Straight Life - Art Pepper [11]
My grandmother was always talking about Dick, her son, the favorite. According to my dad Dick never helped my grandmother at all, never brought her anything, never gave her any money, but she thought he was just great and went on and on about how good he was and how bad my dad was. My dad supported her. One day my dad came over and there was talk about paying some kind of insurance for her. He felt that Richard should pay part of it. My dad was drinking, and he decided to go over and see Dick-"Dicky Boy" he called him. He just hated him.
Dick was a plain-looking man. He had dull-colored, hazel eyes; he was a dull person, nondescript and withdrawn. But he always felt that he was right. He always considered himself a good person. Maybe he was. My dad had got him a job as a longshoreman and had done nothing but good for him, but he said Dick had never shown any appreciation.
We went over there, me and my dad. We went inside. He started talking to them. Dick's wife's name was Irma, and she was just like him, thin, with no beauty, dull, lightish hair, faded eyes. Everything was faded about both of them. My dad tried to reason with them, tried to find out if they would pay anything. Irma said, "No! She's taking care of your brat: you pay it!" They got into a terrible argument. When they started hollering I got scared; I ran out to the car; but they were getting so crazy I felt something terrible was going to happen so I ran back, grabbed my dad, and tried to pull him out of the house. I got him to the car but he was too insane to drive. I opened the door and pushed him into the passenger side. He had just started teaching me how to drive. Dick ran out of the house with a big hammer, and when my dad saw him coming he tried to get out of the car to get at him, but I started the car up, praying I could get it going, trying to hold on to my dad at the same time. He's screaming out the window at them, and Irma's just screaming on the lawn, and here comes Dick with this hammer. By a miracle I was able to start the car. As Dick saw it moving he threw, and I pulled out just as the hammer hit the window in the back. It hit right where my dad's head would have been and shattered the glass. We got away. I looked over at him and saw that he was cut, there was blood on his face, and he was still raging about what he was going to do to Dick. Then he stopped. I guess he realized what had happened-that I was driving the car and had possibly saved his life or stopped him from killing. He might have killed both of them.
I drove back to my grandmother's house, and she wasn't there. I took him inside. I led him into the house and made him go into the bathroom and sat him down on the toilet and got a washrag. During the ride he had looked at me while I was driving, and I felt that he was seeing me for the first time. And I felt really good that I had done something that was right. I wiped the blood off his face. He wasn't cut bad, and he looked at me, and that was the first time I ever felt I had reached him at all. I felt good about myself and I felt that he loved me.
Right after that my grandmother came home and broke the spell. He looked at her and realized how she was. I realized how she was. He started raving at her about her Dicky Boy, and I remember cussing her out myself, telling her that her Dicky Boy wouldn't pay a penny, that he'd tried to kill my dad, that I would kill him, that she was an unfeeling, rotten, ungrateful bitch. She flipped out at both of us. She didn't care anything at all about him being cut: "How dare you go over there and bother Richard and his wife?" She kept at him and at him, ranking him and goading him, and finally he grabbed her and started to strangle her. Probably all his life he'd wanted to kill her. She certainly deserved to be killed by him, and I had the feeling of wishing that he would kill her, thinking it would maybe free me. She wouldn't be there and something else would have to be done with me. Maybe he would have to take me to live with Nellie, who was warm and nice and