Ninety-two degrees

Trigger warning: Theme of Family violence / Sexual abuse

It’s the time of year when the depressing chill of autumn should be settling in, yet the sun is unrelenting stark radiance. No shadows, no perspective just a harsh white light providing a spotlight for my stepfather’s gaze as he watches us. I’m supposed to call him Daddy but under my breath I call him Kronos. Devourer of children. Unhinged titan. Seems more apt.

He’s going stir crazy with the pressure of no work on the horizon. We’ve ducked his ill temper, dodged the petty arguments he tries to kick off. It’s wearying trying to avoid his fists and I can’t wait for school to restart next week.

Stevie tosses me the basketball he's been bouncing absently in front of the garage. "I'm bored."

Our television is out of service so of course he is bored. I escape into books. Today I’m re-reading Wuthering Heights wondering if consumption would be a fair trade to live life like a Bronte on rain sodden moors with a dark, angry dangerous man.

I imagine all that rain and howling wind would become tedious after a while.

Dark, angry, and dangerous is also overrated.

Kronos watches us from the porch as though we’re lifers in an exercise yard. Our chances of busting out are low.

Stevie sighs, he knows it too. “Want to play one on one?" He throws the ball with undue force behind it to underline his dissatisfaction. Tossing Heathcliff and Cathy to one side I accept his challenge.

Faster and taller than me, even in this heat Stevie plays rough determined to win. Sweat spiked up hair, brown eyes glowing with a determination that I cannot compete with, he shoots hoop after hoop endlessly and effortlessly. When he slams into me with his hard, angular body. I wrap my arms around his waist trying to hold him back from scoring. My feeble efforts make him laugh and the game descends into sweaty grappling. I try to push his hands away and he grips on to my arm so tightly I sink to my knees.

"Quit it," Kronos stomps down the porch steps. "It’s too hot for you guys to be horsing around like this."

Stevie inherited his height from his mother. Kronos is constructed with a hard, tough rectangular shape. Short and squat like a refrigerator. He’s not vain, some days he might even laugh if he heard me say he has the physique of a beer fridge - on the other hand, he might smack me into next week. His jaw is unnaturally wide, his neck is sturdy and square, His eyes are brown like Stevie’s. Normally they are wild and psychotic, but back when he used to laugh more, they had an unnatural glint to them as if he were lit up inside with energy. Alcohol has worn down his features like sandpaper. He’s getting old and resents it.

"Come here."

We saunter towards the steps, poised ready to run. Kronos can’t catch us as easily these days. A back injury from Korea gives him hell. He holds himself stiffly and overdoes it on pain killers. He meets regularly with a group of friends who fought in the deserts, in the jungles, across the Pacific, Asia and Europe. They convene in a local tavern to reminisce, drink themselves senseless, then go home to beat their hurt into their families.

He yearns for the darkness. Terror in the jungle is his idea of a high old time. Saddling him with three kids to raise alone is hell for a man with the demons that haunt Kronos.

" You'll get heatstroke. Get inside. And you," He swipes Stevie over the head as he sidles past inside. "Take a cold shower." He frowns as if considering something that has been puzzling him for some time. I tense up hoping that it hasn’t finally dawned him something’s not right with Stevie and me.

Finally he speaks and he is as cryptic as always.

"More murders are committed at ninety-two degrees than any other temperature. Just hot enough to get people good and mad, any higher and it’s too darn hot to do anything. Ninety-two degrees; warm enough to want to kill somebody, still cool enough to get off your ass and do it." Kronos stares down the sun burning his eyes into two white lights. Typical of the demonic vibe that radiates from his being. “Ninety-two degrees. Murder weather.”

He states it as if it’s scientific fact, imbuing it with veracity. He seldom cites his sources but there’s slight tilt to his eyebrow as if he is testing me. Fact or fiction, figure it out.

But no lie, people get irritable in hot weather, I’m not about to linger on the porch for a discussion on murderous impulses and the exact temperature that sets them off with the angriest man I know.

Retreating to my room, I kick off my jeans and tee-shirt in favor of a skirt and a halter neck top that just fitted last summer. The skirt is shorter now and I seem to have filled out that halter neck somewhat. Short skirts in this hick town mark you out as fast and having a bad reputation. But not wrong. That would be me. The halter neck top isn’t entirely immodest. Surveying myself from various angles in the mirror most of the parts that matter are covered.

"Hey," My little brother’s reflection appears in my mirror from nowhere. Alfie has developed a talent for a noiseless tread. We are all quite light-footed in this house. "What do you think?"

I turn towards him with a fashion runway twirl.

Alfie grins a gap-toothed grin, "I think Dad'll skin you if you go out wearing that."

