paunched his daughter’s rock-hard nopples” without thinking of Gretchen barricading herself in her room.
I thought I might throw the book away or maybe even burn it, but like a perfectly good outgrown sweater, it seemed a shame
to destroy it when the world was full of people who might get some use out of it. With this in mind, I carried the book to
the grocery-store parking lot and tossed it into the bed of a shining new pickup truck. Whistling out of apprehension and
nervous relief, I took up my post beside the store’s outdoor vending machine, waiting until the truck’s owner returned pushing
a cart full of groceries. He was a wiry man with fashionable mutton-chop sideburns and a half cast on his arm. As he placed
his bags in the back of the truck, his eyes narrowed upon the book. I watched as he picked it up and leafed through the first
few pages before raising his head to search the parking lot, combing the area as if he might spot either a surveillance camera
or, preferably, a vanload of naked swingers pressing their bare breasts against the windows and inviting him to join the fun.
He took a cigarette from his pocket and tapped it against the roof of the truck before lighting it. Then he slipped the book
into his back pocket and drove away.
cyclops
When he was young my father shot out his best friend’s eye with a BB gun. That is what he told us. “One foolish moment and,
Jesus, if I could take it back, I would.” He winced, shaking his fist as if it held a rattle. “It eats me alive,” he said.
“I mean to tell you that it absolutely tears me apart.”
On one of our summer visits to his hometown, my father took us to meet this guy, a shoe salesman whose milky pupil hugged
the corner of his mangled socket. I watched the two men shake hands and turned away, sickened and ashamed by what my father
had done.
Our next-door neighbor received a BB gun for his twelfth birthday and accepted it as a personal challenge to stalk and maim
any living creature: sunbathing cats, sparrows, slugs, and squirrels — if it moved, he shot it. I thought this was an excellent
idea, but every time I raised the gun to my shoulder, I saw my father’s half-blind friend stumbling forth with an armload
of Capezios. What would it be like to live with that sort of guilt? How could my father look himself in the mirror without
throwing up?
While watching television one afternoon my sister Tiffany stabbed me in the eye with a freshly sharpened pencil. The blood
was copious, and I rode to the hospital knowing that if I was blinded, my sister would be my slave for the rest of her life.
Never for one moment would I let her forget what she’d done to me. There would be no swinging cocktail parties in her future,
no poolside barbeques or episodes of carefree laughter, not one moment of joy — I would make sure of that. I’d planned my
vengeance so thoroughly that I was almost disappointed when the doctor announced that this was nothing but a minor puncture
wound, located not on but beneath the eye.
“Take a look at your brother’s face,” my father said, pointing to my Band-Aid. “You could have blinded him for life! Your
own brother, a Cyclops, is that what you want?” Tiffany’s suffering eased my pain for an hour or two, but then I began to
feel sorry for her. “Every time you reach for a pencil, I want you to think about what you’ve done to your brother,” my father
said. “I want you to get on your knees and beg him to forgive you.”
There are only so many times a person can apologize before it becomes annoying. I lost interest long before the bandage was
removed, but not my father. By the time he was finished, Tiffany couldn’t lift a dull crayon without breaking into tears.
Her pretty, suntanned face assumed the characteristics of a wrinkled, grease-stained bag. Six years old and the girl was broken.
Danger was everywhere and it was our father’s lifelong duty
I thought I might throw the book away or maybe even burn it, but like a perfectly good outgrown sweater, it seemed a shame
to destroy it when the world was full of people who might get some use out of it. With this in mind, I carried the book to
the grocery-store parking lot and tossed it into the bed of a shining new pickup truck. Whistling out of apprehension and
nervous relief, I took up my post beside the store’s outdoor vending machine, waiting until the truck’s owner returned pushing
a cart full of groceries. He was a wiry man with fashionable mutton-chop sideburns and a half cast on his arm. As he placed
his bags in the back of the truck, his eyes narrowed upon the book. I watched as he picked it up and leafed through the first
few pages before raising his head to search the parking lot, combing the area as if he might spot either a surveillance camera
or, preferably, a vanload of naked swingers pressing their bare breasts against the windows and inviting him to join the fun.
He took a cigarette from his pocket and tapped it against the roof of the truck before lighting it. Then he slipped the book
into his back pocket and drove away.
cyclops
When he was young my father shot out his best friend’s eye with a BB gun. That is what he told us. “One foolish moment and,
Jesus, if I could take it back, I would.” He winced, shaking his fist as if it held a rattle. “It eats me alive,” he said.
“I mean to tell you that it absolutely tears me apart.”
On one of our summer visits to his hometown, my father took us to meet this guy, a shoe salesman whose milky pupil hugged
the corner of his mangled socket. I watched the two men shake hands and turned away, sickened and ashamed by what my father
had done.
Our next-door neighbor received a BB gun for his twelfth birthday and accepted it as a personal challenge to stalk and maim
any living creature: sunbathing cats, sparrows, slugs, and squirrels — if it moved, he shot it. I thought this was an excellent
idea, but every time I raised the gun to my shoulder, I saw my father’s half-blind friend stumbling forth with an armload
of Capezios. What would it be like to live with that sort of guilt? How could my father look himself in the mirror without
throwing up?
While watching television one afternoon my sister Tiffany stabbed me in the eye with a freshly sharpened pencil. The blood
was copious, and I rode to the hospital knowing that if I was blinded, my sister would be my slave for the rest of her life.
Never for one moment would I let her forget what she’d done to me. There would be no swinging cocktail parties in her future,
no poolside barbeques or episodes of carefree laughter, not one moment of joy — I would make sure of that. I’d planned my
vengeance so thoroughly that I was almost disappointed when the doctor announced that this was nothing but a minor puncture
wound, located not on but beneath the eye.
“Take a look at your brother’s face,” my father said, pointing to my Band-Aid. “You could have blinded him for life! Your
own brother, a Cyclops, is that what you want?” Tiffany’s suffering eased my pain for an hour or two, but then I began to
feel sorry for her. “Every time you reach for a pencil, I want you to think about what you’ve done to your brother,” my father
said. “I want you to get on your knees and beg him to forgive you.”
There are only so many times a person can apologize before it becomes annoying. I lost interest long before the bandage was
removed, but not my father. By the time he was finished, Tiffany couldn’t lift a dull crayon without breaking into tears.
Her pretty, suntanned face assumed the characteristics of a wrinkled, grease-stained bag. Six years old and the girl was broken.
Danger was everywhere and it was our father’s lifelong duty
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