Цитаты из книги The Pale-Faced Lie

I could control Dad, unless his anger had reached a fever pitch. The trick was to catch him before that happened. It took split-second timing. On that night it worked.

The best way to control Mom was to make her feel important. All I needed to do was agree with whatever she said, and then I could convince her she had allowed me to be late. Once she thought I was on her side, I didn’t have to worry about her saying anything to Dad—but I had to talk to her before he got home.

Neither one was hard to figure out. Staying as far away as possible from both of them was the best form of self-defense.

For some reason, he paused with the belt in the air. “Why were you so late, and why didn’t you let your mother know where you were?”

“I was at Joey Perea’s house reading their Encyclopedia Britannica,” I blurted out. It was the best lie I could come up with on my walk home. “We have a project due for school tomorrow. Mine is on Genghis Khan, the Mongolian warlord.”

Dad lowered the belt.

I talked fast, hoping to delight him with my knowledge of a brutal leader who perfected violence in a way he could appreciate.

“Genghis Khan pinned his own uncle on an anthill for three days in a hundred-degree heat and then tied his arms and legs to four horses that ran off in different directions. His uncle got yanked to pieces for challenging Genghis for leadership of the Mongol hordes. The great Khan tortured and killed all his rivals, not just his uncle. The carnage was amazing.”

“Carnage? What does that mean?”

“It means the slaughtering of lots of people in bloody battles.”

“Carnage,” Dad repeated softly several times, as if the sound soothed his twisted mind. His eyes calmed and the creases on his forehead smoothed out. I’d triggered a complete mood change by praising a vicious, conquering asshole, someone like him. Genghis Khan was the Emile Griffith of dictators. I often won Dad over with the cleverness of my pranks, but this time, I had impressed his violent side.

It was a lesson I wouldn’t forget.

“Sometimes a man has to kill to make things right,” he said, staring out the windshield. “You understand that Paret needed killing, don’t you? They carried him off in a stretcher. That’s a good sign. I hope the son of a bitch dies. I’ve beaten men to death, but we weren’t in a boxing ring and I didn’t get paid for it. No other way to even the score. I’ve gotten rid of a few richly deserving sons of bitches. No one misses them. I did the world a favor.”

He switched off the radio and looked at me. “I’m crazy. Me and you both are. You gotta do what you gotta do. You understand?”

I nodded. All I wanted was to get out of the car and away from him. If he saw the disgust on my face, he’d want to hit me. My head swam with fear. How could I be his son?

That afternoon, Mom stood at the front door in her nightgown and stared out at four drunks lying face down. Sam and I walked up behind her, eager to go out and use our new ammo. She turned to me, frowning. “David, honey, those poor men haven’t moved for hours. It’s just awful to have them in our yard. Will you see if they’re dead? If they are, I’ll call the police so they can be properly buried.”

“We’ll find out,” I said, as Sam and I went into the yard.

One of the drunks was lying flat on his back on our side of the duplex next to the gully. “Sam, see that guy over there? Let’s see if this wakes him up.”

I held a cherry bomb up in the air. It took Sam three tries to light the match, and he flashed a huge smile when the fuse ignited and hissed. I bounced a perfect shot between the guy’s legs, inches from his crotch. Boom! His body quivered, and he staggered to his feet, getting out of our yard before falling down.

I laughed. “No need to call the morgue yet.”

On to the second drunk. Sam took off the man’s hat and placed it over a cherry bomb on the ground about a foot away from his head. With the blast, his hat blew high into the air, splitting into pieces before falling back to the ground. The man winced and rolled to his feet only to drop a few seconds later.

Sam got creative with our third victim. He poured honey on his head, and soon a mass of stinging red ants appeared. The guy didn’t move for a long time, but when he did, he jumped into the air with a screech that reminded me of Midnight when he came flying out of the dryer. For the last guy, we dropped a Black Cat into his boot, and he got up and danced around, shaking his foot like it was on fire.

“David,” Mom called through the screen door, “do you boys need to use firecrackers? You might hurt them.”

