Daddy's Read Online Free Page A

watching Daddy’s headlights cut the dark and then the dark crowding right back in behind them, Levis saying Honey? to whatever he saw out that window, maybe even to himself.
     
    Levis came to bed with me, molding his body to mine, rubbing his face on Daddy’s pillow sleepily, his breath like garlic, like garlic and meat, didn’t even open my eyes when he reached for my breast in the early hours and fed himself. In the morning he woke me, whispering Honey, Honey, smearing the sheets in elaborate patterns with fingerfuls of poop from his diaper, twining his fingers in my hair, Honey.
     
    Normal. Later I bathed Levis and dressed him and we went to the park. For a while I pushed him on the swings, waited for him at the bottom of the slide, did the seesaw with him. When Levis was playing in the sandbox another mother came and sat beside me on the bench, said Your boy is quite large, me saying Yes, me saying Thank you. The woman’s son got into the sandbox with Levis and they started building something and the woman went on, said I’m a producer for the local news and we’d love to have your boy on if you’re interested, as kind of a feature on local unnaturals, and Levis looking up and showing his teeth, his eyes slitted at the woman, like he heard her, like he understood.
     
    Maybe, I told the woman, when Levis is a little older, the woman saying Fine, fine, smoothing her jeans like she was peeved at the color of the wash, and her son getting up to bring his fat little shoe down on Levis’ sandpile, over and over, saying Unh Unh Unh, Levis letting him for a while before grinding a fist of sand into the boy’s face, the boy just blinking for a minute like his second hand had stopped, Levis taking the opportunity to grab the boy by his ankle and bring him down to where he could pound on his abdomen with his fists, like any baby with a toy drum, like any baby figuring out how hard to pound to get just the right sound, the boy going Unh Unh Unh.
     

    The woman said, My Lord, do something, he’s flattened my Jared, her running over like her legs were breaking out of concrete molds, her boy saying Unh a little quieter now and me more proud of Levis than I’d ever been and so getting up and walking to the car, Levis saying Honey? Levis standing up to see better, saying Honey, stepping over the boy and out of the sandbox, me getting into the car and locking the doors, key in the ignition, Levis just standing there, the late afternoon sunlight giving him a glow, just standing there with his fists at his sides, looking like a fat little man more than anybody’s baby, a little fat man beating his chest now, me pulling out onto the road, Levis wailing Honey, wailing Pickles, getting smaller and smaller in the rearview until I took a turn and he was gone, my heart like a fist to a door and my breasts empty and my nipples like lit matchheads.
     

IT ALL GO BY
     

    We almost hit a deer on the way up but we swerved just in time. The sky was a hundred million dilated pupils. Then on the way back down we saw a deer dead on the side of the road with its legs up like it was laying on its back and stretching up its legs in order to admire them better.
     
    It ain’t the same one, you said.
     
    I put it out of my mind and watched the lines on the highway. Lines, even though as fast as we were going they looked like one long line, anyone knows it’s a bunch of lines running together. Eyes playing tricks. If that’s true maybe we did hit that deer and just put it out of our minds and let our eyes go abracadabra on us. Either way.
     
    One thing about night is that it can always get darker on you. There we were in the middle of a country highway, not a car around, and the darkness started getting to us, creeping in under our collars the way a stiff wind sometimes can. I remembered all those times Mother talked about someone walking over her grave, the chill bumps on her arm that stayed for nearly half an hour. You said, We’re