Nothing Short of Dying by Erik Storey Page B

there was no need to have her out of the house where other men could look at her. Even though we were living on less money than before, it didn’t matter. The market was coming back, he said. Soon Mom wasn’t allowed to leave the house at all. Ever. Then she wasn’t allowed to wear her favorite clothes. Paxton bought clothes for her, and if she wore something else, he’d break a rib.
    He broke a lot of ribs. He’d taken to using a chopped-off piece of rebar from his never-moved work truck as the rod that would not be spared. When he moved in with us, after his big house was foreclosed on, there were rules that we all had to follow to keep our bones together. Mom couldn’t voice any opinions. Jen and I couldn’t talk in front of him. Any resistance was answered with precision strikes of steel. While Paxton was out looking for work, all of us went to the hospital with injuries that we said were the result of doors and stairs.
    I was older then, and stronger, and had been hunting to supplement the meager meals that Paxton’s savings allowed, but I still was no match for the man. I tried twice: once when he knocked a good book out of my hand, and the second when he called Jen a slut. Ski had been big, but what Paxton lacked in size he made up for in work-hardened muscles and rage. Both times I tried to stand up to the man, I was pummeled into putty. These were times that Mom was sleeping off a drunk. Paxton never hit us when she was awake. After the second futile attempt, I gave up and tried to follow the rules.
    Jen didn’t. She was older and a hell of a lot more rebellious. When I was away, and Mom was passed out, Jen got the losing end of the rebar. Two of the times were bad enough for hospital stays and visits from child welfare. Mom and Paxton covered it up well enough to keep us together. Now I wish they hadn’t.
    Because on a night in November, after I’d turned sixteen, Paxton destroyed our family. I came down from the mountain with deer meat and found Jen cowering in the living room corner. Paxton was beyond drunk, well into black-out mode, trying to suck the last drops out of the second empty vodka bottle on the table. Mom was asleep. We thought.
    Jen had told Paxton that he should either go to sleep or leave. He told her that she was an uppity little bitch. Jen threw a vase of dead flowers, which bounced off Paxton’s wide jaw. I swung my rifle at his head, which he caught with one iron hand and took from me, then slid the bolt out and tossed it on the couch.
    I tried to kick him in the crotch, but he twisted and caught the boot on his leg. He took the boot and tossed it toward the moldy ceiling, sprawling me on my back. He grabbed therebar from the center of the coffee table and started stumbling toward Jen.
    That’s when Mom came out.
    She was red-eyed and slurry, saying she needed one more cigarette. And for the first time, she saw Paxton hurt her daughter.
    The rest happened in a hazy blur. For years I’ve been alternately trying to remember and forget what happened next.
    Mom screamed and lunged at Paxton. Jen blocked one swing of iron with her arm, scratched at his face, drew blood, and caught a second swing of rebar on the skull. She dropped.
    As I was getting to my feet, Mom was tearing and slashing and slapping at Jimmy. Jimmy tried to smile but was too drunk. I picked up the rifle, grabbed it by the barrel, and got in a lucky swing that connected with his neck and made him stagger against the coatrack.
    But I didn’t get lucky twice. The adrenaline in Jimmy’s system must have overridden the alcohol and he came right at me, no stagger this time, and laid into me like he’d never done before. I didn’t last more than a few seconds. The world went black.
    I came to the next morning with a headache that has yet to be rivaled. From my spot on the floor I could see Jen, still out, her face caked with dried blood. She was lying beneath a