Jay Lake - Rocket Science

He laughed, still deep in memory, his voice chilly and bitter.

“None of us came home the same. Not me, not the Doc, not Grady. I made my own choices, got into the shine business later on after the Volstead Act. Doc Milliken, he hooked up with Hauptmann and some of the other German sympathizers around here. Bunch of closet fascists, those boys and girls. Sheriff’s Department’s still full of them. Your dad, he just pretended it never happened. Came back to that boy Ricky and your mother and made up stories about the Western Front.”

I had never known any of this about Dad. He had always said he was a doughboy in France. I wished he were still alive to talk to about this. I wished I was going to stay alive long enough to talk to him about anything. I glanced up at Mr. Bellamy. He was looking at me, expecting a reply.

“What happened to you?”

His voice was barely a whisper. “The Cheka picked me up, kept me for another year or so.”

“Cheka?” I asked.

“Dzerzhinsky’s secret police. Lenin’s hit men. They call it the NKVD now. Narodny Kommisariat Vnutrennikh Del .” The Russian words rattled off his tongue like he’d been born to the language. “People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs.” Mr. Bellamy sighed, looking sad. “I didn’t come home until 1920. Mrs. Bellamy had Floyd almost seven months later. Fine, strapping nine pound baby boy.”

I was so busy thinking about the NKVD that I almost missed what Mr. Bellamy said about Floyd. Floyd didn’t. Behind me, he gasped.

“You mean you and Mama…?” Floyd asked. His voice trailed off. I wondered exactly how could a fellow ask his father what Floyd was thinking.

“It don’t matter now.” Mr. Bellamy looked angry. No wonder he’d been willing to lock her up, then dump her in the cess pit. I was sure he hadn’t meant to say this much, but I had started him talking and he’d just gone on.

I couldn’t figure whether or not I was surprised that Mr. Neville hadn’t reacted to anything Mr. Bellamy had said. He obviously knew the whole story. I was trying to sort through what Mr. Bellamy had told me, ignoring how Dad’s untold history made me feel as I puzzled through the facts. I didn’t have much time left — Mr. Bellamy had made it quite clear he planned to kill me. Was there some angle here? I had vaguely known of the NKVD. Like he said, the Reds’ secret police. Stalin’s thugs, these days.

“Who’s my daddy?” demanded Floyd.

“Shut up, boy.” Mr. Bellamy laid the shotgun back on the table and clenched his fists. Mr. Neville shifted his grip on the pistol, waiting to see where this would go next. I wanted to sink into the floor, vanish without a trace. For all that they’d turned out to be monsters, I couldn’t help but care about the Bellamys — they’d been like family to me all my life.

And I was even understanding how they became monsters. I hated myself for sympathizing with Mr. Bellamy.

“I stood in the hallway upstairs and listened to her scream while she bore you,” he said with a snarl. “I raised you from a pup.” He stood up, his voice rising in volume. “I taught you how to run and fight and shoot, taught you about women, sent you off to the war and waited for you to come home. I’m your Daddy, by God, and you will show me the respect that I deserve.”

Mr. Bellamy grabbed the shotgun and pointed it over my head. I watched in fascinated horror as he pumped the action. I didn’t dare turn around to look at Floyd. I was too afraid of the gun.

Mr. Neville lifted his pistol, wavering it between Mr. Bellamy and Floyd somewhere behind me. “You going to be all right, Alonzo?” he asked.

“Get on out of here, Marvin,” growled Mr. Bellamy. “This here’s family business.”

Mr. Neville glanced at me with another of his rare, small smiles. He slipped the pistol back in its holster, nodded at the three of us, and walked toward the kitchen. “Don’t do anything hasty, Alonzo,” he called as he left.

The back door slammed a moment later. I hoped he was going to fish Mrs. Bellamy out of the cess pit, but Mr. Neville didn’t seem to be the public-spirited type.

In front of me, Mr. Bellamy was breathing hard. Even with his recent miraculous recovery, I could hear his lungs wheeze. He was old, too old to have gone to the Great War and been broken on a Russian beach. Behind me, the floorboards creaked as Floyd shifted his weight. There was the soft rustling of his shirtsleeves rubbing against his chest as he moved his arms. Was he getting ready to fight? Was it better or worse for me if they fought? I had no idea, so I kept my mouth shut. This was no business of mine, but I was stuck in the middle of it. Literally.

“You made me hurt Mama,” said Floyd. His voice was low and painful. I’d never heard Floyd sound so honest in my life. His emotions served him, not the other way around. “Lock her up, then dump her out there.”

“She was writing out a note to Hauptmann,” answered Mr. Bellamy in the same low, painful voice. He seemed to be picking his words with care. “You know that, boy. You caught her at it. Then Marvin didn’t give us no choice. He nearly made us kill her. It would have been you next, Floyd. And you’ve always been loyal to me. Those Reds are hard bastards.”

Why was she trying to contact Sheriff Hauptmann? I thought he was a Nazi agent. Of course, Mrs. Bellamy might not have known that. And he was still the Sheriff, Nazi or not, with an interest in chasing Reds. Either way, I didn’t dare ask.

Floyd coughed, maybe choking back a sob. I wished like crazy I could see his face. “You said we had to get her out of the way. You made me hustle her out there when Ollie came, to stand in that filth . You always hated her. Now I know why.”

Good boy , Floyd , I thought, slumping down in my chair. Remember who you are.

“Floyd.” Mr. Bellamy’s voice had gone very, very flat. The pain was gone, replaced perhaps by determination. Both of them stank now, sharp sweat filling the air of the dining room. The shotgun hadn’t wavered. I sank further into my chair and thought of Floyd’s boast about his father’s marksmanship.

“Yes, sir?” Floyd said.

“This is a mighty poor time to be fighting about this. We’re neither of us gonna say another word about your mother. She’ll get cleaned up and put safely back in the root cellar now that Ollie’s gone. What’s done is done.”

“That’s fine with me. So why don’t you put down the shotgun… Daddy?”

Without breaking eye contact with Floyd, Mr. Bellamy slowly reached down to placed the weapon on the dining table. As he did it, Floyd walked around to my left and sat down at the other end of the table. His face was set as hard as his father’s. The two of them stared at each other, then they both looked at me almost in the same glance. Sweating myself, I wondered where Floyd had put the carving knife. Even though he was in front of me, my neck itched.

“What do you think, Vernon?” asked Mr. Bellamy.

I was afraid to answer that question. “About what?” I asked cautiously.

His eyes narrowed. “My little story.”

I searched for a reply that wouldn’t agitate him, trying to stay away from Mrs. Bellamy, and the question of my own fate. “Are you a Communist?”

I almost bit my tongue in frustration. That might have been the stupidest question I could have asked.

Mr. Bellamy just looked at me, his eyes growing wider. For a moment, I thought he was going to laugh.

“Me?” he said. “A Communist. Boy, you are out of your mind. First you think I’m a Nazi, now you think I’m a Red. Heck, boy, I already told you. I’m a Republican.”

“But, the Cheka…”

“You’ve never been in prison, Vernon,” said Mr. Bellamy. His face fell back into sadness. “Things happen to a fellow in prison, on purpose sometimes, just part of life sometimes. Some of those things are, well, kind of permanent. They don’t all leave scars on the outside, if you know what I mean. Even now days, I got to do things for some people sometimes, when they ask. Got no choice, but that don’t signify I agree with them. It’s like back in the Prohibition when me and the boys were involved in the shine business. There was some Italians out of Chicago and Kansas City we had dealings with.”