Read Online Of Daughter and Demon by Elias Anderson - Free Book Online

you
wasn’t even hurt, remember? Sure it scared you, but you was two
then and you never even hit your head, and I think two year olds
are just about made a rubber, Alice, they hafta be. If a little kid
had normal bones nobody would ever even make it to kindergarten.
How many times did you fall when you were trying to learn to walk?
How many times did you try an’ walk under the table and smack
yourself on the head or crash your bike, or remember when you hit
that tree in the sled? That woulda broken my back but you just
hopped right up, brushed off the snow, and ran right back up that
hill, didn’t you? You always was a tough little kid. But you can’t
hold that one time she hit you against her, Alice, not forever. She
had a hard day, and she was drunk, and I know that ain’t no excuse,
I used it as grounds as divorce, didn’t I? And I’m sorry about that
too, Alice. I figured I was gonna get full custody but your Ma’s
lawyers brought up that assault charge I did a little time for,
even though it was self-defense, and they kept going on and on
about how dangerous it was for me to be a cop cuz what if I got
shot or something and who would take care of you? If I’d known that
damn judge was gonna give you over to your Ma, I woulda stayed
married to her forever. It’s my fault what happened to you, Alice.
I shoulda been there. All three of us were together that day, on
your birthday, when that picture I got on my bedside table was
taken, but I shoulda been there that night, I know I coulda stopped
all this from ever happening. No--no, Alice! Don’t say that! For
the last time, it wasn’t your Ma’s fault, and I don’t want to hear
you sayin’ that again. She loved you, and she should be here any
minute to tell you goodbye.
    But she ain’t, Angie ain’t nowhere. There are
more prayers and I put two big handfuls of soft black dirt on the
coffin you might never see the inside of. After they lower it into
the ground, the people leave me alone one-by-one, standing there,
looking down into that black and endless hole in the earth and in
my heart. I look up, and on a hill a ways away is a tall man
dressed in black. I look down, then back up, and he’s gone, and I’m
all alone, except for the guy standing back a ways, hoping I won’t
see the shovel lying on the ground and flip out or something, the
guy waiting to fill in this hole.
    It rains, the sky above the city the same
color as your tombstone and right now there’s nothing good in the
world, not for me there’s not.
    But I gotta get down to that bridge in
another fifty minutes or so, probably take me twenty to drive down
there so I gotta leave in thirty. I stop at home and eat a lunch I
don’t want and can’t taste. I change outta my suit and grab my Mack
and that pitcher I took of Bradley. I feel anxious, nervous like I
ain’t been since the war, when you just knew something terrible was
gonna happen, it was a fact a everyday life, but you just didn’t
know when or where, or who’ll be left standing when the smoke
cleared and the body parts finished landing. I feel like that, I
feel trapped in a way, and I know what happens when I get like
this, wasn’t I in the can once for it? Almost kept me off the
force, even got me suspended once, unofficially, I mean. This was
right after you got taken away, Alice, I felt trapped, kinda how I
do now, and I did some things I shouldn’t a done to a guy that
nevertheless deserved it, but that didn’t make it right. Sure, I
can bust some pukes head now and not feel too bad about it, but I
was a cop back then, and cops just ain’t supposed to do
those kinds a things, cops are for order and peace and protecting
people, and sure there’s a lot that don’t go that way, but I always
tried, and Bobby Johns did back then too, and Sam Molina before he
gacked himself, and Lubbock, he was good, but he retired.
    Then a calm falls over me, and I know it’s
you up there, isn’t it, Alice? You’re helping your old man like