Creeps by Darren Hynes Page B

“Your Uncle Philip was small too.”
    Wayne fiddles with the comforter.
    â€œIn school he could make up a joke on the spot and deliver it like a stand-up comic and he’d have the bullies laughing so hard they’d forget why they were picking on him.”
    Wayne sets his eyes on his father’s.
    â€œSo I never had to worry. But you … I don’t know, you’re different … softer. What are you supposed to do if you can’t fight back or say something funny, so we’ll go and talk to this Pete’s parents and no one else has to know.”
    Wayne turns away and imagines those giant hands again and this time they’re taking him to a place where fathers don’t make bad situations worse and where small and weak and soft are things to be admired, then he turns and looks up and notices his door is half open and his father is gone, so he lies back and dreams of another half-open door and slipping through it like a phantom, away from everything.

THREE
    His father pulls into Pete The Meat’s driveway and shuts off the engine. Looks over at Wayne and says, “You ready?”
    Wayne nods and goes to grip the door handle but then changes his mind. “They say his second father owns a shotgun and that he spends all his time polishing it and pointing it and firing it like it’s some joke.”
    â€œWayne—”
    â€œAnd that he’s got a tattoo of a tear beneath his left eye.”
    â€œWhat foolishness—”
    â€œAnd his mother spends hours each day over a huge pot of pork and chicken and she just plunks it down and Pete and his second father reach in with their bare hands and tear the flesh from the bones like wolves and then they even eat the bones—”
    â€œWayne—”
    â€œAnd grease is all over their faces and it drips on their clothes and then Mrs. Avery puts the pot back on the stove and starts all over again and she’s exhausted—”
    â€œThat’s enough.”
    â€œI’m just telling you what I heard.”
    â€œCome on.”
    They get out of the car and walk along the driveway and up the porch stairs and his dad rings the bell, and Wayne imagines the barrel of the gun, then the trigger, and the thick finger pressing against it followed by the arm and shoulder and neck and finally the pale, angry face of Mr. Avery: the little slit of a mouth and a Hitler moustache, probably, and that tear tattoo beneath cold, dead eyes—
    A woman’s suddenly standing in the doorway and she’s nothing like the worn, drawn-out wife and mother he was expecting, and she’s wearing a grey cardigan and jeans with holes in the knees and eyeliner and her teeth are perfect.
    â€œMrs. Avery?” his father says.
    She nods. “Yes.”
    â€œI’m Calvin Pumphrey and this here’s Wayne. He goes to school with your boy, Pete.”
    She takes in his father’s cheek. “Peter, yes.”
    His dad touches his bruise like he’s just as surprised as Pete’s mother to find it there. “Youwouldn’t say it by looking at him, but Wayne’s got a hell of a slapshot.”
    Mrs. Avery tries smiling while his father says how sorry he is to have shown up unannounced and holds out his hand and what choice does Pete’s mom have but to shake it?
    Wayne holds out his hand too and Mrs. Avery grabs it and her grip is soft and warm like fresh bread and she says, “Weren’t you one of the wise men in the pageant last year?”
    â€œI brought frankincense.”
    â€œYou tripped.”
    â€œCostume was too big.”
    â€œUpset the manger,” his father says.
    Mrs. Avery puts her hands in the pockets of her cardigan because she must be cold with the door open, and says, “Stole the show.”
    Another voice then, a man’s. “Who is it, Maureen?”
    â€œMr. Pumphrey and his son, Wayne,” she says over her shoulder.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œCome