After everyone else went home, Barry and his father went back to their house, changed from their suits into work clothes, and then returned to the grave. Slowly, they lowered Dane Graco 's coffin into the hole via a winch rope and pulley system. The casket was heavy, and Barry' s arms and back ached afterward. His father didn ' t allow him to take a break once the coffin rested at the bottom of the grave. Instead, Barry began shoveling dirt back into the hole while his father retrieved the backhoe. The clouds had finally cleared, and the temperature rose. It was hard, sweaty work, and Barry was glad that evening was drawing closer. It would have been even hotter had the sun been in the sky, rather than setting on the horizon. His calloused hands blistered beneath his leather work gloves.
Barry hated this, hated working for his father, slaving away every day, mowing and digging and raking while his friends enjoyed the summer. Nobody else' s fathers made them work like this. Randy Graco didn't force Timmy to go to the paper mill with him every day. Why should he be stuck doing this stuff all summer long, just because his father was a drunk? Chores, his father called them.
Barry knew about chores, and this wasn't it. Timmy had chores; weeding the garden and sweeping out the basement, stuff that took him an hour or so to complete. Timmy bitched and complained about it, but Barry could only laugh. Timmy had no idea how lucky he was. He didn 't have to bust his rear just to cover for his old man's laziness.
Barry didn't know what he wanted to be when he grew up, but it certainly wasn't his father. Buzzing gnats flew in front of his face, darting for his eyes and ears. He waved them away and dropped another shovel full of dirt onto the coffin, listening to it hit the wood and trickle down the sides.
Minutes later, another sound echoed across the graveyard, the roar of the backhoe's powerful diesel engine as it sputtered to life. Slowly, his father backed it out of the utility shed and drove over to the grave, carefully weaving the big machine through the tombstones. Barry backed out of the way, grateful for the short break, and wiped the sweat from his brow. Using the scoop, his father quickly filled the hole with dirt. Then he shut off the backhoe, hopped down, and lit a cigarette. Smoke curled into the sky. The tip glowed.
Barry thought his father seemed nervous.
The sun edged closer to the horizon.
"No screwing around now," Clark grumbled. "Let's get this done quick. Your mom's got dinner waiting."
"Yes, sir."
Barry tensed. His father' s tone was all too familiar. It meant trouble tonight. For him, for his mother, for anybody who did anything to piss him off. Barry wondered whose turn it would be this time.
He hated his father. Sometimes, late at night when everyone was asleep, Barry imagined what it would be like to kill him. He thought about it again now. To hit him over the head with the shovel, dig up the dirt and throw him down on top of Dane Graco' s coffin, then fill it all in again, burying his old man alive. He grinned, even as sour bile rose in his throat. He knew it wasn't right, thinking that way. He knew that God could see inside his heart, just like Reverend Moore said. But he couldn't help it. Besides, if God really cared, then why didn't He step in and help them? Why did He allow Barry and his mother to continue living this way? He imagined his father in the hole, gasping and sputtering as the dirt hit him in the face. His smile grew broader.
"What are you grinning about?" Clark grunted. "You laughing at me?"
"No."
"Then what you grinning about?"
"Nothing."
"Wipe that damn smirk off your face and keep working."
"Yeah…"
"Yeah? Yeah what?"
Barry lowered his eyes. "Yes, sir."
They replanted the squares of sod on top of the grave, as they'd done so many times before, and neither said a word to the other as they worked. Barry watched his father out of the corner of his eye, trying to determine if he was drunk yet. He knew that his father kept a bottle of Wild Turkey hidden in the shed, and it was very likely he 'd taken a few swigs while getting the backhoe. Barry hadn't told Timmy and Doug about the secret stash. They might want to try some, the way they had last summer when they
'd found a six pack of Old Milwaukee beer that Pat Kemp had left in the creek to stay cold (the oversized pounder cans). Secretly, Barry was terrified of alcohol and its effects. He'd seen firsthand what it did to his father, turning him into someone else, into a monster, and he had no desire to do the same. Barry 's biggest fear was of becoming his father. He'd heard other adults say that happenedas you got older, you became your parents. He' d vowed that in his case, he 'd make sure that didn't happen. Never. He hated it when some wellmeaning adult patted him on the head and said, 'Why, you look just like your father.'
His father was an abusive drunk, and Barry had the scars, both physical and mental, to prove it.
But his father didn' t seem drunk now. He seemed… apprehensive. And as the sun sank lower, his agitation increased. He kept glancing around the cemetery, as if looking for something… or someone.
"You okay, Dad?"
Clark frowned. "Course I'm okay. Why? You saying I don't look okay?"
"No. It's nothing."
"Well, then quit dicking around."
"Yes, sir."
Finished with the job, they tamped the sod down firmly, and then stepped back. Clark Smeltzer mopped his forehead with a red bandanna. "Let's get home."
"Don't we need to water the sod first?"
"No." He glanced up at the advancing twilight. "We'll do it tomorrow. Been a long day."
"But"
"None of your lip." A vein throbbed on his father's forehead. "I said we're leaving. Now."
"Sorry."
"Shut up."
They went home. Barry's mother had fixed pork chops, green beans, and mashed potatoes.
Barry did his best to eat, but he had no appetite. When his mother asked him what was wrong, he didn't reply. The look on his father's face halted further discussion. After dinner, Barry tried to watch television. He couldn't focus on the show. Later on, his father got very drunk, split Barry' s lip open with a backhand slap, and chased his mother around the house with a belt, laughing and shouting. Barry fled for the safety of his bedroom, and put his fingers in his ears to block out the sounds of leather meeting flesh, and of his mother 's screams, and his father's curses. He' d tried to help her once before, and as a result, had been out of school for a week until the bruises faded. Afterward, his mother had made him promise never to do it again. And he hadn't. Not because of his promise, but because he was afraid. Afraid of what his father would do the next time.
So he did nothing.
Under his pillow was a BB pistol, powered by a CO2 cartridge. It looked just like the gun Clint Eastwood used in his Dirty Harry movies. Barry often wished it were the real thing. Sometimes, when his father was passed out drunk and there was no danger of waking him up, Barry would creep up beside him in the darkness and point the BB pistol at his head.
But not tonight.
Barry cried himself to sleep; hot tears, full of shame and anger and hopelessness. He dreamed of monsters.
Doug cowered in bed; dirty flannel SpiderMan sheets pulled up over his head, he listened to his mother pawing at his doorknob, pleading drunkenly, her speech slurred by vodka, whispering the things she wanted to do to him, things Doug had read about in Hustler. Dirty things. He' d never told Barry or Timmy, but those things filled him with dread. The same pictures of naked women that his friends drooled and snickered over made him feel queasy.
He'd seen those private feminine parts in real life, and it was horrible. The thing his mother had between her legs looked nothing like the women in the pictures. It didn ' t offer the same promise. It was a dark place, full of shame and guilt and nausea.