Light of Dawn Ch. 07

Maybe it was a blessing that they were seeing less and less of each other. Almost all of her evenings were spent away from home. Using the pretense of studying, she packed up a few textbooks and drove Dad's van over to Jenny's or Tara's or God-knows-where.

She stayed out later and later, sometimes past midnight. Dad was programmed to believe his little Sunshine was beyond suspicion; she was his sweet, virginal daughter, incapable of dishonesty. The gullible old fool would have had a brain hemorrhage if he'd heard just one of the rumors that taunted Jeff daily. Rumors about Alpha House, Beth Appleby's basement and the disgusting Jason Riley.

"Need a Band-aid?" His father's intrusion caused Jeff's long legs to stiffen. Vince Kramer set a tall glass of ice water beside the glider.

Jeff looked at his thumb. Blood trickled down the tanned skin where he'd cut himself on a rose thorn. "I'll survive." He put the thumb to his lips and tasted the tang of blood.

Vince surveyed the garden and the freshly mown yard. "How much do I owe you?" He opened his wallet and removed a pair of twenty dollar bills.

"No, Dad, I don't want any of your money."

"Come on Jeff, you saved me a lot of work."

"I wasn't doing you any favors." Jeff didn't attempt to mask the disgust in his voice. "I got tired of watching Mom's yard turn to shit. How the Hell did this end up in the roses?" A brick, somehow dislodged from the patio, had done substantial damage to Mom's delicate tea roses. "If it was that damn Dustin..." Dustin was the ten year old boy next door. Whether rooting in the dirt, begging toswim in the hot tub or nursing a serious crush on Dawn, he was a constant presence in the backyard; he was also the most destructive, obnoxious little boy who had ever walked the earth.I'm gonna tear him apart, Jeff thought, clenching his fist,I'm going to rip each skinny little limb from his skinny little body.

Vince Kramer must have sensed his son's building anger. "Don't start trouble with the neighbors."

Jeff rolled his eyes. His father had to be the stupidest person on earth. He wouldn't hurt the kid, just instill a little fear of the Almighty.

Vince pulled a few mangled stems from the rose bush, deftly avoiding the thorns. "You know, there was a time when you broke more than girl's hearts."

Clever, Dad, very clever. "Would you be talking about my childhood? That's funny, because I remember breaking and laughing and playing and doing all the other stuff a kid does. Dawn remembers, and if Mom were alive, she'd remember too. You see, they were there, Dad. I know they were there. Every weekend, when Little Vince Junior would take off his Pop Warner helmet and scan the bleachers for his family, he saw them. The problem was Vince Junior wasn't looking for them."

His father plopped down on the glider, shaking his head. "Why do you have to make everything so difficult?"

Difficult? For once Jeff was not being argumentative; he had opened his heart, an annoying habit acquired from Dawn.

"I'm not a good father. I'm scum; I'm trash. Is that what you want to hear?" His father's voice was surprisingly subdued. Usually they were screaming profanities at one another by this point in the conversation. "It's a miracle that one of you turned out alright." Jeff was shocked, not at his father's words so much as the way those words effected him. Jeff Kramer wasn't supposed to have feelings to hurt.

"Junior, I'm sorry. I didn't--"

The apology came too late. "Don't ever call me that. My name is Jeff; my name will always be Jeff; and if you weren't such an arrogant, egotistical prick-bastard my name would have always been Jeff!" His eyes bulged and his pulse raced.

"I'm sorry I didn't turn out like your precious little daughter. Sweet, innocent Dawn. She's fucking half the school but that's alright. As far as Daddy's concerned, she's perfect in every way." Jeff saw how his words wounded. A smirk lifted the corner of his mouth. "The way you let her get away with it all, sometimes I think she's fucking you, too."

Jeff never saw his father's fist; he felt the effects, though, felt his head snap back, felt his body crumple to the patio and the blood rush from his nose.

Too shocked to even consider retaliating, Jeff gripped his nose and his mouth, holding back the flow of blood.

"Why do you hate me, Jeff?"

Dark family secrets are often called skeletons in the closet. The secret Jeff and his father shared would be better represented as a reeking, decomposing corpse. "You know why. You know what you did to Mom." Even after so many years, it was still a jolt to think that his dad, the man he worshipped, the man he was named for, had been capable of doing something so awful.

At the time Jeff was blissfully unaware of trouble at home. Dad was a good man (when he was around) who loved his family. And Mom, Mom was an angel. Jeff only heard his parents fight the one time, but it was a massive blowup.

Late one night, Jeff stumbled out of bed for a drink of water. He saw Dad packing a suitcase. Maybe, Jeff's young brain reasoned, Dad was getting called up to the Major Leagues again. Then he saw the way Mom cried, the way she threw shoes and picture frames and anything else she could reach. She screamed words like infidelity and divorce, words that were not in a nine-year-old vocabulary.

