Read Stick for Free Online Page B

with the belt over and over, and Bosten took it, whimpering, shivering at times, until Dad, out of breath, finally stopped.
    Mom’s grip loosened.
    Dad looked at me. I thought I’d be next, but his eyes fell away from me like I wasn’t there at all. He casually fed his belt back through the loops on his slacks and picked up the pack of cigarettes from the floor where Bosten had knocked it down.
    Bosten lay there, stretched across the chair, shaking. He wasn’t crying. I knew Bosten wouldn’t ever cry in front of Dad and Mom.
    He’d do it later.
    Mom let go of my hair and Dad lit a cigarette, and then dropped the pack, again, onto the floor beside his chair. He hooked his fingers into Bosten’s collar and stood him up. I was thankful that Bosten’s shirt fell down and covered his nakedness and the bloody marks on his backside. I hoped, somehow, that the softness of the flannel made my brother not hurt so much.
    Bosten tried pulling up his jeans, but my father wouldn’t allow him to bend forward. He walked Bosten, manacled by his lowered pants, out of the living room and into the hallway. I knew what would happen next. Same as always. Bosten would get locked inside the spare bedroom—I called it Saint Fillan’s room, I will tell you why—no lights, no nothing, not even any clothes; just a galvanized bucket to use for a toilet and a cot with one sheet. This would usually last for two days, sometimes more. It happened to me as often as it happened to him.
    Everyone raised kids this way.
    And Dad stopped before they’d gone too far down the hall.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â â€œSay
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  good night, Bosten.”
    My brother whispered,
    â€œGood night.”
    It was like a game, but it wasn’t fun and there was no chance of winning.
    Maybe a minute later, I stood there not knowing what to do, a door slammed shut down the hallway.
    I stole away.
    When I was at the top of the basement stairs, Mom called out,
    â€œGood night,
    Stick.”
    It was a game.
    I didn’t answer her.
    â€œGODDAMNIT,             I               SAID
    â€˜GOOD NIGHT, STICK’!”
    I tried to close myself inside my room.
    It was a game.
    Footsteps on the stairs.
    Dad.
    â€œDidn’t you                                              hear your mother? Get your              ugly ass up there and say good night!”
    He grabbed my hair and pulled me upstairs to the living room.
    To say good night.
    It was a game, and it always went like this.
    *   *   *
    There was a pipe that ran down a corner of my wall; a drain from upstairs to the septic tank for gray water. It descended along the concrete walls of the basement in the same corner where I kept my bed.
    If I pressed my only ear to it at night, when the house was quiet, sometimes I could hear things from upstairs.
    And with my head pressed like that into the pipe as I lay in my bed, I could hear nothing else.
    The sounds would get into my head and there was no way they could ever get out.
    I would lie there,
    the top of my head resting against the rough concrete,
    so I could
    listen
    to the upstairs.
    I kept my eyes on the small window above my bed.
    It was a perfect rectangle—golden—I’d measured it; and it sat
    right at ground level.
    In spring I could look up and see how the grass grew.
    It was like being buried, and still able to watch and
    listen
    to the living world.
    I heard Bosten crying
    upstairs.
    It sounded like coughing at first,
    but I know my brother.
    I kept a sixteen-penny nail
    on the floor beneath the bedframe.
    I