Seven

Dan

They’d probably just stopped scratching their heads over that bullet Bridget puked up by the time Billy and me had high-tailed it out to the pick-up and peeled out of the parking lot.

The boy was tight-lipped most of the ride home, but I knew I needed to speak up. I’d kept it mum when he shot his mother, but after what we’d just seen with Bridget, I figured it was time for a little fatherly advice. Keep in mind too this was months before I read the article about Bridget, months before I understood what Pam’s obsession with criminology really meant. So no matter how you might look on my intentions, my qualities and decisions as a father, I think you’d have to admit I showed a lot of foresight on that drive home.

“Let me talk straight at you son,” I said, as I lit a cigarette and cracked a window in the pickup. “When I gave you that gun, there wasn’t nothing in my head but the bitter cuss words of a drunk and disappointed father. Now, your daddy may not be a genius, but I ain’t a dumb man by any stretch of the taffy. I’m smart enough to know what I see when I see it. You shot your mother two days ago, put a bullet through her gut and somehow no more than scratched her. Today then you shot Miss Bridget in the neck, and we just saw that even after having the bullet come out her gullet, she’s just dandy as candy. It’s simple arithmetic, boy. One fluke plus another fluke equals no flukes. There’s something more going on here than luck. So let’s not worry about why I gave you that gun. That’s in the past, you know. It’s like I’m here, you’re here--let’s be here. Okay?” I pinched my cigarette in the corner of my mouth so I could free up a hand to tussle Billy’s hair.

He looked up at me and smiled. But it was one of those smiles that’s only in the mouth. His eyes, dry as they were, could have been crying.

“It’s OK, little man,” I went on. “What I’m saying is I’m on your side. You were right to lie to those cops today, because they ain’t going to understand. No body is. Hell, I can’t say I got it all figured out just yet, but I think we might be sniffing around something pretty damn special right here. I can’t say what we’re going to do. But I tell you this, no matter what might have happened in the past, from this day forward, your Daddy’s going to be there for you.”

Read Next Chapter