The fight broke out in without much warning, one brother flying into a rage and pinning the other to the linoleum floor on the sunporch with one thick forearm across the neck and the other smashing his face repeatedly. By the time my daddy got there, there was a considerable amount of blood and the brother on the floor was barely conscious. The other was still punching.
Sweet Jesus! my daddy shouted, Stop before you kill him!
It took both hands and all his strength to pull them apart. Now shouting for my grandmother, he unthinkingly flung the older one aside, sending him crashing into the drop leaf table where countless bridge games had been won and lost. Snarling and drooling like a rabid dog, the boy recovered and jumped on his back in a blind fury. Nana, who had been in the middle of making an apple pie, simply raised her flour coated rolling pin and swung. My brother dropped like a stone and my daddy shrugged him off and knelt on the now slippery and blood smeared floor.
I watched it all through the window - my daddy yelling for my mother before gathering up my little brother and carrying him to the Lincoln, my grandmother keying the ignition and flying up the driveway as if the old town car had wings - even my mother's frantic flight down the stairs and her panicky scream when she discovered her oldest son, only dazed but still flailing. He cursed her viciously, staggered to his feet and took off like a scared but pretty much drunken rabbit.
I hate you! I shouted as he passed me, I wish you were dead!
Bitch! he shot back, I hope you rot in hell!
Too overwrought and scandalized to move, my sodden heap of a mother began wringing her hands and wailing like a cat in heat.
Serves you right! I shouted at her from the doorway although I wasn't exactly sure of what, You ain't nothin' but a nasty old drunk! Everyone says so!
This brought on a fresh wave of sobs and I fled for the playhouse.
My mother and daddy both claimed to be blindsided by the attack, although both were careful to call it THE INCIDENT. Words and phrases like "regrettable" and "fluke" and "surely never happen again" were tossed around until Nana lost all patience.
Here's a word, she told them coldly, sociopath. It hung in the air like smoke.
These things happen in all families, my mother said with a self-righteous sniffle.
The hell they do! my grandmother snapped, do you think these things just happen, Guy?
My daddy, a kind hearted but helpless soul when it came to this kind of thing, sighed heavily and said nothing.
I was sent to my room without supper that night but my little brother came home with a broken nose, two blackened eyes and a line of ugly stitches from his cheek clear to his chin. He wouldn't talk about the fight. It was Cap who eventually brought my other brother home after finding him hiding in the ferry's wheelhouse. Apart from denying responsibility for the fight, an old and worn out tactic that never failed to work with my mother but failed miserably with everyone else who saw him for what he was, he had nothing to say. Both boys were docked two weeks of allowance and grounded for the upcoming weekend and THE INCIDENT was considered closed. My mother fought hard for a lifting of the punishment, finally brow beating my daddy into restoring the younger brother's allowance but refusing to budge on the other.
I know you can't admit it, Jan, I overheard him tell my mother in an uncommon display of backbone, but no matter who talks or who doesn't, you know as well as I do who started it.
My mother protested but he couldn't be moved.
I hate you! I shouted as he passed me, I wish you were dead!
Bitch! he shot back, I hope you rot in hell!
Too overwrought and scandalized to move, my sodden heap of a mother began wringing her hands and wailing like a cat in heat.
Serves you right! I shouted at her from the doorway although I wasn't exactly sure of what, You ain't nothin' but a nasty old drunk! Everyone says so!
This brought on a fresh wave of sobs and I fled for the playhouse.
My mother and daddy both claimed to be blindsided by the attack, although both were careful to call it THE INCIDENT. Words and phrases like "regrettable" and "fluke" and "surely never happen again" were tossed around until Nana lost all patience.
Here's a word, she told them coldly, sociopath. It hung in the air like smoke.
These things happen in all families, my mother said with a self-righteous sniffle.
The hell they do! my grandmother snapped, do you think these things just happen, Guy?
My daddy, a kind hearted but helpless soul when it came to this kind of thing, sighed heavily and said nothing.
I was sent to my room without supper that night but my little brother came home with a broken nose, two blackened eyes and a line of ugly stitches from his cheek clear to his chin. He wouldn't talk about the fight. It was Cap who eventually brought my other brother home after finding him hiding in the ferry's wheelhouse. Apart from denying responsibility for the fight, an old and worn out tactic that never failed to work with my mother but failed miserably with everyone else who saw him for what he was, he had nothing to say. Both boys were docked two weeks of allowance and grounded for the upcoming weekend and THE INCIDENT was considered closed. My mother fought hard for a lifting of the punishment, finally brow beating my daddy into restoring the younger brother's allowance but refusing to budge on the other.
I know you can't admit it, Jan, I overheard him tell my mother in an uncommon display of backbone, but no matter who talks or who doesn't, you know as well as I do who started it.
My mother protested but he couldn't be moved.
Nothing inspires forgiveness quite like revenge.
Scott Adams
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