Maybe they’d had an argument.
But of course, looking back, death was out there too that night, perched high up with the pigeons, hanging casually from the power lines.
He was watching them, side to side.
* * *
—
The next night Penny told us, in the kitchen; cracked and sadly broken. Our father in several fragments.
I remember it all too clearly—how Rory refused to believe it, and how soon he’d gone berserk, saying, “What?” and “What?” and “WHAT?” He was wiry-hard and rusty. His silver eyes were darkening.
And Penny, so slim and stoic:
She steadied toward matter-of-fact.
Her own eyes green and wild.
Her hair was out and open, and she repeated herself, she said it:
“Boys, I’m going to die.”
* * *
—
The second time was what did it for Rory, I think:
He clenched his hands, and opened them.
There was a sound inside of all of us then—a sound of quiet-loud, a vibration unexplainable—as he tried to beat the cupboards up, he shook them and bucked me off. I could see it, but couldn’t hear.
Soon he grabbed the person nearest him, who happened to be Clay, and roared right through his shirt; and it was then when Penny came at him, she finished across them both, and Rory couldn’t stop. I could hear it far away now, but in a moment it blew me back—a voice in our house like a street fight. He roared into Clay’s chest, straight through the buttons; he shouted right into his heart. He struck him over and over—till the fire was lit in Clay’s eyes, and his own turned flat and hard.
* * *
—
God, I can still hear it.
I try so much to keep my distance from that moment.
Thousands of miles if I can.
But even now, that depth of scream.
I see Henry near the toaster, speechless when it counted.
I see Tommy all numb beside him, looking down at the blurry crumbs.
I see our father, Michael Dunbar, unfixable, at the sink; then going down for Penny—hands on shaking shoulders.
And me, I’m in the middle, collecting a fire up all of my own; paralyzed, folded-armed.
And lastly, of course, I see Clay.
I see the fourth Dunbar boy—dark-haired and thrown to the floor—his face staring up from below. I see the boys and tangled arms. I see our mother cloaked around them—and the more I think about it, maybe that was the true hurricane in that kitchen, when boys were only that, just boys, and murderers still just men.