“I might try out for cheerleading this year." Stevie is dating a cheerleader. Her name is Cherry. Actual name. Cherry pronounced Sherry like the fortified wine not like the pie filling. She’s so popular not even that name holds her back.

My legs are long, and I am limber, I can cartwheel till next Thanksgiving. I execute a match worthy handstand and regard Alfie from this new perspective. “Go Starkweather Bulldogs.”

 "You look more like Daisy Mae than any cheerleader at your school," Alfie interrupts my brief sojourn into the world of cheerleading and kicks me back to Li’l Abner and my real life. I turn right side up and fling my hairbrush at him. He ducks, laughing. He is attired in overalls without a shirt. With his spiked blonde crew cut and toothless smile he looks like a not-so-distant cousin of Li’l Abner himself.

 "Don't you sass me, or I won't let you hide in my room.” I should baby him, but there’s no one else I can lord it over without earning a back handed slap. All the same, I am inexplicably fond of the little freak. His backwoods appearance is offset by the welding goggles he’s wearing. He looks younger than his nine years because he’s skinny and short - and because Kronos knocked out one of his front teeth last week.

"Daddy’s going out later. I heard him talking to somebody." I smile. "Somebody real," adds Alfie. "He’s meeting them in Atlanta."

 Kronos has a savant talent for math and a psychic ability predicting stock market swings. He has a small client base who overlook the fact he’s half a bubble off plumb because of his Midas touch.

"If Kronos would just get out of the house, Stevie and Jess Farrell will take me to see the new Bruce Lee movie tonight.”

At school Jess ignores me but, providing nobody he knows is sitting near me at the movie theatre, he’ll let me share his popcorn. I’ve known Jesse Farrell and his younger brother Cody for what seems like forever. But at school we act like we’ve never met. In fairness, he barely acknowledges Cody either.

"If Dad hears you’re out again with boys, he’ll kill you, I swear. Even it’s only one of the Farrell boys.” Alfie still thinks we should play by the rules - but there are no rules. Just random surges of toxicity and anger. “Stay home.”

"Easy for you to say, you have no friends so when you’re grounded life goes on as usual."

"You're not exactly Miss Homecoming Queen," murmurs Alfie.

He’s getting sharp. I like to think that’s because I’m rubbing off on him.

 "I have a social life.”

“The library doesn’t count. Having sweet tea with Miss Watson over there is hardly a social affair.”

How did Alfie find out about my secret society of book loving freaks in a library largely undisturbed by the people of this town? I have been adopted by a gang of misfit librarians holding the key to the vault of banned books.

“It’s not as though you have any friends,” I retort.

“I have friends. They’re French Canadian so I’m learning French – or I was until Dad broke my Linguaphone records.”

Linguaphone? That would be enough to set Kronos off. He has problems enough with a wide English vocabulary and a lean towards more colorful Anglo-Saxon phrases.

“Linguaphone uses the natural method. You listen to distinguished speakers and professors talking to you and conversing together. As you listen… You speak the French that is spoken in the cafes and the boulevards.”

There are no cafes on Main Street. There are however three bars, and my stepfather is usually in attendance, blind drunk, and howling at the moon.

“You live in the cultural desert of Starkweather. Who in this town speaks French?”

 “I talk to people in Quebec. I call them up on my Ham radio set."

That piques my interest. "Ham radio?"

"Oui.”

"When did you get a Ham radio?" Goddamn that kid has the weirdest hobbies. "Where is it?"

"In my radio shack," says Alfie. " I built it myself.”

Course he did. No one around here would pay a blind bit of notice to anything Alfie was doing, much less help him out.

"Why are you fooling around with a Ham radio when there's a TV that needs fixing?" I sit on my bed pulling down my skirt ineffectively.

Kronos threw the television out of the window yesterday to underline his dissatisfaction with a 20-7 loss by the Atlanta Falcons to the Miami Dolphins. Or it might have been that fool General Westmoreland. Not much pleases Kronos on the news these days.

"I could fix the TV if you want me to," says Alfie.

He's like that kid on Lost in Space. Handy, but real irritating.

"You should fix the TV and you should watch it more often. You're getting too smart." Being book smart has won me no favors in this house. "Pay attention, watch TV and always pay your taxes, little man."

Alfie nods seriously. "Taxes is how they got Al Capone," he says.

"Syphilis, kid," I tell him. “That’s what finished off Big Al.”

Those words are punctuated with a hard slap on the back of my head. Alfie’s eyes widen with alarm.

“Discussing venereal diseases with your nine-year-old brother?” I duck another slap. “Ever heard of the word decency, Miss Vocabulary?”

Stevie is shirtless, toweling dry his wet hair. He flicks Alfie with his towel. Alfie leaves as noiselessly as he arrived. Stevie takes a minute to admire himself in the mirror then throws himself down next to me on the bed and rubs his wet hair against my face.

