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Show •173 thumping, regular and slow. "Could it be Carlo?" I pushed my chair back. "I'll go see." I knew I didn't want to listen to them any more. This family was beyond me too, and I wasn't sure I wanted to understand it. Simple categories were what I wanted: Alice a bitch, Adam a failure and dead. I wished for the first time that I'd taken Jacob's advice the day we rode a log together in those swampy woods behind the church, that I'd buried our father quietly and gone home. Dead, the pounding insisted, getting louder as I went down the hall to the workshop. Dead. Dead. Dead. I pushed the door open and stopped to stare. Adam's centaur and my little brother were facing each other under the flat light of the fluorescents. Carlo held a short-handled sledge-hammer in both hands; he raised it slowly above his head and brought it down hard on the near edge of the work-table. He had already beaten a bowl-shaped shallow depression in the heavy steel. He paused, looked hard at the stone face, and lifted the hammer again. "Wait." He stopped. Obedient Carlo. He smiled but didn't turn his head to look at me. "What are you doing?" "Can't you see?" He balanced the hammer on his shoulder, waiting. "Are you going to break it?" |