potatoes, said, “Richard, I’ll give you next week off, paid, if you’ll use it
to study them books.”
I waited for an explanation. It was not long in coming. “Richard is a
genius,” Dad told me a moment later, winking. “He’s five times smarter
than that Einstein was. He can disprove all them socialist theories and
godless speculations. He’s gonna get down there and blow up the
whole damn system.”
Dad continued with his raptures, oblivious to the effect he was
having on his listeners. Shawn slumped on a bench, his back against
the wall, his face tilted toward the floor. To look at him was to imagine
a man cut from stone, so heavy did he seem, so void of motion. Richard
was the miracle son, the gift from God, the Einstein to disprove
Einstein. Richard would move the world. Shawn would not. He’d lost
too much of his mind when he’d fallen off that pallet. One of my
father’s sons would be driving the forklift for the rest of his life, but it
wouldn’t be Richard.
Richard looked even more miserable than Shawn. His shoulders
hunched and his neck sank into them, as if he were compressing under
the weight of Dad’s praise. After Dad went to bed, Richard told me that
he’d taken a practice test for the ACT. He’d scored so low, he wouldn’t
tell me the number.
“Apparently I’m Einstein,” Richard said, his head in his hands.
“What do I do? Dad is saying I’m going to blow this thing out of the
water, and I’m not even sure I can pass.”
Every night was the same. Through dinner, Dad would list all the
false theories of science that his genius son would disprove; then after
dinner, I would tell Richard about college, about classes, books,
professors, things I knew would appeal to his innate need to learn. I
was worried: Dad’s expectations were so high, and Richard’s fear of
disappointing him so intense, it seemed possible that Richard might
not take the ACT at all.
—THE SHOP IN FRANKLIN was ready to roof, so two days after Christmas I
forced my toe, still crooked and black, into a steel-toed boot, then
spent the morning on a roof driving threading screws into galvanized
tin. It was late afternoon when Shawn dropped his screw gun and
shimmied down the loader’s extended boom. “Time for a break, Siddle