“Oh wow,” he says suddenly. “What is he doing now?”

I peer through the window outside where Kronos on impulse has decided to build a miniature putting green on the lawn. He’s describing his plans to our neighbor, Mr. Billings, who is scratching his head. Their conversations usually go that way.

 Kronos doesn't play golf but that’s not a relevant fact in a madman’s universe. If he feels the need to create a putting green, one will be inlaid. As long as he leaves the basketball hoop above the garage door, Stevie is happy. I feel cheated that Kronos didn't get it into his head to dig a swimming pool.

 "Hey," Stevie suddenly gets a good look at what I’m wearing. "Just where the hell are you going wearing that outfit? "

 “I'm making an effort for Jess Farrell and Bruce Lee tonight.”

 There’s a split second where he might have heard the sarcasm, then the match burns down and he is convinced my mis-sized clothes are deliberate and I’m a tramp who’ll throw herself at any boy, even his best friend.

“The Farrell boys are too good for you, and they know it. Jesse Farrell wouldn’t look twice at you. I know Cody has been mooning around after you all year, but even he’s going to wise up before too long. Nobody in this town wants you. You’re cheap and you’re mean.”

Well, that sure struck a nerve.

He’s wrong about Cody. The mooning around part I mean. I’m not even sure Cody likes girls, he’s certainly never treated me as anything but a friend that, like him, prefers reading to football. That puts us in a select group in this godawful backwater town. Pausing on that thought slows me down enough for Stevie to land a resounding slap on the side of my face leaving my ear ringing.

And here we go again. Ninety-two degrees. Warm enough to want to kill someone. Still cool enough to get off your ass and do it.

Stevie offers a hand to help me up but at the last minute he twists my wrist and I gasp in pain.

“I’ll break your legs if you ever, ever throw Jesse or Cody Farrell in my face again.”

Ninety-two degrees is too darn hot, I think as I sink into darkness…

No. No. There is an insistent slapping on my face but no, not ready to face the conscious world yet. I’m enjoying my sojourn in the world of nothingness. Swallowed by the black void, it is calm, quiet, and endless. I like the view very much.

Stevie shakes me hard. “Would you wake up?”

“I’m back,” I check out of the Hotel Unconsciousness. I remember something about a promise of Bruce Lee later as an incentive.

"Move your fingers.” Stevie shakes my arm, and a bolt of pain lights up my pain centers.

Each finger waggle is a new shot of pain. Damn. I play piano. Music is an escape. Wrenching it away from me strikes me as a little more cruel than usual.

“You riled up Dad,” says Stevie. “I’ll get some ice. You’ll be fine.”

 It still surprises me how Kronos hurts us so easily. What set him off this time? Clothes and hot temperatures. Sounds about right.

No, it doesn’t, you know that’s not right. A voice in my head starts up again. Insistent as always, I try to shake it from my head and see stars.

Alfie pats my arm softly; his fingers run across my arm lightly. His expression is so weighted with sadness I know he must feel like I do sometimes.

Bad, when it's somebody else. Bad, because you're glad it’s not you.

“You really don’t remember?” he whispers. “Do you remember how your wrist got hurt?”

It’s a blur of smacks and kicks and beatings. Alfie regards me with more than usual concern before Stevie returns, swipes him over the back of the head and tells him to give me some space.

“I don’t remember,” I say to Alfie’s retreating back. “But it’s not important.” Alfie turns, opens his mouth. “It’s not important.” I tell us both firmly.

When my mother ran away from Kronos and left me here, Stevie said to me, “I’d have fought her if she tried to take you.”

The idea of anybody fighting to keep me was at odds with everything I’d ever experienced. I was dumbstruck.

“You’re mine,” Stevie had said fiercely. “Don’t forget that. I get to keep you. You belong to me. Nobody loves you like I do.”

I wanted to be wanted and this is where it lands. Messed up, like everything I touch. Corrupt. I break everything that is good.

Nobody ever wanted me before Stevie…

“Imagine love with a different boy. One who treats you with kindness. This is not love.” That darn voice starts up in my head with that Tennessee twang like an internal Dolly Parton, giving me her unwanted opinion and generous to a fault sharing her advice.

Shhhh. No boy with kind eyes and book smarts will ever love me and even if they did, I would break them. It would go bad regardless. But hush now, this is close enough. I’m mean and cheap and this is as good as it gets.

I feel sweat drip down my back, like a spider inching along my spine. It has been a long, hot summer. It’ll cool down any day now and then it will get better. School will restart. Stevie will leave me alone. Kronos will find more work.

I close my eyes and appreciate a moment of stillness in the claustrophic heat of an Indian summer. The cicadas chirp as if summer will never end but I think I smell rain not so far away. I hope it comes soon.