Read Online Big Fish by Daniel Wallace - Free Book Online Page B

reeling from the jouncing. The boy had been drinking, for sure.
    My father gave the car one last shot of acceleration, pulled ahead, and turned the wheel abruptly, blocking the road with his car. Don Price braked just feet away, and both men were out of their cars in an instant, eye to eye and only an arm’s length away.
    â€œShe’s mine,” Don Price said.
    He was as big as Edward, even bigger around the shoulders. His father owned a trucking company, where Don worked summers loading and unloading tractor trailers, and it showed.
    â€œI didn’t know that she belonged to anybody,” my father said.
    â€œWell, now you do, farm boy,” Don said.
    Don looked at her, still sitting in the car.
    â€œSandra,” he said.
    But she didn’t move. She just sat there, thinking.
    â€œWe’re getting married,” Don said to my father. “I’ve asked her to marry me, farm boy. Or didn’t she tell you?”
    â€œThe question is, what did she tell you?”
    Don Price didn’t say anything, but his breathing came faster and his eyes narrowed, like a bull about to charge.
    â€œI could tear you apart like a paper doll,” he said.
    â€œThere’s no reason for that,” my father said.
    â€œYou better hope there’s not,” Don Price said. “As long as Sandy gets in my car. Now.”
    â€œShe’s not going to be doing that, Don,” my father said.
    Don Price laughed.
    â€œWho the hell are you to say?”
    â€œYou’re drunk, Don,” he said. “I’ll drive her down off the mountain, and then if she wants to go with you she can. How about that?”
    But this just made Don Price laugh even harder. Even though he remembered what he had seen in the glass of the old lady’s eye many weeks ago, Don Price just laughed.
    â€œThanks for giving me a goddamn choice, farm boy,” he said. “But no thanks.”
    And Don Price came at my father with the fury of ten men, but my father had the strength of many more, and they fought for some time, beating each other with their fists. Blood covered both their faces, streaming from their noses and lips, but in the end Don Price fell and did not get up, and my father stood over him, triumphant. Then he placed his opponent’s limp and aching body into the back seat of his car, and drove Don Price and my mother off the mountain and back into town. He drove until they arrived at my mother’s dorm, and parked in the darkness of the late night, with Don Price still moaning softly in the back.
    Neither my mother nor my father spoke for a long time. It was a silence so still one could almost hear the other’s thoughts. Then my father said, “He asked you to marry him, Sandy?”
    â€œYes,” my mother said. “He did.”
    â€œAnd so what did you tell him?” he asked her.
    â€œI told him that I’d think about it,” she said.
    â€œAnd?” my father said.
    â€œAnd I’ve thought about it,” she said, taking my father’s bloody hand in her own.
    They fell into a kiss.

On Meeting the In-Laws
    A ccording to my father, my mother’s father had no hair anywhere on his body. He owned a farm in the country, where he lived with his wife, bedridden by then for ten years, unable to feed herself or talk, and he rode a great horse, as big as any horse there was, and black, with a spot of white on each of its legs just above the hooves.
    He adored my mother. He had told amazing stories about her since she was little, and now that he was old and had lost some of his mind it appeared that he had begun to believe them.
    He thought she hung the moon. He actually believed this from time to time. He believed the moon wouldn’t have been there but that she’d hung it. He believed the stars were wishes, and that one day they would all come true. For her, his daughter. He had told her this when she was little to make her happy, and now that he was