Dad was gone the next morning and the one after that. Mom fell into a funk. She didn't eat or sleep the entire time. It was difficult for Jeff to watch the most warm and vibrant person in the world suffer so much, while he, a useless little kid, could offer no comfort.

When Dad finally did come home it seemed like everything fell back to normal in a hurry. Mom and Dad were happy again, giving one another disgusting kisses when they thought they were alone and making funny noises late at night behind the locked door of their bedroom. Jeff had no idea how close his family came to splintering. He didn't care. Mom, Dad, Dawn and him would be together forever; that was all that mattered.

For whatever reason, Vince confessed the details of his infidelity to Jeff only days after Mom's funeral. The saddest time in a ten-year-old boy's life was compounded exponentially as he lost not only his beloved mother but his father, his hero.

For more than a decade, Jeff struggled with the confession. Sometimes it was so hard to hold his tongue. Whether it was when he and Vince butted heads over sports and school or when Dawn droned on about how wonderful a man her Daddy was, Jeff wanted to unburden himself. He never did. Shallow and vindictive as he was, Jeff envied Dawn and the innocent way she hero-worshipped her Daddy. After taking so much from her, he couldn't takethat.

Vince sighed. "It was a mistake, Jeff, one I have to live with forever. I tried to make it right."

"Only after she told you she was sick."

"The cancer was terminal; she knew it but I deluded myself into thinking that God would intervene. How could He let someone so good and sweet like your mother die so young. If became when.When she got better andwhen she came home. I wanted to take a family vacation, a real one, not a bus ride to watch me play in some Triple-A ballpark. I wanted to quit baseball, find work close to home so we could be together every night; I wanted another baby, we both did, but she was too weak..."

"Why did you tell me!?" They were intended to be Jeff's last words on the matter. Jeff wiped at his face. The blood from his nose wasn't so bad and the pain kept tears from forming.

"I fell apart; the whole world fell apart--but not you. You were like a rock. My little boy, more man than I could ever be--it was too heavy a burden to carry all by myself."

Jeff remembered what sitting in the funeral home had been like, watching friends, family and people he'd never seen before file in to view Mom's casket. "Don't cry, don't ever cry," Grandpa Lou had said. His sentiments were reinforced by Uncle William, "Your Daddy needs you to be strong, Dawn does too." Did they not realize he was a little boy who suddenly had no mother?

He found that the only way to be strong for his Dad, strong for Dawn was to convince himself he didn't care. Cold logic was his comfort. So what if she's dead. We all have to die eventually. Besides, it's not like crying will bring her back. His heart slowed a little; the knots in his juvenile muscles unwound. His insides turned to stone, cold and hard but strong and enduring.

"She forgave me, Son. Me, the most loathsome human being on the planet. I only wish you could forgive me too."

Jeff would never forgive his father, not in a hundred billion years.

"Dawn's an adult now; she deserves to know." His father's words chased away the murmurs of the organ and the sobbing of mourners. Knowledge that her precious Daddy was a cheater would alter Dawn's life forever. "I'm so afraid I'll lose her the way I did you."

Jeff gathered the tools and went inside to tend his bloodied nose, unable to decide if he hated his father more or less.

The hot tub felt especially soothing to his weary body. Churning water massaged the stiffness from his exhausted muscles but did little to soothe his bruised and battered chest. Silence was broken by the electronic chime of the telephone. Wrapping a towel around his lean waist, he answered, dripping his way back inside the house.

"Man, what the fuck's wrong with you?" It was Willie Thompson, Jeff's favorite receiver and just about the only guy who ever called anymore. "Beth is throwin' the craziest bash of the year and your skinny butt is sitting at home?" Jeff faintly distinguished the drunken whoops of Hayden Burt over the din of the party.

Beth Appleby's chaotic parties were once a staple of Jeff's social life. Music, beer and women, they were his holy trinity. Not so very long ago, the notion that Jeff would be soaking his Friday night away in the hot tub because of excessive yard work would have seemed ludicrous. "Sorry Will, I'm beat." Back muscles burned as he struggled to find a comfortable position on the sofa.

Willie laughed. "I'll bet you're sorry--sorry you missed Liza. She looks incredible and she's been asking about you."

Closing his eyes, Jeff pictured the sexy, blond cheerleader. For so long Liza had seemed the embodiment of female perfection, the yin to his yang. She was a tease but not a malevolent one; Liza was, in fact, the closest thing to a real friend he had ever known at Choteau.

Jeff was never one to believe in déjà vu but the circumstances gave pause for thought. He first touched Dawn because of Liza, hoping it would prove to the blond the depths of his lust. Maybe, just maybe, Liza held the cure. If he could go to her, if he could see her flawless face and hear her syrupy voice he could be the quarterback again, Choteau's lanky god with the cheerleading goddess at his side. At the very least he might forget about Dawn for one night, forget about hopeless love.

To be continued...

I want to thank everyone who has made it this far, especially those of you who take the time to vote, comment, and e-mail. Your comments and opinions are what keep me going.

And special thanks to Chargergirl for her thoughts on this and future chapters.