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now.
    “We don’t watch the news no more,” I told him. The Space Men were a touchy subject in our house. Nothing was surer to get Dad started in on ranting than someone mentioning them ships in the sky. “All them sheep too brainwashed to believe the jokers in the White House will let anything bad happen to ‘em. They should be standing and fighting like Americans. Why don’t they let our boys nuke ‘em out of the sky? Guess those political types are too chickenshit to protect our land.”
    Biedermann nodded. “Sure. Ahem. Well, if you’re positive there’s nothing we can do to help. We’re not trying to pick a fight, we’re just concerned. I know your father has his share of problems….” He grimaced in phony sympathy. His mouth flopped open like he had more to say, but I shut the door in his face.
    Back in my room, I sat on the bed, my hands screwed up into fists. I wanted to break something, but there was enough broken junk in this house without me adding to it.

    Dad got home just before sunset.
    I ran out of the house to meet him as soon as I heard the splutter of the Dodge’s engine out in the street.
    “You hungry?” I asked him as he threw the truck door open. “I was gonna fry up some hot dogs.”
    “We ate at The Tap,” Dad said. “And I wouldn’t want no tired-ass hot dogs if I hadn’t. Not when we got ourselves fresh venison.”
    He winked, and jerked his head toward the flatbed of the truck, where there was a lumpy shape covered over with a tarpaulin.
    A little runner of dark blood dripped from the trail hitch, adding to the black oil stains on the bare earth.
    “Deer?” I asked, cautiously.
    “My son, the genius,” Dad snorted.
    “Funny sort of fish, a deer,” I said, trying to make a joke out of it.
    “Don’t get smart with me. Bob and his damn fish. Who the hell wants to sit on their can all day, staring at a damn lake?”
    I glanced around. I thought a curtain twitched over at the Biedermann’s, but it was likely just my paranoid mind.
    “Need some help getting it in the shed?” I asked.
    “What’s the rush? Gonna have a beer and rest my feet a minute, if that’s okay by you.” He stared at me; his pale green eyes looked like they was lit up with laser beams from the inside. However successful his “fishing” trip had been, it didn’t seem to have calmed him down any.
    I followed him back into the house, trying to convince myself that no one was even going to see that illegal, out-of-season deer.
    Dad had no sooner gone inside to shuck off his dirty hunting gear, than Tom Biedermann was striding up our path to bang on the door like he wanted to bust right through it. Seems that the lazy summer wind had lifted the tarp up to reveal the whitetail, with its belly gaping open from neck to asshole. The Biedermann girls had caught an eyeful and were now in the process of having a meltdown in the middle of the Biedermann lounge.
    “It’s barbaric,” roared Tom Biedermann, as Dad opened the door. “What you choose to do with your weekends is none of my business, but I will not have my daughters exposed to your disgusting blood sports.”
    It was never a great idea to bother Dad just after he got back from a trip. He’d need a couple of beers inside him and a good long soak in the shower before he was in anything like a talkative mood, and that was when he wasn’t in the grip of the mean reds to begin with. I fully expected Dad to haul off and smack Tom Biedermann right in the kisser, but Dad just stared at him a second or two, then closed the door in the man’s face. He didn’t slam it, just closed it real soft, like there had been no one there in the first place.
    He went to the kitchen and pulled a beer out of the fridge.
    That was good.
    After he killed the beer, he chased it with a shot of Wild Turkey.
    That was bad.
    Dad used to get real mean on bourbon.
    “Hey, Dad, why don’t we get that deer in the back shed?” I asked him. “I’ll help out. Nothin’ else