Everything about him is completely normal except his taste in partners. Which, to be honest, isn’t that weird in this day and age. But our town is a decade behind the rest of the world and they don’t appreciate him leapfrogging into modern relationships.
“So what are you doing, boy? Answer me when I ask you a fucking question.” His voice raises a notch in volume with each word until he’s yelling at me. But that’s never scared me before and it sure as hell doesn’t scare me now.
“You fucking retard.” My father swings his fist at my head and I stumble, but I remember a few things from my brief time in sports and tackle him with my shoulder to his abdomen, arms around the waist, trying to take him down.
Even though I’ve gotten a bit bigger since picking up weight lifting, he’s still bigger than me.
Offensive lineman in high school. Probably could have gone to college on scholarship for it if he hadn’t knocked up our mom.
He’s clearly caught off guard by my attack which causes him to stumble, but it doesn’t take long for the bastard to shove me to the ground and stomp on my chest.
Mom starts hollering, crying for our dad to stop.
But when he’s like this, there’s no stopping the rampage.
The sad thing is he’s not even drunk. I’ve heard about dads who get violent when they drink.
But at least there’s an excuse there, a way to stop it.
Our dad was just born mean, bitter, violent.
He shoves me down the front steps with his steel-toed boot and I turn into the fetal position and hold my bruised rib cage hoping that seeing me wounded like a dog on the ground is enough to satisfy his taste for blood and misery.
“You thought you could hide behind your brother?” Our father turns on Dylan, clearly not satiated yet.
“No, I—.” Dylan loses the power of speech when our father charges for him next.
Panic sets in. I see the pure terror in Dylan’s eyes, hear Mom plead for our father to stop, crying in between sucking in lungfuls of air she can’t hold onto. And my chest caves with the weight of it all. I can’t see them hurting. He can hurt me all he wants, but not them.
So I do the only thing I can think of.
“NO!” I shout. It’s hoarse from disuse like I’ve been swallowing gravel, but the shock of hearing me speak for the first time in years stops him dead in his tracks long enough for Mom to get to Dylan.
And, more importantly, it redirects our father’s focus to me. That rage turned toward the son who refused to speak no matter how many beatings I took. No matter how many bruised ribs I’ve hidden under my clothes, I’ve never broken
Until now.
Until he threatened the two people I care about in this world.
He’s never laid a hand on our mother or Dylan because most of his anger was honed in on me.
But when he found out that his youngest son likes other men, not women like men were supposed to in his day and age, I wasn’t his biggest problem anymore.
He had two disappointments to beat the hell out of.
“What the fuck?” He snarls under his breath. “What the fuck!” His words are clearer that time, heavier, laced with venom. “Are you fucking telling me you’ve been able to speak this entire time?”
I don’t answer, I don’t plan to speak again.
“ANSWER ME,” he demands. But his orders fall on deaf ears. I stopped caring about his patience years ago. There’s no incentive to please him when I’m already used to the beatings.
“You fucking worthless, pathetic excuse for a man.” I don’t think he even wants me to speak. I think he wants a reason to lay hands on me. So I’ll fucking give it to him. This match has been a long time coming.
In answer to my active disrespect, he charges down the stairs for me but I’m ready this time.
Fists in the air the way he taught me, I’m able to land a blow to his nose before he can take the last step to the flagstone path I’m standing on.
Disoriented and probably a little shocked, he stumbles forward with his fists in the air but not as precisely as usual. He’s a shell of the man he used to be.
He steps his left foot forward alerting me he’s preparing to throw his right hook, so I dodge it just in time and land an uppercut to his ribs.
We spar in a continuous back and forth. He manages to land a few punches on me as well but the final blow that connects with his jaw is the last straw for him.
He’s enraged, blinded by anger and hatred, and his movements become less coordinated and more frenzied.
Rookie mistakes a pro like him shouldn’t be making.
He’s just too overwhelmed to think straight which works in my favor.
Seeing that the bare-knuckle boxing technique isn’t working, he tries to tackle me to the ground, but I’m ready this time. I refuse to be weak anymore. I refuse to be a punching bag. And I refuse to back down. He’s belittled me my entire life.
Retard.
Stupid.
Mute.
Coward.
Liar.
I’m done being any of the things he and countless others have called me. If I don’t assert my dominance tonight, he’ll always see me as the pathetic boy who takes his beatings like a coward.
So when he loops an arm around my neck trying to push me down and cut off my air supply, I plant my palms against his chest and shove as hard as I can, channeling every ounce of resentment into putting as much space between us as possible.
