It was a creepy night. I gotta start with that. There was damp crispness in the air, as it had rained most of the day. In fact, this time in April, it seemed to rain every day.
I got out of my truck and stepped in a puddle. Damn! I always seemed to park right over the same puddle every time. I mentally reminded myself that I should fill it in the next time the driveway dried out as I slipped into the garage.
As I shimmied between my mom's car and the wall, I mentally ran through my checklist of why I was home. Two Xbox controllers, and a bag of Doritos. A bunch of guys from the baseball team were congregated at one guy's house, and we had run short of both Doritos and controllers.
I unlocked the door to the house, and closed it quietly behind me. It was already 10:45, and Mom was often in bed by then. I didn't want to wake her if I didn't have to.
The door had just clicked shut when from behind me I heard a sound that had no good connotations: Breaking glass. Especially to me, who it brought back flashbacks.
My mind immediately sank back to the incident last summer that had brought to climax events that had been building since before I was even born.
My mom was a seventeen year old high school senior when she had started seeing the contractor her father, the pastor, had hired to replace the roof on both the church and the rectory.
Her father, the good minister, had no idea that the roofer ended up nailing his daughter as well as his roof. After all, my mother was a good girl, straight A student, headed off to college in the fall.
Unfortunately, those plans fell apart when my mother became pregnant. Mom's cloistered upbringing had only taught her the evils of contraception, not the benefits, so nature took its course and I appeared.
The phrase 'shotgun wedding' may not have been wholly figurative in their case, and six months after marrying my father, my mother had me during a January snowstorm that was still talked about in the small town where we lived.
Even though my parents married, the pastor and his wife still wanted nothing to do with their 'teenage mother' daughter and her husband that was nearly twice her age. The fact that they saw me as ruining my mother's chance for 'making something of herself' did nothing to help my relationship with my grandparents either, and by the time I was in middle school, my mother just stopped trying to get along with them.
The most contact I had with my grandfather after that was to watch him rain down fire and brimstone from the pulpit every Sunday. Yes, even after everything that happened, my mother still attended his church, an exercise my father used to insult every Sunday when we came home.
Despite their earlier transgressions, I was an only child who grew up learning the roofing and general construction trade from my father from the time I was old enough to hand him nails.
My father became one of the more successful contractors in the area, his success due more to my mother's business acumen in taking care of 'the books' than anything else. In fact, by the time I hit middle school; Dad wasn't only building roofs but the entire house, and had several crews working for him at any one time.
From eighth grade on I spent summers working for him. Roofing, 'his first love', was the worst, so that was what I got stuck doing. Carrying 50 lb bundles of shingles around and spending all summer in the sun may have given me a cut physique, deep tan, and full pockets, but I hated every minute of it.
Mom knew this, and used it as an effective motivation for me to work hard in school. Despite my father's dream of me being a professional baseball player, which he had passed on to me, I just didn't have the skills, so I knew I had to make it at something else.
By the start of my junior year, I had gotten in the routine of studying a couple hours every night, even on the weekends. Mom usually sat in the living room, sewing, reading, or watching television as I would sit at the kitchen table, working through whatever mental obstacle high school had thrown at me that week.
That was what I was doing, working through a physics problem regarding refraction of light, when my father came in.
I could tell right away he was drunk. Dad's drinking had gotten progressively worse, and since today was Saturday that meant he'd been down at the bar since the doors had opened at noon.
I looked up from my studies to see dad holding one of my college brochures, squinting at me. He was looking for my reaction, which I gave by going back to my homework.
When my dad was drunk, he would decide that college was a waste of money, and that I could just work for him after graduation. To my mother, of course, this hit too close to home, and it was one of the few things she couldn't help herself from arguing with Dad about, even when he was drunk and unreasonable.
Having decided I wouldn't provide him the answer he wanted, he staggered past me into the living room. Thirty-plus years of manual labor, especially kneeling on roofs, had shot my dad's knees and back, and he walked with noticeable stiffness. Add in the balance of a drunk, and he was by no means striding as he went by me.
"What the fuck is this?!" I heard him loudly say to my mother.
Her answer and the next few minutes of their argument were drowned out by the headphones I wore while studying. What wasn't drowned out were my father's statements that "We'll spend the money on a new truck for him... He'll get more use from that" and "Over my dead body is he going".
I sighed, hoping that my father would finally come around to realize Mom wasn't budging when I heard the crashing of glass. Removing my headphones, I heard the sounds of struggle in the living room mixed with the sounds of the television.
Getting up, I leaned around to see the sight that was burned into my memory. Mom was leaning back in her rocker, fear in her eyes. Dad was leaning over her, his hands locked around her neck in a fierce grip.
Mom wasn't a small woman. It was only in the past two years that I finally past her 5'11" height on my way to 6'4". But dad was a bear of a man, 6'2", and easily 250 lbs, more fat every year, but still formidable.
Knowing what had to be done, I looked down to see my father's softball bat that we used in backyard games. It was a heavy wooden bat, much heavier than the aluminum bats I used in high school games.
The weight worked to my benefit though, as I swung it heavily into my father's ribs.
His breath left him in a big "Whooph" and he collapsed over the side of the chair, momentarily stunned and grasping for breath.
My mother, her own hands still touching her throat, looked at me. I saw the absolute terror in her eyes.
"Go upstairs and lock yourself in the bathroom" I said calmly. I offered her my hand, and helped her out of the chair. I could see the red finger marks around her neck as she ran past me and up the stairs.
As I stepped beyond the chair over my prone father, I could hear a door slam upstairs. Taking a deep breath, I put a knee in my father's back, I pinned him to the floor. Slipping the bat up under his head, I pulled back, raising his chin.
This was not the first time my father had threatened my mother, but this was the first time I knew of that he had touched her. It would also be the last.
I allowed Dad's breathe to return, and then pulled back on the bat, choking him as he had moments earlier choked my mother.
"That was your last strike. If you aren't out of this house in sixty seconds, my next swing will be at your head."
My voice was much calmer than I was. I released his head, tapping the back of his head lightly with the bat. I backed up from my father, wary that in his rage, he might come at me next.
A few seconds after my knee left his back; he raised himself up with his hands, and spun, looking at me. His face was a mixture of fear, surprise, and anger. I saw him size me up, so I took a light swing with the bat, reminding him of what had just happened.
He got the message, and slowly worked himself to his feet. He looked around, and not seeing my mother, headed for the front door, watching me the whole time. I stayed between him and the stairs the whole time, until finally he was out and I was able to close the door and set the deadbolt.
Memories of that night were running through my head as I slowly, but purposefully, stepped from the back hallway into the kitchen. Seeing no one, I looked into the living room, much as I had a year prior.
Mom had replaced the couch and chair since then with a sectional, so it wasn't her chair she was in this time, but rather the couch.
Her position and the man crouched over her, was much the same. I saw that they had knocked over the vase next to her, and saw that mom was struggling with this unknown male. "No-no... Stop" That was all I heard. There was no bat this time, but it didn't matter as I grabbed the guy and threw him on the floor. I jumped on top of him, one hand on his throat, the other cocked to unload a punch on his face.
"Who the fuck are you?" I growled, my eyes locked on his.
