Sturgeon, Theodore - Some Of Your Blood
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SOME OF YOUR BLOOD
Chapter 1 Chapter 8
Chapter 2 Chapter 9
Chapter 3 Chapter 10
Chapter 4 Chapter 11
Chapter 5 Chapter 12
Chapter 6 Chapter 13
Chapter 7
1
...but first, a word:
You know the way. You have the key. And it is your privilege.
Go to the home of Dr. Philip Outerbridge. Go on in—you have the key. Climb the stairs, walk to the
end of the corridor, and turn left. This is Dr. Phil’s study, and a very comfortable and well-appointed one
it is. Books, couch, books, desk, lamp, books, books. Go to the desk—sit down; it’s all right. Open the
lower right drawer. It’s one of those deep, double drawers. It’s locked? But you have the key—go ahead.
Pull it open—more than that. All the way. That’s it. See all those file-folders, a solid mass of them?
Notice how they are held in a sort of box frame? Well, lift it out. (Better get up; it’s heavy.) There.
Underneath, lying flat, are a half-dozen folders—just plain file folders. Perhaps they are there to
level up the main box-frame; well, they certainly do that. Perhaps, too, they are there because they are
hidden, concealed, secret. Both perhapses could be true. And perhaps they are there because they are
valuable, now or later. Value is money, value is knowledge, value is entertainment... sentiment, nostalgia.
Add that perhaps to the others. It does not destroy them. And bear in mind that of the six folders, any of
six might be any or all of these things. You may look at one of them. The second one from the top. You
will note that it, like the others, is marked with Dr. Outerbridge’s name and, in large red capitals,
PERSONAL—CONFIDENTIAL—PRIVATE. But go ahead. Go right ahead; take it out, replace the box-frame,
close the drawer, light the lamp, make yourself comfortable. You may read through the papers in this
folder.
But first rest your hands on the smooth cream-yellow paperboard and close your eyes and think
about this folder which is marked CONFIDENTIAL and which is hidden in a drawer which is locked. Think
how it was filled some years ago, when Dr. Phil was a young staff psychologist in a large military
neuropsychiatric hospital. It happened that he was then two months short of the required age for a
commission, so he rated as a sergeant. Yet he had, since his freshman year in college, trained and
interned in psychological diagnosis and treatment at a famous university clinic, where be had earned a
graduate degree in clinical psychology.
It was wartime, or something very like it. The hospital was swamped, staggered, flooded. The staff
had to learn as many new tricks, cut as many unheard-of corners, work as unholy hours, as those in any
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other establishment that handled the goings and comings of war, be they shipbuilders or professors of
Baltic languages. And some of the staff, like some builders and teachers everywhere, were burdened by
too many hours, too little help, too few facilities, and too much tradition, yet found their greatest burden
the constant, grinding, overriding necessity for quality. Some men in tank factories turned down each
bolt really tight; some welders really cared about the joints they ran. Some doctors, then, belonged with
these, and never stopped caring about what they did, whether it was dull, whether it was difficult,
whether, even, the whole world suddenly turned enemy and fought back, said quit, said skip it, it doesn’t
matter.
So perhaps the value of these folders, and their secrecy lies in their ability to remind. Open one,
relive it. Say, here was a triumph. Say, here is a tragedy. Say, here is a terrible blunder for which
atonement can never be made... but which, because it was made, will never be made again. Say, here is
the case which killed me; though I have not died, yet when I do I shall die of it. Say, here was my great
insight, my inspiration, one day my book and my immortality. Say, here is failure; I think it would be
anyone’s failure, I—I pray God I never discover that someone else could succeed with something, some
little thing I should have done and did not. Say... there is something to be said for each of these folders,
guarded once by a lock, again by concealment, and at last by the declaration of privacy.
But open your eyes now and look at the folder before you. On the index tab at its edge is lettered
“GEORGE SMITH”
The quotation marks are heavily and carefully applied, almost like a 66 and a 99.
Go ahead.
Open it.
You know the way. You have the key. And it is your privilege. Would you like to know why? It is
because you are The Reader, and this is fiction. Oh yes it is, it’s fiction. As for Dr. Philip Outerbridge, he
is fiction too, and he won’t mind. So go on—he won’t say a thing to you. You’re quite safe.
