Untaken Read online

  “It’s barbaric,” roared Tom Biedermann, as Dad opened the door. “What you choose to do with your weekends is none of my business, but I will not have my daughters exposed to your disgusting blood sports.”

  It was never a great idea to bother Dad just after he got back from a trip. He’d need a couple of beers inside him and a good long soak in the shower before he was in anything like a talkative mood, and that was when he wasn’t in the grip of the mean reds to begin with. I fully expected Dad to haul off and smack Tom Biedermann right in the kisser, but Dad just stared at him a second or two, then closed the door in the man’s face. He didn’t slam it, just closed it real soft, like there had been no one there in the first place.

  He went to the kitchen and pulled a beer out of the fridge.

  That was good.

  After he killed the beer, he chased it with a shot of Wild Turkey.

  That was bad.

  Dad used to get real mean on bourbon.

  “Hey, Dad, why don’t we get that deer in the back shed?” I asked him. “I’ll help out. Nothin’ else going down.”

  I didn’t usually like butchering the animals Dad brought home, although I liked eating them well enough. The guts and all the really sick shit had already been taken care of, but I hated the blood stink that lingered on my skin for hours after we were through cutting and wrapping the meat.

  Still, Dad was pleased when I did stuff with him like that, just us men, and I was hoping that by the time we’d finished, he’d have forgotten about that blowhard Tom Biedermann, and wouldn’t do anything crazy.

  Not that my dad was crazy. Sometimes, though, he could act kind of crazy.

  Dad stared at me a long minute without saying a thing, the way he had at Mr. Biedermann, until I grinned widely out of nerves, then he turned on his heel, muttering something about “an eggsuck dog” and stalked off to his shed where there was a big chest freezer and the bench where Dad would butcher his kill.

  I figured that Dad was set to shrug off what Mr. Biedermann had said, and the worried knot in my chest loosened up some.

  By the time I’d pulled on my Converse and made it out the back door, Dad was already leaving the shed, and I got a real bad feeling when I saw the big Poulan chainsaw in his hands.

  Dad hauled the whitetail down off the flatbed without waiting for me to help him. Instead of taking it back to the shed, he dragged it around the side of our house where the Biedermann’s lounge windows overlooked the scrubby strip of yard there. I caught up to him just as he started up the chainsaw.

  Mrs. Biedermann stood in the window, her face white and angry. Mr. Biedermann appeared at her shoulder, his skinny rabbit’s face all blotchy with rage.

  “Dad, come on now, this isn’t such a good idea.” I was trying to speak calmly, which is a hard thing to do over the noise of a chainsaw, and it didn’t do a lick of good anyway, because Dad set right to work cutting up that deer. He didn’t do it neatly, with the purpose of separating the meat into cuts, he just laid into it like the animal had done him wrong.

  He cut off the legs and tossed them aside, where they lay scattered on the lawn like yard sticks.

  “Come on Dad,” I tried again. In truth, I was scared.

  Dad, the fence, and the side of the house were soon covered in a sick mist of gore and deer hide. He sliced almost at random into the body, little shreds of fur and meat flying, the chainsaw groaning and coughing smoke when it hit bone, until what had once been a good kill was just a vaguely animal-shaped heap of hide and blood and bone.

  Finally he cut off the doe’s head, which was missing an ear and most of the flesh of the left side of its face, and set it on top of the woodpile, where it was the ideal height to stare right in through the Biedermann’s window.

  “Come on, Dad,” I tried again, but my sentence was cut off by the crunch of car tires on gravel, and when I looked up, a cop car pulled in front of the house.

  Lou Carrigan, a good pal of my dad’s, climbed out of the cruiser. His presence made me feel a little better, but not much.

  All around us, curtains twitched in windows as the neighbors gawked. I felt my face going red, and hoped Dad wouldn’t notice.

  “Hey there, Carl, what’s this about?” asked Lou, taking in the scene as if it were no big deal to scatter deer parts all around your yard.

