“Now you be puttin’ them drawin’s in the trash Evan, and get back to your school work. I‘ve told ya before, what ya need to be workin‘ on is your school work. There aint no way you’re goin’ to be an artist. Nothin’ will ever come it. Do ya hear me? Nothin’! I won’t stand for it! Artists is low life degenerates and most of ’em can’t even support themselves.”
“But I,” Evan started to say, when his father hit him in the face with a backhand and left him sprawled on the floor of his room. His father removed his belt and Evan knew what was coming. The swish of the belt as it split the air was followed by the slap of leather to skin when it hit him. Humiliation filled his being as the physical pain coursed through his limbs with each hate filled strike.
Evan was stoic and as usual, there’d be no response from him. There’d be no tears, no pleading for his father to stop - at least not out loud that is: “No, No, No, daddy! Please stop daddy! Please stop,” echoed in his thoughts but Evan would not allow him the satisfaction of hearing him beg. His degradation was complete as he lay limp as a rag doll and took the beating. There was no love lost, that’d been lost years ago.
“I’ll not be havin’ any backtalk from ya! Do ya hear me ya little heathen? Do what I say, and clean up this room too ya little bastard. It looks like the swine is livin’ here! I’m goin’ down to Shanties to have me self a pint or two. Mind what I say now: School work! It’s your school work you’ll be doin’, or I’ll blister your damnable hide again!”
Evan looked up into his father’s steely eyes and saw the evil that lived unrestrained in his mind. He saw the pain, sorrow, and hatred as it festered inside. Silent screams echoed in Evan’s mind but were not brought to fruition.
“Mark my words and take heed,” said Patrick as he put his belt back on, went down the stairs, and slipped outside. He closed the door behind him. Silence hung suspended in the moment without a clue as to what had transpired.
Evan went to the window, looking out on his street, and watched as his father made his way through the children playing in the street down the block. As he watched, the rage that had been contained built to the point of explosion. He watched and waited till he was sure Patrick was far enough away from the house that he couldn’t hear him, and his anger burst from him in a rant of verbal slurs and cursing. He screamed at the top of his voice and called his father every name he could think of. His fists were clenched and he pounded them mercilessly in the couch cushions, picturing his father’s face with every blow.
“The devil is in ya Patrick Doyle! I hate ya, I loathe ya! May ya burn in hell Patrick Doyle!,” screamed Evan. He let out a screech, the screech of a tortured banshee, and it seemed as though it would never end as the air escaped from his lungs. He beat the cushions till the feathers from them flew in a wisp into the air; he beat them till he could no longer lift his arms and lay in an exhausted heap of spent frustration on the floor.
Tears rolled down his cheeks in unending streams of glistening, crystalline liquid, as his body shuddered with uncontrollable sobs. Insignificant, tiny, helpless, tormented, tortured, devastated, were his thoughts and feelings.
The late afternoon sun dimmed with a crimson melancholy sky at the horizon and the day softly, tenderly, turned to darkness while he cried. He lay curled in a tiny forlorn heap on the floor of the living room of the small flat. Alone, he was all alone, with no one to love him and no one who cared about him. “Could this be hell,” was his final thought as he slipped form consciousness into dreamland. Relief from the torment was at hand: Peaceful sleep.
* * * *
It could have been hours. It could have been days. Evan had no sense of how long he had been asleep. He was awake now, but his eyes were still closed; he listened. There was no sound. He opened his eyes, but the darkness was consistent with what he had seen when his eyes were closed. He couldn’t see his hand before him. Patrick wasn‘t home yet, or was he?
“Poppa,” said Evan gingerly, tentatively, with trepidation, hoping there would be no response.
Things were always awful when Patrick spent time at Shanties pub. Fear struck him as though an icy wind suddenly came over him and he shivered as it crept up his spine and nestled itself in his brain. He felt fear of a man that he had long ago learned to hate and despise. How had things gotten to this point, he wondered out loud. How could God have allowed this to happen to me?
“You’re a despicable loutish cretin, Patrick Doyle,” Evan muttered under his breath. “You’re as mean as a wounded serpent and as cruel as the widow Brennan, he lamented. Sure if you’re not the devils’ only friend. I’ll have me day, Patrick Doyle, There’s a day comin’, Patrick Doyle, when I’ll have me revenge and it‘s mercy you‘ll be beggin for; Nary a bit there‘ll be!”
Evan sat quietly in the darkness for some time and then said in a faltering little voice, “God . . . God . . . are you there God? I‘m approachin’ ya with reverence dear God. Why did you do this to me God? Did I do something to make you do this to me? What could I have possibly done to deserve such a life? Please answer me God . . .Please make my father stop hurting me. Please change my life back to the way it was before my mother died. Please change my father back to the way he used to be. . . “ The silence echoed in his ears and after a bit he simply said, “Please take care of my mother God . . . Please answer me.” God did not answer Evan. There was only silence and the beating of his hopeless heart.
* * * *
The tumblers in the lock on the front door clicked, clickity clack, and it creaked open slowly. Panic struck Evan in a white hot flash. It was Patrick home from a night of drinking a carousing. He made one last plea to God, “Dear sweet God, please help me.” Patrick started up the stairs slowly, with Evan‘s angst growing stronger with every step. He knew by the way Patrick climbed the stairs that he was drunk. Evan checked the clock; it was almost midnight. He must have been at Shanties all evening, thought Evan. He scrambled with the nimbleness of a cat to his bedroom in the cover of darkness and slipped under the bed and lay perfectly still.