It is, it is, it really is fiction...
2
Here is a typewritten letter written on paper showing signs of having been torn across the top with a
straight-edge, as if to remove a letterhead. The letters O-R over the date are in ink, printed by hand,
large and clear.
Base Hospital HQ,
Portland Ore. : otherwise known as—
Office of the Understaff O-R
Freudsville, Oregon. 12 Jan.
Dear Phil:
First and foremost notice the O-R notation above. That means off the record, and I mean altogether. If
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and when you see it in future you don’t need explanations. Anything which can be gotten across by
abbreviation and in code is a blessing to me, especially since they gave me this nut factory to administer
without relieving me of that bedlam of yours. You’ll excuse the layman’s vulgarisins, dear doctor; believe
me, they do me good.
Under separate and highly official cover, and through channels, you’ll find orders from me to you
relative to a file AX544. I’m the colonel and you’re the sergeant. I’m the administrator and you’re just
staff. Hence the orders. On the other hand we are old friends and you are senior to me in your specialty six
times umpteen squared. The fact—not mentioned in the orders—is that we’ve pulled the kind of blooper
you don’t excuse by saying oops, sorry. This soldier was yanked out of a staging area overseas and
shipped back here with a “psychosis, unclassified” label and a “dangerous, violent” stencil, by a meat-
headed MedCorps major. It could only have been sheer vindictiveness, deriving from the fact that the GI
punched him in the nose. Criminal he may be—according to the distinctions now current—but insane he is
not. Seems to me he did the right thing; but to the major’s dim appreciation it appeared insane to strike an
officer and so he was sent to your laughing academy instead of to a stockade.
What complicates things is that we lost this guy. What with understaffing and turnover and all-around
snafu, this GI has been stuck in padded solitary for three months now without diagnosis or treatment, and
if he didn’t qualify as one of your charges when he got there, he sure as hell should now.
However it happened, it comes out looking like the worst kind of carelessness, to say nothing of
injustice. So what “diagnose and treat” means in the official order is, please, Phil, on bended knee, get that
man out of there and out of the Army in such a way that there will be no kickbacks, lawsuits or headlines.
And aside from the merits of the case itself, we have to slough off these trivial cases. We need the bed. I
need the bed, or will soon if this kind of thing happens again.
I trust you to sew it up tidily, Philip. Not only a sound diagnosis, but a sound-sounding one. And then
a medical discharge. His remuneration, whether or not he ever appreciates it, can be that his fisticuffs on
the person of that moo-minded major are on the house.
yr absentee landlord,
Al
P. S. : To enrich the jest, I just got word that above-mentioned major, by name Manson, got himself
deceased in line of duty, in a C-119 crash. This I learned in answer to my request for any additional files
he may have on subject patient. There ain’t any files.
A. W.
Here is the carbon copy of a letter.
Field Hospital #2
Smithton Township, Cal. : also called— O-R
Bedpan Bureau 14 Jan.
Reik’s Ranch, Cal.
Dear Al:
You diagnose right handily by mail. You must have been studying that technique where the quack
sends you a ten-dollar Kleenex and you wipe it over your face and send it back and he tells you you’ve got
housemaid’s knee. I spent a half-hour with the guy today—honest to God, Al, all the time I could split
off—and I found him up on the top floor all alone in a secure cell. Very polite, very quiet. Although he
offers nothing, he responds well. I had no hesitation in holding out some hope to him—all he wants is out,
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and I handed him the idea that if he cooperates with me he ought to make it. He was pathetically eager to
please. For once and probably the only time, I’m glad I’m not an officer. He doesn’t like officers. And as
you said, if we put in solitary every GI who feels that way we’d have to evacuate the entire state of
California for housing.
Not having anything with me on that first visit to do any tests—including time, damn you—I sent Gus
for a composition book and some ball-points and told the patient to write the story of his life any way it
came to him, suggesting that third person might help. That’ll give him something to do until I can get back
to him, which will be soon—even sooner if you’ll okay a requisition for a thirty-hour day and a sleep-
eliminator for me.
yrs wearily,
Phil
The third or fourth carbon of a typed transcription.
