|
|
"Anyway, Gramps and I, we went to our first boxing match one summer when I was about nine or ten years old, I guess. I won him a couple of hundred bucks after reading the stats on the boxers and checking the guys out before the fight. Don’t really know how I ever knew who the winner would be, but it just came to me. Sometimes when it was a close match, it would take me a couple of minutes to decide, but ultimately I always came up aces. Gramps kidded me about that, a little, saying that I actually was the one in charge of deciding who would win a fight and who would lose it, or who would crash into the wall during a speedway race, or which swimmer would pull a muscle during the Olympic games and fall behind, losing the gold. I never really believed him, because I knew it was all really just the way that the system worked." He took out another cigarette. I looked over at
Hunter for a moment and he looked back at me, his expression blank. Maybe he was mad at
Janine or me for coming across like jerks a little earlier. Most likely
it was because he'd gone from a RV with minor issues to a total waste of
a vehicle in a mere two hours. I don't know.
"I'm going somewhere with this, honest." Hunter said, putting the cigarette in his mouth, but not lighting it. "Anyway, this kind of thing went on for a couple of years, until gramps and I had a pretty good stash piled up in a chest in the back of his closet. It was our secret, he said, and I didn't say a word to mom about it for the longest time, until one day she came home with a black eye and said it was from one of the guys at her work. That’s when I told her about the money, and her and gramps had a big fight about it that lasted a couple of hours. Things got thrown around in the house, and I went outside, away from all of the chaos. I felt really bad, but I was only trying to help out. I wished that my mom could stay home, you know, hang out with both of us, and maybe go to a game or something. At least during the summer.
"Gramps was a pretty good guy, I suppose, deep down, but he still was a controlling bastard. When you're a kid you don't see things the same way as you do once you've grown up, though, things just aren't as bad as you'd realized when you're looking at them from the standpoint of an adult. Mom ended up leaving without saying goodbye, and she was gone for a few days, and then things were like nothing had happened at all. I guess gramps was giving her some of the money, I don't really know. Mom wasn't really around all that much, anyway, so it's not like I really missed her being there in the end." |