14

I Hear You

Chester Ridpath switched off Ernie Kovacs on the old twelve-inch Sears television in the living room and covertly looked at his son, who had eaten only half of his Swanson TV Chicken Dinner. The kid was starving himself - half of the time he forgot the food was there in front of him, and stared off into space like a zombie. Or like something from those movies he liked, something that only pretended to be normal and okay… Chester immediately banished these thoughts and sent them into the limbo where he had consigned everything he had thought or imagined about the 'hazing' incident two weeks earlier. Old Billy Thorpe had stuck up for Stevie, but Ridpath could see that despite his loyalty to a colleague, Billy wasn't quite sure in his own mind that he had done the right thing - every now and then he looked like a quarterback fourteen points down. Of course they had all felt like that lately, with Laker Broome cracking up in chapel the way he had and nobody knowing from one minute to the next if the head would keep his job. What a terrible year it had turned out to be… He picked up the TV dinner's aluminum pan from the footstool in front of him and on his way out of the room took Steve's half-eaten dinner too. The kid smiled faintly, as if half-thanking, half-mocking him.

Thank God Billy Thorpe had never seen Steve's room.

Because that was the problem. Any kid who wanted to surround himself with garbage like that was the kind who could use a belt on a freshman or cheat on his exams.

Hell, Steve didn't cheat.

Did he?

Ridpath balled up the two crinkly pans and dumped them into the bin. Waste. His own father would have belted him from here to kingdom come for throwing away food. Just look at him now. If a fly landed on his nose, he wouldn't brush it off.

So talk to him. You talk to kids all day long.

Talk at them.

Better than nothing.

No, nothing was better. He'd seen Steve's face sometimes when he was in the middle of a story. Indifference. Blank as the face of a corpse. Even when he was just a short-pants kid, sometimes he'd crack him one and see that same expression on the little shit's mug… Jesus, he was glad Billy Thorpe had never seen that awful crap up in Steve's room. If that was the kind of stuff the kid had on his mind…

'Hey, Steve,' he said, and went back to the kitchen door. 'Isn't that Kovacs kind of strange? Bet those cigars cost… ' He stopped the sad attempt at conversation. Steve's chair was empty. He had gone back up to do whatever the hell it was he did in that room.

Should go in there and rip out all that evil junk - just rip it out. Then tell him why - tell him why it's for his own good. Should have done it long ago.

No: first tell him why, then rip it out.

But of course it was too late for that. How long had it been since he and Steve had really talked? Four years? More?

Chester finished wiping the silverware dry and crossed the untidy living room and stood at the bottom of the stairs. At least that savage music wasn't on; like his good grades, it could be a sign that Steve was growing up, and getting old enough to know that all you had to do was burn the damn ball back, just forget the pain and return the fire. Wasn't that what a father had to teach his son? If you don't land the first punch, be goddamned sure you land the second.

'You busy, Steve?' he called up the stairs. There was no answer. 'How about a talk?' And surprised himself - his heart beat a little faster.

Steve was not listening: he was pacing around the bedroom, his feet going bang bang on the linoleum. Praying to the pictures, or whatever he did when he wasn't varnishing.

'Steve?' Bang, bang, went the footsteps, ech-d by his heart. Ridpath went halfway up the stairs and reached the step from which he could see his son's door, which was closed. Through the crack at the bottom of the door, with his eyes right at the level of the floor and looking through the posts of the railing, Ridpath could see the bottoms of Steve's loafers, pacing past. Bang, bang, bang, bang. Steve was patrolling from one end of the room to the other, metronomically, wheeling around when he reached a wall and marching back in a straight line. Marching, he was mumbling something to himself: it sounded like I hear you, I hear you to Chester. I bang hear bang you bang I bang hear…

'Okay, you hear me,' he said. 'How about coming out and having a beer with the old man?' His throat was dry - hell, you'd almost think he was afraid of Steve. 'A beer sound good?' he asked, and was pathetic even to himself.

I bang hear bang you bang I bang hear bang you bang I bang… The black bottoms of the sh-s appeared in the crack at the bottom of the door, one, two, hayfoot, strawfoot, came back in five or six seconds, vanished. 'Beer?' Chester muttered, realizing that whatever Steve was hearing, it was not his father.

Sometimes Steve acted like he was tuned in to another world, somewhere out in space where all you heard was the far - off metallic voices on a lost radio beam.

'Aaah,' Steve uttered, a single private moan of pleasure or insight, and his feet went by the door again - it was as if someone had just finished explaining something to him.

Then Ridpath, his face glued to the newel posts of the half-railing on the second floor, remembered a terrible dream, what must have been a dream, from the winter before - a huge bird fighting against Steve's window, breaking the glass, whapping its big wings against the side of the house and tearing with its talons… 'Oh, my God,' he whispered.

Steve was going aaah now, but Ridpath could not see the black bottoms of the loafers as he went past the door.

Beating, beating, thundering at the house, whipping that awful beak from side to side… Ridpath had a sudden irrational notion that now that nightmare bird was upstairs in Steve's room…

bang, went one foot on the left side of the room, where the window was, and then bang, bang, both feet on the right-hand side of the bedroom.

Bang. Just as if he had touched down back on the window side of the room - just as if that nightmare bird was ferrying him back and forth, the joy of flight causing aaah aah to bubble out of his throat couldn't be, he wasn't hearing right, there was some reason why he could no longer see Steve's loafers move past the door… some reason… those damn kids and their endless talk about bad dreams. I was up in the air and no one could get me down. Ridpath felt his whole body go cold. Whisper, went Steve's loafer on the right side of the room, and - an instant later - whisper, on the left.

'Come talk when you're ready,' Ridpath said, but only to himself.

That was on a Friday night. Chester Ridpath fled into the basement and uncorked a bottle of Four Roses he kept hidden under his workbench.