Bread and Blood (pt 5).

You can’t blame her for leaving, Dixie says. He’s sitting on the floor, his legs straight out in a V, leaning against the bed and holding his dad’s hand against his cheek. She already had people praying for us to die and obscene calls in the middle of the night and broke windows and cut tires, but with Davie and Ellie gone we outnumbered her. She went to Aunt Beth’s, I guess. We never looked for her and she never checked back.

His dad’s class ring is loose on his finger, but Dixie doesn’t dare try to take it off. It sounds like there’s somebody knocking on the door, but he doesn’t get up.

I watched you, Dixie says. I followed you when you went to those roach pits and made people pay up. Everybody said I was supposed to think that was so bad, but I never saw anybody beat you. You’re my dad and nobody could hurt you, so how come I got to feel bad about that?

The thumping on the door is louder now. Dixie listens and thinks he hears a radio; god dammit, somebody did call the cops.

But still he stays where he is, not letting go; they’d held hands since he was a little boy and never stopped until he left home. His dad said his own father was cold about things and he didn’t want to be the same, and he wasn’t, he never pushed Dixie away. It was just a thing that happened, he’d said to Dixie, his eyes running day and night. Just bad luck, kid.

A voice calls out; Dixie’s eyes narrow. He places the hand back on the bed.

Somebody is in his dad’s house.

Inside. His father’s. House.

Later the cop would report that he didn’t even think it was a person at first but maybe a dog that had been locked up a long time the way it came charging at him and growling; it would take a month for his sight to clear and the ringing in his ears to stop, but the ribs would ache on rainy days for the rest of his life. And while he was lying on the floor coughing up teeth and trying to get the hell out of there, the corner of the living room suddenly caved in when the truck belonging to the home owner crashed right through it, the fugitive screaming like a banshee as he got out, his face slashed up like a cat got at him, giving the cop a crazy salute before running away.