This was when Brent still sometimes threatened the boys with a spanking, and she had said over her dead body. She knew all that bullshit about “This hurts me more than it hurts you” and other stupid things people who are three times your size say to make themselves feel better about their hateful ignorance. A man takes off his belt and beats the shit out of a kid who doesn’t deserve it. Even a gentle swat from Brent sent her reeling. She had stood in her brother’s room holding tight to a stuffed dog he had in there, one he won at the state fair when his school class went. He said a lot of boys gave what they won to a girl but that he really wanted to bring his home, and she got hopeful, thinking he was going to surprise her with it. But, no, he really did want it all to himself, but he would let her hold it sometimes, and she held it while their dad took him in the other room, telling him why he was not a good person, why there was a good chance he was always going to be a failure. And she counted the leather belt slaps on bare skin.

“Don’t hit Harvey, and don’t hit Jason. Ever,” she said later when they were alone in their room.

“Discipline never hurt anybody,” Brent said, and by then he had laughed with both boys. He had told Harvey a bedtime story and kissed him good night.

“But it can hurt,” she said. “It hurts, and that shit stays with them, it chases and catches them, and you know what? It catches the parents who gave it, and they eventually come to a place where they have to face something really ugly and awful, because that’s what they did to others; reap what you sow.”

“Nice, Shelley,” he said. And when he left, she thought how she would not miss that part of him, that part that was capable of hurting others.

Frank

He stops, waits for his breathing to settle. More and more these days, he thinks of his grandfather and all the diagnoses he made simply looking at teeth and nails, examining phlegm and piss and shit as if inspecting gemstones.