(Miscellany (noun): a collection of things of various kinds || A home for: my thoughts; my essays; my memoirs; my writing)
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Mule Deer (Part 2 of 2)
‘Me?’ said Mandy, as if she were surprised. Casey looked from his father to her mother, and then at him. There was something in her expression, something inscrutable. In a moment he realised the fascinated-goody-two-shoes thing was just an act. She was as bored as he was. She’d been here as many times as he had, with as many men. Later her mother would ask her if she thought he might be the one, and she’d shrug her shoulders and say something meaningless. She’d got a sundae out of it, what should she care?
‘Yes,’ said his father. ‘Tell me about you.’
Mandy began to speak. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I was born right near Omaha but we came out here when I was a little girl. My father worked the farm -- ’
‘And your mother?’
Mandy shrugged. She carried on speaking, but he stopped listening. Casey was looking down into her lap. She’d begun swinging her leg, kicking against the leg of the table. He shifted back on the chair. He wanted her to stop. It was getting too hot in the restaurant, the air conditioning must be fucked. The air felt thick and soupy, his icecream felt like a distant memory. He wanted another cola.
‘Dad?’ he said, but his father ignored him. Mandy was talking about her husband, now. He wondered how she’d got onto him so quickly.
‘Dad?’ he said again. This time his father glanced in his direction. His eyes were narrowed. It was a warning. Behave, his father was saying, or else. He turned his attention back to Mandy. It was like Scott hadn’t spoken. Didn’t exist. Casey carried on swinging her leg. Her foot hit the leg of the table again, and then again, and then she missed. She hit him. His shin, just below his knee. It didn’t hurt, but still. She could’ve said sorry.
He looked at her. She was still smiling up at her mother, then at his father, then back again. She was ignoring him. She had her hands folded on the table in front of her, the same as the mother. They’d both interlinked their fingers in the exact same way. He wondered if it was something they’d rehearsed.
A moment later Casey hit him again. This time she flashed him a glance, barely noticeable, but long enough for him to work she’d kicked him deliberately.
He looked at her hands. Her middle finger was outstretched. She was flipping him the bird, but she retracted it before he could say anything, before anyone else could notice.
He hesitated for a moment, then kicked her back. What else could he do? He aimed as well as he could, kicked as hard as he could. He got her right in the shin, felt a satisfying thud of connection. Casey yelped. Her mother stopped talking and turned to her. ‘Honey!’ she said. ‘Behave , for heaven’s sake!’
The bitch was pointing at him. ‘He kicked me!’ she said. She was wailing. Tears were already streaming down her face. A moment later his father hit him. A clip, across the top of the head. ‘That’s it!’ he was saying. He hit him again, then pushed him out of the booth, so that he fell onto the floor. His father grabbed his ear. He lifted him up, still shouting, until he was on his feet. ‘Excuse me, ladies,’ he said, through gritted teeth, but they didn’t answer. Casey was still wailing and Mandy was hunting through her bag for tissues.
His father walked him towards the bathrooms, then past them and out of the back door of the restaurant and into the sunbaked yard. He slammed him against the wall.
‘What the fuck!’ he was saying. ‘What. The. Fuck.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He was crying too, now, but his father wasn’t listening. He was up close, his mouth right next to his ear. He was hissing. ‘Do not fuck this one up,’ he said. ‘D’you hear me? That bitch in there is fucking loaded. Did you see those nails? The rings? And she’s wet for me. Y’hear? I might even get a poke out of the slut. And all you have to do is to keep your mouth shut until I tell you. You think you can do that?’
He tried to nod, to say yes, but there was something warm in his mouth. Blood, it must be. He must’ve bitten his tongue, or the inside of his lip. He licked his lips, the swallowed. It tasted like the metal of his mother’s wristwatch.
‘Y’hear me?’ said his father. He had his arm twisted behind his back and he wrenched it higher. ‘Just do what we arranged. Remember?’
Of course he did, he thought. He knew the signal, knew what he had to do. Just like all the other times. It’d never failed yet. He’d throw himself to the floor. He’d thrash. Sometimes he could even manage to foam at the mouth, though he wasn’t sure that actually looked as good as he thought it did. It didn’t really matter, though. It always worked.
