How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets Read Online Free PDF Page A

musicians and drugs were bedfellows thousands of years before Evan came along. But for Evan it isn’t a choice. It’s survival. It is who he is.
    He stops his car across from Frank and Ellen’s house.
    “Listen, Dean, ” he says, “when I was seventeen, I got a girl pregnant and she had a baby—you—and I never saw you. It wasn’t my fault, Dean, but I can’t say I’m not guilty. And I—”
    He looks over at Dean, who is sneering at him, and stops. It’s no use. He can’t stuff his life into a nutshell and make a child see. He can’t reverse the past: fourteen years of Dean going to the annual father-and-son picnic with his mother—he can’t change that. He can’t explain it away; he can’t mitigate it in any way: Dean grew up without a father, and it’s impossible for Evan to erase that reality while sitting on the sticky vinyl seats of his car, a car that is older than Dean himself.
    “Are you done?” Dean asks after a moment.
    “Yeah, I guess I’m done.”
    “Good. Maybe we’ll see each other again some day. Like at your funeral. I’d like that. Be sure to put me on the invitation list.”
    He climbs out and walks around the front of the car. As he passes Evan, he calmly reaches out his hand and gives Evan the finger. The finger. Evan has to laugh. The kid just makes you want to smack him.
    Dean walks across the street and up onto the front porch of Frank’s house. But instead of continuing into the house, Dean slows to a stop. Evan follows Dean’s eyes to the front door. It opens suddenly and Ellen flies out of the house. She rushes to Dean, turns him around and herds him off the porch. What the hell is going on?
    Frantic, Ellen prods Dean down the walk toward the street. Evan rolls down his window.
    “Take him, ” she calls out in hushed hysteria. “Take him away, please!”
    By now they’re crossing the street and Dean has pulled away from her. He stands in the middle of the road, looking at her with disbelief. She rushes to Evan’s car.
    “You have to leave here, ” she pleads.“ Please!”
    It is then, with Ellen practically pushing her way through Evan’s window, that Evan realizes something is terribly wrong. Her cheek is scarlet and swollen. She’s holding a damp washcloth to the corner of her mouth. The towel is dark, but he thinks he sees blood on it.
    “What happened?” he asks.“Are you all right?”
    She calms herself, musters her energies, looks Evan directly in the eyes.
    “You have to take him away from here, ” she says as steadily as she can. “Take him away, Evan. I’ll call you when you can bring him back. Please, just—”
    Bang!
    They both jump. Dean spins toward the sound. A door slamming violently, a house shaken. A bear wakened from its slumber. Frank.
    He storms out of the house with a great roar, which might have been funny if it weren’t so fucking scary. He’s still wearing his suit. No tie. He is barefoot.
    “Get your ass in this house!” he yells.
    A dog down the street barks violently at Frank, charging and hurling itself against a chain link fence with a CHING-ing-ing! Bark, bark, shuffle, CHING-ing-ing!
    Evan, Ellen, and Dean are all frozen. A living tableau.
    What has Evan gotten himself into? What’s going on?
    There’s no time to wonder. Frank has been loosed, and he’s on his way, a human cannonball, a projectile ready to explode on impact. Evan doesn’t know what the story is, but there’s time for that later. Right now, he wants to take Ellen’s advice and get out. He looks at Dean, who still hasn’t moved though Frank is closing in, off the porch, onto the walk, fifteen yards at most and closing fast—
    “Please!”
    “Get in the car, Dean!”
    “Wha?—”
    “Get in the fucking car!”
    Dean hesitates. Ten yards from being smashed to oblivion.
    “NOW!” Evan screams.
    And this time Dean moves, bolts from his position on the broken yellow line, shoots around the car and into the passenger seat. Frank is at full speed,