• • •
George’s Account
The first that anybody heard about George was at this big staging area outside Tokyo and they were so
busy they threw a lot of work to people who usually didn’t do it. Which is the usual Army thing,
thousands of guys sitting around waiting and a few dozen knocking themselves out. One of the things
was the mail. The mail had to be censored but for military stuff and in this particular war, only certain
special military stuff. Anything else was nobody’s business but whoever wrote the letter.
All the same some lieutenant who should have known better, well, he did know better but he did it
anyway, he got very puzzled at one of the letters he was supposed to censor. He took it to a friend of his
who happened to be a major in the Medical Corps, but this major was not just a doctor, he was a
psychiatrist. He looked at the letter and told the lieutenant he had no business worrying himself about, it,
it was not military, which the lieutenant already knew. And that did not do any good because the major
had the letter now and it bothered him just as much, so he sent for the soldier who wrote the letter.
The next day the major cleared up his desk and went and opened the door to the little room outside
where this soldier was waiting. The major had a file in his hand turned around back to back with a lot of
papers. He said “Come in uh,” and looked at the papers, “uh Smith.”
The soldier came in and the major closed the door. The soldier was at attention but he looked around
when he heard the door close. The major did not look at him yet but walked past him looking at the
papers and he said “It’s all right, soldier. At ease.” And he didn’t seem to be so tough. He sat down and
put the papers on the desk and squared them away and finally he leaned back in his shiny brown swivel
chair and took a good look at the soldier.
What he saw was a big fellow with yellow hair and a pink kind of skin and the shoulders and chest
that make the shirt look like it grew on him, it was so snug. He had thick arms and thick legs and he kept
his face closed.
Up to now the major did not tell the soldier he had the letter. So the soldier did not know why he was
there.
The major said, “The company clerk tells me you’re something of a loner, Smith. Don’t run with a
crowd much.”
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The soldier just said, Yes sir. He always liked to let the other guy do the talking as much as he could.
“What do you do for amusement?”
“I like to walk around. At home I fish some. Hunt.” The major did not say anything to this so the
soldier had to say, “There isn’t much of that here. Coons and chucks, I mean. Rabbits.”
The major looked down at his papers and said, “Miss that a lot?”
“Well, yes sir, I reckon.”
“Got a girl at home, George?” The Major called him George this time.
“Sure do, yes sir.”
“Go in town once in a while, do you?”
George knew just what he meant and he just shook his head no.
The major picked up a paper and looked to see if it had anything written on the other side, which it
had not. It was blue paper and had two lines written on it. It was only then that George began staring at it.
He stared at it as much as the major did for the rest of the time he was there but from farther off. The
major seemed to be going to say something about the paper but he did not. He said, “What do you hunt
for, George? I mean, just what do you get out of it?”
He waited, looking down at the paper, and when he did not get an answer he looked up to the
soldier’s face. Then he said, real soft and long, “Hey-y-y...” and got on his feet. He went to the far corner
of the room quickly but sort of sidling, watching the soldier’s face the whole time, took down a glass,
filled it from a cooler, came back and passed it to the soldier. The major said, “Here, you better drink
this.”
The soldier’s face was bone-white and little drops of sweat were all over it and he was shaking and
his eyes were half-way closed and what they call glazed. He took the glass but he did not seem to know
he was taking it. He did not drink out of it but just held it out in front of him. He was staring down at the
paper. The major looked down there too and that was when there was the explosion.
The glass, it seemed to explode but that was really because the soldier squeezed it. The next thing
would be to jump the major and the major knew that because he turned just as white as the soldier. But
what saved the major’s life was the hand still out. First it was dripping water and then it was dripping
blood. The blood dripping was what saved the major, because when George Smith saw it he like forgot
there was anyone or anything else there. Slowly he brought his hand up to his face. The fingers opened
and pieces of bloody glass fell out. He closed the fist and brought it close and began to smell it. He
opened it and along the outside edge of the hand under the little finger, blood was pulsing where a little
artery was cut. George put his mouth on that part.
