Daddys Caliban | Page 5

Above it all the Old Tower rose like a finger pointed toward Father Sun.
In that moment, I could even see the crisp snowcaps of those distant
mountains to the west. Something glinted from high up in the Old
Tower.
That decided me.
"I know where Daddy keeps his work keys on the weekend," I said.
Cameron hugged me. "That's my Henry."
Did I love him or hate him, my almost-brother? I couldn't say as I
gathered the pail and the napkin and picked my way down the slope,

through the scrubby forest of little, twisted pines and silver-barked
aspen toward the streets of Mabton and our small house.
*
Our family lived in a frame house on a brick foundation. The basement
was low-ceilinged, dirt-floored except for the brick pad under the
furnace and the little utility rooms where Cameron lived and where
Daddy stored his tools. Everything else was a domain of sacks of
half-rotted root vegetables, old crates and straw bales and an endless
war between rats and cats.
Where the underside of the house was like a little nightmare with
Cameron as the demon at its heart, upstairs was pin-neat and
ruler-straight. Mommy didn't believe in dirt. With the time Daddy's job
forced upon her she proselytized mightily for the forces of cleanly
order. She was the Seven Secondary Virtues in the flesh.
It wasn't a big house -- two bedrooms, a main room and the tiny kitchen,
plus the indoor bathroom that had once been a porch and was now
Mommy's pride. I knew other kids, like Peggy, lived in brick houses
with two or even three bathrooms that had heat in them in the winter,
but her father was a judge and things were different for people like that.
We were proud of who we were and what we had. Mommy filled the
place with flowers and curious, twisted sticks and odd charms that
people like old Mrs. Grimsby made her, plus the curious little
misfirings that came from the china works at the clay pits east of town.
Mommy had a passion for strange and broken things, as long as they
were clean, neatly presented and well arranged. Daddy sometimes
complained about it, but not much.
It was his complaining that led me to knowing about where Daddy hid
his work keys. They'd had one of their rare fights, and Mommy had
said, "It's no worse than your closet of glory, Jack Puca."
Then they'd both glanced at me, Daddy shamefaced and Mommy with a
sly wink, and gone on to discuss other things.

Well, I knew there weren't any spare closets in the house. It wasn't like
we had much spare of anything, unless you counted Cameron as a spare
for me. So one time when Mommy and Daddy were both out, at a ward
meeting I think, I looked in their room real good, until I found a
trapdoor above their tiny clothes closet. The trap was hard to see in the
boards of the ceiling but I'd been looking closely for just such a thing.
Once found, it wasn't difficult to open. I'd climbed up on top of
Mommy's wool basket and chinned myself into the attic space.
I don't know why Mommy called it a closet of glory. It was pretty
inglorious. First of all it was small. Daddy had to have bent over to fit
up there, with the stuff that was already crowded in. I struck a match to
light my candle and see what was at hand.
There was a saddle, like for a horse, though it took me a few moments
to realize it wasn't just a badly-made footstool. The leather was old and
cracked but it had silver chasing on it in long flowing lines that looked
like leaves or narrow-bodied dragons. I bent and looked close. I
couldn't see why we were so poor if Daddy had silver hidden away, but
then I spotted where there had once been jewels on the saddle, pried out
so that only tarnished little prongs remained.
I imagined him up here, stealing his own jewels one by one to stretch
his pay packet on a cold winter's week. The thought hurt my heart. I
looked around more.
A broken spear lay in three pieces against one corner of the tiny closet.
There was big piece of cloth rolled up next to it. I touched that cloth --
silk. More stuff, too, a sort of sleeveless shirt of metal rings. It was
armor like in the books of old stories. A sword with no grip, just a
narrow tongue at the end of the blade. Had Daddy sold that grip off too
at some point? A crown of leaves that when I touched them were metal,
corroded to black. I