My efforts work, my father stumbles away from me.
But his heel catches on one of the uneven stones and he’s falling like a tree in the woods before I can reach him.
I feel the panic in a single second as though time is frozen with fear.
I’m angry. I’m hurt. I want to make it clear I’m not a boy anymore.
But I didn’t want to do any serious damage.
Our father’s head collides with one of the rocks lining the pathway before I can grab him.
A sickening crunch and thud precede the unnatural stillness of his body.
Eyes fixed on me, unblinking, lifeless. I know before I even get to him to feel his pulse that the man who’s abused me mentally and physically my entire life no longer inhabits this body.
The silence behind me speaks loud enough, Mom and Dylan are just as petrified as I am.
I have to think fast. It was an accident. If I try to hide it, it’ll look like it was intentional. Thankfully, I have witnesses to back up my story.
“I’m gonna call 911,” Dylan breaks the silence.
My mother’s hands are on me the following second.
Her warm palms against my cheeks turning my gaze from the dead man before us to her.
Her kind eyes—my eyes—stare back at me. I look just like my now deceased father from the strong jaw and hair color to my build, but my eyes came from the only parent that truly mattered.
“Jason, sweetheart, listen to me.” My kind, gentle, would-never-hurt-a-fly mother’s voice is all business now. “You are not a bad person. You are not to blame for his actions that lead to this point. You are a good man!”
I focus on her eyes. I focus on her nose. I focus on the words leaving her mouth. Otherwise I’ll spiral.
“We will tell the police that you two fought and he stepped outside to get some air. We heard a noise and came outside to find him like this. Do you understand me? I will not have my boy go to jail for second degree murder when you were simply defending yourself. I won’t even have you in front of a jury who might find you guilty of manslaughter. We both know this was his fault.”
Footsteps reverberate on the hollow porch. “They’ll be here in ten minutes,” Dylan announces.
“Good,” my mom says without taking her hands off me. “Go grab the bottle of whiskey on the shelf.”
My brows bunch in confusion until Dylan returns and our mother sets to work pouring the amber liquor down his throat. Maybe four shots worth. Then she lays the bottle beside him not far from his hand so the whiskey spills out.
She’s making it look like he was a drunk. People might believe that he stumbled on a path he’s walked a thousand times. Might. But they sure as hell won’t think twice about a drunk man tripping over uneven stones after a fight with his son. I’ll be the victim, not the murderer.
Logically, I know I didn’t kill him with intent. But it’s still my fault he died. I pushed him. I pushed him every day of my life. I pushed him to fight me instead of Dylan. I pushed him down causing his head to hit the rock and split open.
I stare at his body as if I expect him to rise from the dead with glazed over eyes and try to eat my brains.
The stubborn son of a bitch would, too. But his eyes start to cloud over, the gash on the side of his head continues to seep blood.
Small bits of rock and dust are embedded in the open wound.
Even his limbs are laid in a crooked, unnatural fashion.
The telltale purple-yellow discoloration of a bruise is starting to emerge on his jaw where I’d connected my fist to his face.
I’d been afraid of this man my entire life, feared being in the same room as him. Now, he lays dead and I feel foolish for ever being afraid of someone so mortal and insignificant.
Our deaths are just one misstep away. No one is immune to the side effects of humanity.
Blue and red flashes draw my attention from the woman who showed me more love than I deserved to the road where two county sheriff’s deputy vehicles pull up against the curb. We don’t live in city limits so this is their jurisdiction.
Mom and Dylan fed them the story. Everyone knows I don’t speak.
But I was required to write a statement and sign it.
Even I wasn’t exempt from due process. But as my mother predicted, no one questioned a drunk man tripping over a rock and bashing his head on stones.
No one suspected I had anything to do with it other than the fight we had before his death.
It was too easy to walk away from all of this without suffering the consequences.
My father was a bastard, a horrible man who deserved to suffer for his actions. But did he deserve to die? Nothing like being faced with immortality to make you question the past. Even when you know you were the victim in the story.
Six months after the “accident” that killed our father, our mom suffered a heart attack in her sleep and died.
It felt like some cruel joke. Like our father dragged her into the afterlife so she would have to suffer with him.
Or maybe it was meant to make me suffer for the life I took before his time was up.
A life for a life. Either way, I felt responsible and I knew whatever power there was in the world was sending a message.
I just wish I’d paid the price of it instead of a woman who deserved more than she got.
Perhaps living is the price I have to pay. If that’s the case, I’ll suffer in silence for my crimes.
That’s the way it’s always been.