The major must have pushed a button under his desk or something because the door banged open
without knocking and two MP’s ran in and grabbed George. After a while the major had to come and
help, and then two more MP’s came and that did it. The major had a bloody nose and one of the MP’s
just lay there on the floor without moving. George got his hand back to his mouth and stood breathing
like a bull through his nostrils and watching the blood on the major’s face.
“Wait a minute,” the major said when the MP’s started hustling the soldier out, and they stopped. He
looked George Smith straight in the eye and spoke to him kindly. He was breathing hard and bleeding but
he really was kindly. He said, “What was it, soldier? What did I say?”
George looked at the file folder on the desk and then he looked at the major bleeding and he sucked
at his bleeding hand, and he did not say anything. For three months he did not say anything because he
figured he had said much too much already.
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They packed up the file folder and the soldier and sent both back Stateside.
3
This George Smith was twenty-three years old at the time. He came from Kentucky, back in the hills. It
was hills with woods and bills with farms and every once in a while these little towns that grow like you
know, hair; around something, crossroads or a hole in the ground like a mine.
George came from a mine town. His mother and father came from the old country. They got married
on this side. The father was working in Charleston, South Carolina when he met the mother. Probably the
only reason he married her was she was the only girl he knew who could talk to him. There sure was
nothing else worth while between them. Lonely. People get lonesome by theirselves and then get hooked
up and go off and be lonesome together.
When they went to Kentucky so he could work in the mines they were always set apart from
everybody because they never did learn much English. Whatever it was he wanted, friends or some place
to belong or to be a big shot, he tried to find in a bottle. About the earliest thing George could remember
was the father bellowing drunk and the mother screaming and sometimes George screaming too. This
was not the kind of memory like a thing happens and you remember it. This was no special one time, but
like a colored light or a smell that you live in all the time. And hungry. Practically all the time hungry.
Hungry waiting for the father to come home and sometimes he didn’t and sometimes he came late and
one single word to him about it and he’d start slugging. You found out that when the mother yelled you
didn’t feel hungry any more.
But all the same it was nice. Like the woods. You could walk in the woods and know where you
were, first a little way away from the house, then more, finally, anywhere. The woods in the rain, in the
snow, the woods even when you were hungry, they couldn’t hurt you the way you might get hurt at
home. You might die in the woods or get killed, but the woods did not drink, the woods did not punch
your mother in the face. You’re always all right if you can get away into the woods. The woods are
smooth, you might say, towns are rough. You can lay up to the smooth woods and drink, but not towns,
not people, all split halfway up and prickly. Also you know where you stand in the woods. Animals, now,
they never stay mad. You go to club a rabbit and you miss, or hurt him and he gets away, he’s not going
to get sore about it. Maybe he’s learned something and maybe he’s more careful after that, more scared,
but that’s all. But if you hit out at a person you never know what’s going to come of it, from nothing at
all all the way down to a stretch in the Big House. Also if a squirrel should see you cut a squirrel, it
makes no never mind. But if a person sees you cut a person, look out. Even years later.
When George was old enough to walk he was old enough to be in the woods. No matter what
happened they were there waiting for him. From the time he was eleven there was something as good,
even better, because the father’s sister married a man who had a farm in the south part of Virginia and
although it was a long way away he got to go there once in a while. And he found out years later that as
farms go that farm was pretty nothing, but at the time it was heaven. And for a while he lived there
permanent. But that was later after everyone died.
The only really bad thing that ever happened to George in the woods was when he was five and he
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heard voices and crawled up a ridge and looked down and saw a guy giving it to a girl. It was not the first
time he had seen it but this was different from what happened at home because the girl was not crying.
What he always remembered most about it was this girl’s ankles, they were in the air and every time the
guy lunged they wiggled like putty. George was watching this not thinking one way or the other about it
when the other guy—there was two of them taken this girl out in the woods and the one was hanging
around waiting—well this second guy come up behind George and whupped him with a tree trunk. It was
not a very big tree and it was a long time dead and punky or I guess George would be dead but it hurt a
lot and also scared him very bad, the guy running after him whupping him eight or ten times till George
got away the brush being so thick around there and him so small, it was like clubbing a rabbit in
brambles, you just can’t do it.
