Joe Pike, age nine. Tall for his age, but thin. An only child. Wearing shorts cut off just above the knee, and a striped tee shirt long since grimed to a murky gray. Known as a thoughtful, quiet boy at school. A bright child who kept to himself and, some teachers thought, seemed moody. In the third grade now. His first-grade teacher had asked to test the boy to see if he was retarded. The teacher then was a young man fresh from an out-of-state teachers college. Joe s father had threatened to beat him to death and cursed him as a faggot. Joe didn't know what a faggot was, but the teacher had paled and left the school midway through the year.

Joe sat cross-legged beneath the young trees at the edge of the woods, low branches cutting his line like breaks in a jigsaw puzzle as he watched his father turn into the yard and felt the same rush of fear he felt every day at this time.

The blue Kingswood station wagon stopped by the front porch, gleaming as if he had just driven it off the showroom floor. Joe watched a short, powerfully built man get out of the wagon, climb the three wooden steps to the front porch, and disappear into the house.

Daddy.

Joe's father built the house himself, three years before Joe was born, on a plot of land at the edge of the small town in which they lived, only two miles from where Mr. Pike worked as a shift foreman at the sawmill. Not much out here except some woods and a creek and some deer. It was a modest clapboard design of small unimaginative rooms sitting on a raised foundation. The house was painted a bright clean yellow with white trim, and, like the car, gleamed spotlessly in the bright sunlight. It looked like such a happy home. Every Wednesday afternoon, when Joe's father got home from work, he washed the house. Three times every week, he washed the Kingswood. Joe's father worked hard for his paycheck, and believed in taking care of the things that he had. You took care of things by keeping them clean.

Five minutes later, Joe's mother came out onto the porch and called him to supper. She was a tall woman with heavy hips, dark hair, and anxious eyes. She was almost as tall as her husband. She would have supper on the table at four o'clock on the dot because that's when Joe's father wanted it. He went to work early, came home after a long day of busting his ass, and wanted to eat when he wanted to eat. They ate at four. He would drink himself to sleep by seven.

Mrs. Pike walked to the lip of the porch and called without direction because she did not know that her son was watching her. "You come in now, Joseph! We'll be having supper soon."

Joe didn't answer.

"Suppertime, Joe! You'd better get home!"

Even as she said it, Joe could feel his heart quicken as the fear spread through his arms and legs. Maybe tonight would be different and nothing would happen, but he couldn't count on that. He just never knew, and so Joe waited silently until she went back into the house. He never went when she first called. He got home from school at three, but got gone fast, and stayed out of the house until the last possible minute. In the woods was better. Safe from the fear was better.

But ten minutes later his mother reappeared, and now her face was pinched and anxious. "Goddamnit, boy, I'm warning you! Don't you make your father wait! You get your butt in here!"

She stalked back into the house and slammed the door, and only then did Joe slip between the branches.

Joe could smell the booze in the air as soon as he opened the door, and the smell of it and what it meant made his stomach knot.

His father was sitting at the kitchen table, feet up, reading the paper, and drinking straight Old Crow whiskey on the rocks from a Jiffy peanut butter jar. The table was set for dinner, but Mr. Pike had pushed the plates to the side so he could put his feet up. His father watched him come in, finished what was in the glass, then jiggled the ice in the glass to draw Joe's eye. "Fill'er up, sport."

Joe's big job. Filling his father's glass with Old Crow.

Joe got the bottle from the cabinet under the kitchen sink, pulled out the cork, and poured a little bit into the glass. His father scowled. "That ain't even a swallow, boy. Give a man a fit highball and people won't think you re cheap."

Joe filled the glass until his father grunted.

His mother said, "You ready to eat?"

Mr. Pike's answer was to take down his feet and pull his plate closer. Joe and his father didn't look anything alike. Where Joe was tall and thin for his age with a lean, bony face, his father was shorter than average, with heavy forearms and a round face. Mr. Pike said, "Christ, can't you say hello to your old man?" A man comes home, he wants his family to give a damn."

"Hi, Daddy."

Mrs. Pike said, "Get the milk."

Joe washed his hands at the kitchen sink, then got the milk from the refrigerator and took his seat. His mother was working on a highball of her own, and smoking a Salem cigarette. His mother told Joe that she drank just to keep some of the booze from his father. Joe also knew that she poured out some of the whiskey and refilled it with water, because he'd seen her do it. His mother had told him, "Joe, your father's a damned mean drunk."

And Joe guessed that his father was.

Mr. Pike rose at four every morning, knocked back a couple of short ones to "get his feet under him," then went to the mill. His father didn't drink in bars, and almost always came straight home unless he'd picked up a second job doing carpentry, which he sometimes did. If there wasn't the second job, the old man was home by three-thirty, pouring his first one even before he'd opened the paper, knocking back two or three before supper. After supper, he'd turn on the television, settle back in his EZBoy to watch the news, and drink until he fell asleep.

Unless something set him off.

If something set him off, there would be hell to pay.

Joe knew the signs. His father's eyes would shrink into hard, tiny pits, and his face would glow bright red. His voice would get louder, letting everyone know he was about to let go, but Joe's mother would shout back at him curse for curse. That was the scariest part to Joe, the way his mother did that. It was like his father was giving them fair warning, letting them know he was losing control of himself, that there was still time to settle him down, only Mrs. Pike just couldn't seem to see it. Joe was only nine, but he could see it coming as fearfully as you could see a hundred-car freight train bearing down on you if you were strapped to the tracks. Joe would see the signs, and watch with horror as his mother ignored them, just kept digging at the old man in that way she had as if she wanted to set him off, when all Joe wanted was for her to stop, was to say and do the things that would calm the old man, was just get the hell out of there and run into the woods where he could hide and be safe.

But no.

His mother was blind to it, and Joe would watch as she pushed harder and harder, Joe getting so scared that sometimes he cried, begging her to leave Daddy alone, none of it doing any good until the old man finally had had enough and jumped up, shouting, "There's gonna be hell to pay."

His father said it every time.

That's when he started to hit.

Mrs. Pike brought a roast beef to the table for her husband to carve, then went back to the stove for mashed potatoes and string beans. His mother and father weren't looking at each other, and barely spoke, and that had Joe worried. Things had been tense between them since Saturday, when his father was watching the Game of the Week with Pee Wee Reese and Dizzy Dean. His mother was vacuuming the floor around the television, which had the old man pissed off enough, but then she'd run over the antenna wire with the vacuum and screwed up the reception at the bottom of the eighth inning in a three-two game. It had been building every day since then, with both of them retreating into silence and hostility until the air in the house seemed charged with fire.