Laura was right. His letters tilted to the upper-right. His loops were flattened and words broke apart with odd breaks. The line of his hand tilted and sloped, more scrawly meaning he was fucked up. Lots of things were crossed out and his spelling was awful. We were reading my father's diary.
There was a lot of mention of my dad's friend he'd stay out with, a guy named Rob:
Stayed up all night. Left the bar. Me and Rob drove around back roads talking only. At morning the frost n ice on trees lookt like evrything was made from brite dimands. Mist work. Rob is always kiddin.
I hadn't wanted to read it. We found it in a pile of his clothes and things in the closet of my parent's bedroom. My mother had smashed his whole side two nights ago. His work clothes, Carharts, streaked with grease and smelling like his sweat and tar soap were heaped on top of his dress shoes, his work boots. We crawled in there and picked through it. There was an old porno mag, women with teased hair, sitting on Mustangs and Camaros, rubbed their oiled breasts. One of the captions said "Do You Have a Tool For Me?" I was only eight and I knew this was incredibly stupid.
Laura was my neighbor, four years older than me and she watched me after school. She held the magazine up to my face. The smell of the paper, musty newsprint, but mixed with that citrus stuff they wash their hands with, scared me and made me feel like he was going to come walking in and find us. Laura saw how my face went and said "He's not coming. And don't go for women like this." I said I wouldn't.
It was odd to me that my father kept a journal. I never saw him read a newspaper. It was a spiral-bound yellow pad and all the entries were only a few sentences long, all about Dad's nights out with his friends, drinking, driving around, sleeping it off at their places. When Laura found it she said "Hello..."
On the day my brother was born, he wrote:
I have a son William. 8:22 AM. He came out his head pointed and his eyes buljing. Purple head. I thought he was retart. I said to my self sorry to God I said I am sorry I did it. Dr. says no it gos away.
His hunting boots were gone. His gun was gone. There were shotgun rounds sprinkled throughout the pile we were sitting on. Mom had broken the top shelf, while screaming how he's not a man. There were two holes in the closet drywall she had punched while my brother bawled from the crib in the next room. I could see his place on their bed still disturbed and dirty, their wedding photo smashed on the opposite side. The cover of the notebook said "For You Bitch". The last entry said:
Faggot. You fucking faggot. YOU
The last page was ripped out. There was a little tangle of paper caught in the wire binding.
My mother made spaghetti that night and told me that my father was not coming back. I kept my eyes on the table.
Laura came over that night. She and I watched TV and, during a commercial, she reached over and grabbed my wrist and looked me in the eye.
"You're better off without him," she said. "He wasn't shit. He was good with his hands, but he didn't know shit."
I said okay. She kept her eyes on mine.
"You won't be like him," she insisted and let go of my arm.
"I know," I told her.
On TV, space people had landed and a woman shrieked when their ship opened. But the space man wasn't scary. He was a man in a silver suit with his face painted green. Smoke blew all around him. The people of Earth fought back with machine guns and tanks, but he killed them with rays from his hands. The show tried to trick you at the end. He'd be someone with an important message from the future, or an alien who came to cure all diseases. Everybody knew the trick was coming, so why did they try to make it a surprise?
Once you stopped to think about it, you already knew.
