Crystal Eaters by Shane Jones Page B

sides, the paint behind the dresser peeled off in curling sheets, half a dozen brittle hooks fingering the air.
    “I mean, how ridiculous . No more spending time with those boys. I’m telling your father. I don’t know what to do with you.”
    What was said between parents: slightly worse than a spanking. Something to be remembered. He sensed the beating coming from Dad’s truck heading home from the mine. He had never seen Mom so angry and had overhead the word belt . Even her cough was angry. He feared bruises. What he did to protecthimself was take the rolled up dirty underwear on the floor and stuff it down the inside of his pants, covering his legs front and back. He put the underwear under his shirt and fattened his belly. He positioned underwear on his shoulders and became a little anxious monster waiting for Dad’s anger to liquefy out and onto his body.
    He lay on the bed with his chest rising and falling in the silence of the bedroom.
    Mom greeted Dad in the driveway. Pants startled when Dad slammed the truck’s door. Then he heard their voices through the window before they decided to go for a walk. Pants got up, kind of penguin-shuffled with the shit-underwear covering him and watched from the window until they came back up the road. He thought maybe nothing would happen. He thought maybe a big body wouldn’t hurt his small body. A walk meant things were okay. Walks relaxed. You talked and felt better after a walk.
    Again, they stood in the gravel driveway talking closely, the wind sweeping dirt from the road into brown wings against the sky above them. When Mom looked up at his window he fell backward and onto the bed and began hyperventilating. He couldn’t control his air. The bed squeaked and he tried to calm himself down by saying it would be okay. Would it be okay?
    Remy woke from her nap and shouted Wake me up!
    His body felt miniature because the bed felt like it was the size of the room.
    His breathing hurt.
    Mom lifted Remy from the crib and she stopped crying.
    Footsteps in the hallway.
    A drawer being opened then closed.
    Someone in the bathroom.
    A body near the door.
    Footsteps.
    Then no footsteps.
    When the door opened a hole opened in his heart.
    Dad lunged in. The belt extended from his fist and hung against his thigh. His work shirt was stained with long drips of YCL and he smelled like mold. Pants sat up in bed, swung his legs over the edge, fell to his knees on the carpet scattered with underwater, and apologized. Mom said from the doorway maybe he would learn something this way because she had tried everything else. Her father had done the same to her, and so did Dad’s, and it worked, look at them, adjusted people. She didn’t necessarily believe what she thought, but her family history was stronger than her head. The important thing was a punishment that he would remember.
    Going in for a lay-up that won’t go in because Pants is directly under the rim, he understands Dad was so mad that day because of Mom. The fights, the silence at dinner, all things he saw but couldn’t process, building up inside Dad, exploding against his boy’s body. What was said during the walk was what upset Dad, and because he couldn’t vocalize then, to her, what he felt, it came out against him. Why Mom allowed it he wasn’t sure. It was so unlike her. He’s not sure who is more at fault. He’s not sure what it’s like to be a parent, how difficult it is, all the mistakes made even though a parent is constantly trying not to make mistakes. But maybe that’s the problem.
    He can’t make a single shot because his mind is in the bedroom.
    He was lashed across the back of his legs and down his arms. Rolls of dirty underwear falling from his shirt in a strange and terrible magician ta-da! kind of way. One pair, from his left leg, wrapped around his ankle and stayed there for the remainder.
    “I’m sorry,” he babbled.
    Dad flung him into the ceiling when he tried to hide in the space between wall