You Don't Know Me by David Klass

Author:David Klass
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Published: 2001-09-24T04:00:00+00:00

15

A Short Haul

I do not know if you have ever had the experience of jogging home through the darkness on a cold night in late autumn, jacketless, shirtless, shoeless, and sockless, with cuts and bruises on your arms and legs, while two police cars cruise the darkness searching for you.

If you have not, perhaps you will fail to understand the necessity I feel to get within the walls of my house that is not a house as soon as possible. The night of my big date started out balmy, but the temperature has been dropping steadily. It has been a night of some exertion and much danger, and even a home that is not a home seems like a relatively pleasant place—a shelter in the storm, so to speak.

I begin the chapter this way to convince you that I have ample reason for not exercising proper caution in returning to a war zone. I do not conduct reconnaissance. I do not peer through all the windows on the ground floor. I do not crawl up the drainpipe like a cat burglar and pry open an upstairs window.

In fact, the front door is unlocked and I just walk on in.

My house is pitch-dark. I feel about for the light switch. Suddenly a hand grabs my right wrist in a grip that makes me cry out.

I smell the hot stench of whiskey breath. The voice of the man who is not my father hisses, “Where is it?”

“Where is what?” I ask, stalling for time, even though I believe I understand his question.

WHOP. The hard slap to the back of my head makes my vision blur and my ears ring. He holds me with his left and slaps me with his right. I cannot wriggle free. “Don’t play games. Where’s my money?” In the moonlight that streams in through a window, I can just make out his angry face.

“In my jacket pocket.”

‘And where’s your jacket?” WHOP.

The second slap catches me on top of my ear and is so hard it would knock me off my feet if he weren’t holding me tightly. There are tears in my eyes, and I am suddenly looking back at the man who is not my father through a kaleidoscope, so that his image keeps breaking apart and re-forming. “I had to leave it somewhere,” I manage to gasp. And then, to prevent a third blow, I hastily add, “I can get it tomorrow.”

My arm is twisted behind me in an agonizing grip that I believe professional wrestlers refer to as the chicken wing hold. “That’s not good enough. I’ll take it out of your hide, tonight.”

“Let me go or I’ll scream,” I say, thinking that my mother must surely be home now.

“Make a sound and you’ll regret it for weeks,” the man who is not my father counters in a not very pleasant tone.

I expect to be marched on into the house for further interrogation and punishment, so I am surprised when the man who is not my father pushes me ahead of him, outside, into the cold darkness.

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