Daddy Love (14 page)

Here he discovered cash, secreted away in a woman’s silk evening purse. Daddy Love counted the bills swiftly once, and then twice, like a bank teller.

Fifteen hundred dollars! Assholes.

Elsewhere there was jewelry, and a man’s silk neckties, and a selection of these items Daddy Love shoved into a woman’s straw tote bag, and handed it to Gideon as his responsibility for carrying back out to the minivan.

Daddy Love entered the large shining bathroom that adjoined the bedroom. Gideon had never seen a bathroom so
large
.

Daddy Love insisted that Gideon use the toilet, for it was a long drive home and he didn’t intend to stop.

Daddy Love often watched Gideon at the toilet. Daddy Love observed the shy stream of yellowish liquid falling and fizzing in the toilet bowl and seemed in his unpredictable Daddy Love way strangely moved.

You are such a perfect boy, Son. If only you would never grow an inch!

Daddy Love stood beside Gideon, to urinate into the toilet himself. But Gideon shut his eyes and did not see.

Daddy Love did not flush the toilet.

Instead, Daddy Love stopped the drain in the large
pale-pink
-marble bathtub bordered by floor-to-ceiling mirrors on two walls. And Daddy Love turned on the faucet, so that water splashed noisily but did not run out of the tub.

Gideon sucked at his fingers, seeing this.

For this was a
bad thing
to do, he remembered being told.

Long ago he’d been told. Never never turn on a faucet so that the water will overflow the sink.

Seeing the worried look in Gideon’s face Daddy Love laughed.

Christ says I bring not peace but a sword, Son.

Laughing Daddy Love led Gideon back out onto the redwood deck and out to the minivan parked in the driveway. Together Gideon and his dad loaded the rear of the van.

And all the way home, Daddy Love was in a good mood. Whistling and laughing. At the Water Gap bridge he leaned over to kiss Son on the forehead in a way that frightened Son but made him feel very relieved too for it seemed that Daddy Love did love him as he’d said since the first night.

Bless you, child. You are mine.

Son.

He woke abruptly—shamefully. He’d been dozing off.

Sometimes when he was anxious and confused and worried that Daddy Love was becoming angry with him, he became strangely sleepy and couldn’t keep his eyes open or his head erect.

In the New Jersey Transit Station amid so much commotion and movement and the loud announcements of buses departing and arriving and yet—Gideon had dozed off, helplessly.

Come, Son. With me. Now.

Frowning Daddy Love loomed over Gideon. He was such a figure of dignity in his black preacher’s clothes and the surprise of the crimson velvet vest, you could see strangers glancing at him and in particular women.

Gideon had the idea that Daddy Love had been in the station somewhere, observing him. As in Grindell Park when he’d been on the swings. But no one had approached him now, as the flush-faced man with the video camera had approached him, and (maybe?) this was why Daddy Love was disappointed in him.

I am not so special now. No stranger cares about me.

Before Gideon could scramble to his feet Daddy Love gripped his arm and yanked him so hard it felt as if his arm was being jerked out of its socket.

He fast-walked Gideon through the station and out the exit doors to the minivan parked a half-block away. Not caring if they almost collided with people or even that they’d caught the eye of two New Jersey Transit security cops for Daddy Love was pissed about something, and Daddy Love felt a righteous indignation rush through him like a bolt of God.

This time, unlike the time at the contractor’s house in Raven Rock when he’d been a little boy of six, Daddy Love did not lean over to kiss Son on the forehead; nor did Daddy Love say in his tender cuddle-voice
Bless you child. You are mine.

Well, Son! Let’s see what you’ve been doing all morning.

Daddy Love lifted the macramé tote bag in vivid red-orange to inspect the stitches.

Son held himself very still for it was never clear if Daddy Love would praise his handiwork, or pass a severe judgment.

Son could not predict.

Gideon did not trust himself to predict.

But Daddy Love was smiling. Good work, Son!

And Daddy Love ran his knuckles through Gideon’s spiky hair just hard enough to hurt his scalp but it was a gentle-hurt.

Saying mysteriously, Know what, Son? Maybe it’s time to expand our studio.

And later that day when Gideon was setting the table for their suppertime in front of the TV—(it was NASCAR race
night)—Daddy Love said as if he’d just now thought of it: Maybe you’d like a little brother to keep you company, eh? Plenty of room in Daddy Love’s house as in Daddy Love’s heart.

Little brother.

Keep you company.

And yet: never trust a stranger, Daddy Love cautioned.

Gideon had his (secret) friends at school. Often he counted them on his fingers: Alex, Simon, Frankie, Jennie.

Sometimes he reversed them: Jennie, Frankie, Simon, Alex.

In his sixth-grade homeroom at West Lenape Elementary these were shy quiet children like Gideon Cash. Except for Jennie they were not so smart as Gideon Cash.