They say that these things affect you in late life but it never bothered George. I mean if it was
supposed to scare him away from the woods it did not. Even at five years old George could understand
that it was not the woods done it to him.
Well George had to go to school like everybody else and that was where he first learned to let other
people do the talking because they all did it so easy. George could talk all right, his father made him do it
like in the store and all, but for a long time that hunky talk lay in his mouth and put a stink on every word
that came out and they laughed. Of course after a while George could talk American as good as anyone
but by that time the whole town was calling the father the town drunk which he was and any time George
opened his mouth he was like to get somebody’s fist in it. And besides the other kids in town used to run
together all the time and go to each other’s house, but nobody ever came to George’s house because that
was the one and only place they were scared of the father. And besides the mother was always too sick
and too tired. She had the arthritis at first in her hands and it hurt her to do the wash and clean up
although she did as much as she could and George helped her when nobody was watching. But one thing
he would not do was hang out the clothes because the kids one time saw him do it
All this could of been worse because George just natturally grew big, sixteen pounds when he was
born, his mother used to say that’s what gave her the arthritis, then from the time he was eight or so he
really grew and what with getting left back in school two years he was always bigger than the kids he was
thrown in with. By the time he was twelve he was six feet and a hundred and seventy pounds.
About the hunting. He was only about seven or eight when he started to get anywhere good at it. A
sling shot was all right but it took a long while to get good at. Sometimes he could bean a rabbit with a
club. You go out in the early morning when it is dark and be there at the edge of a field by the woods
when the first light comes. You have a club about two feet long and thick as your wrist, green maple or
hickory is best, green because it is heavier that way. Pine is easier to cut but it gets that pitch on your
hands and clothes and you can not get it off. You get yourself set in thick brush but near the edge so your
arm can swing clear. You stand with your arm back and the club resting in a tree crotch or some place
that takes the weight of it and you make up your mind you will be there without moving for a good long
time. Pretty soon it begins to get light and then the rabbits come out and eat the clover and timothy or
whatever, and jump around and lay flat and rub their stomachs on the wet grass and all that. You pick out
your rabbit and you make up your mind no other one will do. No matter how close another one comes
you leave it be. Pretty soon your rabbit will get just where you want him and no matter what he does, roll
over, wave his feet in the air, squat down and nibble, sniff around another rabbit or whatever, you leave
him be. But when he holds real still with all four feet on the ground and his chin down and his ears
floppy, because when his ears are up he’s on lookout, then you let fly with your club. You want to scrape
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it away from the tree it is resting on because that makes a little sound, just enough to bring him straight
up on his haunches. He’s sticking up out of the ground like a boundary peg. You scrape your club off the
tree and throw it all at once, no waiting, and you throw it low and fast, level with the ground and no
higher than the middle of his ears and you throw it so it spins like an airplane propeller (but the airplane
would have to be flying straight up)and you jump out and dive on that rabbit as soon as the club leaves
your hand. Now if the club hits right it likes to tear his head plumb off but if it knocks him going away,
or if it gets him on the shoulder it just like stuns him and you better be there to grab him because he can
be stunned and back on his feet and gone before you can blink. And if he is stunned you can grab him
and you take hold of his two hind legs in your left hand and pick him up and when you do that to a rabbit
he straightens right out and throws his head back, so with your right hand you chop straight down with
the edge of it and it breaks his neck and he never moves and blood runs out of his nose. But if you do that
to a rat or a chuck or a coon or a squirrel it will not straighten out and throw up its head but instead it will
curl up the other way and bite you. A squirrel can bite you nine times before you can say ouch and it has
big yellow teeth an inch long. A rat that looks dead can get you if you hold it even by the end of the tail,
it can climb up that tail with its front feet hand over hand and cut you good before you get sense enough
to let go. A squirrel bites straight down and leaves holes as big as his teeth but a rat has a way of slashing,
