‘Around that time, my parents became extra-quiet. I’m not sure I noticed everything at the time, except that one day I realised exactly what was going on.’
He stopped, looked to the floor and half coughed. She silently passed him a tissue, which he took without acknowledgement. He used it to wipe the snot and ignored the tears. He clutched the used tissue as he continued. Dana took short, silent breaths.
‘My parents had been strict, yes. But fair. They had a code: respect the Bible, live simply, don’t answer back. It was easy to follow, Detective. It chimed with my… with me. I didn’t find it hard to stick to, so I wasn’t in a heap of trouble. We’d argue about what was a suitable book, but other than that I was no problem to them. But Jeb? When he became a teenager, Jeb was a different story.
‘When he got to sixteen he started pushing them around. Physically pushing them around. He argued with Father and locked him in the cellar. Literally – dragged him by the arm and hair and pushed him into our cellar. It was where we kept the root vegetables and the wood for the stove. Dark, damp, unhealthy; snakes and fear. And my father screamed. Claustrophobic, you see: I mean, he really screamed, like someone was chopping his limbs off. I’d never heard anything that bad before. An hour in there and he was begging. Jeb went down and told our father his fortune. That was all it took: we had a new boss.
‘Jeb started to call the shots. Who went where, what we did. He could threaten Father with the cellar, and other things, and Father knew they weren’t idle threats. Besides, Jeb had shown his power. It was that simple – all the prayer, all the authority of parenthood, dissolved when someone was big and brutal and violent and didn’t care. Like that thing Mike Tyson said, Detective: Everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
‘And Jeb could threaten Father by threatening Mother. After all, Father was out all day and I was eight: she was at Jeb’s mercy, and he had none. I had no choice; I had a new path in terms of discipline, orders and behaviour. A new master. A new father.’
Dana swallowed. Below the desk, finger and thumb tapped. She was horrified how many parallels there were between her life and Nathan’s. Both were ruptured when they were eight. Both rattled and riddled by something they could barely comprehend. Both lives dominated by a quiet, resilient but directionless survival.
‘Jeb began to change things. I liked some of them – a bit of pop music, some more TV. But it was only ever what Jeb mandated, only what Jeb allowed and could take away. Some of them I didn’t like. Jeb took control of the bank accounts. Soon enough, they transferred all the property to his name. I was ten then, old enough to begin to understand what that meant. We were all Jeb’s tenants now: at his beck and call.
‘When I started high school I got a little release. Jeb never stopped me going, but he sneered at any education that wasn’t practical. Useless, he called it. Empty. When he drank, he started hitting people. Things. Anything in his zone. It got uglier and uglier. He started having girls over from the city – his party nights. My parents and I had to go to the barn and sleep among the machinery – he wouldn’t have us in the house. Shivering, silent; water from a trough. We never spoke of the implications, Detective. We barely spoke at alclass="underline" we all felt the shame, and it didn’t need spelling out.’
Nathan stopped, slurped at the water with a needy, raspy breath, spilling some of it. Dana wondered whether to speak or wait for him to resume. But it became clear he needed a prompt, for there to be another voice in the room. Some counterpoint to the sound of his own desperation.
‘There was never any rebellion? No thoughts of escape?’
‘Not really. Jeb could smash any of us to a paste, any old time. My parents were not the adversarial type, Detective. Nor was I. We were raised compliant – not so much submissive as accepting. There’s a subtle difference. Our meekness was a practical survival instinct, an acceptance of the consequences. Jeb had the property, the money, the only car. We were isolated socially, physically. We were terrified; we’d seen what he could do and how easy it was to do it. That was the overriding thing – his cruelty was easy for him, a default. Sometimes I harboured ideas of sneaking up on him when he was asleep, slamming into his head with a shovel. But really, it was an empty dream – I lacked the guts and I knew it would go wrong. Dreaming it made me feel weaker: it emphasised that I would never do it.’
Classic abusive behaviour, thought Dana. The threats, the isolation, the destruction of self. Almost everything by implication; it rarely needed to be carried out. A very real but utterly intangible danger – one others couldn’t see, chose to ignore or wouldn’t care to understand.
‘Didn’t you acquire a car of your own? A Toyota? Couldn’t you escape in that?’
Nathan thought for a moment, temporarily perplexed.
‘Ah, no. That thing. That was much later. A scam by Jeb; my name on the forms, but I never even saw the car. He had some con going; insurance, I think.’
‘I see. Sorry.’ Dana cursed herself for interrupting the flow – she should have stayed silent.
Nathan sat back in his chair and regarded his hands. When he was struggling with what to reveal he seemed to shrink back to this childlike body language. Dana wondered when that impulse had emerged and felt a connection to her own finger-and-thumb reflex.
‘I… uh, maybe I shouldn’t be talking about this.’ Nathan’s voice was almost a whisper.
She shuddered inside. She couldn’t let him stop – not now. Her interruption had given him the option.
‘Why are you reluctant, Mr Whittler?’
He shook his head.
‘I mean,’ she continued, ‘that you have something you’ve held within for a very long time. I respect that; understand that. As you appreciate. But I also know that some things have a natural timing; there’s a reason they reach for the light and a reason you should let them.’
He shook his head sadly. She could feel revelation drifting from her grasp.
‘As things stand, Mr Whittler, you have something inside you that you want me to know. You want me to understand it; that matters to you, and for a very particular reason. You know that I can put information together. You know I can comprehend. More than that, I can understand. So I think that, while you’re nervous about the telling, you actually want me to know.’
She paused to see if she was having any impact. There was no sign of it.
‘The telling doesn’t have to be precise or perfect, Mr Whittler. It simply has to communicate what you wish me to understand. That’s all.’
He swallowed hard, then nodded. Dana tried to hide her relief. Nathan resumed, almost reverential.
‘He made me get a job. He wanted money, and Father’s wages weren’t enough. Jeb was working construction a little; dealing drugs on the side. Lots of building buddies wanted some stuff for the weekend – Jeb made himself indispensable. And then, about a year before I left, it got much worse. Oh, God.’
Nathan’s limbs suddenly flailed, as though slapping away an invisible force. She feared he’d fall to the ground. Gradually, his shaking arms came under control and he settled again, his voice continuing to quiver as he stared at the wall.
‘Each Saturday, Jeb would tell my parents after lunch that it was “nap time”. I was twenty-three, Detective. A small, weak, pummelled, ashamed twenty-three. He was way bigger than all of us. My father was average height but skinny; my mother was tiny. Jeb was full-size: bigger than any of your colleagues. He barked, “Nap time,” and they’d all shuffle off up the stairs. Jeb didn’t need to tell me to stay where I was – one look was enough.’