At lunchtime in the noisy cafeteria or at recess outside behind the school, Gideon stayed close to his friends. If he and Jennie Farley sat together at lunch often they had little to say to each other but each felt a comfort in the other’s company.

Jennie had a thin freckled face, pale red-brown hair cut short as a boy’s. When she smiled, her teeth were revealed as crooked in a way to make you smile, but not in meanness.

Jennie said, Mom says to ask you if you’d like to come to my birthday party.

Gideon said, he’d like that.

But Daddy Love did not approve. Daddy Love had “looked into” Jennie Farley’s family and didn’t like it that her father was Dwayne Farley, a deputy with the Lenape Sheriff ’s Department.

Nor did Daddy Love approve of Alex Trow’s family for his mother was a county social worker. Such people are naturally curious—nosey.

If anyone ever questions you about your daddy, Son, tell them to talk to ME. Got that?

Yes. Gideon got that.

Alex Trow was a close friend of Gideon’s too. Though the boys rarely spoke together, only just hung out together at lunchtime or recess. Alex was a particularly quiet boy who had difficulty reading—he’d told Gideon that he was “dys-lec-tic” and that his brain was wired wrong—and so Gideon helped him with reading assignments and arithmetic homework. It was amazing to Gideon, that his friend could so misspell simple words and, with numerals, write them upside down without seeming to notice.

Maybe I’m just an upside-down freak, Alex said. But he wasn’t smiling.

Everybody is a freak, Gideon said. If you get to know them.

You’re not, Gideon. I wish I was you.

This was so spontaneous and touching, Gideon looked away.

But you can’t be me. There is only one son of Daddy Love.

Yet, maybe Alex Trow could be Son’s brother? If Daddy Love was serious about a new brother.

Gideon didn’t think so. The new brother would be younger than eleven, Gideon seemed to know.

Alex was a twitchy nervous boy with poor motor coordination so that sometimes, for no evident reason, he dropped his cafeteria tray, or lost his balance and fell on the stairs.

Yet Alex could be coaxed—coerced—into participating in rough games at recess, on the cracked and potholed asphalt playground.

West Lenape Middle School was on the other side of the parking lot from the elementary school. Often it happened that older boys, as old as fourteen, in ninth grade, drifted over to the elementary school to torment the younger children.
Elementary-and
middle-school children took school buses together but Daddy Love did not want Gideon to take the school bus until he was older.

Yet, Daddy Love didn’t drive Gideon to school very often now, or pick him up after school; Daddy Love wanted Gideon to bicycle to school—
to save fossil fuels.

Older boys from the middle school were mean, mocking. Their language was threaded with obscenities in emulation of the speech of adult men and their laughter was jeering and unsettling. Gideon Cash had no idea why they disliked
him
—he’d never spoken a word to them unless provoked.

Or maybe they disliked the quieter children. Boys like Alex Trow and girls like Jennie Farley who didn’t laugh at their jokes but backed away from them with frightened faces.

Once, Gideon saw his friend Alex drawn into playing dodge-ball with the older boys. He’d wanted to call to Alex, to come off the playing field—but he stood at the sidelines with other children, watching.

The game was furiously played. Boys threw the ball at one another’s faces and bellies. And there seemed to be a secret agenda to the game—the younger and weaker boys, like Alex Trow, were particular targets, slow to realize until they were seriously struck by the ball.

One of the ninth-grade boys, Lyle McIntyre, who lived on the Saw Mill Road not far from Daddy Love’s farm, threw the ball directly into Alex’s face from a distance of about five feet. As Alex recoiled, lost his balance and fell down, and hid his face in his hands, stunned and bleeding from his nose, the other players hooted and laughed and threw the ball along the field, ignoring him.

Gideon and Jennie went to help Alex to his feet. His lower face was covered in blood, and blood was dribbling onto his shirt. He was crying, his lips trembled convulsively. Gideon and Jennie walked Alex to the school, to the nurse’s office.

Asked who had hurt him, Alex sat sullen and silent.

Asked who had gotten him to play such a rough game, Alex sat sullen and silent.

It was known, if you “ratted” on anyone, you would really be singled out for punishment. So Gideon didn’t tell the nurse or the school authorities who the boys were from the middle school.

Smiling thinking
Christ says I bring not peace but a sword.

There was the McIntyre house which was an old converted farmhouse covered in mustard-yellow vinyl siding, where Lyle McIntyre and his younger brother Bobbie lived. Lyle was in ninth grade and Bobbie was in seventh grade. Both boys were bullies and both seemed to have taken a particular dislike to Gideon Cash.

What’re you looking at, fuckface?

Who the fuck are you, fuckface?

And there was Pete Baumgarten, also in ninth grade, a burly boy who lived just inside the Kittatinny village limits, in a “ranch house” adjoining a lumberyard.

