The Silver Bear Read Online Free Page A

fuck?” was all he could muster, before his eyes narrowed and he came marching toward me.
    I tossed the bookcase off my back like I was bucking a saddle, and looked for the easiest escape route, but there wasn’t one, and before I could move, his arms were around me. He hoisted me off the ground—I couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and twenty pounds—and threw me headfirst into the wall. Instead of cracking, my head ripped through the plaster into a wooden beam. Dazed, I pushed away as fast as I could, shaking wall dust from my hair, but he was on me again, and this time, he held me up in a bear hug. His face was both angry and ecstatic, and he squeezed until I couldn’t breathe and my eyes went bleary with tears. I think he would have killed me. I was getting too old to bully and he knew I was building up resistance. It would have been safer to kill me. To go ahead and finish this here and now. He still had one more little boy he could torture.
    From up the stairs, Pooley found his voice. “Let go of him, you stupid motherfucker!”
    This got our attention, both of us, and distracted Cox enough to make him drop me. From my mouth, he was used to hearing such language, such resentment, such fury, but not from little Pooley. We both jerked our heads simultaneously and looked up the stairs.
    The door guarding Mrs. Cox stood open. The padlock that usually kept it firmly closed was somehow forced, wood scrapings cutting claw scratches into the wall. Pooley stood just outside the door, his tiny body shaking, drenched with sweat, a glass shard in his hand, blood dripping from the end in large red drops.
    Pete’s face metamorphosed so dramatically, it was like someone had flipped a switch, turning from acid rage to sudden confusion and trepidation. “What’d you do?” was all he could manage, and his knees actually wobbled.
    Pooley didn’t answer; he just stood there, trembling, his face strained, blood and sweat mingling on the carpet at his feet.
    “What’d you do?” Pete shouted a second time, his voice marked with desperation. Again, Pooley didn’t answer.
    Pete launched for the stairs and ascended them in five quick steps. I was close behind, prepared to tackle him with everything I had if he went for Pooley. But he didn’t. He took two more steps toward his wife’s open door, peeked into the room fearfully, as though hands might suddenly reach out and grab him, and then collapsed inside.
    I got to Pooley as tormented wails began to waft from the open door. “Come on,” I said.
    Pooley’s eyes continued to stare off into space.
    “Let’s get out of here,” I added. The urgency in my voice snapped some life back into his face and his eyes settled on me.
    “I had to,” he said weakly.
    “I know,” I offered.
    I put my hand on his arm, and he let the shard drop to the floor. The blood caught it, and it landed sideways, red flecks marring the beauty of the glass. We stepped over it and walked down the stairs. I picked up the bookcase again and heaved it into the living room window, somehow knowing instinctively the front door had been double bolted before Pete turned and found me there.
    We climbed out of the window and tasted the air outside for the first time in over a year, just as the loudest wail rose from the dark upstairs. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!”
     
     
    ALL those months Pooley had been silent, pretending to be resigned inside himself, he had really been watching, studying, understanding the motivations of our Pete. Taking his beatings in silence, letting me take mine, but watching, waiting. Twice he had overheard Pete in Mrs. Cox’s room, pouring out his penitence to her mindless eyes. Twice he had heard Pete begging for forgiveness, only to increase his savagery two hours later. So Pooley began to figure out that Pete needed her there to continue doing what he did to us. He needed someone who wouldn’t judge him, but would sit passively and let him forgive