Robert Crais - L.A. Requiem

Five minutes later, Joe's mother came out onto the porch and called him to supper. She was a tall woman with heavy hips, dark hair, and anxious eyes. She was almost as tall as her husband. She would have supper on the table at four o'clock on the dot because that's when Joe's father wanted it. He went to work early, came home after a long day of busting his ass, and wanted to eat when he wanted to eat. They ate at four. He would drink himself to sleep by seven.

Mrs. Pike walked to the lip of the porch and called without direction because she did not know that her son was watching her. “You come in now, Joseph! We'll be having supper soon.”

Joe didn't answer.

“Suppertime, Joe! You'd better get home!”

Even as she said it, Joe could feel his heart quicken as the fear spread through his arms and legs. Maybe tonight would be different and nothing would happen, but he couldn't count on that. He just never knew, and so Joe waited silently until she went back into the house. He never went when she first called. He got home from school at three, but got gone fast , and stayed out of the house until the last possible minute. In the woods was better. Safe from the fear was better.

But ten minutes later his mother reappeared, and now her face was pinched and anxious. “Goddamnit, boy, I'm warning you! Don't you make your father wait! You get your butt in here!”

She stalked back into the house and slammed the door, and only then did Joe slip between the branches.

Joe could smell the booze in the air as soon as he opened the door, and the smell of it and what it meant made his stomach knot.

His father was sitting at the kitchen table, feet up, reading the paper, and drinking straight Old Crow whiskey on the rocks from a Jiffy peanut butter jar. The table was set for dinner, but Mr. Pike had pushed the plates to the side so he could put his feet up. His father watched him come in, finished what was in the glass, then jiggled the ice in the glass to draw Joe's eye. “Fill 'er up, sport.”

Joe's big job. Filling his father's glass with Old Crow.

Joe got the bottle from the cabinet under the kitchen sink, pulled out the cork, and poured a little bit into the glass. His father scowled. “That ain't even a swallow, boy. Give a man a fit highball and people won't think you're cheap.”

Joe filled the glass until his father grunted.

His mother said, “You ready to eat?”

Mr. Pike's answer was to take down his feet and pull his plate closer. Joe and his father didn't look anything alike. Where Joe was tall and thin for his age with a lean, bony face, his father was shorter than average, with heavy forearms and a round face. Mr. Pike said, “Christ, can't you say hello to your old man? A man comes home, he wants his family to give a damn.”

“Hi, Daddy.”

Mrs. Pike said, “Get the milk.”

Joe washed his hands at the kitchen sink, then got the milk from the refrigerator and took his seat. His mother was working on a highball of her own, and smoking a Salem cigarette. His mother told Joe that she drank just to keep some of the booze from his father. Joe also knew that she poured out some of the whiskey and refilled it with water, because he'd seen her do it. His mother had told him, “Joe, your father's a damned mean drunk.”

And Joe guessed that his father was.

Mr. Pike rose at four every morning, knocked back a couple of short ones to “get his feet under him,” then went to the mill. His father didn't drink in bars, and almost always came straight home unless he'd picked up a second job doing carpentry, which he sometimes did. If there wasn't the second job, the old man was home by three-thirty, pouring his first one even before he'd opened the paper, knocking back two or three before supper. After supper, he'd turn on the television, settle back in his EZ Boy to watch the news, and drink until he fell asleep.

Unless something set him off.

If something set him off, there would be hell to pay.

Joe knew the signs. His father's eyes would shrink into hard, tiny pits, and his face would glow bright red. His voice would get louder, letting everyone know he was about to let go, but Joe's mother would shout back at him curse for curse. That was the scariest part to Joe, the way his mother did that. It was like his father was giving them fair warning, letting them know he was losing control of himself, that there was still time to settle him down, only Mrs. Pike just couldn't seem to see it. Joe was only nine, but he could see it coming as fearfully as you could see a hundred-car freight train bearing down on you if you were strapped to the tracks. Joe would see the signs, and watch with horror as his mother ignored them, just kept digging at the old man in that way she had as if she wanted to set him off, when all Joe wanted was for her to stop, was to say and do the things that would calm the old man, was just get the hell out of there and run into the woods where he could hide and be safe.

But no.

His mother was blind to it, and Joe would watch as she pushed harder and harder, Joe getting so scared that sometimes he cried, begging her to leave Daddy alone, none of it doing any good until the old man finally had had enough and jumped up, shouting, “There's gonna be hell to pay.”

His father said it every time.

That's when he started to hit.

Mrs. Pike brought a roast beef to the table for her husband to carve, then went back to the stove for mashed potatoes and string beans. His mother and father weren't looking at each other, and barely spoke, and that had Joe worried. Things had been tense between them since Saturday, when his father was watching the Game of the Week with Pee Wee Reese and Dizzy Dean. His mother was vacuuming the floor around the televi sion, which had the old man pissed off enough, but then she'd run over the antenna wire with the vacuum and screwed up the reception at the bottom of the eighth inning in a three-two game. It had been building every day since then, with both of them retreating into silence and hostility until the air in the house seemed charged with fire.

Nine-year-old Joe Pike, the only child in this house, could feel their building anger, and he knew with terrified certainty what was coming as surely as the coming of the full moon.

Mr. Pike took another slurp of his whiskey, then set about slicing the roast. He cut two pieces, then frowned. “What kind of cheap meat is this you bought? There's a goddamned vein right through the middle.”

Here we go.

Joe's mother brought potatoes and string beans to the table without answering.

His father put down the carving knife and fork. “You forget how to speak American? How you expect me to eat something that looks like this? They sold you a piece of bad meat.”

She still didn't look at him. “Why don't you just calm down and eat your supper? I didn't know there was a vein. They don't put a label, this meat has a vein.”

Joe knew his mother was scared, but she didn't act scared. She looked angry and sullen.

His father said, “I'm just saying is all. Look at this. You're not looking.”

“I'll eat the goddamned vein. Put it on my plate.”

Mr. Pike's face began its slow, inexorable crawl to red. He stared at his wife. “What kind of comment is that? What's that tone in your voice?”

Joe said, “I'll eat it, Daddy. I like the veins.”

His father's eyes flashed, and they were as small as steel shot. “Nobody's eating the goddamned veins.”