Bless you, child. You are mine.
Son.
He woke abruptly—shamefully. He’d been dozing off.
Sometimes when he was anxious and confused and worried that Daddy Love was becoming angry with him, he became strangely sleepy and couldn’t keep his eyes open or his head erect.
In the New Jersey Transit Station amid so much commotion and movement and the loud announcements of buses departing and arriving and yet—Gideon had dozed off, helplessly.
Come, Son. With me. Now.
Frowning Daddy Love loomed over Gideon. He was such a figure of dignity in his black preacher’s clothes and the surprise of the crimson velvet vest, you could see strangers glancing at him and in particular women.
Gideon had the idea that Daddy Love had been in the station somewhere, observing him. As in Grindell Park when he’d been on the swings. But no one had approached him now, as the flush-faced man with the video camera had approached him, and (maybe?) this was why Daddy Love was disappointed in him.
I am not so special now. No stranger cares about me.
Before Gideon could scramble to his feet Daddy Love gripped his arm and yanked him so hard it felt as if his arm was being jerked out of its socket.
He fast-walked Gideon through the station and out the exit doors to the minivan parked a half-block away. Not caring if they almost collided with people or even that they’d caught the eye of two New Jersey Transit security cops for Daddy Love was pissed about something, and Daddy Love felt a righteous indignation rush through him like a bolt of God.
This time, unlike the time at the contractor’s house in Raven Rock when he’d been a little boy of six, Daddy Love did not lean over to kiss Son on the forehead; nor did Daddy Love say in his tender cuddle-voice Bless you child. You are mine.
6
KITTATINNY FALLS, NEW JERSEY MAY 2012
Well, Son! Let’s see what you’ve been doing all morning.
Daddy Love lifted the macramé tote bag in vivid red-orange to inspect the stitches.
Son held himself very still for it was never clear if Daddy Love would praise his handiwork, or pass a severe judgment.
Son could not predict.
Gideon did not trust himself to predict.
But Daddy Love was smiling. Good work, Son!
And Daddy Love ran his knuckles through Gideon’s spiky hair just hard enough to hurt his scalp but it was a gentle-hurt.
Saying mysteriously, Know what, Son? Maybe it’s time to expand our studio.
And later that day when Gideon was setting the table for their suppertime in front of the TV—(it was NASCAR race night)—Daddy Love said as if he’d just now thought of it: Maybe you’d like a little brother to keep you company, eh? Plenty of room in Daddy Love’s house as in Daddy Love’s heart.
7
KITTATINNY FALLS, NEW JERSEY MAY 2012
Little brother.
Keep you company.
And yet: never trust a stranger, Daddy Love cautioned.
Gideon had his (secret) friends at school. Often he counted them on his fingers: Alex, Simon, Frankie, Jennie.
Sometimes he reversed them: Jennie, Frankie, Simon, Alex.
In his sixth-grade homeroom at West Lenape Elementary these were shy quiet children like Gideon Cash. Except for Jennie they were not so smart as Gideon Cash.
At lunchtime in the noisy cafeteria or at recess outside behind the school, Gideon stayed close to his friends. If he and Jennie Farley sat together at lunch often they had little to say to each other but each felt a comfort in the other’s company.
Jennie had a thin freckled face, pale red-brown hair cut short as a boy’s. When she smiled, her teeth were revealed as crooked in a way to make you smile, but not in meanness.
Jennie said, Mom says to ask you if you’d like to come to my birthday party.
Gideon said, he’d like that.
But Daddy Love did not approve. Daddy Love had “looked into” Jennie Farley’s family and didn’t like it that her father was Dwayne Farley, a deputy with the Lenape Sheriff ’s Department.
Nor did Daddy Love approve of Alex Trow’s family for his mother was a county social worker. Such people are naturally curious—nosey.
If anyone ever questions you about your daddy, Son, tell them to talk to ME. Got that?
Yes. Gideon got that.
