Army Planes

by Bethany Harvey

Army planes flew over our house on Tuesdays. They came low, brushing the trees, tearing the sky in half. My brother and I stood on mold-slick shingles and whirled a drag hook on a rope over our heads. The hook arced down and through a window. Dad came out with his fists balled up, but we were out of reach. He kicked the ladder over instead.

I said, "How we supposed to get down?"

"I'll get the gun and shoot you down." He knocked over a feed can on the way out.

When he came back I couldn't see if he had the gun. I jumped off the other side and dragged my brother down with me. The ground hit us hard, my brother screaming. He didn't have the gun.

We had a fence around the garden. Dad made yellow honey-locust posts, cut the points with a chainsaw. The leftover slices of wood were blades, the wide part the sharpest, the narrow part a handle. I threw one at him in a fight. It sailed, whistling, in a beautiful curve. It would have hit him. I was ten years old and little, but it would have knocked him on the ground bleeding. But he ducked. He broke my glasses when he hit me. Mom asked how they broke. I said I fell off the roof.

I sic'd my dog on him. She was a one-person dog, my dog, even though I always forgot to feed her. She'd bite anybody but me.

He shot her when I was in school. He said she killed chickens.

I was the only kid who never said the devil made me do it. Dad said that, "I swear the devil gets into you sometimes."

I said, "The devil never made me do what I didn't want."