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CHAPTER ONE
My father died when I was young, leaving me and my mother alone in a one-bedroom apartment, that even with my mother’s meager wages, they’d barely afforded. Mostly, her earnings helped pay for our heat, and now, with my father gone, we were often so cold, we sometimes wore three or four layers of clothing.
Weather in Seattle was always unpredictable; even during the dead of winter, it could be foggy and raining in the mornings and clear and sunny in the afternoons. I remember the skies were mostly gray. But maybe that was because of how we lived.
We originally came from rural Nashville, Tennessee, way before it became famous for country music. I was five, and I don’t recall much about our home there; but what I do remember was that my father was a drinker. When he was sober, he was my idol. He’d read to me at bedtime, and then when it was time for me to go to sleep, he’d tuck me in so snugly, he’d say “you’re snug as a bug.”
He was always coming up behind my mother while she was at the sink, giving her a hug, snuggling her neck, or grabbing her caboose, as he called it. During the day, he worked for the railway, and at the end of his long shift, he spent his nights drinking at the local bar. He called it is “winding down place.” My mother worked at the gunpowder plant.
After the 1918 train wreck, they laid my father off while the tracks could be repaired, and he took this as a premonition he would permanently lose his job. For months he hung around the house until one day, my mother pointed out that we needed his wages to survive and she suggested he look for a job at the powder plant where she worked. When she said this, I could see the wheels moving around in his head; he silently worked his mouth, chewing his cheek. Then he pushed his tongue around his teeth, pushing his upper lip out.
“I ain’t gonna work at some woman’s job,” he said, an edge rising in his voice...
That was the first time I remember him hauling off and hitting her. Eventually, they called him back to the railway, but by this time he’d been drinking so much, even I could smell the alcohol coming through his pores. The first day he went back, they fired him. My mother never said a word, but my father took that as a silent accusation of his failure, and he raised his arm to strike her. That was the second time he hit her.
Over the next few weeks, it got worse. One day, thinking I could stop him, I gallantly stood in front of my mother and acted as her shield.
“Get outta my way,” he yelled.
He pushed his mouth forward and pursed his lips before he backhanded me and knocked me down. I fell flat on my back and I instantly felt the wind leave my lungs. I couldn’t breathe and I thought for sure I was going to die. When my mother kneeled beside me, he kicked her, and when she tried to get up, he kicked her again.
After that, he was gone for two days, and when he returned, I stood in our doorway and said, “If you touch me or my mother again, I swear I’ll kill you in your sleep.”
“Shut up,” he said, pushing me down.
“We’re going to where I can find a better job.”
