Seeley examined the jar doubtfully before returning it to its corner in the closet. “I'll toss the gun on the way to school tomorrow.”
Leonard said, “Maybe he won't come home.”
That was Lenny's fantasy, but Seeley had his own version. At around this time, the U. S. Justice Department had, with much publicity, initiated the prosecution in nearby Cleveland of a local autoworker for fraudulently entering the United States by failing to disclose that he had been an SS guard at two death camps in Poland. It took no great forensic leap for Seeley at age fifteen to conclude that Lothar Seelig, also an autoworker and immigrant, had himself been an SS camp guard. Surely the brass key in the carved box would unlock the incriminating evidence. Some day, like the Cleveland autoworker, neither of the two madmen would come home.
One sitcom had replaced another on the television when a slamming door shook the house. Seeley's mother must have come into the kitchen because his father's ancient tirade-booming, guttural, unforgiving-at once filled the house with its complaint of incompetence and betrayal. The sentences had lost their meaning long ago, but the fact that the words were English, not German, momentarily loosened the knot in Seeley's chest. When his father spoke English in the house it meant that his drinking had not yet carried him past the last edge of decency.
There was a heavy thump and again the house shook. From experience Seeley knew that his father had hurled his mother against a kitchen wall. Her cry, if there was one, was drowned out by the television. There was a long silence before the heavy boots staggered down the hallway, stopping at the closed door behind which, Seeley on his bed, and his brother at the card table, neither breathed nor moved. The boots turned into his parents' bedroom. Lenny started shaking and, though terrified himself, Seeley was astonished to discover, peeking out from some corner of his soul, a spark of mischief, even glee, anticipating the roar of the dumb, confounded beast pawing through drawers of socks and underwear as he discovered that his gun was gone.
Drawers opened and slammed shut in the next room. Then, as Seeley expected, the mindless, anguished cry. Wo ist es? Wo ist mein Revolver?
The door to the boys' room swung open-the latch had broken long ago-and the massive figure, all chest and gut, a blown-up version of the boys' pantomime monster, crashed in, the fierce stench of alcohol filling the room. He didn't ask who took the gun. The bloodshot eyes that locked onto Seeley's announced that he had already been convicted of the theft. Wordlessly, his father ripped one drawer from Seeley's dresser, then another, flinging them against the wall, before doing the same with Lenny's. Ignoring Lenny, who was frozen in his chair, the monster seized the table by a leg and flipped it over. The wastebasket he flung against the wall, and black shards rained onto the floor. He didn't notice. Pants, shirts, jackets, followed by wire hangers flew from the closet. The monster again turned to Seeley and glared at him.
To avoid the man's gaze, Seeley's eyes swept past Lenny and the telltale closet, fixing instead on the ocean scene that decorated the wallpaper directly opposite his bed. Against a blue-gray ground, horizontal rows of sailboats alternated with parallel rows of tropical fish. The sailboats were the same color as the sea, separated only by a thin red outline tracing the hull and sails. The fish bore pastel stripes and spots, but, like the boats, were otherwise transparent to the color of the sea. Improbably, the fish were three times the size of the boats. The gross unreality of the images cemented Seeley's terror, as if the fact that these forms could coexist on his bedroom wall implied that any horror was possible; that in this house so rarely visited by outsiders, anything could happen.
The gun's discovery was inevitable. The house was too small, the furnishings too spare, to hide the smallest secret from this man's rage. As if reading Seeley's thoughts, his father swung back to the closet. For an instant, the single swiping movement of his boot threw him off balance but then shoes and sneakers hurtled out into the room. Bracing his bulk against the doorframe, the man leaned in and brought out the squat glass jar. He twisted off the top and, staggering across the room, emptied the jar onto the foot of Seeley's bed. Propped against a pillow, Seeley watched as his father pawed the coins, quickly uncovering the revolver. With a startling delicacy, he lifted the gun so that the scarred weapon rested in his palms. He could have been cradling some small injured animal.
Beneath Seeley's pounding blood, the perverse sense of mischief peered out again, taunting. “ Lo thar,” Seeley said. His brother shot him a horror-stricken look. “ Lo thar,” Seeley said again.
If his father heard, he gave no sign. “This is what you do to my possessions?” The voice was heavy with alcohol. “The man, your father, who gives you a roof over your head”-he aimed a thick finger at the ceiling-“who feeds you? This is how you repay me? Dolchstoss! A stab in the back!”
A hand the size of a baseball mitt seized Seeley by the collar, and he didn't resist when it pulled him off the bed, onto his feet. The fl at of his father's hand propelled him through the door and down the narrow hallway, the tip of the gun barrel pressed into Seeley's skull, behind his ear. Lenny remained in the bedroom. He must have pried himself from the chair because Seeley heard the door close behind him.
“Let's show your mother what a fine son she bore me.” They were in the kitchen, where Seeley's mother had pressed herself against the far wall. On the stove, a pot boiled violently and the evening's dinner congealed in its roasting pan. As in the bedroom, the raw smell of alcohol filled the room. Formerly a student of wallpaper, Seeley now fixed on the television screen. Two women his mother's age, but elegantly dressed, chatted amiably in a stage-set living room.
Seeley's father cried out, “This is the ungrateful monster you raised.” He threw Seeley against the stove, and brought the gun up to his son's face. “How are you going to pay for this?”
Inside Seeley, the snapping spark of mischief fired into something fiercer. His eyes, when they caught his father's, turned defiant. As if on its own, his hand shot up and in a single swift motion seized the gun. His other hand, clenched into a fist, swung forward, striking his father high on the jaw. Seeley felt every whisker of the man's stubble. As much from surprise as from the force of the blow, his father dropped in an instant, crashing onto the floor, blood pouring from his nose. Seeley stood above the sprawling figure, his heart throbbing, but holding the gun steady with both hands. He aimed at his father's heaving chest. He heard himself shouting, “What kind of bully threatens his family with a gun? What kind of coward does that?”
His mother came away from the wall. “Don't speak to your father like that! You put that gun away and apologize this instant!”
Squeeze the trigger. Seeley remembered the seasoned cop instructing the rookie on some long-ago television show. Squeeze, don't pull. Seeley tasted metal at the back of his mouth. Carefully, he pointed the barrel toward where he imagined his father's heart would be, inches from the center of the man's chest. He squeezed. Nothing happened; the trigger, locked by the safety catch, failed to move.
His father lay motionless, the blood now bubbling from his nostrils onto the linoleum. Seeley's mother came away from the wall and grabbed for the gun, but Seeley caught her by the wrist, wrenching her arm upward. An emotion flashed behind her pale eyes that Seeley had seen before, but this time he didn't know whether it was hatred or fear, or both. Her look stopped him as he realized what he had almost done. He had never struck his father before nor stopped his mother from striking him. Now everything had changed in an instant. He felt an overwhelming sense of relief, but at the same time he understood that when he seized the gun, when he aimed it at his father, when he squeezed the trigger, he had crossed a line from which retreat was impossible. He could no longer live in his parents' house.