  “That asshole, Biedermann,” muttered Dad, “told me to get rid of it. So I did. I work hard all week, Lou. Can’t a man bring home food for his family without some snot-nose prying into his business?”

  “Sure, Carl,” said Lou, “but you’re upsetting the kiddies.”

  “That professor is ruining them kiddies,” shouted Dad. A little scrap of bloody deer hide drooped above his eye like an extra eyebrow and gave him a mournful sort of expression. He was out of breath from wielding the chainsaw, and looked so tired and old that I felt ashamed of him, then ashamed of myself for feeling that way.

  “I guess I raised my boy right. Taught him the value of an honest day’s work. Is a man not allowed to provide for his boy no more?”

  “Carl, you ain’t broke no laws,” said Lou, “but you might think about heading inside now.”

  Dad glowered at Lou and, for a minute, I got scared he was going to get really mad, but then his shoulders kind of slumped and I could see the fight had gone out of him.

  He cleaned the chainsaw off real carefully and put it away. He picked up some of the bigger deer bits and tossed them in the chest freezer without bothering to wrap them.

  “Got time for a cold one?” he asked Lou, who watched him with his arms folded and a worried expression on his face.

  “Never on duty,” said Lou with a wink at me, “but it just so happens, I’m due a break.” They headed inside together and soon, the sound of laughter carried outside.

  I went to my room and read my guitar books for a while. Even with my guitar sold, I still liked to study the music, to make the shapes of the chords with my fingers. It was relaxing somehow.

  The next day I was up at dawn. I tiptoed past Dad’s room, wincing at the creak of tired floorboards. I figured I’d cook him up some eggs for his breakfast, just the way he liked—sloppy and buried in a gallon of ketchup—but there was nothing in the fridge but a couple of beers and a dried up splat of last week’s chili, covered over with saran wrap.

  Gross.

  I dumped the chili onto the top of the trashcan, careful as I could so as not to cause an avalanche of stinky garbage.

  I picked through cast-off pairs of Dad’s pants and jackets, looking for some cash. I could get to the corner store and back before he woke up, I was sure of it. If there was any chance of Dad being reasonable, it would be more likely if his belly was full.

  The first thing I saw when I got outside was that the body of the deer was gone. The second was that the head still sat on the woodpile, forgotten by Lou, but not by my Dad, nor I guessed by the Biedermanns.

  Its tongue lolled out between yellow teeth, and its glassy eyes seemed to follow me as I walked by. I thought I saw the drapes twitch over at the Biedermanns and walked faster.

  I didn’t have enough money for the eggs and the ketchup, so I stuck the sauce inside my shirt, feeling shitty when old Mrs. Carey smiled and asked how I was doing.

  The head was still there when I got back. A crow or something had made off with the eyes, but I still felt like it was watching me from the raggedy black sockets.

  All morning I expected Mr. Biedermann to call the cops again, but I guess he’d seen Lou leaving our place late that night, laughing and back-slapping and stinking of beer. The Biedermanns were still pretty new in town and in small towns like ours, old friendships are important. Mr. Biedermann was a smart guy; I guess he understood that. He could have taken it down himself, but that would have hurt his pride, I guess.

  I couldn’t help feeling bad for him. Dad had proved his point already, so why not just end things by taking that nasty old head down?

  It was afternoon when I heard the sla
m of the bathroom door and the rattle of pipes that meant the shower was spluttering into life. I had the eggs and sauce on the table by the time Dad ambled into the room, but he shoved them aside and lit up a cigarette instead.

  His bare shoulders were tan and muscled, but his chest was corpse white, and his ribs were showing.

  “Gonna eat?” I asked him.

  He snorted, and stubbed the cigarette out in the ketchup.

  “Get me a drink,” he said.

  Calories are calories, I told myself as I cracked open his beer.

  “So about that head…” I started, but the cold flash of his eyes was enough to shut me up quick.

  The Biedermanns opened their drapes after lunch, but when I waved to them through the window, trying to be friendly, they looked the other way, even Mrs. Biedermann, who had used to smile at me sometimes and ask how school was going.

