A Fine Dark Line Read Online Free

thing.”
    “Was she throwing them in her room?”
    “Do what?”
    “Water balloons?”
    Daddy looked at me for a long moment, blinked, said, “Oh . . . Oh, I see . . . Why yes, son. She was. I can’t tolerate that kind of thing . . . Tell you what. We’ll talk later.”
    Daddy stood up and went inside.
    I sat there for a while, then toddled inside, confused. Whatever our conversation had been about, I was certain of one thing: It wasn’t a matter Daddy really wanted to discuss anyway.
    ———
    I N THE NEXT FEW DAYS there occurred what seemed to me a series of random events. Oh, I knew Callie was in trouble for the water balloon, but it astonished me that Mom and Daddy told her she wasn’t going anywhere for six months or longer, or “maybe forever,” as Daddy put it, unless it was with the family.
    Callie was also weepy all the time, and that surprised me. She normally took her punishment quite stoically, though it seemed to me she always got off lighter on everything than I did. She usually had Daddy wrapped around her little finger, but this time that wasn’t the case. He was harder on her than Mom was, and Mom wasn’t easy. She gave Callie all mannerof odd chores, and would break out crying sometimes when she saw her.
    Callie’s boyfriend, Chester, who she had met the second day we arrived in Dewmont, and who was nineteen, stopped coming around soon after, due to Daddy and him having what Mom would refer to in later years as an altercation.
    To be more precise, Daddy told him not to show his face there again. After a few days, however, Chester ignored him, coming up one Sunday afternoon wanting to talk to Daddy, as he said, “Like a man.”
    He came up in his black hotrod Ford, flame licks painted on the sides, got out, his hair sculptured into what looked like a black, overturned gravy boat. He had on a pink and black shirt and jeans with the cuffs rolled up, and a pair of, you guessed it, blue suede shoes.
    Chester got out of his car slowly, like a visiting dignitary from the planet Rockabilly.
    Daddy had already received word of his arrival, as I had been out in the front yard with Nub, messing about, and as soon as Chester showed, I rushed into the house to tattle.
    I followed Daddy outside. Chester cocked his leg forward, tried to look like Elvis. He said, “Sir, I want to set you straight on something about me and Callie.”
    That was the wrong tone. Daddy’s answer was to spring on Chester. Daddy’s fist found Chester’s mouth, and after that blow there was a sound from Chester like someone torturing a cat. Then Daddy was straddling him, beating him like a circus monkey.
    Well, actually, had Daddy been serious, Chester would have never gotten up. Daddy was slapping him repeatedly, saying, “Getting any smarter, grease stick, getting any smarter?”
    Chester’s IQ didn’t seem to be rising, but his voice had certainly jumped some octaves. After about five minutes ofslapping it reached the level of the tenors in the Vienna Boys Choir, only less melodious.
    And so, with Daddy straddling Chester under the shadow of the drive-in wall, trying desperately to raise Chester’s IQ with repeated slapping, the morning passed. Or so it seemed. I do believe Daddy slapped Chester for about fifteen minutes.
    Chester wailed for God to come down from the heavens and save him, and though God didn’t show, Mom and Callie did.
    Fearing Daddy would really lose it, turn his hitting into something more serious, Mom and me and Callie pulled him off. Daddy called Chester a sonofabitch while Chester limped for his car, his face red from slapping, his greasy hair hanging in front of his face, his ducktail mashed flat against his neck, the ass of his jeans dripping grass. His blue suede shoes still looked pretty good though.
    “I told you not to come back around here,” Daddy said. “Ever see you again I’ll kick your ass so hard you’ll have to hire a goddamn winch truck to crank it down so you can