Read Online Almost Midnight by Michael W. Cuneo - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Michael W. Cuneo
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Joyce phoned Lexie from Houston saying Darrell was welcome to come and pick up Melissa, Shane, and Wesley. She’d gotten remarried and was struggling to build a new life. The kids were more than she could handle. Darrell drove down to Houston with his cousin Dale, eager to get his kids back but determined to take no chances. Suspecting Joyce might be setting him up for an ambush, he arrived on her doorstep—in the scalding Houston heat, no less—wearing a military field coat with a bulletproof vest underneath. The precautions proved unnecessary. Joyce was grateful that he’d come and the three kids ran happily from the swimming pool in the yard to greet and hug him. They couldn’t wait to get back home with their dad.
Back home—it wasn’t what the three kids had been hoping for. Within a matter of weeks Darrell’s forty acres in the hollow had becomea militarized zone. Donna made it perfectly clear that she didn’t want this added responsibility. She hadn’t signed on to be cleaning up after Darrell’s first marriage. They were crowded and destitute enough as it was without three more kids thrown into the bargain. But it was part of the bargain, Darrell insisted. Donna had always known that he’d jump at any chance to be reunited with his first three kids. He’d been up front with her about this from day one. Sure it was awkward, but they’d just have to make the best of it.
Instead of making the best of it, however, Donna and Darrell fell into endless bickering and all pretense of domestic civility soon vanished. Sometimes Darrell would try to cope with the tension by going emotionally AWOL, firing up a joint after work and hiding out in his bedroom. It was tough on Melissa and her two brothers, knowing full well that they were living where they weren’t wanted. And it was tough on Donna, Darrell brooding half the time, fuming the other half, the kids—not even her own kids!—openly defying her, stretching her to the breaking point. Finally, Darrell arrived home from work one evening to discover that the kids were gone. There had been one altercation too many, and Melissa had phoned Lexie asking her to come get them and bring them to her and R.J.’s house.
And so that was that. The reunification experiment had ended up a dismal failure. Over the next few years Melissa and her brothers led a nomadic existence, shuttling back and forth between Lexie’s place and Larry’s, moving to Houston for a month here, a couple of months there, sometimes spending a troubled week or two (but not longer) with Darrell and Donna at the two-room house in the hollow.
It’s difficult for Melissa, almost twenty years later, to think back on these unsettled times. Some of the details are scrambled, others mercifully forgotten. She remembers feeling most at home at R.J. and Lexie’s house and wishing she and her brothers could have stayed there year-round. She also remembers silently rooting for her dad, this troubled man she’d never really gotten to know, all thewhile sensing he was fighting a losing battle. “Donna was big and strong and she’d fly off the handle and slug him. I never saw him hit her back, but there was probably a lot going on that I wasn’t aware of. The thing was, I really couldn’t discuss the situation with my dad. I couldn’t confide in him. I loved him, and I knew he loved me, but we didn’t have a bond of trust. He was gruff, drunk a lot of the time, stoned. So we were like strangers—father and daughter, but strangers. It’s funny the things that stick in your mind, little things, stuff that stays with you. He had a pit bull named Diablo—I remember that. And the skull—he had a human skull on a ledge of the stonework in the basement of the new house he was building. It was wearing a purple knit hat and sunglasses and had a necklace draped around its base and a joint stuck in its mouth. That was my dad—I guess he had his own way of doing things.”
Neither Darrell nor Donna had
Back home—it wasn’t what the three kids had been hoping for. Within a matter of weeks Darrell’s forty acres in the hollow had becomea militarized zone. Donna made it perfectly clear that she didn’t want this added responsibility. She hadn’t signed on to be cleaning up after Darrell’s first marriage. They were crowded and destitute enough as it was without three more kids thrown into the bargain. But it was part of the bargain, Darrell insisted. Donna had always known that he’d jump at any chance to be reunited with his first three kids. He’d been up front with her about this from day one. Sure it was awkward, but they’d just have to make the best of it.
Instead of making the best of it, however, Donna and Darrell fell into endless bickering and all pretense of domestic civility soon vanished. Sometimes Darrell would try to cope with the tension by going emotionally AWOL, firing up a joint after work and hiding out in his bedroom. It was tough on Melissa and her two brothers, knowing full well that they were living where they weren’t wanted. And it was tough on Donna, Darrell brooding half the time, fuming the other half, the kids—not even her own kids!—openly defying her, stretching her to the breaking point. Finally, Darrell arrived home from work one evening to discover that the kids were gone. There had been one altercation too many, and Melissa had phoned Lexie asking her to come get them and bring them to her and R.J.’s house.
And so that was that. The reunification experiment had ended up a dismal failure. Over the next few years Melissa and her brothers led a nomadic existence, shuttling back and forth between Lexie’s place and Larry’s, moving to Houston for a month here, a couple of months there, sometimes spending a troubled week or two (but not longer) with Darrell and Donna at the two-room house in the hollow.
It’s difficult for Melissa, almost twenty years later, to think back on these unsettled times. Some of the details are scrambled, others mercifully forgotten. She remembers feeling most at home at R.J. and Lexie’s house and wishing she and her brothers could have stayed there year-round. She also remembers silently rooting for her dad, this troubled man she’d never really gotten to know, all thewhile sensing he was fighting a losing battle. “Donna was big and strong and she’d fly off the handle and slug him. I never saw him hit her back, but there was probably a lot going on that I wasn’t aware of. The thing was, I really couldn’t discuss the situation with my dad. I couldn’t confide in him. I loved him, and I knew he loved me, but we didn’t have a bond of trust. He was gruff, drunk a lot of the time, stoned. So we were like strangers—father and daughter, but strangers. It’s funny the things that stick in your mind, little things, stuff that stays with you. He had a pit bull named Diablo—I remember that. And the skull—he had a human skull on a ledge of the stonework in the basement of the new house he was building. It was wearing a purple knit hat and sunglasses and had a necklace draped around its base and a joint stuck in its mouth. That was my dad—I guess he had his own way of doing things.”
Neither Darrell nor Donna had
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