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“Go away!” she said, and this time there was an edge to her voice and and it scared Mike to hear it. It hardly sounded like her at all.
A month ago he would have turned and fled from the sound of that voice, but he wasn’t the same boy he had been a month ago. He wasn’t even the same boy he had been that morning. Now he took a half step forward, beginning the motion of raising his hand to touch her, to reassure her, to comfort her with his presence.
“Why, you disrespectful little shit!”
The voice slashed through the shadows and Mike turned to see Vic’s bulk filling the doorway behind him. He hadn’t heard Vic come upstairs, hadn’t heard the cellar door open, but there he was, all puffed up with righteous rage, standing wide-legged, fists on hips like a poster of Superman.
“Mom’s sick,” Mike said hastily.
“Sicker than you think, shithead. Get the hell out of there. ”
But Mike held his ground. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that she’s a sloppy drunk and a lousy lay, and if she’d just take her medicine like she’s been told she wouldn’t be mooning around the house like she was at death’s door. ” Vic chuckled and repeated, “Like she was at death’s door. Ha!”
Mike didn’t understand what was funny about that, and didn’t care. He stood his ground. “If she’s sick, then she ought to go to the doctor. ”
Vic laughed again. “Well, I think it’s a little too late for the doctor, kiddo. Isn’t it, Lois honey? Too late for the ol’ doctor? Still, she knows where the medicine is, and she knows how to get it, but she won’t, ’cause she’s a stupid, stubborn old cow. ”
“Don’t talk like that about my mother,” Mike warned.
Vic looked at Mike for a second, then burst out laughing. “I’ll say whatever I damn well want in my own house, and you, my little piece of shit, are just going to have to listen and like it. ”
“I’m telling you—”
“No, shithead, I’m telling you! Since when did you grow a pair of balls? What, you think you’re standing up for your mother’s honor? That’s a frigging joke! I was screwing her long before your father rolled his car off Shandy’s Curve. I was sticking it to her day and night while your dumbass father was out working his balls off. Christ, what a shithead he was!”
“You’re a liar!” Mike felt his hands balling up into fists.
“Hell I am,” Vic snapped back. He was smiling, enjoying this. “And I’m here to tell you, boy, ol’ Lois there used to be a sweet piece, no matter what hole you’d take her from. And head? Damn, she could suck a golf ball through a twenty-foot garden hose. Jeeez-us! Man, those were some good times. Your dad’d call home to say he was working overtime and Lois here’d call me up not ten seconds later, talking all sweet about how she wants my cock in her and she can’t get enough of it and how she’s all wet and wants me over there. Back then, kid, I’d be over here in a hot minute. You’d be sucking your thumb upstairs and your mom’d be sucking my root down here. ”
“Shut your lying mouth!”
“Hell, boy, I was taking her up the ass when the chief’s office called to say that John Sweeney was Spam in a can off Shandy’s Curve. You know what? We finished screwing before we went out to the accident. How’s that for good old mom?”
Mike took a definite step toward Vic, who didn’t budge.
Behind him, Mike could hear his mother quietly weeping.
Mike looked over his shoulder at her huddled form. He tried to muster anger at her, tried to conjure hate, but he couldn’t. Maybe there would be a time for that, but right now all he felt for her was sadness. Still, as he turned back to face Vic, a searing white-hot hatred sprang up in his heart, charring his soul.
“Yeah,” Vic said in an offhand way, “Lois’d ball anything with a dick back then. ” Vic leaned forward and gave Mike a secretive leer. “How do you know John Sweeney was even your dad?”
“He was my father, asshole!” Mike snapped, though he knew it was a lie.
“John Sweeney was a useless piece of shit who did the whole world a favor by rolling his car down the hill. Kid, if I was you I’d be embarrassed to tell anyone that I was even related to that loser, let alone scream that he’s your father. ” He gave Mike a knowing sneer. “You couldn’t begin to understand who your father is. Or what he is! You should be ashamed of yourself, you little faggot, for being such a weak, miserable piece of crap, when your father is—”
He never finished his sentence because against all logic and expectation Mike Sweeney hit him so fast and hard that Vic never saw it coming. It caught Vic in the mouth and ground his inner lips against the teeth of his laughing mouth and knocked him back three steps so that he slammed against the living room doorway. Vic touched his mouth and looked at the hot blood on his fingertips.
For a moment he stood there and stared through shocked eyes at Mike. The boy’s chest heaved, hands clenching and unclenching, and there was a look of mingled fury and surprise in his eyes.
“Oh, God, Mike…no!” his mother cried from the shadows.
Slowly Vic’s eyes rose from his bloodstained fingers to stare at Mike, and Mike swore he could see a crimson veil of fury fall over his stepfather’s gaze.
“You just killed yourself you stupid shit,” he said and hurled himself off the wall, looping a hard right hook that broke a big white bell in Mike’s head and sent him crashing into an overstuffed chair. Mike slid to his knees as blood ran into his left eye.
“Fucking hit me?” Vic said, still overwhelmed by it. He moved toward Mike, bringing his hands up into a boxer’s guard.
