Gradually, his parents' fight died out, and they wound up glaring in dead, dumb silence at the snowy 13" black and white TV across the room from each other. His father downed beer after beer and piled the empties in and around a brown, paper, Piggly Wiggly grocery bag. Eventually, his mommy couldn't take the gulping and clinking anymore and went and sat on her stool in the garage.

Tony didn't get any supper that night. After the sun set, he shuffled and weaved his way to his room, his left thumb still in his mouth, Dawg still clutched in his four usable fingers. The air of the day and the little sounds of the night said more to Tony than had any of their screamed words. Another aspect of Tony's world.

Now he recalled every detail of the incident, with a little blurriness immediately following the sledgehammer fist on his head, in a flashback so vivid he curled up on the bed, sucked his thumb, and squeezed the smelly, wrinkled bed sheets with his left hand. His right held the pistol on the edge of the bed in front of him. The solid grip was in his palm and his index finger was inside the trigger guard. It looked like he was ready to shoot.

He remembered other times. Once he was shaken as if he were actually Deputy Dawg in a Doberman's mouth -- he couldn't stop crying after spraining his ankle by falling down the two steps leading to the family room. His vision was blurred for a week and he still limps a little when he's tired.

He was tripped when he ran through the kitchen to see his mommy when she returned after a three day absence. He skidded on his palms and knees on the linoleum floor. The abrasions lasted two weeks.

Black and blue hand prints erupted on the backs of his thighs, on his hips, on his bottom, and on his back after he got sick at school about a month ago. His father had to leave work to pick him up early because Mommy wasn't around again. The marks didn't completely fade for three weeks.

He didn't like lollipops but didn't know that it was because too many times his father had baited him with them when he was two. His father would show him a Tootsie Pop and as Tony reached for it, his father knocked him on the head with it.

He never sat next to his father if he could avoid it, though he didn't actually think to distance himself on every occasion; it was just a part of him now. Of course he never ran in the house anymore or in school or even down the street. (He did run around the bases.) He never sat with his back to a doorway through which his father might enter. He asked a dozen times a day where his father was when his mommy was home. He didn't have kids over to play and rarely went elsewhere to play. He didn't have friends. A dislocated shoulder. A broken wrist. Too many stitches. He answered questions and questions and questions by those women from The State who never did save him. Once his father actually chased them away by throwing empty beer cans at them. He was removed twice after trips to the emergency room, but he was returned both times.

Tony was on the bed two hours before his mother came home. The slamming of the back door brought him around, and when he focused his eyes once more, there was the gun, the end of the barrel almost touching the point of his nose. He quickly rolled over off the bed, landed on his knees, and launched himself under the bed. As Mommy came up the family room steps, he returned the gun to the shoebox and scooted back out but forgot to replace the lid.

Mommy walked through the kitchen glancing at the day's bills and frowning at the dirty dishes.

He slid under the bed again, topped the box, and got out of the bedroom.

His mother sat at the 1960's vintage dinette in the kitchen to take off her shoes while Tony brushed off his clothes.

"Honeybaby, Mommy's home!", she squawked, and he hustled into the kitchen to greet her.

"Oh, baby, Mommy missed you sooo much!" The sweetness practically dripped from her like chocolate from a Fudgesicle in the summer heat. "Come give Mommy welcome home hugs and kisses."

Tony opened his arms wide and approached with some trepidation. Mommy seemed to be bigger every day. He didn't stop to wonder how when there was rarely enough food for all three of them to eat, and his father wasn't home most nights to eat anyway. He didn't consider her size odd since he didn't have much of a frame of reference. He just knew that regardless of her size, Mommy was the nicer of the two adults in this house. She spoke to him nicely, she held him nicely. And, when his father felt it was anhialation time, she sometimes tried to rescue him nicely, too. He didn't wonder about the times when she wasn't home to rescue him or when she was home but stayed in the garage and simply didn't rescue him. It never occurred to him to wonder about any of this. To Tony, this was life on earth. Mommy was the occasional saver of Tony so he loved her.

When she hugged him, Tony automatically held his breath because he knew it was useless to even attempt to breathe enveloped in the biggest, softest person in his world. He would be surrounded by those Jello arms and squeezed into that overstuffed body. Rarely was the hug so long that it bothered him, but during the hug, he couldn't move.

She released him, sort of popped him out, and looked down at him through happy, squinty eyes. This time, like most times she looked at him, he could feel what he knew to be the absolute fact of her love for him. Tony basked in the warmth of her sunshine, feeling himself blossom. His own face absorbed hers and a dimpling grin sprouted. It grew and grew, and soon the magnitude of his happiness matched hers. They smiled at each other for a minute, knowing the presence of the other, feeling the safety of happiness and numbers, reveling in the comfort and calm of his father's stormless absence. For a moment Tony felt like his world was really a good place, not a hurtful or lonely place. He felt normal.

Their moment of happiness degenerated into an all-encompassing fear and dread the instant they heard the rusty '82 Ford Ranger crunch over the gravel and slide to a stop at an angle about two thirds of the way into the driveway. Together they turned to look out the front window and wonder why he was home now, this early. Sunshine glared on the windshield. The truck door gradually opened as the engine sputtered for another couple of minutes. Just as they were beginning to wonder if anyone was in the truck, the door sprung wide and the driver fell out onto his hands and knees, emptying a morning's worth of Milwaukee's Best onto the muddy ground. He spit a couple times to finish the job, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and stumbled to the front door of the house. Before Anthony could turn around, his mommy was rumbling toward the garage door, leaving him standing, staring out the window. His father grabbed the storm door handle and ripped it open as his mother slipped quietly into the cool, dark garage.

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