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seemed to work. Instead of shouting, Elton went back into the house. He banged around and made noises with what sounded to Thomas like bottles and glasses. He made a phone call and did a lot of loud cursing. Then he went two rooms away to the living room, where he turned the TV up loud.
    The night came on as all of this was happening. Thousands of insects fluttered up to the screen and thumped up against it in their attempt to get at the lamplight. Beyond the night bugs were a few stars and the quarter moon. Looking up there, Thomas remembered the nights when Dr. Nolan and Eric were gone to some family party. Branwyn and Thomas would go out into the flower garden in their pajamas and bare feet. Big pale-green moths flew overhead, and the boy and his mother made up stories about the stars.
    “It’s like a big coat on the man in the moon,” Branwyn would say, “and all the stars are just the dust that fell off the sun.”
    “An’ if he brush it off,” Thomas would add, “all the dust would fall down on us, but it would be yellow diamonds and dimes.”
    They’d laugh and run through the garden until way after Thomas’s bedtime. And when he’d go to bed finally, he’d get the giggles so bad that he couldn’t go to sleep for laughing.
    Lying across that hard and lumpy mattress, on Elton and May’s back porch, Thomas thought about the flower garden and his mother, and he believed that somewhere she was thinking the same things. This made him very happy, and he fell asleep feeling that he wasn’t alone in that screened-in room.
    In his dreams he was drowsing in the big chair in the backyard near the pool. As usual he was tired after only a little while, but Eric was still leaping from the diving board and telling everybody to look. Dr. Nolan and Branwyn were lying side by side on two lounge chairs, and Ahn was sitting near to where Eric was, just in case he got into trouble from playing too hard.
    Thomas was perfectly happy and dozy in his chair.
    Then a woman’s loud scream brought him wide awake.
    “What the fuck you mean ‘out’!” Elton yelled.
    Then another scream.
    “Get your hands off’a me,” May shouted.
    “I’ma see if he been up in there,” Elton said. They were in the kitchen, Thomas realized. “An’ if he have been, then I’ma bust yo’ head.”
    There was a scuffle and more screams.
    Something crashed to the floor, and May let out a yell that picked Thomas up out of the bed and dragged him to the door to the kitchen. He didn’t want to go into the room, but he couldn’t help himself. He was drawn by the sounds of violence.
    When he pushed the door open, he saw that Elton had thrown May up on the kitchen table. Her dress was hiked up to her waist, and Elton had his hand up under her red panties.
    “If I feel him up there I’ma make it that you ain’t nevah gonna have no babies,” Elton shouted.
    “I ain’t done nuthin’, baby,” May moaned. “I just had dinnah.”
    “Till two in the mo’nin’?”
    Elton moved his hand with a violent twist, and May screamed again.
    Without thinking, Thomas rushed at Elton’s leg and wrapped his arms around it.
    “Stop, Daddy!” the little boy screamed. “Stop!”
    “What?” Elton cried, surprised by the appearance of his son.
    He looked down at Thomas as if he had never seen him before. The man’s eyes were very bloodshot, and there was a crazy curl on his lips.
    Just then there was a loud sound at the front of the house.
    “Help!” May cried. “Help! He’s tryin’ to kill me!”
    Four uniformed policemen rushed into the room.
    “What the fuck?” Elton shouted.
    “Stand down,” a tall black policeman said, and then, before Elton could move, the policeman hit him across the forehead with a short black stick.
    Elton fell to the floor. His arms were flailing and his eyes were wild.
    “Fuckin’ hell,” Thomas’s father said. “This my house.”
    He got halfway up, but another cop hit him with a nightstick and he went down again.