Alex Trow was a close friend of Gideon’s too. Though the boys rarely spoke together, only just hung out together at lunchtime or recess. Alex was a particularly quiet boy who had difficulty reading—he’d told Gideon that he was “dys-lec-tic” and that his brain was wired wrong—and so Gideon helped him with reading assignments and arithmetic homework. It was amazing to Gideon, that his friend could so misspell simple words and, with numerals, write them upside down without seeming to notice.
Maybe I’m just an upside-down freak, Alex said. But he wasn’t smiling.
Everybody is a freak, Gideon said. If you get to know them.
You’re not, Gideon. I wish I was you.
This was so spontaneous and touching, Gideon looked away.
But you can’t be me. There is only one son of Daddy Love.
Yet, maybe Alex Trow could be Son’s brother? If Daddy Love was serious about a new brother.
Gideon didn’t think so. The new brother would be younger than eleven, Gideon seemed to know.
Alex was a twitchy nervous boy with poor motor coordination so that sometimes, for no evident reason, he dropped his cafeteria tray, or lost his balance and fell on the stairs.
Yet Alex could be coaxed—coerced—into participating in rough games at recess, on the cracked and potholed asphalt playground.
West Lenape Middle School was on the other side of the parking lot from the elementary school. Often it happened that older boys, as old as fourteen, in ninth grade, drifted over to the elementary school to torment the younger children. Elementary-and middle-school children took school buses together but Daddy Love did not want Gideon to take the school bus until he was older.
Yet, Daddy Love didn’t drive Gideon to school very often now, or pick him up after school; Daddy Love wanted Gideon to bicycle to school—to save fossil fuels.
Older boys from the middle school were mean, mocking. Their language was threaded with obscenities in emulation of the speech of adult men and their laughter was jeering and unsettling. Gideon Cash had no idea why they disliked him—he’d never spoken a word to them unless provoked.
Or maybe they disliked the quieter children. Boys like Alex Trow and girls like Jennie Farley who didn’t laugh at their jokes but backed away from them with frightened faces.
Once, Gideon saw his friend Alex drawn into playing dodge-ball with the older boys. He’d wanted to call to Alex, to come off the playing field—but he stood at the sidelines with other children, watching.
The game was furiously played. Boys threw the ball at one another’s faces and bellies. And there seemed to be a secret agenda to the game—the younger and weaker boys, like Alex Trow, were particular targets, slow to realize until they were seriously struck by the ball.
One of the ninth-grade boys, Lyle McIntyre, who lived on the Saw Mill Road not far from Daddy Love’s farm, threw the ball directly into Alex’s face from a distance of about five feet. As Alex recoiled, lost his balance and fell down, and hid his face in his hands, stunned and bleeding from his nose, the other players hooted and laughed and threw the ball along the field, ignoring him.
Gideon and Jennie went to help Alex to his feet. His lower face was covered in blood, and blood was dribbling onto his shirt. He was crying, his lips trembled convulsively. Gideon and Jennie walked Alex to the school, to the nurse’s office.
Asked who had hurt him, Alex sat sullen and silent.
Asked who had gotten him to play such a rough game, Alex sat sullen and silent.
It was known, if you “ratted” on anyone, you would really be singled out for punishment. So Gideon didn’t tell the nurse or the school authorities who the boy
s were from the middle school.
Smiling thinking Christ says I bring not peace but a sword.
* * *
There was the McIntyre house which was an old converted farmhouse covered in mustard-yellow vinyl siding, where Lyle McIntyre and his younger brother Bobbie lived. Lyle was in ninth grade and Bobbie was in seventh grade. Both boys were bullies and both seemed to have taken a particular dislike to Gideon Cash.
What’re you looking at, fuckface?
Who the fuck are you, fuckface?
And there was Pete Baumgarten, also in ninth grade, a burly boy who lived just inside the Kittatinny village limits, in a “ranch house” adjoining a lumberyard.
Gideon never looked openly at these boys or their friends. But he studied them, covertly.
Since the “arson fires” in the garages near Lenape Elementary School there had been no further fires or disturbances in Kittatinny Falls. Numerous persons in the neighborhood had been questioned—including several middle- and high-school boys—but no perpetrator had been arrested.
