Donald Ray Pollock

I was sitting in front of the dead TV, watching watery blood trickle down her pale calves. She’d tried to shave them with the old man’s straight razor, but her legs were like sticks of butter. A black fly kept buzzing around her bony ankles, dodging her mad slaps.

The room went quiet for a second, but when the man’s son began screaming, my father exploded. He circled around the man, kicking the ribs with his work boots, stomping the left hand until the gold wedding ring cut through to the bone of his finger.

SOMEHOW, I ENDED UP WITH THAT LITTLE MACKEY GIRL IN my arms

The old man had caught Daniel playing Romeo in the smokehouse with Lucy, Daniel’s little sister’s carnival doll. Daniel was giving it to her good, making believe she was Gloria Hamlin, a snotty, bucktoothed cheerleader who’d spit chocolate milk on him last year in the school cafeteria. “Boy, that’s Mary’s doll,” the old man said when he jerked the smokehouse door open. He said it matter-of-factly, like he was just telling his son that the radio was calling for rain, that the price of hogs was down again

Might as well watch niggers as listen to this shit,” the old man yelled at the TV.

“It’s a shame they don’t sell live ones,” the man said, mashing his bloodshot eyeballs with his fist.

And suddenly, Daniel knew that if he looked in the mirror again, he’d see the wig for what it really was. So instead, he closed his eyes.

Frankie had been listing all the stuff he wanted to do to Ali McGraw. I’d known him my whole life, but the part about the ax handle took me by surprise. I’d never been with a woman, and I was still trying to figure out if such a thing was even possible. “Shit, I don’t know,” I finally said with a shrug.

The last time he got excited like this, he chopped himself in the leg with a hoe, all because I refused to admit that my blue marble was really his green one. “Okay,” I said, giving in again. “Then can we at least say that the smoke is—”

“Just checking,” she said, tossing the toy helmet to the ground. Then she took off and did a flip that made her skirt go over her head. She was twelve, practically a grown woman to a nine-year-old. I could see her crack pressed tight against her white underwear. It looked like the knot in a tree. I wanted to fuck her, though I wasn’t sure what fucking actually entailed. I just knew my mom did a lot of it. Every kid on the school bus said so.