Deeper Than the Dead

50

“What the hell is the matter with you?”

Dennis could hear his father’s voice as soon as he snuck in the back door. It was like he had hit the Pause button on his way out. His parents were still having the same conversation they had been having when he had snuck out of the house earlier.

He had somehow managed to slip away from the supper table without attracting his father’s attention, which had been a minor miracle—especially because his stupid sisters weren’t there for a distraction. They had gone to the football game at the high school and then to a sleep-over. Stupid lucky cows. Dennis couldn’t imagine why they had friends and he didn’t. They were so stupid.

Anyway, Dennis had managed to slide out of his chair and out of the room without attracting attention. His father was too busy going on about how he was being betrayed at work, and how Dixon didn’t appreciate him. He seemed to be just talking out loud, like he was trying to figure it all out, and it didn’t really matter if anyone was listening or not. Then every once in a while he would direct something at Dennis’s mother, and she would have to say something to prove that she was paying attention.

Dennis had gotten enough of his father’s attention the night before, getting punished for taking the finger to school. His dad had been furious about that. Dennis had embarrassed him and made him look bad at work.

He had made Dennis take off all his clothes except his underpants and stand in the corner of the dining room while everyone else ate dinner.

“You humiliated me,” his father said. “Now I’m going to humiliate you.”

He had been made to stand there for hours, until he had to go to the bathroom so bad he wet his pants.

After he cleaned up the mess, he had been sent to bed. He had waited until he got checked on, then climbed out his window and down the oak tree that grew beside the house.

He spent hours looking in people’s windows. They never saw him, but he saw them do all kinds of things. It was like having his own television with no channels he wasn’t allowed to watch. Mostly he looked for bedroom windows where he watched girls and ladies take their clothes off. He liked to look at their boobs, all different shapes and sizes.

Sometimes he got to watch people having sex, which he found both gross and weirdly exciting. He mostly liked it because the man got to grab the woman and push her around, and make her do things he wanted, and she couldn’t say no. A lot of the women screamed and stuff while the guy was doing it to them. Dennis liked that part.

It had been weird to watch Miss Navarre and the old detective. Dennis had never really thought about his teacher having breasts or what she would look like with no clothes on. He hardly thought of her as a woman at all. He had never thought of her kissing a man or letting a man do stuff to her. But she sure had. What a whore.

Now Dennis stood in the dark kitchen, watching his parents in the dining room. He couldn’t get to the stairs without going past the dining room and having his father see him. He would have to go back outside and climb the tree to get to his room. But for the moment he stood watching his parents framed by the doorway like they were on a stage or something.

His father was still sitting at the dining room table, still in his uniform, still drinking and talking. His mother still sat in her chair. All the plates and pots and food and stuff were still on the table.

His father had started drinking as soon as he had gotten home from work. That was never a good thing. Then supper had been really bad. Half-frozen meatloaf. His dad had taken one bite of it, got a face, then got up from the table, took the plate with the meatloaf to the back door, and threw it out in the yard.

He worked hard. All he wanted at the end of the day was a decent meal. Was that too much to ask? he demanded of Dennis’s mother. She had been home all day. Was she so lazy she couldn’t bring herself to do the one thing he needed?

“Are you stupid?” he asked now.

Dennis’s mother was crying very quietly. “I’m sorry, Frank. What was I supposed to do?”

“Not talk to them without talking to me first!” he said, his speech barely slurred despite the fact that he had been drinking for hours.

His dad knew how to hold his liquor.

“Now I look like a fool in front of that prick Mendez.”

“I’m sorry, Frank.”

“And Dixon turns on me like a snake! All these years, and he turns on me like a fucking snake!”

“He should have more respect for you.”

“My record is spotless! Spotless! And that’s not going to count for a goddamn thing because I stopped that stupid little whore and gave her a speeding ticket!” he said. He looked stunned, shocked at the idea that something so meaningless could have such an impact on his life.

“I know, Frank. It’s not fair,” his mother murmured.

“Dixon took me off the investigation,” his father said to the whiskey in his glass. “Because of Dennis having that finger. And because I wrote that stupid slut a ticket. She was a whore. Bad things happen to whores.”

He turned and looked at Dennis’s mother. “Isn’t that right, Sharon?”

“Yes, Frank.”

“They have it coming.”

“Yes, Frank, you’re absolutely right.”

“And now you make me look bad. All because you can’t keep your stupid mouth shut.”

“I’m sorry, Frank. I was stupid. I didn’t think.”

“You never think.”

His mother was so stupid. His father was very proud of who he was. He was proud of being chief deputy. People respected him and looked up to him. His mother should have known better than to make him look bad.

His father poured more whiskey into his glass and sipped at it.

“‘Standard procedure,’” he muttered. “‘Don’t take it personally, Frank. It’s just standard op.’ ”

He pushed back from the table and got up to pace back and forth, his too-full glass in his hand. The whiskey sloshed out of it as he moved, spilling onto the hardwood floor.

“Standard operating procedure,” he said. “Fucking spic. I don’t want you ever talking to that fucking little prick again. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Frank.” His mother’s voice was so soft and trembling so badly, it was hard to hear.

“What?” His father cupped a hand to his ear, sloshing more whiskey onto the floor. “I can’t hear you, you stupid fucking cow. Answer me so I can hear you!”