The first time had been real. His first fit. In a restaurant, a burger joint. His whole body tensed, then he slumped to the floor. The other diners either stared or looked away. His father hadn’t known what to do. He’d hissed at him, told him to behave, and then when his eyes rolled right back in his head he’d started shouting. ‘Scott!’ he said. ‘Scott! Stop it right now!’ Luckily there was some woman there who said she was a doctor. She’d known what to do. She knelt next to him, she cushioned his head with a rolled up jacket. Then she waited for it to stop before turning him onto his side.
His father hadn’t moved from his seat. He’d just sat there, open mouthed.
‘Has this happened before?’ she asked him. He said no, and she told him to take him to the doctor’s as soon as they could. It might not be anything to worry about. It might not happen again. So far it hadn’t.
‘Thing is,’ his father had told him later, ‘that doctor left her bag right there on the table. Did you see? She just came over. Left it all there. Anyone could’ve taken it.’
That was when his father first had the idea. They’ve refined it over the months; now it works every time. He starts to fit. Sometimes he shakes, apparently uncontrollably, other times he just slumps to the floor. He always makes sure he takes a glass with him, or a plate of food. He wants to make as much noise as possible, as much fuss. The other diners ignore him, or else just sit and stare. His father sits there too, open-mouthed. ‘Scott?’ he says. ‘Scott, what the fuck--?’
He makes sure to piss himself, just to be sure. He always wears his grey school trousers, so no one misses it. His father’s date will always react. She’ll pick him up, or else just hold him. Sometimes she’ll put something under his head, just like the doctor the first time. He calms down, pretends to be coming round, while his father sits there, acting useless and dumb, and that’s when the date offers to take him to the bathroom, to get him cleaned up. The whole restaurant watches as this woman carries the sick kid to the bathroom, and while they do his father grabs the woman’s bag, her purse, whatever. He swipes the keys to her car too, then walks out. People don’t stop him, even if they notice. They don’t want to interfere.
All Scott has to do is recover in the bathroom, let himself be cleaned up. Then, after he walks back into the restaurant with his new best friend, he just has to run.
This is a new thing, though, this wetness the woman is supposed to be feeling for his father. It isn’t something that’s seemed to matter before.
‘But—‘ he began, but his father twisted his arm again. It was the one he’d broken and pain shot through him. It hadn’t been healed for that long, just a year or so. Surely his father remembered that?
‘But what? We’ll go back in there. We’ll finish our food. We’ll pay. Then we’ll find a motel.’
‘A motel? What--?’
‘We’ll get a room, dickwad. Y’know?’ He felt his father grind his crotch against him. ‘You can sit in the car with little missy out there.’ He lowered his voice further. ‘Or you wanna watch?’
He didn’t want to think about it. He’d heard it enough times and the last thing he needed to do was watch it too.
‘This one is eating out of the palm of my hand. We might be able to screw her for more than a few bucks if we’re clever about it. Don’t rush it. Y’know?’
He tried to nod his head but his father was still pushing him against the wall. He felt his mouth all squashed up.
‘So let’s just play it cool. You behave like a nice little boy. Okay?’ His father let him go and then stood back. He nodded, spat a bloody mouthful onto the ground, then wiped his face with his shirtsleeve. They walked back into the restaurant, his father ahead of him, past the bathrooms, through the swing doors, towards their table. For a moment he had this idea. Their table will be empty, Mandy has gone, Casey too. They’ve taken his father’s wallet, his credit cards, his phone, his car keys. This time they’ve been unlucky.
Or else it will be his mother sitting there. She’ll be wearing the sundress with the poppies and smiling that lopsided smile she always had, and she’ll have ordered him a coke and some more icecream, and his brother will be there too, and they’ll be glad to see him. There’ll be an argument of course, but this time his mother will win. They’ll take him home in the station wagon and it’ll be his father left there on his own, standing in a puddle of his own piss, wondering what the fuck is going on.
But in the end neither happened. The place was as they left it. There was another lemonade on the table, in front of Casey, and a cola where he’d been sitting. The same CD was playing on the stereo, looped back to the first song. The same waitress was bending down to the same fridge for another of the same bottle.
‘I got you a beer,’ said Mandy as they slid back into their seats. ‘It’s on its way.’ She hesitated, glanced at Scott. He could see her take in the bloodied nose, the grit that clung to his cheek. He should’ve cleaned up properly. It might all be fucked, now.
‘All good?’ she said.
His father flapped open his napkin and let it fall back into his crotch. He did the same, just like he’d been told. The cola would help, he thought. Later. If he needed it.
‘Swell,’ said his father. ‘Everything’s just swell.