Inside, a skinny Mexican man with large brown eyes and aviator glasses greeted us with a wide smile from behind the counter. “I’m Ray Pino,” he said with a huge laugh, a cigarette dangling from his thin mustached lips. “I haven’t seen you boys before. Did you just move here?” He sounded like a big kid, excited to meet us.

“Yeah, about a week ago,” I said. “We’re looking for firecrackers and big action.”

Sam giggled, and I shot him a dirty look. He always did that when I tried sounding older, not helping either one of us.

Mr. Pino waved his hand, motioning for us to follow him. “I’ve got something you might like.” He laughed so hard his head shook and ashes from his cigarette sprinkled onto the concrete floor. His Wrangler jeans bagged around his skinny legs as he ambled to the back of the store, sidestepping boxes of curios. He stopped in front of cartons of Roman candles, sparklers, Whistling Jupiter rockets, and Black Cat firecrackers. I’d never seen anything so wonderful.

“I like fireworks and always keep a good supply.” Mr. Pino chuckled and slapped his knee. “These red donut-hole-sized balls are called cherry bombs.” He held one up and made an explosion sound with his mouth. “You’ll like these babies but be careful. If one blows up in your hand, it’ll take off a few fingers.”

I followed Dad into a big office where he signed the medical release forms. The doctor behind the desk asked him, “Mr. Crow, how did your son get on top of the house and fall onto the concrete? He’s only six years old.”

Dad blasted out of the chair, waving the forms in one hand and the pen in the other. “The little son of a bitch thinks he can fly,” he said. “And his mother sits on her ass all day watching TV.”

The doctor frowned. “Sir, that’s—”

Dad leaned over and jabbed the pen into his white smock. “All of you goddamn doctors are capitalist frauds making money off people’s misery and suffering. You bastards don’t care if you cure anybody as long as they keep coming back to spend every last dollar you blood suckers can extract.”

What was Dad talking about? Every time Sam got hurt, the doctors patched him up. It was Mom’s fault he kept getting hurt.

Days later, I went with Mom and Dad to get Sam out of the hospital. Mom held him in a blanket, but Dad ripped him out of her arms, yelling that she was too goddamn incompetent to hold him without dropping him. As we walked toward the exit, an older doctor came up behind us. “Mr. and Mrs. Crow, may I speak with you in my office?”

I tagged along since no one told me not to. “Please, have a seat,” the doctor said, closing the door. He picked up a clipboard from his desk and looked at Mom. “I’m trying to understand what happened. Why would you place a small child in a bicycle basket?”

Waiting for Mom to answer, Dad mumbled to himself, his voice low like a record player spinning too slowly. The usual signs of anger were there: the bugged-out eyes and pulsing Y vein on his forehead, along with dancing crisscrossed lines. It sounded like he was arguing with himself.

“I couldn’t leave David alone,” Mom said through sobs. “He causes trouble all the time. Lonnie watched Sally in the house . . . so they were okay. I put Sam in the basket and held him with one hand. It seemed safe . . . There weren’t any cars . . . Sam was having fun . . . David balanced the back end, but he’s so heavy I could barely get going . . . Sam wriggled out of my hand. The accident could have happened to anybody. It wasn’t my fault.”

The doctor stared at her, frowning, and then bent over the clipboard and wrote quickly.

“Thelma Lou couldn’t take care of plastic fruit,” Dad said.

The doctor raised his head. “You shouldn’t talk about your wife like that, mister.”

“Really?” he yelled. “If you want the dumb bitch, I’ll leave her with you.”

The doctor got up and walked out.

As we passed through the waiting room, everyone stared at us. I focused on the floor, my face growing hot. I wanted to disappear.

On the weekends, Dad would tell me to get into the car, and we’d drive to Belen to check on the cigarette machines he leased. As we refilled them and collected the money, he would say, “Ignorant Indians and Mexicans are paying me to wreck their health. You’d never catch a Cherokee doing it. When I was in the Q, I did autopsies on smokers who had black lungs. I always knew cigarettes were bad.”

Dad would blurt out things like this when were alone. By that point, I’d figured out pieces of his story from listening in. He never mentioned the Q in front of my siblings, but he talked to me about it as though I knew everything.

“Pay attention, David—I’ll teach you how to make money off other people’s idiocy. It’s the easiest money you’ll ever make.”