Gideon smiled thinking Assholes!
He had a way of speaking under his breath that was in emulation of Daddy Love and a way of flaring his nostrils, as Daddy Love did when he was righteously indignant.
Now in mild weather Daddy Love wasn’t so vigilant about overseeing Gideon and allowed him to bicycle to school and home again and frequently after school Gideon bicycled along the paved streets of Kittatinny Falls, observing houses in which certain of his classmates and teachers lived and wondering what their lives were, in those houses. He had a strong impulse to ride his bicycle up a driveway, peer into a back window or boldly enter a house …
Hi! Am I somebody you know?
Since he’d set fires in three garages, two of them belonging to strangers, Gideon was less interested in garage fires; he was more intrigued by a spectacular act, like an explosion—a bomb set off in, for instance, the fire station, or one of the several churches in town, or one of the larger stores on Broad Street. From the Internet, without Daddy Love’s knowledge—(how shocked and furious Daddy Love would be, to learn that his son surreptitiously used his computer when Daddy Love was away)—he’d downloaded recipes for simple, homemade bombs … Just the thought of a real explosion, bringing down an entire structure, was thrilling to him.
Hi! Just to let you know I WAS HERE.
Gideon didn’t want to hurt anyone, however. (Did he?)
(At school, Ms. Swale was not so smiling and cheerful as she’d been. Jennie told Gideon that their teacher was nervous now that her house would be burnt down.)
(Jennie said she felt sorry for Ms. Swale. Gideon said yes, he felt sorry for Ms. Swale too.)
He’d stopped drawing and painting in study hall. Ms. Swale had asked him why and he’d said with a shrug that his daddy didn’t think he should be wasting time on such crap.
“Crap! Oh, Gideon. I’m sure your father didn’t say such a thing …”
Ms. Swale looked as if she’d been struck in the face. Gideon was overcome with a sick feeling like guilt or resentment or fury and edged away from her as politely as he could.
Often on his bicycle Gideon was drawn to the edge of Kittatinny Falls, where, on the river, there was a sprawling, boarded-up old mill in which in a long-ago time, as their teacher told them, hundreds of mill-workers had been employed manufacturing ladies’ and gentlemen’s footware.
Only a faded sign on the tall faded-brick building remained—PRESTON FOOTWARE “LUXURY AT LOW COST.” Ghostly figures emerged out of the wall, a man in a fedora hat, a woman with blond tight-curled hair, each holding footwear in their hands, for the viewer to admire. Though the old mill had been abandoned, part of the first floor was being renovated and was to become the Kittatinny Falls Community Arts Center, if the State of New Jersey could provide funds to match private donors.
Work had begun on the renovation the previous year, but was temporarily suspended. Gideon peered through new plate-glass windows into the interior, where the old floorboards had been ripped away and new tiles had been laid in place. But the walls were unfinished, needing to be plastered.
The Kittatinny Arts Center would be in a beautiful location, everyone said. A deck running the length of the building, above the Delaware River.
A room for art exhibits. A room for folk music concerts. A room in which crafts would be taught—knitting, weaving, potting, macramé.
Chet Cash had something to do with these plans. Gideon thought so. There were volunteers to serve on the local committee, to spread the word and to help raise funds, and “Chet Cash” was one of these volunteers.
In Kittatinny Falls and elsewhere in the Delaware Valley, “Chet Cash” was known as a serious artist. Particularly, his macramé products were much admired and were said to bring in a steady if modest income to support him and his son.
From the Studio of Chet Cash.
Son was proud of helping his Daddy as he did. Macramé was not easy work and could hurt your fingers and make your eyes ache and it was hard to remain indoors so much now that the weather was nice but Son did not resent working for Daddy Love for as Daddy Love explained, he provided the macramé materials, and he provided the directions, and he sold the products to retailers.
Gideon was beginning to resent macramé! Beginning to be sick of it.
Fucking macramé! Waiting to see if Daddy Love praised or scolded.