A blinding burst of phosphorescent light filled the living room as Patrick hit the light switch, the remnants of which illuminated the floor of Evan’s room.
“Where are ya little man? Where is my wonderful little son? Come out you little son-of-a-bitch! It‘s what for I’m goin’ to give ya!”
Heart pounding, he held his breath until he thought his head would surely pop. He could hear glasses breaking in the kitchen. Dishes crashed to the floor. Evan reasoned that he hadn’t been this drunk in a long while. He exhaled slowly, so as to not make a sound and deliberately, quietly, sucked in more air. Thump . . . Thump . . . Thump, went his heart. Thump . . . Thump . . . Thump. All he knew was that he had to not let him find him. He’d have to get out of the house some how.
“If I can just give the alcohol time to pass trough his system, maybe it won’t be that bad after he sobers up,” was his only conjecture. Evan started to slide out from under the bed when he felt intense pain. Patrick had him by the hair and pulled him out, kicking and screaming.
Patrick yelled, “Got cha, ya little beggar! I‘m gonna teach ya a lesson. Why am I gonna teach ya a lesson? Cause I’m the meanest bastard in this town, that’s all. And you’re the mean bastard’s son. What a plight!”
The stench of whiskey permeated the air as Patrick dragged him to the cellar door. With one shove, he sent Evan tumbling down the stairs. As he sailed through the air, he pleaded with God, “Please help God, please help me!” Evan landed on his chest, knocking the air from his lungs. There would be no help from God, and he knew it.
Patrick tied Evan’s wrists and hung him from a pipe in the ceiling and beat him relentlessly.
“Beg me, you little bastard, beg me to stop!”
The beating continued. Ultimately, it was more than Evan could take.
“Please stop Poppa! Please stop,” said Evan with a whimper.
Patrick grinned a broad and happy grin.
“That‘s what I wanted to hear, little man, that‘s what I wanted to hear! Finally you said it!”
Patrick cut him loose; he fell to the floor and he dragged him to a closet, shoved him in and lock the door. The air was dank, with the scent of soot. Remarkably, he felt no pain. His body was numb: Quit unquestionably, he had been beaten senseless.
“Is this my tomb God? Is this where I die,” thought Evan, totally submitted now to servitude to his father. “But I might really die. Would he have in fact won if I die,“ thought Evan. “I’m not being melodramatic God. Seriously God, Is this my tomb?”
His father had won. He had won the sick, stupid, game that he played with Evan. He knew that was true when he begged him to stop. Evan never begged, but this time he did. He simply couldn’t take it any more. His father was the master and he was the slave.
He tried to talk to God again, but there was no response and finally he said with a gasping breath, “Please let me die, God. Please . . . let me die.” Evan lost consciousness. The itsy bitsy spiders scurried over his lifeless body. If he had know it, he would have been terrified.
* * * *
Tickle, tickle, scurry, scurry, is what Evan felt on his bare legs - tiny little creatures from dark reclusive hiding places scampered all about all over Evan’s body. Not being able to see them, not see the repulsiveness of their form, instead of being terrified, he merely brushed they away.
“Where am I,” he thought. “Darkness. Again, darkness.” He became aware of his back. The pain was searing hot. “Poppa, it must have been Poppa,” he thought.
God had helped him after all: He had no recollection of the beating. The pain, although extreme, was nothing compared to what it would have been if God had not intervened. All that Evan remembered was the fact that he had been beaten and that he had begged his father to stop.
“No dear God, No! You let Poppa win God! You let Poppa win!”
Evan sat crouched on bended knees and cradled his face in his hands for a moment. He felt in the darkness to try to determine where he was.
“Oh yes, the storage closet. I’m in the storage closet again.”
He felt for the door handle until he became acclimated to the enclosure.
“Here it is,” he said. “Here it is!” The door was secured and would not open. A thought came to him out of no where: “I‘m the mean bastard‘s son. What a plight. That is the reality of it. . . What a plight . . . What a plight!”
He called out, quietly at first, “Poppa, Poppa,” then louder and with more zeal. He began pounding on the door and yelling his father name; he didn‘t call him Poppa, but rather Patrick, over and over again.
* * * *
Patrick was hunched over the table upstairs in the kitchen with a piece of dry toast and a cup of coffee in front of him. He leaned sideways and threw up in the trash can. He heaved and heaved and heaved: the dry heaves were the worst.
“How many pints did I have last night? Must a been a plenty,” he said as he wiped the spittle from his chin. Then he heard Evan downstairs and it struck his memory: “What have I done? What in God’s name have I done?” The flashes of memory of the beating reverberated in his brain. “No, no, sure ‘n if I didn‘t do that! But I did, didn’t I.” He had locked him in the storage closet before, but he had never beaten him like he beat him last night. He recounted the beating almost blow by blow. He sat dumbfounded in his recovering stupor.
He was sharing a cup with his father; the cup of inexhaustible, loathing and hatred and even if it tasted sour at first, they wallowed in the commonality of it. It was the one thing they agreed on: They truly hated one another and they “loved” to hate one another. They were symbiotic in their resolve.