Those Who Favor Fire by Lauren Wolk (easy readers .TXT) 📕

as a house and lose all my color and have my hair falling out all the time, and he treated me like I was a goddess of fertility or something. He had stars in his eyes. I was very happy that whole time, thinking about what kind of father he would make.” Angela lit another cigarette.

“In the first few days after Rusty was born, Buddy could barely speak. He was absolutely overcome. He had this perfect little son and I was okay and everything was fine.” She hung her left hand on the back of her neck. “And then Rusty got the colic and cried for four months straight.

“After the first month, Buddy started sleeping at the garage or out in the truck or sometimes on his parents’ couch. He’d come home and try to help me, but he just couldn’t stay. He tried, though. I’ll give him that. But there was something very wrong, all of a sudden. He came home one night when Rusty was about twelve weeks old, and the poor little kid was bawling his head off. Buddy had a beer and he watched some of a ball game on TV. And then he came over to where I was rocking the baby and he picked him up—I thought he was just going to walk him a bit—and he started to shake Rusty so hard his … his little head was snapping back and forth. I thought it was going to break right off.” Angela tried to smoke her cigarette, but it fell out of her lips and she had to scramble for it. “I finally got Rusty away from him and I ran into the bedroom and Buddy stood out in the living room and screamed until he was hoarse. He kicked in the television and he threw a lamp through the front window, and then he sat down on the floor and cried.” Angela rubbed some flakes of ash into her blue jeans. “When he came around he got really scared and ran out of the house, bunked with a friend for a couple of days. Then he finally came back home and we all sat in the living room and stared at each other. Me, Buddy, Rusty, and my mother. She sat in the corner and didn’t say a word, but she wouldn’t leave us alone either.”

Angela smoked her cigarette some more. “You don’t know her very well yet, Joe, but my mother is one hell of a woman. Quiet. Keeps to herself. But she’s as solid as a rock. Sold her house so I could buy this place. I never even had to ask.” She stared, remembering. “Anyway, she sat there with us so Buddy would behave himself, I guess. I had Rusty in my lap. He’d been crying all day, and he still was. Buddy got down on his knees and begged me to forgive him, and I did. I was feeling pretty desperate myself, and I thought I could understand how he had lost control for a minute like that. But after an hour in the house with Rusty crying the whole time, Buddy all of a sudden started to look wild again. My mother went in the nursery with Rusty and shut the door, and I stood outside it while Buddy paced around the house, pulling on his hair and cursing and looking like he was going to break something. And then he left the house and got in the truck and drove off.” Angela’s cigarette was all ash now.

“I know it doesn’t seem very likely that a man would run off over a crying baby. But that’s what Buddy did. I didn’t believe it at first, had the police looking for him for weeks. But about six months later I got a letter from him. Even when I sat down and read it, I had an awful hard time believing that the man I had known so long could suddenly change so much. He hated Rusty. He hated him. And of course he hated himself—I mean really hated himself—for feeling that way about our little baby. But there was something … wild about Buddy by then. He was like a grizzly or maybe a hyena. Some kind of animal that kills its young.” She closed her mouth, and Joe could see that she was chewing the lining of her cheeks.

“If it’s one thing having a child has taught me,” she said, “it’s not to judge other parents. I used to see people in the grocery store or on the street with their children, and I’d think, ‘I’ll never act that way when I have kids.’ But now I lay off. Nobody else can know how a child can change you. Turn your life inside out. Thank God, I’m one of the lucky ones. From the time that boy was a knob in my belly I’ve loved him as much as I can love. And when he is an old man, if I am still alive to see that, I will still love my boy with every bit of my flesh and every particle of my spirit. And I know Buddy loved him too. He had to. But to him Rusty was like a magnet, or a lightning rod. Every regret that Buddy had ever had, every doubt, every complaint, every kind of anger was unleashed on our baby. It was a horrible thing to watch. And I know that is why Buddy left. He would have learned some control, Rusty would have outgrown his pain and that incredible selfishness that infants have, but Buddy would never have been able to look at his son without knowing what he was capable of doing. Without remembering those bad early days. Without longing for a different sort of life.” She picked up her glass of tea and drained it.

“Rusty thinks that it was me his father left. And that, too, is the truth.”

When Joe put his arms around Angela, he had to fight not to