We the Animals by Justin Torres

Author:Justin Torres
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780547576725
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2011-10-15T01:13:31+00:00

Ducks

PAPS CAME HOME WITH sleepy eyes and blood-flushed ears and started leaning against Ma, pressing her into the counter, kissing her, pinching her in different places, and Ma, who had been about to leave for the brewery, said, "Stop, stop, stop."

But he didn't stop; he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her toward the bedroom. She dragged her feet, tried to hold on to the counter, the wall, the door frame, saying, "Stop, baby, I'm serious," her voice lowering, deepening. "Stop." He lifted her feet off the ground and pulled her up the stairs, laughing at her anger. She gripped the banister, and he tugged at her from behind until she let go. He couldn't see her expression, but we could. Her eyes searched, wild and desperate, for something to grab, and for just an instant she looked at us with that same pleading look—she looked to us for help, but we stood there, out of her reach, watching. Then her face flattened and calmed some; she even smiled a sad, halfway smile. What did we see there? Disappointment? Forgiveness? All of this passed in a moment, and only a moment, before Paps kicked the door shut.

We boys pulled the blankets from our beds and the cushions from the sofa and made a nest in front of the television. We would not sleep upstairs. We fell asleep with the flash of blue across our eyelids and the moans and whispers of late-night advertisements filling our dreams.

Ma eventually left, worked her graveyard shift, and came home again. She shook us awake, saying, "Get yourselves in that truck, and don't question me. I won't be questioned."

Ma called it that truck, or your father's truck; Paps had never returned the truck like he had promised, and we knew he never would.

We drove out to a park where there was a stepped white gazebo and upside-down canoes half submerged in the river. There were swings with black rubber seats, most of them broken and dangling from their chains into the dirt ruts below. There was a wide and patchy lawn sloping up from the water to the road, and there was our truck parked half on the grass and half on the shoulder. There were no children; all the children were in school.

Inside the bed of the truck were garbage bags stuffed tight with our clothing, the white plastic stretched to a milky translucence and here and there ripped through by the angled edges of letters and envelopes and pictures. Inside the cab was Ma, who had lain across the bench seat and said she needed a nap, pulling her forearm across her eyes to block out the bright day—and all across the lawn was the dew, breaking the sun into specks of light, like a million baby suns clinging to the grass.

The three of us boys trampled around the park, keeping one eye on the truck. We found a sapling bordered by a chicken-wire fence, and we bent the tree to

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