the hole is always much bigger than his teeth, you can not figure out how he does it. A rat if he is stunned
you want to grab the end of his tail and put your foot on it crosswise so the tail is under the arch of your
foot and then pull him up close to the shoe on the other side of the foot. That way you got him up tight
where he can’t but lash around some and you have one hand free to club him or pick up a rock or your
knife or stomp him with your other foot. A ground squirrel, what they call back East a chipmunk, is not
worth your trouble, he has a tail comes off if you grab it, well it does not come off but it skins off and he
gets away and the rest of the tail shrivels up and drops off later. A chipmunk can bite worse than a rat
almost and you would not believe anything that size could get his mouth open that wide, and once you
got him what have you got? He has no more juice than a stewed prune. A skunk is not worth your
trouble, although they are easy to get because they are not afraid of nothing. A possum all you have to do
is lift him clear of the ground. A coon you want to have a good club for and you do not do nothing but
club him and keep it up till you are sure, if he ever gets his back against a tree or a rock and he is not
dead yet you will think somebody threw a buzz saw at you spinning. George got a bobcat throwing a club
once but never again. All cats got the same taste, you breathe outward through your nose and there’s a
taste there like cat pee smell. For hours. You wouldn’t believe it but snakes taste all right, maybe a little
fishy but there is nothing wrong with fish, the only thing is it is not warm. Birds are a waste of time they
are mostly feathers, except a couple of times George saw wild turkey but he never did get near enough
for even a big sling shot. Except ducks. Ducks are fine.
When George got a little older, ten or eleven, he got good with traps. He never could pay for steel
traps but he got so good with snares he did not need them. He could make a deadfall big enough to take a
badger and that is saying something because a badger can dig straight down through a blacktop road if he
has to unless your deadfall rock is big enough to kill him first crack, but this George was a strong boy.
Your deadfall is nothing but a big flat rock tipped up and propped on a stick. Some people tie a long
string to the stick and wait and watch all day till something goes under the rock after the bait, but that is
for boy scouts. George liked to prop up the rock and then whittle the stick almost through, and tie the
string to the notch. The string goes back under the rock around a peg sunk in the ground and then back a
ways and you tie your bait to it. A fox or a possum will grab hold and pull, and the stick breaks and down
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comes the rock. For rabbits a carrot is the best bait because it is strong. For foxes or even a badger
sometimes rabbit meat is good, but don’t ever use the kidneys or you will catch yourself some kind of
damn cat.
The nicest one of all is the figure-four, and George could make one faster than you can climb a
yellow pine tree. All you do is find a nice young hardwood sapling, ash or hickory or even birch if you
got to. You pace off the right distance, depends on the tree, and dig a hole. Then you find a branch thick
as your thumb with a good V crotch on it. You cut it through right under the V and then you cut away one
of the side branches leaving a spur. What you have now is a bushy branch with a hook like. You turn this
upside down and bury the branchy part, stomping it good and putting heavy rocks in the hole and maybe
a log on top, so just the upside-down hook is showing out of the ground. You cut a little notch in the
shank part of the hook and whittle yourself a good strong double-pointed peg to fit into that notch and
cross to the tip of the hook. It looks like a figure 4.
Now you pull down your sapling to bend almost double and tie a piece of twine near the top and the
other end of the twine to the double-pointed peg, and set the peg in the hook to make the figure 4. Real
easy you let the bent tree pull up until the peg sets hard against the hook. Now, tied to this twine just
above the figure 4 is another piece of twine, and tied to this is nothing in the world but a old number one
guitar string, the kind with a little bitty brass stopper on one end looks like a hollow brass barrel. You
have the end of the guitar string passed through this to make a loop. You lay this loop around the bait,
and you tie the bait with a short cord to the double-ended peg in the figure 4. You shake fine dirt all
around until the loop is buried and the bait-cord is buried, and then you go home. In the morning you got
yourself a rabbit or a chuck or maybe even a fox or badger. Because first time he tugs on the bait he pulls
out the peg and that snaps upright and that thin wire loop grabs him and hangs him up higher than
Haman. Or maybe it’s a damn skunk or maybe nothing but the chawed off foot of a fox, but usually it’s
something good.
