CHAPTER TWO

DIZZYING PATTERNS. VAGUE but luminous. Dipping out of the sky. Always mingling.

A snowfall. The whirl of flakes spiraling downward like some impressionistic waltz. Forever dazzling. Brilliant. It is so serene that the only sound is that of the falling snow. No cry of a bird, or even the faint sigh of a breeze drifted through the tall pines below.

A spark flashes. The runner of a sleigh slices across the snow-shot sky sparking in the blackness.

A paw follows. A dozen more after it. Needle-tipped claws unsheathed, digging into blind space. The night sky comes alive with the motion of them, pumping, surging earthward with splendid gracefulness.

And then, folded into the streaming dark, a sound. Almost delicate at first but building.

The sound of jangling bells.

A flicker — a darting movement too fast for the human eye to follow. A hand, not human at all, cuts the blackness. The long nailed charade of a fist hauls back a bullwhip held tight in its grasp.

The whip lashes out - Corey bolted awake at the nerve jangling sound.

He shot up in bed rigid with fear, raw-boned, bruised bloodshot eyes wide on his locked bedroom door.

Something was moving sluggishly behind it. Something huge and grimy.

Corey could hear it tap-tapping, glass scraping across the floor. He stared at the crack of light beneath the door where a. shadow slid like grease in a skillet in a liquid motion. He sat up in bed breathless, unblinking, sweat pooling under him, his hair damp and flat on his forehead and neck. Whatever was outside his door Corey knew wanted to get in.

The shadow stopped moving. Corey thought he could still hear it though but the roar of his own heartbeat stuffed his ears. He strained to make out a sound. Fear warped his judgment. How could he be sure it was gone and wasn't waiting for him just to open the door to see if it was gone then pounce on him? He couldn't. So he sat there in bed motionless, hiding under the cave of his sheets, not daring to even breath until he was positive all was well in the union and whatever it was outside the door had gone back to whatever pit it had crawled out of.

A solid wood-splintering crack sent the door crashing open.

Corey jolted, breath choking. The hall light washed over him bleaching him white, catching him with the frightened to-the-bone-look of a deer caught in headlights.

Ralph was sprawled out on the floor in a pool of whole grain, his hickory walking stick beside him. Even prone like that Corey was petrified of his father.

"...Corey..." Ralph's voice rumbled like thunder. He slumped against the wall, his chin buried in his chest. His neck swelled over; his collar. His eyes hardly seemed to move. "...come on over here..."

Corey cringed. He didn't move.

"Don't play deaf with me, boy...help me up..."

Still Corey didn't move. He didn't budge.

"You don't back your ass out here this minute Chanks is gonna come git ya..."

Something seized Corey's spine. His temperature rose and fell ten degrees in as many seconds. He couldn't deny his daddy's threat. Forcing himself, he rose shakily and padded bare-foot across the room. At the door he stopped, hanging on the frame. He looked down at the floor littered with the glass of the broken whiskey bottle.

"Mind the glass," he heard Ralph say to him.

Corey sidestepped around his father into the hall, the whiskey warm and sticky under his feet. His eyes never left the floor as he worked his small hands into Ralph's armpits, straining to lift him. It was an enormous effort for an eight year-old, but Corey managed to get Ralph up. But it wasn't until Ralph was standing and his full weight was on Corey that Corey realized it was too much for him. He began to wobble. He tried to brace himself against the hallway wall and slipped on a slick of whiskey.

A shard jutted upward. Falling, Corey saw it there, wet and sharp, and then it was gone - disappearing deep into his palm.

Corey's mouth flew open, crying out.

Ralph grabbed his head, wincing against the boy's ear-splitting wail.

"Margaret!" Calling his wife's name sharpened the dull ache in his brain cutting him like rough steel. He didn't want to call her again. When he heard the up stair’s bedroom door unlock he knew he wouldn't have to. You never forget to lock it, do ya? Ralph thought to himself. It was going on six months now that she had locked him out of their bedroom, never sleeping with him once in all that time. A long season of no nookie. That was fine by him. Whiskey kept him warmer inside than Margaret ever did.

