Read Online Ash Wednesday by Chet Williamson, Neil Jackson - Free Book Online

metal spring that had somehow become twisted. "Daddy, don't break it!"
    "Do you want me to fix it or don't you?" Brad snarled, and the boy quailed.
    "Y-yeah . . ."
    "Okay, then, here! " He grabbed the plastic flap in one hand and snapped it off like a dead twig. The boy's face melted, butterlike , trembling with weeping, staring unbelievingly at his broken toy. "It'll run now ," said Brad defensively. "It won't flip, but it'll run! Goddamn Hong Kong crap anyway. Here "—he thrust the car into Frankie's hands—"and don't ask me to fix your shit again." He stalked into the kitchen, and Bonnie heard the refrigerator door open, the metallic rattle of the nearly depleted six-pack, the door slam, and the pop and hiss of a ring tab being pulled.
    She hadn't really been aware of when the drinking had started in earnest. One Friday he'd come home from work a little high—he'd stopped at the Anchor with a few of his friends, since one of them was getting married that weekend—and she'd thought nothing of it. She'd seen her own father far worse every weekend when she'd lived at home. That next week he brought home a six-pack, and on the weekend, a case. Then slowly he began to drink more and more beer. At first a case had lasted two weeks, then a week and a half, and now he would drink four or five bottles in a single night, more on weekends. Instead of relaxing him, it seemed to Bonnie to make him more irritable, more impossible to talk to.
    Now Frankie's crying brought her back to the present, and she hugged the boy, looking sadly at Linda's wide puzzled eyes staring up from the floor where she played with her pop-beads. Bonnie didn't mind it when he got mad at her—she was a big girl, she could take it—but the kids were something else. She had to try to talk to him. Now, before he got too many more beers inside him.
    "Honey," she said to Frankie, whose cries had shrunk to soft, high-pitched sniveling, "you take Linda Marie to your room, okay?"
    "You mad at me too?" the boy asked.
    "No, hon , I'm not mad at you. I just want to talk to Daddy, that's all." The boy took his sister's hand and led her down the short hall to the room they shared, while Bonnie walked into the kitchen.
    Brad looked at her from under glowering brows. "Well?" he said with a surly cockiness that set her teeth on edge.
    "I don't want to fight," she said.
    "Who does?" He took a deep swig from the can. "What do you want?"
    "I . . . I just want to know why you picked on Frankie like that."
    He belched. " Scuse me. And excuse me for picking on Frankie. God forbid I should ever harm the little darlings.”
    “ Stop it."
    "Did I hit him?" he flared. "Do I ever hit him? Or you? Or Linda?"
    "No, but—"
    "I never lay a hand on you!"
    "But your temper!"
    " Fuck my temper. So I got a temper, so what?"
    "So what?" she asked astounded. "So you're getting impossible to live with is what."
    "Then get the hell out." He turned away from her, as if ashamed of what he'd just said, and sat down.
    "You mean that?" she said quietly.
    His head shook almost imperceptibly. "No. No, I don't mean it." The voice was calm, his anger gone. She stepped behind his chair and put her hands on his shoulders. "I'm sorry," he said. "I don't know what happens sometimes. I just . . . I just blow up, you know?"
    "I know."
    "I don't mean to. And I'd never want you to leave. I need you, Bonnie."
    "I know that too." She sighed. "If you'd just try to keep your temper, keep control of yourself—"
    "I will."
    "The littlest things get you going, Brad, it's scary—”
    “I will, I promise. I'll really try."
    She thought she heard his voice break, and when she looked, his eyes were wet with tears. She left him alone then, having forgotten how to be tender.
    That night he didn't drink any more beer. Instead, he played with Frankie and Linda and read them bedtime stories. Later, when the children were asleep, he and Bonnie made love for the first time in several weeks, and she had one of her intense