D.B. and Me by Rob Rosen

Author:Rob Rosen [Rosen, Rob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: JMS Books LLC
Published: 2024-01-19T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 8

It was another hour hike to my house. His house. My mom had left him years ago, just after I went off to war, when she knew I no longer needed her. Then again, her war had been just as brutal as mine was. I sent her letters from Nam. I stopped sending them after Seattle. I figured she’d been through enough.

Tim and I paused a little ways down the street from the house.

“That it?” he asked with a point.

I nodded. “Hasn’t changed.” I also pointed. “The car in the driveway. It was mine. Left to me by my grandad, so not his, mine. Meaning, if I take it, it won’t be stealing.”

He laughed, then whispered, “You murdered a man and I hijacked a plane; car theft barely seems to rank.”

I nodded. “But if he catches us, none of that will matter. He’ll be judge and jury. And he’s armed.”

“But he’s your father.”

It was now my turn to laugh, though there was no joy in this one. “Yeah, I’ve tried that argument before. Only, to him, that’s what justifies everything he’s ever said or done to me, to her. He’s my father. He was her husband. He put a roof over our heads and food on the table, so he could treat us like shit as often as he liked. He could berate us, and degrade us, and hit us. Says so in the Bible.”

“He hit you?”

“With the Bible.” And his hand and his belt. Mostly, it was the degrading stuff, though, how we weren’t worth shit, how we were lucky to have him, that I would never amount to anything. Even when I went off to war, the manliest thing a guy could do, he called me a pussy. He already knew I was gay; war wasn’t going to make me any more of a man.

Tim rubbed my back in the middle of the street I grew up on. Things had come full circle, but, man, did they take a weird route to get there. “I’m sorry, Adam.”

“Yeah, me, too,” I said as I stared at my house in a mixture of both fear and contempt. “The army was supposed to make me a man, but I was already a man. And to him, I’d only ever be a homo. I could’ve saved myself a fucking huge headache and headed to Canada.” I laughed despite myself. “Guess that’s the answer to everything, huh?”

“I love you, Adam,” he said, which was also the answer to everything. He patted my back one final time. “So, how do we get your car and get out of here without getting shot?”

I again started walking to the house. “We need a distraction.”

“Uh huh. Uh huh. And what kind of distraction?” he asked. “Fireworks, tossed eggs, Christmas caroling? Not sure about the first two, but I can sing a mean Deck the Halls.”

“Nope,” I said, drawing us ever closer. “A Mormon.”

He rummaged around his pockets. “Sorry, fresh out.”

I pointed his way. “Just say this:

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