Margaret raced down the stairs, her bathrobe flapping. She came into the hall and for a second Ralph fell in love with her all over again. She knelt beside Corey, taking his injured hand in hers, then shot Ralph a fierce withering glare. And at that moment Ralph lost all love for her because he saw how absolutely she despised him.

"I told him to be careful ..." He was guiltless. "Boy don't listen."

And it came up from Margaret's stomach like bile. The anger, the humiliation, each indignity piled onto the last until she was sure she could take no more. Yet Margaret knew all she could do was endure it. It enraged her beyond restraint — the pointless, mindless meanness Ralph used to terrorize them. And her fear of him fed her contempt for him. She was ashamed of her life, and the life she had made for Corey. At that moment, she felt as helpless, as pitiful, as her own weeping son.

So she rinsed his palm, dosing the cut with iodine and took him upstairs to her bed. She wrapped Corey in her arms and held him, drawing him to her, Corey still whimpering, crying himself to sleep.

They cried their shame together.

It was the last day of school before Christmas vacation. There'd be a party, there always was; milk and butter cookies decorated with red and green sprinkles and the best part of all— half a day of school.

But if Corey had his wish it would be never to have a Christmas recess. Not that he liked school all that much because he didn't, but better reading and arithmetic, than what was coming.

Morning streaked through the kitchen window. Corey sat at the table picking at the bandage on his hand with his fork. His wheatina had gone cold and stiff in his bowl. He'd barely touched it. For the past month now he had all but stopped from eating. And what little he did eat he could hardly keep down. Margaret had taken him into Rutland to see the doctor there. He had examined her son and concluded what the boy was suffering from was a nervous stomach and, believe it or not, the beginning of an ulceration.

"What's got you all worked up, son?"

Corey didn't answer, only stared quietly at Doc Hargrove then at Margaret standing there beside him. Margaret knew full well why her son had a hole in his stomach. But she was as mute as her son. She didn't say a thing. And that she would have to live with.

Her face red from the stove, Margaret frowned down at the bowl of lumpy cereal. "Did you eat any of it, Corey?" Corey looked up at her, his eyes pleading.

"Did you try?"

He nodded he had. Margaret knew it would do no good to force him. "Okay, it don't matter, cause's I'm gonna make us the biggest Christmas Eve dinner tonight. All your favorite things — sugar cured ham, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, fresh baked soda bread, and the best chocolate yule log you ever tasted. So you save your appetite till then. Let's get you ready for school. The bus'11 be here soon enough and we don't want Mrs. Lumsden waitin on you."

She bundled him in his coat, wrapped his head up in a scarf and held it in place with the raccoon cap that Corey wore indoors, outdoors, year round. His "Daniel Boone" hat Corey called it. Margaret slid a mitten gently over his bandaged hand. She had already lectured her son about what to say if any of the) teachers asked him what had happened, but she wanted to make sure Corey had it down. " Now what are you gonna say to Miss Putnam and Mrs. Schlammer if they ask you about your hand?" Corey stared down at his feet. "What are you gonna say?"

"That I dropped a bottle of milk out on the porch and when I went to pick it up I cut myself."

"Good, son. You just tell them that, okay?" Margaret could see Corey was having trouble with the lie. "Sometimes the ones closest to us, Corey, seem farthest away. Your daddy still loves you. I know it's hard to see it, but he does. Don't ever forget that." "Sometimes I do."

"Don't." Listen to me, Margaret told herself. I'm tellin the boy to do something I should be doing and can't. It was so easy to understand when she told Corey, yet so hard for her to see it herself. "Your daddy's been through bad times. He sits here festering away, same old thoughts repeating themselves on him day in and day out. It's different for a man to be out of a job like he is. A man needs his work. He loses that, he loses his self-respect. Doesn't think himself a man no more when he can't support his family."

