Current mood:	hurt
Entry tags:	father, in my time of dying, laura, max, mother, nano, peter, the distance to here

Section 10 (instalment 2)
ooc: There's something about the father that I'm not getting quite right and it'll need to be adjusted when I figure it out, but it's not off enough to not consider it first-draft level. *sighs* Not good times.

Word count: 1520


Max remembered...

He was turning exactly seven and a half, that day, and it was a Sunday, too.

He had also done exceptionally well in school, in the weeks before, so he was allowed a small party. No sleepover, just a few of his friends, and their parents, and a last chance for an outdoors barbecue too, since the weather was still nice. (Not that he recalled the bit about it being the last chance for the year - just that if the weather WAS nice, it would be a barbecue, and so it was. He'd figured out it was that later, when he got to understand about how party situations depended on seasons.)

The afternoon had been absolutely brilliant. Everybody was having fun - mom with her friends (that is, those of the mothers that hadn't just dropped off their kids but had stayed for the company); he with his; dad having a few beers with the couple of fathers who'd braved coming. It was his party and there were even presents, and he was using some of them to play with his schoolmates, and was definitely looking forward to spending more time exploring the rest (one of the girls had even brought him two books, and he loved it, even if two of the boys had mocked her how boring a gift that was. He'd stood before them and told them it wasn't boring, that books could be very very interesting, and gotten odd looks. And teases that he liked the girl. Had he liked that girl? ... he couldn't recall anymore. Not that it ever mattered. Not that he'd ever go back or was likely to meet her again. It was highly unlikely she was still alive even.) But even the taunting about that all had been good natured, with more laughter than malice.

Because that's the kind of friends Max had. He was strong enough to be a bully if he was so inclined, but he wasn't. There were few things that others had that he wanted, and those he could usually ask for nicely enough. But he didn't tolerate bullies either. In the year or so since he'd first started going to school, the group of friends he'd acquired had shaped up as those who enjoyed that kind of presence. No, they weren't perfect, but they didn't tend to really be bad to each other. And that's why they had fun.

At least he'd reached that conclusion later. Not too much later. He avoided thinking back, later. But he recalled thinking it when in the beginning of fourth grade one of the other groups of friend started fighting among each other and the group of friends he was with were just looking at them surprised. (Not his group of friends. They just hung around together, and usually followed whoever's idea seemed best at the time. Some of the ideas were his; a lot weren't.)

And then dusk came, and the mothers and fathers started drifting off to their houses. He'd see his friends tomorrow at school, of course, so it was a lot of 'bye!'s and a few brief conversations on what they had to bring in to school tomorrow and what they'd be doing between classes... and then it was time to help mom and dad clean up. Dad's voice was a bit too loud for some reason, but he busied himself with the grill as usual, and Max was gathering up trash and putting it in bags and taking things that needed to be washed inside for mom to wash them, and she was putting away food, and everything was good. He went in to arrange his presents for later for a bit, even, and it was alright even though there were still paper cups and plates out on the lawn. But he'd taken in all the blankets and folding chairs, and he could finish the rest in a bit, and then he could just spend the evening fiddling with his new stuff, maybe reading through the beginning of one of the books too. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and nobody called him down too soon, and then he was back to finishing the cleaning up. It'd been a good party, he though. He'd liked it.

It was almost dark when dad went inside, and Max was already relying on the lights outside and a flashlight to make sure that the lawn was fully clear. And he was just about to go in himself, turned the flashlight off and looking up at the sky, trying to make out constellations, when there was a crash from the inside, and he heard his dad yelling, and even his mom's voice raised. He ran in, because it wasn't often when that happened. But it was never good. (He knew by then that his mom's face didn't look good with bruises, or her arms, or her legs when it was summer and she should be wearing shorts and her favorite skirts, and she tried to hide those bruises, and he hated it.)

He'd tried before to stop his dad from hitting mom. He'd yelled out to him at the best of his voice, but his dad had just told him to shut up and go to his room. That he was his son and had to do as he told me, and he had no choice in the matter. He had no choice, that's what he said, and Max didn't know why he said it, but he didn't like it all. And this time he ran back inside, and into the kitchen. Seemed to him his mom had broken one of the big serving platters, and dad was yelling at her for it. Not like he usually cared, that's what mom retorted, and Max thought she was right. And she told dad that he'd had too much bear and should go to bed, and he told her that she couldn't order him around, and she had to do what he told her too. And then he lifted his hand and Max ran and stood between them.

He'd tried before to pull his dad's arm and pull him away from her. He'd tried to tell him not to do it. This time, he stepped between them. Not that he was tall enough to stop her from being hit on the head. Or on the shoulders. But for some reason it seemed to make sense to him as something to do, another way to try and stop it, because he mustn't hit mom--

The heavy hand struck him across the cheek and side of the head, and made his balance go away so he fell to the ground, and made his ears ring as he cried out. The sound overlapped his mom shouting too, and Max looked up quickly enough to see her backhanded hard enough to fall against the sink for support. He was blinking up tears as his dad leaned down and grabbed him for the back of his neck can't breathe... hurts, large fingers digging into his skin, and lifting him up off the ground. Max was kicking and shouting out now, to let him go, to stop this please, that it was hurting him and he shouldn't be hurting anybody, not mom, not him, nobody.

Up the stairs his dad carried him, and to his room and kind of tossed him to the floor, and his elbow hit the hardwood part that wasn't covered by a carpet and he cried out again. He scrambled to his feet quickly, but he didn't get to the door until it was closed and locked, and much as he shook it, it wouldn't budge. The his dad yelled, "I told you to not try to stop this, Maxy-boy. You're my son, mine, do you hear me? You do as I tell you. You've got no choice."

Max pounded on the door, but he could hear his dad's steps down the hallway and down the stairs and into the kitchen again. And the door shut, but he though he could hear the yelling and crying going on. He was crying too. His ears were ringing and eventually his hands hurt from hitting on the wood, and he sat on the floor, back to the door, and cried.

Did he really have no choice? Why was it that he didn't? It wasn't good, it wasn't good to hit people, even dad himself told him a lot of the time, most of the time. Not when he was like that, though, and it made him confused, why was he doing it if it was wrong in the first place?

You don't have a choice. You're mine and you do as I tell you to.

He never got to play with his new presents that evening.

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