Before, Missy had kept him company. They could work outdoors if they remained at the rear of the house. (For Daddy Love did not want strangers showing up at the house and discovering that his son was the macramé artist, not Chet Cash.) But now that Missy was gone, buried beyond the garden, there was no one for Gideon to play with when he had a few minutes’ playtime; there was no one to bark excitedly, no one to wag her tail, when Gideon returned from school.
Sometimes, Daddy Love wasn’t even home when Gideon returned from school. Out in the minivan—where?
He is looking for a new son. A brother for you.
8
KITTATINNY FALLS, NEW JERSEY MAY 2012
Daddy Love had said, Son. Make yourself supper and take yourself to bed and Daddy Love will be home by the time you wake up.
Son said, yes Daddy.
Gideon said, under his breath Go to hell Daddy. You are Devil Daddy and you don’t love me.
It was exciting to plan the explosion. Prepare the bomb.
Gideon knew, lots of kids blew off their hands, parts of their faces making such bombs. The Internet was filled with scare-stories. But also stories of bombs that had detonated as planned.
You won’t be prepared for the THRILL—an anonymous commentator on the Internet observed.
Your ordinary little life will be shitty from now on. That is a promise.
The bottle was a twenty-four-ounce Coke bottle he’d found at a landfill. Following Daddy Love he knew to use gloves. They watched TV together—Cops, CSI, Forensic Files. You had to be pretty damned stupid to touch anything with your bare hands, even a bottle that would be shattered into small pieces.
Now that Gideon was older he saw things about Daddy Love that Son had never noticed before and one of these was that Daddy Love wore gloves almost everywhere.
And Daddy Love had a drawer of gloves. Including thin rubber gloves like you’d expect a surgeon to wear.
And Daddy Love had “medical supplies”—in a lockbox in his bedroom closet. But Gideon had observed him opening it once and removing packets of pills. And Gideon observed coils of rope, handcuffs, rolls of gauze … He’d searched for Daddy Love’s key for the box but hadn’t yet found it.
He’d planned the hit while riding his bicycle. Daydreaming in school. These past several weeks, since the Church of Abiding Hope in Trenton, and Reverend Cash’s sermon, and the vigil in the New Jersey Transit Bus Station, he’d been less interested in school and in getting good grades. He’d been less interested in being good.
Smirking and shrugging in class. His teacher Ms. Olson like Ms. Swale was su
rprised and hurt.
It was a weakness in people, especially in women, to be so easily hurt. Gideon knew now what Daddy Love meant speaking in contempt of females.
Daddy Love had had some sort of argument with Darlene. Maybe she’d been poking her nose into the wrong part of Daddy Love’s house. Maybe she’d been needling Daddy Love about taking her out. Their raised voices were surprising to Gideon, in the stillness of his life.
Now Gideon was older, Darlene wasn’t needed so much for housecleaning. Gideon prepared meals and washed dishes and mopped the kitchen floor; changed bedclothes, and did laundry in a rickety old washing machine; swept, and vacuumed; took out garbage to dump behind the old hay barn. Good work, Son!—Daddy Love was generous with praise.
Son beamed with pleasure. Basking in Daddy Love’s praise as you’d bask in sunshine sprawled on a chilly rock.
Gideon chafed at the praise. Resented Daddy Love so obviously manipulating him.
He thinks I’m some dumb little kid. Thinks I’m a moron like everybody else.
Lately Gideon came to realize that he hadn’t seen Darlene in a long time. Daddy Love never hired her to clean any longer nor did Daddy Love mention her.
He asked Daddy Love where Darlene was and Daddy Love said with a shrug, Go ask the cunt yourself, you’re interested.
Cunt. This was a nasty word, uttered by the middle-school boys. The McIntyre brothers laughed at Gideon as a skinny cunt and Gideon had not known what this might mean until now.
Cunt—female. Something whining and disgusting about them, though you needed them for some things, unavoidably.
The cunt let go of my fingers.
The cunt blew smoke in my face.
The cunt sold me to be “adopted.”
Vacuuming the house while Daddy Love was out—for Daddy Love hated the noise of a vacuum cleaner.