Chapter 122
VOLUME 3: ELLIOTT
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 1944
The tinkling of glass fragments against the linoleum floor mingled with the incessant wailing coming from the bassinet, and even though one cracked eye proclaimed it was not yet dawn, Elliott Sanderson pulled himself from a troubled sleep to investigate. Tripping over a Tonka truck with three wheels he’d left on the floor next to the bed, he shuffled his feet in an attempt to reclaim the big toe on his left foot that insisted on poking out through the hole in his sock as if it might arrive at the problem first and offer a solution so that the rest of his five-year-old body could go back to sleep.
Most of the commotion was coming from the kitchen, which wasn’t too surprising. He couldn’t tell time, but the black hands on the clock over the cigarette burn covered couch weren’t pointing anywhere near the numbers they usually did whenever his mom yanked him out of bed in the morning, so he thought it must still be nighttime. Also, the only light in the living room came from the bare bulb on the chipped lamp next to said couch, the shade having met its demise the last time his mother threw something at Bob—maybe not the last time if the sound of glass shattering was any indicator, maybe the time before this.
There was a fine line between investigating and being “nosy,” and Elliott did not want to be accused of the latter, so he stepped lightly, which was hard for him as he was a hefty boy. His mom called him "chunky” but he preferred to think of himself as a logger, a lumberjack, who needed to be big and strong like the trees he chopped down. His mom said there was a difference between being big and strong and being fat and lazy, and the sooner he learned he was the second choice, the quicker he’d accept he wasn’t ever going to amount to anything either. Just like his father. Whoever that was.
“God dammit, Arlene,” Bob’s angry voice shouted from the kitchen. “I don’t know how you live like this. You’re a goddamn drunk!” The slur in his voice let Elliott know he was either a hypocrite or had taken too many of the Army issued pills he’d been prescribed to fight the pain in his leg, the one the Germans had nearly taken off, the one that had sent him home before the war had ended. When he wasn’t around, Mom often said he had shot himself because he was a lazy coward, just like every man she’d ever met. Elliott had asked if that included him, and she’d assured him it did. He had wondered how she knew so much about the type of man he would be when he wasn’t even in kindergarten yet.
The sound of his mother’s angry voice shouting back caused his brain to ache. She was definitely drunk again. There was another screech of glass and then the sound of Bob’s uneven footsteps as his cane clunked against the black and white linoleum tiles, and then his mother started to make that half-scream, half-crying sound she always made when Bob was hurting her.
Torn between going to make that man stop hitting his mom, even though he knew he’d catch the raw end of the deal when his mom realized he was sticking his snotty nose where it didn’t belong, and going to see what was wrong with his baby brother, Jimmy, Elliott stood in his indecisive state for long enough that another clatter came from the kitchen and the thumping of someone hitting the floor broke his irresolute state. Bob had pushed her again. The sounds of her shouting at him, throwing dishes or whatever she could get her hands on, rang through the air as Bob’s step-thump, step-thump drew closer to the living room.
He rounded the corner and spotted Elliott standing there, halfway into the room but still in the shadow from the unlit hallway near the two bedrooms. The anger rolled off of Bob as his narrow eyes searched the room. He grabbed at his hat off of the bureau and then stared directly into Elliott’s green eyes. The boy took a step back. “You hear that baby crying?” he snarled.
Elliott’s head bobbed up and down, his dark, curly hair flipping around like a mop in its unkempt state.
“You take care of my son, boy,” Bob demanded as he settled his hat on top of his thinning blond hair. “God knows your ma won’t.”
Once again, Elliott nodded, his hands folded in front of himself, as he tried to stay as small as possible. Unlike Mom’s last boyfriend, Gill, and the three or four before that, Bob Baker had never hurt Elliott, but there was a first time for everything. The first time Gill had punched him in the face for asking for another piece of chicken at dinner, he hadn’t seen that coming either. He learned. He learned real quick.
Bob took another look around the living room. “What a shithole,” he muttered. Elliott’s eyes followed Bob’s over the discarded newspapers, broken furniture, and worn orange carpet covered in enough trash-confetti one of those tinker day parades may have just passed through. He’d never noticed before, but Bob may have had a point.
Lumbering off toward the door, Bob didn’t look back as Elliott’s mom staggered into the room, tripping over her own feet and grabbing at the bureau, shouting for him to come back and that she was sorry. A picture of Elliott’s grandparents slipped from atop the desk and shattered on the floor, causing his mom to say that really bad word she had slapped him in the face for saying last week, demanding to know where he got such a filthy mouth. She wasn’t cursing the broken picture, though. She was clutching at her foot, more swears coming out of her mouth than Elliott had heard in as long as he could remember. The couch was in the way, so he couldn’t see what the problem was, but he imagined she had cut herself on the broken glass.
“Do you need any help, Mommy?” Elliott asked, taking a few steps toward her, though he was leery of cutting himself as well. That big toe wasn’t well protected out on its scouting mission.
“No, I don’t want any goddamn help, not from you anyway, Chunk!” she muttered, releasing her foot and stumbling into the sofa, another curse filling the air. “Will you shut that goddamn baby up!”
