As I Die Lying by Scott Nicholson Page A

she loved me or because she’s the one who got
a dollar’s worth of candy.

 
     
    CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    Mr. Bakken pounded on our door, yelling,
"Come out, you goddamn cuckold."
    I was in the kitchen, eating a bowl of cereal
full of unfortunate marshmallow charms. Father opened the door and
looked out, scratching inside the sleeve of his gray T-shirt. Mr.
Bakken reached through the hole in the screen and grabbed at
Father's throat. Father stepped back and kicked the handle off the
storm door so that it swung open. Then he stepped out onto the
porch, a crooked smile on his chapped lips like the one he'd worn
at Granddad's funeral.
    "Let's do it up right, Mac," he said, with
rare cheer.
    Mr. Bakken punched Father in the side of the
head. Father became a wolverine, a blur of ferocity, an
International Harvester of pain and rage. He brought his sharp
fists into Mr. Bakken's beefy red face again and again, until I
couldn't see Mr. Bakken's freckles for the blood. When Mr. Bakken
fell down, crumpled like a sack of feed corn in the dirt by the
driveway, Father's dancing boots gave a rare daylight
performance.
    The police came and took Father away and the
crackling radio in one of the police cars said something about a
domestic dispute and then a bunch of numbers that started with
ten.
    “ I have to go bail him out,”
Mother said.
    “ Why?” I failed to
understand why she wanted to shatter the peace that had descended
in our home like the sudden silence in a forest after a hunter’s
shotgun blast.
    “ I have to,” she said. “I
married him.”
    Father returned like a conquering hero, the
cock of the block, strutting around preening his feathers. At least
the attention kept his anger off me and Mother. Looking back, I
believe it was the closest I ever came to admiring him. Then again,
how could I know what I was thinking? That sounds like something my
invisible friend would dream up, or one of the headmates who claim
to be my co-writers. Admire that bastard? Never.
    The Bakkens moved a week later. We watched
them pack. Mother stood on the porch biting her white lips, a glass
of brown liquid in her hand. Liquor from one of Father's
bottles.
    The Bakkens filled up their blue station
wagon, piled the stuff of their life on top until I thought the
roof might cave in. Mr. Bakken's face was bandaged like a mummy's.
Only his burning eyes showed, looking around like he wished he
could set fire to the apartment building, the woods, the
checkerboard landscape, and the entire world, but mostly like he
wanted to set fire to the past. If only our life stories were paper
pages instead of real things.
    I watched from the kitchen window as Mr.
Bakken stomped the tailgate of the wagon shut and walked back into
their apartment. Sally came outside, her pigtails gone, her dull
bronze hair wilting under the August sun. She carried an armful of
dolls, squeezing them against her chest as if afraid that someone
might snatch them away, pieces of Angel Baby tangled among them.
She climbed into the open door into the backseat without looking
around.
    She hadn't given me a good-bye kiss.
    So much for love and its eternal promise.
    Then Mrs. Bakken came out, even paler than
usual. She had blue bruises under her eyes and her face was puffy.
She gnawed at the tip of her pinky like an animal trying to free
itself from a steel trap. She stared at her feet as she walked to
the car. The invisible knives of her glare had been packed away
with the spatulas, blankets, and towels.
    Mr. Bakken brought up the rear of the
miserable parade. He went down the stairs and turned to Mother.
    "At least we get to leave. You have to stay,"
he said, his words muffled by his swollen lips. "I guess everybody
gets what they deserve."
    Then he closed the car doors and got behind
the wheel and started the engine. Mother went inside. As the
station wagon pulled out of the driveway, its tires crunching on
asphalt crumbs, I caught a glimpse of the back of Sally's head and
wondered what