“Yes, Frank!”

“That little bastard is going to try to pin that murder on me. You wait and see,” he said. “Do you think I’m murderer?”

“No!” she said on a gasp, her eyes going round as she stared down at her plate.

“Look at me and say it,” he ordered. “Do you think I’m a murderer? Huh? ANSWER ME!”

She looked at him, shaking and afraid, tears streaming down her cheeks. “No!”

There must have been something about her face that wasn’t right, because Dennis’s father cursed and went to backhand her. He took a step toward her, stepping in the whiskey he had spilled. His foot slid out from under him, and he went down hard on the floor, banging his elbow and his head. His glass crashed and shattered.

“FUCK! FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!” he raged.

As he lifted his head, he looked straight into the kitchen—right at Dennis—and saw him plain as anything.

“What are doing in there?” his father snapped, struggling awkwardly to get to his hands and knees. He never took his laser gaze off Dennis. Dennis seemed frozen to the spot.

“What the fuck are you doing in there?”

“N-n-n-nothing.”

“Are you spying on us?”

“N-n-n-no!”

Dennis was shaking his head so fast he felt like the bobblehead doll he got the time he went to the Dodgers game with his cousins. He was scared now. He knew that look in his father’s eyes when they got dark and flat and cold, like a shark’s eyes.

His father got to his feet and came toward him.

“Don’t lie to me, you rotten little shit. You’re standing in here listening. What the hell’s the matter with you?”

“I-I-I don’t know,” Dennis stammered, tears running down his face. He wanted to turn and run, but he was afraid to. Maybe if he stood very still, his father would calm down. Maybe if he ran, his father would chase him down and beat him to within an inch of his life.

“You good-for-nothing little smartass brat. I try to set you straight, and you take the finger off a dead woman. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Dennis didn’t answer him fast enough. Or maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. His father was past calming down. The rage was in him now. There was no stopping him.

“I asked you a question!” he shouted. “Answer me!”

But he didn’t let Dennis even try to answer. He slapped him across the face so hard it knocked Dennis off his feet, then kicked him once, twice, the toe of his boot like a sledgehammer against Dennis’s back and buttocks.

“Frank! Stop it!” Dennis’s mother yelled. “He’s just a little boy!”

His father spun around, redirecting his fury.

Dennis scrambled to his feet and ran out the back door. He was trying to run faster than his legs could go, and he tripped himself and went sprawling down the concrete back steps. BAM! BAM! His chin bounced off one step and then another, skin scraping off. He bit his tongue hard and tasted blood as he landed at the bottom.

From inside the house he heard his mother cry out and the sound of plates crashing off the dining room table to the floor.

Dennis didn’t move for a minute. He lay there in the damp grass, thinking he would start to cry. But it was like something had broken inside of him, and he couldn’t feel anything. He got to his feet and limped around the side of the house to the oak tree.

It was harder to get up into the tree than it was to get down. He tried three times to jump up and catch hold of the lowest branch, finally getting hold of it with his fingertips. Groaning and twisting he struggled to get a better grip and pull himself up. If his father came out of the house now he would be dead.

Fear helped launch him up to where he could get his leg over the limb. Then he was in the tree and climbing. It didn’t matter that it was dark. He knew every branch.

He needed to disappear. He needed to go to a place his father couldn’t find him. He would go to his safe place and wait out the storm.

He had to stretch out over space to get hold of the windowsill into his bedroom. If he slipped and fell he would probably die. He didn’t know if he cared.

Flopping through the open window like a seal, he fell to his bedroom floor with a thud. The sounds of a beating came up through the floor. His father yelling, his mother crying. SMACK! SMACK!

Dennis scraped himself up and went into his closet. In the ceiling was a trapdoor with a pull-down ladder leading up into a section of attic. He climbed up the ladder and pulled it up behind him, closing the trapdoor. From the attic he could go out a dormer window onto the roof.

Finally he made it to his hiding place. He could sit behind the old brick chimney, tucked up against the slope of the roof, and no one could see him from below. His father would never think to look there. At least he never had before.

Dennis sat there for a long, long time, cold and shaking. He had wet his pants when his father hit him. His lip was split and his chin was bleeding, but he didn’t care. He didn’t think about anything. He didn’t think about what was going on inside the house below him. He just stared at the moonlit speckles in the shingles on the slope of the roof.

After a long while he heard the back door, then heard his father in the backyard, calling for him and cursing at him. Then his father went back inside the house, and a few minutes later Dennis heard him moving around in his bedroom, still cursing.

Dennis could hear the thumps and crashing as his father searched through his room, tipping over furniture, breaking things, screaming at him to come out. But Dennis never moved, and he never made a sound. He never thought, and he never felt. He never wondered why his mother didn’t come looking for him.

The noise in his bedroom died down. Time passed. He heard the back door slam and, a moment later, a car start in the driveway. His mother’s minivan. The engine sounded like a toy compared with his father’s cruiser. Maybe she was leaving and would never come back. What would it matter to him? Nothing.

When the car had gone, and silence fell and everything was still at last, Dennis climbed a little higher to the ridge of the roof where he could see as far as he could see, and wish himself just as far away.

The world was a pretty place at night and from far away. You couldn’t see bad things happen. You couldn’t see what was ugly. When you looked in people’s windows at night every family looked happy, and every child loved.

If only . . .