For a moment I considered not telling Dad. I was afraid there'd be
bloodshed, since he was always going on about how he'd kill anyone who
laid a finger on me. Then I decided I wanted to see the guy pummeled.
"Dad, that creep attacked me when we were upstairs."
"I'm sure he just pawed you some," Dad said as we pulled out of the
parking lot. "I knew you could handle yourself."
The road back to Welch was dark and empty. The wind whistled through
the broken window on my side of the Plymouth. Dad lit a cigarette. "It
was like that time I threw you into the sulfur spring to teach you to
swim," he said. "You might have been convinced you were going to
drown, but I knew you'd do just fine."
THE NEXT EVENING Dad disappeared. After a couple of days, he
wanted me to go out with him again to some bar, but I said no. Dad got
ticked off and said that if I wasn't going to team up with him, the least I
could do was stake him some pool-shooting money. I found myself
forking over a twenty, and then another in a few days.
Mom had told me to expect a check in early July for the lease on her
Texas land. She also warned me that Dad would try to get his hands on it.
Dad actually waited at the foot of the hill for the mailman and took it
from him on the day it arrived, but when the mailman told me what had
happened, I ran down Little Hobart Street and caught Dad before he got
into town. I told him Mom had wanted me to hide the check until she
returned. "Let's hide it together," Dad said and suggested we stash it in
the 1933 World Book Encyclopedia Mom got free from the library—
under. "currency."
The next day when I went to rehide the check, it was gone. Dad swore he
had no idea what happened to it. I knew he was lying, but I also knew if I