  The stink was already getting bad. I could smell it strongest in the kitchen, but I reckoned before long the whole place was going to smell of rotten deer brains. Surely dad had made his point by now?

  I put my ear to the door of Dad’s room. Nothing, then a wet, rumbling snore. Sometimes when he got a case of the mean reds, he’d sleep whole days away.

  I wrapped the head up as best I could in a mess of hefty bags and rode with it on my bike way out of town, where I tossed it into a stream. As I rode, I pretended I was a Marine on a special mission to get rid of a bomb before it could go off and blow up our base, which is kind of a silly little kid thing to pretend, but I made record time and was feeling pretty good about myself as I rode up our driveway.

  When I got inside, Dad was waiting for me. He’d never hit me before, so although I knew he’d be mad, I was shocked when his fist popped out and caught me below the eye. My legs kind of folded up and dumped me on the floor, and there I lay, with Dad standing over me, looking about a hundred feet tall.

  “Never guessed I’d raised a coward,” he said.

  That hurt worse than my eye. I wanted to say something, to explain myself, but I knew that if I opened my mouth I’d start to cry, and Dad hated when anyone cried. “Sniveling,” he’d call it. “Quit your sniveling and man up.” I crawled backward toward my bedroom door. I didn’t want to stand up in case he popped me again. I was fumbling for the doorknob when he turned and walked away from me.

  Dad spent the next day pacing around the house all wild one minute, then sitting out back, cleaning his guns, with the radio in the truck cranked up high the next. When we crossed paths, he acted like he couldn’t even see me. I didn’t want to leave the house with my face all busted up, but I couldn’t stand the way Dad looked right through me either, so I stayed in my room. Someone must have complained again, because Lou’s Police cruiser rolled up just before two p.m. I didn’t hear what he said to Dad, but he sounded way less friendly this time.

  When the phone rang, I scrambled to answer it.

  “Hey man, where you been? Thought you were coming over for band practice.”

  “I can’t talk now,” I hissed to Stevie.

  “Seriously?”

  “I got the flu.”

  “Yeah, right. The flu again.” He paused. I could hear him breathing on the other end of the line. “Do you want to come stay for a few days? I know my mom and dad wouldn’t mind.”

  “Sorry, man. Not now. I’ll call when I feel better, I guess,” I babbled, shoving the phone in its cradle with a crash, and yanking the cable back out of the wall again for good measure. I never could fool Stevie. He knew me too well. It’d been the same way last year, when Dad had been suspended from work. I’d gotten a job myself to help out with the overdue bills, stocking shelves at nights at the Star Market, and what with that and Dad’s wild spells, I didn’t get a wink of sleep in a month. I’d felt so exhausted all the time that I called in sick to school. They bought it right away; probably they were glad I wasn’t there to bug them.

  Stevie wasn’t buying it for a second, though.

  Came over every day until I ended up agreeing to go home with him, just to get him off my case and out of Dad’s way. Stevie’s folks had let me stay with them almost two whole weeks “to give your Dad a break,” but when I went back home, Dad looked like he hadn’t eaten a bite of food or slept a solid hour the whole time I’d been gone. It would have been great to have stayed at Stevie’s place, but Dad needed me.

  I did my best to stay out of his way for the rest of the day. My room was the only calm place in the house, but even in the orderly oasis of my room, I couldn’t shake the hot, itchy panic that settled over me every time I tried to chill. Dad sometimes ragged me for keeping my room neat the way I did, but it didn’t make me a sissy for liking things neat, surely? Army guys kept their kit in good order, and they were the toughest guys around.

  I lay on my bed, listening to Dad thunder around the house, like a lightning storm that had flown through the window and gotten trapped indoors. I let myself daydream about me and Stevie leaving town and starting a band, just like we’d always bullshitted about. Playing in big cities and getting girls and seeing the world, but thinking that way made me feel guilty.

