By the time Shot dragged my brother to the water trough and our father had to stand in his way and physically restrain him, we all realized this sickness was transferable. Because Dad had begun to cross the line. Threaten to slap us. Punished us by overturning our cereal bowls in our laps if angry about something. To allow Shot’s energy to break him down. And by then Mother just wasn’t really there. And we had no defense for this new source of abuse, had spent our energy erecting barricades in the other direction.

Shot took his cues from an idea of nasty men, things he read in the old noir magazines he’d once collected or bad shows on TV. Where he was reading or seeing things from the villain’s point of view. If he’d been a generation younger, we would’ve at least been spared the theatrical nature of his dysfunction. Maybe gotten something more original.

Then a kind of freneticness, or fit, would come upon him, and he’d be the one half in, half out of the water trough. Find it hard to move properly. Scream out for Father to help him. The convalescence meant we heard him more but saw him less. But if we didn’t attend to him, in his bed, he would let us know about it when well again. Nor did he want to go to a doctor.

Shot made my brother read to him when an invalid. The racy, uncomfortable stories in those magazines. The ones with the ripped-bodice women on the cover and some steely-eyed private eye in the backdrop. Lots of leg and no sense. I meant to burn those magazines if I could, but I never summoned the nerve. What would it have mattered anyway? They already lived in his head.

I was beginning to feel my grandfather surging up inside me. All of that rage, that energy, and it had to have someplace to go. Just the parts I could use. If you could harness such a thing.

From a mythical place long ago and far away.

[50]

Back inside, I was still fighting the anger. How far had Hellbender infiltrated my life, without me knowing? I put the gun and ammo down on the kitchen table, and I took Shovel Pig and dumped her contents. I was shaking. I didn’t realize the violence of the act until it was over. How much had been inside the purse. How upending it had been like pouring an ocean of “stuff” onto the table. How some of it fell off, so I spent the next few minutes picking it up.