Read Online For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down by David Adams Richards - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: David Adams Richards
Ads: Link
remembered those songs when he was a little boy and went to church wearing the suit his mother had bought him, and his father was at the picnic. His father had a plate in his head and would want to fight. And the Matheson boys would always try to get him home.
His father would stand with his shirt out weaving back and forth, his right fist cocked a little, back against the wall, and the dry earth, the smell of hay, tumbling with the crickets and smell of summer and all the world jostling in trumpets of song – a mentally unfit melancholy man along a road with a little boy by the hand.
Then you know truth.
You don’t know it before then. (This is what he could not tell Vera, of course.) You don’t know it before then.
And the Matheson boys go home, you see, thinking his father would be all right, now that the picnic is over and the thumb wedge of darkness is over the trees, and it is going to rain.
Down by the brook with tall delicate sweet grass along the borders, the flies flick out at the last of an August evening.
A cow bellows somewhere off aways. I love you all I love you all.
And the small sifting sand of passing cars blown up as the man walks home in his squalid suit jacket, with a small boy by the hand.
But the men he was going to fight, who had all tormented him, are there on the road. The men, one of whom was married three days before and is on his honeymoon, a man named Gary Percy Rils, is drinking wine with the boys behind the barn near where your father was pitching horseshoes in the dust.
At first it is not an argument and you are still sitting there watching your dad, who at one time was a fine fellow – a long time ago. But then it is arguing. It is always arguing and arguing. And you watch carefully – the man who is just married is wanting to fight – you know him from before.
And your father is frightened. You see that. And the Matheson boys intervene. No one pretends he is frightened. None pretend he is. But he is all alone, and has his little boy.
And your father smiles at you as if it is a joke and everyone is friends and whips his mouth with his hand and takes a bolt of dark whisky.
You don’t know when they are there exactly – it is August and you are going home with your father and it is starting to rain.
I love you all I love you all.
And then the car plays with you on the road.
And you want to help.
Your father picks up a rock and you stand behindhim and his leg is shaking. And you never forget how he tries to protect you, this hobbled, mentally unbalanced, melancholy man.
“Grrr,” he says, with the rock in his hand, and the headlights flicking on and off, the grill mashed with flies, the wilted carnation from the wedding sitting on the dash.
“I have my little boy,” your father pleads. “I have my little boy – Jerry – is just a little boy.”
In the dark, by the ditch, with the crooked brook, going home.
I love you all I love you all.
7
Ralphie now felt himself lucky – a privileged part of the town. At first he did not admit that he felt this. But after a while it became evident that he did feel this way, and that he could no longer hide this feeling from himself.
It was good to know Jerry Bines because Jerry Bines was either liked or feared. And it was evident that people now looked upon Ralphie this way also. That is, that if Jerry Bines liked him then no one would bother him.
It was strange, because all of his life Ralphie had reacted with aversion to this kind of manipulation. But now, within the sanctuary of it, it all seemed different. Itseemed possible that the things Jerry did were misconstrued, were even wonderful – (the story about him escaping from prison one time now seemed a wonderful story). And Ralphie also knew that within the government, within academic circles, the same kind of manipulation happened. But complementing this was another bothersome feeling that perhaps no one, not even Adele, knew. At first it wasn’t noticeable but
His father would stand with his shirt out weaving back and forth, his right fist cocked a little, back against the wall, and the dry earth, the smell of hay, tumbling with the crickets and smell of summer and all the world jostling in trumpets of song – a mentally unfit melancholy man along a road with a little boy by the hand.
Then you know truth.
You don’t know it before then. (This is what he could not tell Vera, of course.) You don’t know it before then.
And the Matheson boys go home, you see, thinking his father would be all right, now that the picnic is over and the thumb wedge of darkness is over the trees, and it is going to rain.
Down by the brook with tall delicate sweet grass along the borders, the flies flick out at the last of an August evening.
A cow bellows somewhere off aways. I love you all I love you all.
And the small sifting sand of passing cars blown up as the man walks home in his squalid suit jacket, with a small boy by the hand.
But the men he was going to fight, who had all tormented him, are there on the road. The men, one of whom was married three days before and is on his honeymoon, a man named Gary Percy Rils, is drinking wine with the boys behind the barn near where your father was pitching horseshoes in the dust.
At first it is not an argument and you are still sitting there watching your dad, who at one time was a fine fellow – a long time ago. But then it is arguing. It is always arguing and arguing. And you watch carefully – the man who is just married is wanting to fight – you know him from before.
And your father is frightened. You see that. And the Matheson boys intervene. No one pretends he is frightened. None pretend he is. But he is all alone, and has his little boy.
And your father smiles at you as if it is a joke and everyone is friends and whips his mouth with his hand and takes a bolt of dark whisky.
You don’t know when they are there exactly – it is August and you are going home with your father and it is starting to rain.
I love you all I love you all.
And then the car plays with you on the road.
And you want to help.
Your father picks up a rock and you stand behindhim and his leg is shaking. And you never forget how he tries to protect you, this hobbled, mentally unbalanced, melancholy man.
“Grrr,” he says, with the rock in his hand, and the headlights flicking on and off, the grill mashed with flies, the wilted carnation from the wedding sitting on the dash.
“I have my little boy,” your father pleads. “I have my little boy – Jerry – is just a little boy.”
In the dark, by the ditch, with the crooked brook, going home.
I love you all I love you all.
7
Ralphie now felt himself lucky – a privileged part of the town. At first he did not admit that he felt this. But after a while it became evident that he did feel this way, and that he could no longer hide this feeling from himself.
It was good to know Jerry Bines because Jerry Bines was either liked or feared. And it was evident that people now looked upon Ralphie this way also. That is, that if Jerry Bines liked him then no one would bother him.
It was strange, because all of his life Ralphie had reacted with aversion to this kind of manipulation. But now, within the sanctuary of it, it all seemed different. Itseemed possible that the things Jerry did were misconstrued, were even wonderful – (the story about him escaping from prison one time now seemed a wonderful story). And Ralphie also knew that within the government, within academic circles, the same kind of manipulation happened. But complementing this was another bothersome feeling that perhaps no one, not even Adele, knew. At first it wasn’t noticeable but
Similar Books