  My Dad gave up everything for me, and I couldn’t even look after him when he was low? I knew that the mean reds would lift eventually.

  Gracie

  shoved open the door of Beantown Scoops, still trying to push back the tears welling up behind my eyelids. I wasn’t even hungry anymore, but the last place I wanted to be was home. The kid across the street, Erin, called Beantown Scoops the booger store, because she swore that one day there’d been a booger on top of her raspberry ripple. But, new people owned it now, and it was always packed with folks from the neighborhood.

  The line stretched all the way back to the door, and the girls behind the counter scowled as they ran back and forth, getting in each other’s way as they tried to keep up with the orders. Neither of them went to my school. I wondered if they looked like the types to put a booger in your cone, but I didn’t see how either of them would have had time.

  The frappe machine roared, making my head pound harder. The two little girls in front of me shrieked and giggled over some secret joke and slapped sticky handprints onto the freezer case so you could hardly read which flavor was which. Me and Katie had been like them once. I wondered if they’d still be friends when they were my age. Would one of them grow up to be the swan, and one the big ugly duckling?

  “What they doing? Churning the damn milk themselves?” grumbled the old guy behind me. That would probably be me pretty soon—talking out loud to no one in particular, just to feel like someone was listening.

  When it was finally my turn, I ordered a Mocha Chip. As cold as it was beneath the blast of the air conditioning, the cone was already melting by the time I’d fumbled my change back into my pocket. I stooped to take a lick, pushing my way out of the store into the wall of summer heat. The door of the ice-cream store swung shut behind me, producing a jolly jingle-bell clatter.

  Now that I had my cone, I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t want to wander the neighborhood and risk running in to Katie and the guys, but I didn’t want to go home and sit in that big empty house by myself, either.

  As I stood trying to make my mind up where to go, a breeze stirred up around my ankles. Down the block, a pair of trees began to nod back and forth, dry leaves rustling. The colorful flag hanging out front of the store fluttered and snapped, softly at first, then harder, nearly whacking me across the back of my head. The wind snatched the Red Sox cap off one of the kids lounging on the bench and spun it down the road as his friends jeered.

  “We expecting a storm?” the little old man who’d grumbled in the line said from behind me. He had his ice-cream cone clutched carefully in one hand, and a folded newspaper in the other, which the rising wind was now snatching at like it wanted to rip it to confetti.

  There’d been no storm clouds when I’d walked to the ice cream shop, no breeze whatsoever, but as they always say in New England, “If you don�
�t like the weather, wait a minute.” I guessed I was going home after all. I kind of liked the big summer thunderstorms. The house would feel cozy instead of empty. I could watch the black clouds roll in from the attic window, and picture Katie and her dumb friends getting caught in the storm.

  “Whoa!” The colorful flag ripped free of its moorings and sailed off down the road. Clouds moved like molasses across the sun, and the difference between the soupy summer heat and the chill of sudden shadow made me shiver. Candy wrappers and leaves skittered past my legs, stinging my ankles, and the chalkboard with the week’s special flavors written on it fell over with a bang.

  I turned to go, but before I made it three steps, a flock of napkins fluttered up off one of the little cast iron tables, right into my face.

  “Whoops, sorry.” The woman sitting there made a grab for them, her oversized sunglasses flashing my own reflection back at me.

  “So much for ice-cream, huh?”

  She had a little white dog on a leash and as the wind blew harder, the pup started to yip and whimper.

  “Hush up, Tootsie,” she scolded.

  Other dogs barked too, howling in backyards all around the neighborhood. The sound made me uneasy, like cold fingers trailed up and down my spine. I’d heard of dogs barking all together before an earthquake, but not because of a bit of wind.

  “Tootsie!” The little dog flashed past me, claws skittering on the pavement, tail tucked between its legs, its leash flying out behind it. The woman’s chair toppled to the ground as she ran after her dog. She scooped Tootsie up just before it ran into the busy traffic of Comm Ave. The little dog struggled and snarled in her arms. “Tootsie, what the hell!”