The entire house turned deeply silent then; a cold reserve descended throughout. I remember it so crisply. It felt as though there were lines of icicles suspended in the tense air around me.
With everything so rigidly still, even the faint sound of the key could be heard as it turned in the lock and the front door was opened. And then a strange thing happened: a long pause followed, forty, maybe fifty seconds in all, before the door finally fell closed, accompanied by a thunderous bang. Startled, I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. I’d never heard that before: a long silent pause and then a loud violent bang. That wasn’t right. Every day, my father returned from work at approximately five twenty five. He shut the door after him with a swift precision, imparting no undue clamor, before quickly retreating to his study. Every day he followed this course of events, down to the smallest footstep. Jim Winter had a routine to uphold and right now it was running disturbingly off course. My recall jumped into over-drive searching for a time when his entrance might have proceeded otherwise, but I found myself arriving at an unsettling loss. Today was different, I conceded. And with that, a pang of anxiety sounded in the tight core of my chest.
I sat, frozen to my spot, listening to the reverend’s footsteps as he galloped passed the study and stormed into the kitchen.
There was a brief silence, but gradually it was broken, the rising din trickling through the floorboards beneath my feet and curling my toes with a creeping sense of unease. An argument was developing below me.
I could make out little of what was being said as my parent’s voices were muffled. Their tone, however, was easily detected: my mother’s marked by a pacifying plea, smooth but with a shrill edge to it; my father’s a booming snarl, full of aggrieved hostility. It shocked me how vicious he sounded. Such raw brutality I’d never known before. Bewildered, I did the only thing I could think of - I waited for it to stop.
It had to stop soon, I told myself. It would stop soon. But it didn’t. It got worse. The reverend’s voice escalated to a roar, and then there came a crashing noise, as if a plate or a vase had been smashed against a wall. I jumped to my feet and scurried over to the door, edging it open as softly as I could. They had moved to the living room now, and with the door open their voices were clearer. I could discern only fragments of the reverend’s wild bellowing, but even then, what I did hear made little sense to me – something about the sacrifices he’d made for this family, that he shouldn’t be made to suffer for them, not at the hands of that man. And then, as if to emphasize the point, there came another crashing sound. Louder this time, and more persistent, one unruly shattering after another.
Across the hall from me, Billy peered out somberly through a slivered chink in his doorway, his wide open eyes glimmering in the dim hallway, as fearful and alert as my own. But unlike mine, there was no element of surprise in Billy’s stare. In fact, there was almost a look of tedium on his face, which was strangely lacking in comparison to the sense of disbelief that was permeating mine. His fixed stare faltered suddenly as he noticed me gazing sorrowfully over at him. At once, he shot out from behind the door and raced over to my room, shoving me backwards as he ran so that I fell to the floor with a harsh thud. We both froze, anticipating a response to the noise, but none came. The commotion downstairs was too great – it drowned us out.
Billy bent over me. “Stay in here and be quiet till it’s over,” he whispered, an air of icy resolve in his tone.
I peered fretfully back at him, bemused at the sudden arrival of all this chaos around me. It was a look he seemed to recognize, for he knelt down then and met my eyes, patting me gently on the shoulder, trying his best to convey some feeling of consolation. But in the end, the hopelessness of it defeated him and he turned to leave, his head drooping despondently to the ground as he tiptoed out. I did what he said. He was my older brother after all, five years older. And I figured that was the reason, the fact that he was older, that was how he knew what to do. But the simple truth was Billy had seen all this before.
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