Oh this George he loved to hunt. But he never liked killing anything. He had no use for people who
killed things just to be killing when the animals never did nothing to them. Nobody should kill nothing
they don’t need to for some purpose. Like deer. One time George found a doe pressed flat against the
ground by a fallen tree after a bad windstorm and he worked all morning clearing it away with just a bitty
hand axe and dragging up poles until he could lever it up high enough to let the deer out The doe like to
died of fear but George just laughed and went on working till he got it loose. George never did kill a deer.
They are too big anyway. But this George, when he wasn’t hunting, or maybe fishing, he was laying
around thinking about it. He sure did like to do it.
4
All the time this hunting was going on, and school days and all, things were getting worse around the
house. The mother got more arthritis and pretty soon she stopped cleaning the house much and couldn’t
hardly cook even. This made the father mad and he got worse than ever. Sometimes he was out all night
and would go to work drunk in the morning and he was a good worker, strong, but sometimes when the
foreman would say something he would argue back and once he hit him but not much. So he kept getting
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laid off. When he got laid off he would draw his pay and then he would go on a mad drunk until he spent
it all. It was not too bad when he stayed away at those times but when he came home it was very bad.
George and the mother always tried not to say the one word that would set him off but any word would
do it. Then he would beat up the mother, punching her right in the face and the blood came and the
mother cried but she never screamed real loud she was so ashamed. He used to beat up George too but
when George was big enough to run away he would run away as soon as the the trouble started and even
before that, as soon as the father came home. He would come back after the father was asleep. Once the
father was asleep there was never any more trouble and when he woke up he never seemed to remember
anything about it. George never ran to the neighbors because they had no use for any of them or to the
cops because the father hated cops and George never thought there was anything wrong with that, who
was to tell him different? He just went into the woods and lay up in a tree or hunted if it was moonlight or
maybe just hung around outside until it got quiet and then peeked in the window to see if he was asleep
and if he was he would come in and get in bed.
And sometimes he would already be in bed and even asleep when the father came in and those were
the times he would wake up hearing the mother crying, first, “Don’t, don’t, not now, the boy, the boy,”
and the father would growl that the boy was asleep. George would keep his eyes tight closed and lie still
like in the woods waiting for the rabbits, and the mother crying “no no” until she would give a little
scream and say, “My hands, oh, my hands,” because that is what he would do, squeeze her arthritis until
she gave in, because he always said there was nothing really wrong with her, she was faking. So she
would stop saying no no but go on crying until he went to sleep. That was one thing about it, he always
went right to sleep.
When George was thirteen he was as big as a man. He was, as big as his father and maybe stronger
although he did not seem to know this. His father was a yellow headed man with a lot of bad teeth and his
skin hung down under his eyes with like little bloody hammocks under the eyeballs and his pants fit him
best if he let his stomach hang out over his belt so he always wore them real low like that. When George
was a little kid he used to try to wear his pants like that but he never had the belly for it. When he got
bigger he stopped trying to do anything like the father. Well when he was thirteen something happened
that changed everything.
The father had been working for quite a spell and for a while there was plenty to eat and George
helped out as much as he could with the cleaning up and all. Because the father would come home and
when he was sober and the house was all cleaned up and dinner cooking he maybe wasn’t like a kind and
loving husband in the movies but at least he walked in and washed up and ate and sat in the door
whittling and went to bed without yelling at anybody or hitting. And once or twice he would look at
something George did like white-washing the wall or fixing the busted porch rail or a step or something
and he would look at it and at George and he would say “Wal aw kay!” in that foreign accent of his and
George would of done anything for him then. And he could still remember the one time he came in and
sniffed in the kitchen and said, “Poy, dat schmells goot!” and the mother just sat there in her wheelchair
and cried. She got the wheelchair from the priest who came visiting I guess to see if a wheelchair would
make her or George or even, the father go to church once in a while, but they never did, the father told
them not to and cussed every time he saw the wheelchair for a month but all the same he let her keep it.
And with things that way naturally George and the mother knocked themselves out trying to keep
everything nice to make it last as long as they could and make the father glad to come home to a nice
place. So this one night was the day he was supposed to stop off at the store on the way home because
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