Around Christmas, when I finally came off the road for a couple of weeks, I tried to stay out of the way. Our house was in its usual chaos, what with the teenage step-kid and a wife who needed a stronger hand than I was able to give anymore. I'd made up my mind I was never going to hit her again.
She gave Billy his pawn shop .22 rifle a week early and he drove right into a field at the edge of Fresno and shot the first thing he saw, a pretty little red fox. He skinned her, stretched the pelt on a board and set it outside on the patio to dry.
I tried to talk to him, tell him how I felt about that, but he looked at me as if for the first time, so I retreated to the stereo with a pitcher of stingers and put on a Doors album.
After I'd played "The End" for almost three hours straight, my wife came in and screamed, "I'm sick of this shit."
She ripped the stereo off its rickety shelf of cinder blocks and pine boards and the needle screeched across the record. In the lugubrious silence, I was still sober enough to step over the mess and get to the bedroom without reacting.
On Christmas morning Billy handed me a package from under our ratty little tree and I opened up a Doors tape with "The End" on it, something I could listen to in the car when I went back on the road after New Year's.
They bought me something else from K-Mart, too, but I can't remember what. Then later that afternoon, my wife told me Billy had thrown away the fox pelt. Tears jumped into my eyes, I couldn't help it. "That's the best present of all," I said finally.
"Don't get too excited," she said. "It was eaten up with maggots."
I took down the Christmas tree in late March--the lemon tree and wisteria were in bloom. It broke up easily and I sat in front of the fireplace with a vodka-tonic to watch it burn. |
