First Daughter - Eric van Lustbader [37]
Fists aren't what frighten Jack, though his father possesses the big, knuckly rocks of a bricklayer or an assassin. By adult standards, his father isn't particularly big, but with his dark eyes, sullen mouth, and broken nose, he seems like a colossus to Jack. Especially when he's swinging the belt. Following Neanderthal instincts, he turned the biker belt into an ugly, writhing thing. Its armor of metal studs, its crown a buckle big as two fists are not enough. He filed the corners to points one sunny Sunday when Jack was out playing softball.
"Tell me a story, read me a book," his father says as he opens the door to his son's room. He looks around at the unholy mess of clothes, comics, magazines, records, bits of candy bars and chocolate. "Books, books, where are the friggin' books?" He bends down, swipes up a comic. "Batman," he says with a sneer. "How the fuck old are you?"
"Fifteen," Jack answers automatically, though his mouth is dry.
"And all you can read is this junk?" He shoves the comic in his son's face. "Okay then, brainiac, read to me."
Jack's hands tremble so badly, the comic slips through his fingers.
"Open it, John."
Dutifully, Jack flips the pages of the comic. He wants to read, he wants to show his father that he can, but his emotions are in turmoil. He's filled with fear and anxiety, which automatically extinguish what progress he's made in decoding English. He stares down at the comic panels. The speech balloons might as well be written in Mandarin. The letters float off like spiky sea creatures with a will of their own. He sees them, but he cannot make heads or tails of what they might be. It's garbage in, garbage out.
"God almighty, it's a fucking comic. A six-year-old could read it, but not you, huh?" His father rips the comic from him, flips it into a corner.
"Hey, watch it," Jack says, leaping up.
His father sticks out his right hand, shoves him back onto the bed.
"That's issue number four."
"How the hell would you know?" His father stomps over to the corner, rips up the comic. Batman and his bat-cape are parted.
His father carefully removes his prized gold-and-diamond cuff links from his shirt, knocks a pile of comics off Jack's dresser with a backhand swipe, lays them down on the open space. Then the beating starts. The belt uncoils from his father's fist like an oily viper. It whips up, then down, striping Jack's rib cage. And as the lashing commences in earnest, his father punctuates each singing strike with a litany of words.
"You don't talk right." Crack! "You act like a goddamn zombie when I ask you to do something." Crack! "You fidget and procrastinate because you're too stupid to understand me." Crack! "Christ, fifteen years old and you can't read." Crack! "I was already hauling garbage when I was fifteen." Crack!
He is breathing hard, his chest rising and falling rapidly. "Where the fuck did you come from?" Crack! "Not from me, that's for damn sure!" Crack! "A hole in the ground, that's it." Crack!
His rage is immense, as large as the Lincoln Memorial, as large as the sky. He is a man who looks upon his son and is diminished. As if something in his seed is defective. He can't bear the thought. Having a son like Jack fills him with rage; the rage fuels his violence.
"Your mother must've fucked some sideshow freak—" Crack! "—while I was out trying to make ends meet, John." Crack! "John. They call the losers who go to whores johns." Crack! "You're a pinhead." Crack! "A half-wit!" Crack! "You give morons a good name." Crack! "Stupid would be a big step up for you." Crack! Crack! Crack!
Jack's body absorbs the excruciating pain with its usual indifference. In fact, it grows hard and tough under the abuse. It's the words that penetrate to his inner gyroscope, fragile, delicately balanced in the best of times. The litany of hate knocks the pins out from under the gyroscope, the heavy machinery flattens Jack's tattered self-esteem, burying it in the muddy flats at the depths of his being. Belief is as ephemeral as a cloud, shape-shifted by invisible forces. How easily other