It didn't seem to matter what she said to Corey. He just stood there, staring down at the floor, digging his heels into his boots.

"He'll find a way soon. Meantime, what we have to do, is watch over him just like we use to watch over Willalee."

Corey watched his mother cross herself, just like she did everytime she mentioned Willalee's name out loud. He could still remember his baby brother like it was yesterday. Willalee wasn't with them all that long but Corey could still remember the mobile hanging over Willalee's crib, his baby brother's pink smile when he use to tickle his feet, and the morning he found Willalee still sleeping way after ten, so still, so —

Corey jumped. Ralph's voice boomed from somewhere in the house. "Margaret! I need you here!"

"Do your mama a favor, honey." Margaret stood up. "The eggman's past due. I owe him for two weeks. He comes by this afternoon you pay him for me, will ya? You know where I hide the money." She pointed to the tall pie safe with the pierced tin doors, the one Grandma Gatlin had given them when she got a new Westinghouse refrigerator. "Margaret! "

"Don't let on to your daddy about the eggman," Margaret whispered to Corey. She leaned over to kiss her son and when she did Corey threw his arms around her, hugging his mother to him like he was holding on for his life.

Margaret squeezed Corey even tighter to stop herself from trying. But she couldn't keep the tears out of her voice. "Have a good day at school," she told Corey, voice breaking. "Learn hard."

She sent Corey out the door.

"Where you been, I been callin1!"

Ralph was sitting in the living room in the same scruffed clothes he had on him the night before. And the night before that. He smelt grizzled and sour.

Margaret was careful not to get to close to him, to get within the reach of his stick. She moved around the chair to get to the ironing board and her just ironed skirt. She stepped into it out of Ralph's sight. She already had on her blouse, and her make-up before that.

"I asked you where you been?"

"I had to get the boy off to school."

"Boy don't listen," Ralph mumbled. "Serves him right. Next time he'll listen. And next time I call you, you best come running!"

"Do you want anything fore I go. I'm late for work."

"Just cause you got a job now don't excuse you from your household duties. You got a responsibility to this house first!"

"I don't neglect that," Margaret told him evenly. "I never have. Now you want something fore I go? Cause I'm going —"

Ralph's head rose out of that powerful barrel chest. "I'm thirsty."

Margaret watched him for what seemed a whole minute before saying, "I'll get you a glass of water."

"I'm thirsty, not dirty! I don't need a bath, I need a drink!"

"A drink is what you don't need —"

"Don't tell me what I'm needing and not needing! I don't need you telling me. what I don't need is what I don't need!"

"You wanna drink you drag yourself outta that chair and get it yourself. But I'm not gonna help you kill yourself."

"I don't need your help! I'll do it myself!"

Margaret didn't know if he meant kill himself or get himself a drink. But either way she didn't care. Something in Ralph had gone dead. Burnt off. There was sorrow at first, then pity, but all that was left now was a hollow shell of whatever love she had for him. Suddenly she was out of patience — "I gotta go make a living," she said, and turned, going upstairs for her shoes.

Ralph looked like he was going to lunge for her but just his head shot forward. The rest of him stayed put in the chair limp and impotent. "Don't you turn from me! Margaret, don't you " turn from me when I'm talking to you! Margaret!

On the porch outside Corey heard his father's voice carry clearly on the cold unmoving air. He moved through a carved out path flanked by snow banks taller than him, heading through the woods that surrounded his home to his bus stop. At the edge of a copse of pines he turned to look back at the house. To Corey it looked like a statue in an empty white museum. Mute, isolated. He looked at it a long time. After tonight he may not ever have the chance to see it again. The cold had already gotten to him but something even colder seized Corey's spine when the thought of what the night would bring flared in his mind's eye.

He hunkered down into his coat and ambled off into the soft white waste.