Chapter 32 ~ Family Rules – Part X
August 1, 2010
When he exhaled, the stench of whisky redoubled.
The table top. The cards. My fingernails.
“How are you, Kenny?” Slight slurring.
I didn’t speak.
Sanderson didn’t say anything. For a long time.
Glancing out the corner of my eye; his eyes closed. I turned my head, pretty sure that he was out, passed out. I looked at him. He snorted in his sleep, half-snore, half-choke, and I thought he was coming back.
But he didn’t.
And I counted my blessings.
Closed my eyes.
Counted my blessings.
Tried to work out just how I was going to get out from behind the table when he was right in the way, when his feet were spread out beneath the table. When the only route out was to step over his legs.
The only escape.
My own legs too short to be able to step over without touching him.
I opened my eyes. Looked at him. Listened to the rhythm of his snoring.
Finally, I got up the confidence to stand.
Stood for a while, watching and listening – remembering the morning when my father had roared at me in their bed, when I had run to hide in the gap between my own bed and the wall. Not knowing what it was about Sanderson that scared me, a fear that had been building for a long time, some intuitive part of me sensing something in him.
The only way to get out was to turn my back on him, leaning away, lifting my left leg and stepping sideways, like a clown accentuating every movement. Me straddling his legs, half-crouching, half-sitting, furiously listening for any change in his breathing. Waiting a long, long time. No change in his breathing, that rumbling snore; in and out, rumble and rattle. Steadying myself to lift my right foot, to complete the manoeuvre. Off balance, I began to fall, catching myself early enough to stay silent and standing.
His hand on my neck was like a vice; sudden, excruciating.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” he roared. His voice drunken, loud and crowing, as if he were performing to a theatre auditorium.
I didn’t say a thing.
He yanked me backwards, lifting me off my feet and I was cocooned in his scotch breath and old man’s arms, sitting on his lap, unable to squirm, his free arm snaking around me and pinioning me to his chest.
“Don’t you move!” he hissed, spit speckling my ear and cheek.
My five-year-old ear and cheek.
I stopped trying to struggle; the noise that escaped me was the whimpering of a starved puppy, crying for food or its mother’s teat.
“Shut up.”
I couldn’t.
“Shut up,” his hand grabbed my ear and twisted hard.
“Quite the prima donna, aren’t you little Kenny?” he spat, “got every one of them wrapped around your cutesy, cutesy little finger. Especially that bitch Jamie, especially her.”
He tensed as he spoke her name, tensed against me.
“Bitch!”
He was quiet for a moment. Then he started to mumble under his breath. Words slipping through.
“Bring her down a peg or two… make her… bitch… who does she think…”
“Stand up,” he said.
I did so, still straddling his legs, which he now opened, placing them either side of me, pinning me between his thighs. I began to turn around, to look at him but he stopped me with his hand on the back of my shoulder.
“No,” he said, “keep facing that way.”
I stared at the wall on the other side of the table.
Wondered where my minder was. For the first time in this whole extended moment, wondering where she was.
He snuffled behind me, grunting, panting. Hissing under his breath. Words. Disconnected and bilious.
Where was she?
His grunts.
Where?
I sprinted for the door, tripping over his legs, kicking out to get clear, sprawling on the floor, dreading the feel of his claw on my neck again. When I glanced back, he was doubled over on the seat, head between his knees, breathing hard. I jumped to my feet and ran for the door.
Just to find it opening, Jamie pushing it towards me.
I dashed into her arms. Beginning to sob without realizing it was starting.
She held me for a moment and then looked over my shoulder.
“Martin?”
“Fuck off,” he hissed, head still between his knees, looking at the ground.
“What did you do, Kenny?” she asked.
And I couldn’t speak.
“Martin?”
Nothing.
“What did you do, Kenny?” More forceful this time. Accusing me.
The sound of his fly going up was crystal clear. The sound of him getting to his feet, putting himself away, the rattle of his zip.
I began to panic, thinking that it wasn’t over. That she wasn’t the saviour I’d called for while he’d done whatever he did behind my back.
She took a step backward through the door, out of the trailer.
She’s going to leave me with him, I thought.
“Yeah, right,” she said, laughing a little, “like that’s gonna happen!”
And he roared.
She carried me straight to Joel’s trailer.
Where she spilled everything.
As I sat listening to stuff that I didn’t have a hope of understanding, I worshipped her. I worshipped her force, her strength, her beauty. And I worshipped Joel’s reaction.
The last thing I saw before she whisked me away was Joel dragging Sanderson out of the trailer by his hair.
