Tim McGregor - Killing Down the Roman Line

Travis stood outside the tent with his head bowed, caught between the OPP officer and his parents. As if there was some debate as to who was taking him away. Could the cop even do that, haul him away to the paddy cell with all the drunks and brawlers? Given the absolute shitstorm he was in for when he got home, maybe the paddy was the better fate.

Emma was apoplectic, Jim red-faced. Constable Bauer provided a few details but none of it made any sense. Travis just attacked the boy out of the blue, no provocation. Assault with a weapon.

“What weapon?” Jim asked.

The constable produced a wadded paper towel, seeped damp with blood and unfolded it. The brass knuckles glinted under the patio lights.

Emma covered her mouth. Jim snatched Travis by the collar. “You used this on that kid? Where the hell did you get this?” When the boy said nothing, Jim shook him. “Where did you get this!”

“I found it.”

“Bullshit! Who did you get it from?”

“Easy.” The constable put a hand on Jim’s shoulder. “Let’s not make this any worse.”

Emma rubbed her temple. “How could this get any worse?”

“This wasn’t just a schoolyard fight,” Constable Bauer said. “The Coogan boy is seriously hurt. I don’t know how his parents will react but they’d be within their rights to charge your son with assault.”

“Oh god.” The blood drained out of Emma’s already paling face. She felt dizzy.

Two people rushed past them to the nurse’s station. The injured boy’s parents.

Jim held his breath and pushed down the rage rumbling up his throat. He leaned down eye-level to Travis and said, “We need to fix this right now. Apologize to that boy.”

Travis didn’t move. Just take me to jail. Anything but apologize to that sack of shit . He felt his dad’s hand grip his shoulder, turn him around and march him to the tent.

The Coogan boy was a mess. Strings of red drool swung off his chin, snot running down his broken nose. Francie the nurse lifted away the ice-pack from the boy’s cheek. A deep cut, still welling up with blood. It didn’t seem real to Jim. How could his son have done that?

Jim cleared his throat, spoke up. “Mr. Coogan, my son would like to apologize…”

“Get that little bastard away from my son!” Mrs. Coogan lashed out with so much rage, Jim leaned back, thinking she was going to swing. Her teeth bared. “Look at what your son did! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”

Mr. Coogan said nothing, just patted his son’s back. Emma stepped up, hoping to talk the mother down. “Liz, I’m sorry. I don’t understand how this—”

“What kind of people are you? Raising such a vicious child. Brant’s lost a tooth for God’s sakes!”

Francie stepped between them, defusing the whole thing. “Is your car close by? You need to take Brant to the hospital. He’ll need a few stitches for that cut.”

Mrs. Coogan wailed at the thought. Brant’s father helped his son up and walked him out of the tent. He looked at Jim and Emma and, in an icy tone, told them he was laying charges against their son.

Constable Bauer watched the boy limp away before turning back to Jim and Emma. “Take the boy home. If I see him back here or in town, I’ll drive him straight to juvenile lockup. Understand?”

Escorting their son to the parking lot, Jim wondered if they could pack the boy off to his grandmother’s for the rest of the summer.

Nothing was said on the drive home, away from the twinkling lights and prom night haze. Back to the old farmhouse with its worn out floors and houseflies buzzing against the windows. Jim driving too fast, Emma unable to shake the image of the boy’s broken face. Travis withered between them like a spooked hermit crab.

When he got out, Travis ran for the house. Letting the screen door bang behind him, marching for the stairs. The haven of his room. Jim barked at him to stop, take a seat. Good or bad, it all came to a head around the kitchen table. Emma chewed her lip, the whole drive home debating how to deal with this. Calm and cool, detach her emotions and get the boy to talk. Draw it out of him. Yelling at Travis would only make him withdraw into a silent shell. She needed to pull Jim aside and tell him how to broach this but he didn’t give her a chance. Unloading on the boy, he’d already blown any chance at getting to the bottom of this. The rage of the father trumping the needs of the child.

Jim leaned against the counter and pinned the boy with a stare. Minutes ticked over and still Jim said nothing, just squaring Travis until a bead of sweat stung the boy’s eye. And then Jim laid into him. Why did he attack that boy? Sneaking up and sucker-punching him like a weasel. Where had he gotten the brass knuckles and had his brains completely fallen out of his fucking head for brutalizing someone like that?

Travis wilted. His eyes glassed over, mentally fleeing somewhere far, far away. The barking of his father melding into the white noise of crickets. Isn’t that how torture victims dealt with their torment?

Emma stepped in when her husband’s rage was spent. She knelt down eye-level with Travis and told him they need to understand what had happened. What had that boy done to him? How had Brant Coogan hurt him to provoke that kind of anger?

Travis gave up nothing. He wasn’t even in the room.

Jim watched his son sit there like a stump. He could taste the contempt in the back of his throat, the simmering rage fire back up. It sickened him the way she mollycoddled the little prince and in a crystal flash he saw how this was all her fault. She had prissied and babied the boy into this state, still wiping his ass and indulging his limitless egotism, his infantile tantrums. Jim thought of his own father and all the harsh lessons the old man had taught him. His body held testimony to those lessons. The bent index finger, broken after he’d backed the family car into a tree. The gap in his jaw where a fist had knocked a molar loose. The lip of scar tissue trailing up his back.

The schooling hurt but the lessons stuck, seared fast with pain.

And here was his own son, the inheritor of the Hawkshaw legacy, spoiled into milquetoast by this overbearing woman and all her TV-fed, Oprah, feel-good bullshit. It wasn’t her fault, he realized. Emma simply hadn’t been raised right. He saw the flaw in her bloodline. She too had been mollycoddled and indulged. It explained why she had no stomach for harsh lessons or ugly truths. But he’d be damned if she would poison their son with it any longer.

“Travis.” His voice cold, cutting off Emma. “Answer your mother or so help me God you will end up worse than that boy you bludgeoned.”

Travis bounced his heel off the chair leg. “Now you act all tough. You act like a coward with bullies in town but you get all big man with me? Real tough, dad.”

Like a hot needle prodding an exposed nerve. Jim launched off the counter and threw Travis against the table. His hand came down hard across the boy’s face, snapping his head back like a tetherball. Cables popped up Jim’s neck. His teeth snapped, raging at the boy to never speak to him like that again.

Travis sunk to the floor. Emma screamed at him to stop, pushing him away but Jim didn’t budge, chewing the boy’s ear. “You’re too old to hide behind your mother anymore.”

Emma knocked Jim backwards. Travis bolted for the stairs, rabbiting up to his room. Jim sidled back like an accident victim, unsure of what had just happened. The look of pure revulsion on his wife’s face was something he’d never seen before.

“What is wrong with you?” Emma, coming at him fast. She slammed her palms into him, knocking him back another step. “Don’t you ever hit that boy!”