Beach Trip by Cathy Holton Page B

without the red nose and the beer gut.
    The evening went pleasantly enough at first, with Sara and Mel chattering on about the homecoming dance, Leland sitting in uncharacteristic silence at one end of the table and Junior at the other. Leland sat hunched over his plate with his elbows on the table and his head lowered like a junkyard dog guarding a ham bone. From time to time he would sip from the tumbler of Old Crow at his elbow, watching his son over the edge of his glass with red-rimmed eyes. Junior just sat there looking sickly and skinny, and picked at his food.
    “Eat your food, boy, don’t play with it,” Leland said suddenly, pointing at Junior with his fork. He’d given the boy every advantage and Junior had disappointed him in every way imaginable; he was bad at sports, he couldn’t hit the side of a barn with a scattergun, and he had absolutely no gumption or goals in life. Worse, he couldn’t hold his liquor (Leland lumped all narcotics in with alcohol) whereas Leland could down half a quart of Old Crow in one sitting and never show the effects.
    “I don’t need you telling me how to eat,” Junior said in a surly voice.
    Mel kept on talking about the homecoming dance but Sara turned her attention to the dueling Barclays. She thought it was cool the way they could just say what they were thinking, right out in the open with no restraints. At her house, saying what you thought was considered bad manners. She had never heard her parents argue. If they disagreed over something, they didn’t speak to each other, sometimes for days. Sara and her brothers would walk around on tiptoes, aware of an undercurrent of tension and a brooding silence that wafted through their house and into their dreams like a sinister presence. When the prescribed amount of silence had been carried out, as if on a signal, her parents started talking to each other again and everything went on as civilized and sedately as before. The source of the disagreement was never mentioned.
    “You don’t like the chicken, we can get the girl’s ma (here he pointed at the backstairs with his fork) to make you something else. Cookin’s the one thing she’s still good at.”
    Junior picked up a drumstick and stuffed it into his mouth. Mel gave Leland a baleful stare. She didn’t like hearing her mother abused in her presence. “She’s good at a lot of things,” she said.
    “Not the things that matter,” Leland said, lifting his tumbler.
    “How do you know what she’s good at? You never even talk to her.”
    “It’s hard to talk to someone who’s shut up in her room all day.”
    “No one wants to be around you, you smelly old goat.”
    Leland grimaced and set his drink down. “Now, Sister, this don’t concern you. It’s between me and the boy here.” Leland liked to give Junior pep talks about getting his life back on track.
Sling it against the wall, son, and see if it sticks
was one of his favorites. Or sometimes,
Run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes.
And if that didn’t work he might weigh in with,
If the fish ain’t biting, boy, change the bait.
This was back in 1973, long before anyone in Howard’s Mill had heard of rehab.
    “Stop calling me boy,” Junior said, his mouth full of fried chicken.
    “Well, you sure as hell ain’t a man,” Leland said.
    Junior scowled and started packing his cheeks with mashed potatoes. “Fuck you, old man,” he said.
    Sara snorted and glanced at Mel and then down at her plate. She tried to imagine what her mother would say if she heard someone use the F-word at the table. She’d probably say,
Just because you have money doesn’t mean you have class.
She’d also say,
Don’t ever set foot in the Barclay house again.
    “Why don’t you just leave him alone?” Mel said to Leland. She stared at her father with a dangerous expression on her face. “Can’t you see he’s sick?”
    “He ain’t sick,” Leland said, slapping the table with his hand so that the silverware