Gideon never looked openly at these boys or their friends. But he studied them, covertly.

Since the “arson fires” in the garages near Lenape Elementary School there had been no further fires or disturbances in Kittatinny Falls. Numerous persons in the neighborhood had been questioned—including several middle- and high-school boys—but no perpetrator had been arrested.

Gideon smiled thinking
Assholes!

He had a way of speaking under his breath that was in emulation of Daddy Love and a way of flaring his nostrils, as Daddy Love did when he was righteously indignant.

Now in mild weather Daddy Love wasn’t so vigilant about overseeing Gideon and allowed him to bicycle to school and home again and frequently after school Gideon bicycled along
the paved streets of Kittatinny Falls, observing houses in which certain of his classmates and teachers lived and wondering what their lives were, in those houses. He had a strong impulse to ride his bicycle up a driveway, peer into a back window or boldly enter a house …

Hi! Am I somebody you know?

Since he’d set fires in three garages, two of them belonging to strangers, Gideon was less interested in garage fires; he was more intrigued by a spectacular act, like an explosion—a bomb set off in, for instance, the fire station, or one of the several churches in town, or one of the larger stores on Broad Street. From the Internet, without Daddy Love’s knowledge—(how shocked and furious Daddy Love would be, to learn that his son surreptitiously used his computer when Daddy Love was away)—he’d downloaded recipes for simple, homemade bombs … Just the thought of a real explosion, bringing down an entire structure, was thrilling to him.

Hi! Just to let you know I WAS HERE.

Gideon didn’t want to hurt anyone, however. (Did he?)

(At school, Ms. Swale was not so smiling and cheerful as she’d been. Jennie told Gideon that their teacher was nervous now that her house would be burnt down.)

(Jennie said she felt sorry for Ms. Swale. Gideon said
yes
, he felt sorry for Ms. Swale too.)

He’d stopped drawing and painting in study hall. Ms. Swale had asked him why and he’d said with a shrug that his daddy didn’t think he should be wasting time on such crap.

“Crap! Oh, Gideon. I’m sure your father didn’t say such a thing …”

Ms. Swale looked as if she’d been struck in the face. Gideon was overcome with a sick feeling like guilt or resentment or fury and edged away from her as politely as he could.

Often on his bicycle Gideon was drawn to the edge of Kittatinny Falls, where, on the river, there was a sprawling, boarded-up old mill in which in a long-ago time, as their teacher told them, hundreds of mill-workers had been employed manufacturing ladies’ and gentlemen’s footware.

Only a faded sign on the tall faded-brick building remained—
PRESTON FOOTWARE “LUXURY AT LOW COST
.” Ghostly figures emerged out of the wall, a man in a fedora hat, a woman with blond tight-curled hair, each holding footwear in their hands, for the viewer to admire. Though the old mill had been abandoned, part of the first floor was being renovated and was to become the Kittatinny Falls Community Arts Center, if the State of New Jersey could provide funds to match private donors.

Work had begun on the renovation the previous year, but was temporarily suspended. Gideon peered through new plate-glass windows into the interior, where the old floorboards had been ripped away and new tiles had been laid in place. But the walls were unfinished, needing to be plastered.

The Kittatinny Arts Center would be in a beautiful location, everyone said. A deck running the length of the building, above the Delaware River.

A room for art exhibits. A room for folk music concerts. A room in which crafts would be taught—knitting, weaving, potting, macramé.

Chet Cash had something to do with these plans. Gideon thought so. There were volunteers to serve on the local committee, to spread the word and to help raise funds, and “Chet Cash” was one of these volunteers.

In Kittatinny Falls and elsewhere in the Delaware Valley, “Chet Cash” was known as a serious artist. Particularly, his macramé products were much admired and were said to bring in a steady if modest income to support him and his son.

From the Studio of Chet Cash.

Son was proud of helping his Daddy as he did. Macramé was not easy work and could hurt your fingers and make your eyes ache and it was hard to remain indoors so much now that the weather was nice but Son did not resent working for Daddy Love for as Daddy Love explained, he provided the macramé materials, and he provided the directions, and he sold the products to retailers.

Gideon was beginning to resent macramé! Beginning to be sick of it.

Fucking macramé! Waiting to see if Daddy Love praised or scolded.

Before, Missy had kept him company. They could work outdoors if they remained at the rear of the house. (For Daddy Love did not want strangers showing up at the house and discovering that his son was the macramé artist, not Chet Cash.) But now
that Missy was gone, buried beyond the garden, there was no one for Gideon to play with when he had a few minutes’ playtime; there was no one to bark excitedly, no one to wag her tail, when Gideon returned from school.

Sometimes, Daddy Love wasn’t even home when Gideon returned from school. Out in the minivan—where?

He is looking for a new son. A brother for you.