The Great Depression ruined everything.

They'd never been rich, but the Barnes' had been fairly comfortable. Pa worked at the bank. He wasn't one of those rich bankers with their fancy suits and big bellies and shiny new shoes, he was just one of the men that worked for them, but it was a good job. Unlike most of Bucky's friends' fathers, he came home from work clean and had a few people that answered to him. He was a taciturn man and a strict father, but he was fair with them and provided well for his family and Bucky was proud of his Pa. There weren't any frivolities like rides in motorcars or furniture that all matched, but they didn't need that stuff. They had food on the table and shoes without holes and medicine for Ma when she needed it and his sisters each had a dolly and he had his very own pocket knife and enough free time to play on the neighborhood soccer team. Bucky was going to be a professional soccer player when he grew up. And an inventor.

~1929~

Pa wasn't in the first wave of people to lose their jobs, but the family still felt it. He was worried all the time, his temper shorter. He came home either oblivious to everything, or angry if anything was imperfect. Bucky and Becca took over much of the work at home and did their best to keep little Elizabeth out from underfoot. They didn't talk about how things were at home; they just did it. Their friends' families were stressed too, and at least Pa still had a job. Besides, at 12 and 8 they were big enough to start helping more at home.

~1931~

When Pa did lose his job, things got bad fast. He started drinking, and he was mean when he drank. Bucky, now 14, picked up some work at the butchershop, but lost it a month later after showing up late because he could barely walk. Pa had tried to take his belt to Elizabeth after tripping over her dolly that she'd left on the floor, and Bucky had stepped in to protect her. The old Pa never would have done it; he'd been strict, but his belt was reserved for big boys who'd been really bad. He'd taught Bucky that no matter how badly behaved they'd been, a man should never use more than his bare hand on a dame or a small child. The betrayal of seeing Pa behaving in a way he'd taught Bucky was wrong and shameful almost hurt more than catching the licking of his life for stopping him. Bucky avoided Steve for as long as he could get away with without it seeming suspicious, and when his best friend caught onto him moving gingerly, he told him that a cow they were carving up fell on top of him. Steve seemed to buy it, Sarah raised an eyebrow from across the room but said nothing.

~1933~

They got a reprieve from Pa's drinking when Ma got pregnant again. The news seemed to snap him out of it, and he was able to grab a place on a construction crew by being in the right place at the right time thanks to Bucky hearing that his friend's sister's boyfriend's brother was going to get the sack if he showed up late again. The pay was next to nothing because the company knew their men were desperate and they could get away with it, but between that and the job Bucky had managed to find in the shipyard, it looked like they might just scrape by, even with a sixth mouth to feed.

~1933-34~

It wasn't an easy pregnancy or delivery. Ma was always delicate, but on her fourth child with food in short supply, she didn't handle it well. At 12, Becca had effectively become the woman of the household, doing nearly all the cooking and cleaning and looking after Elizabeth while Ma rested and did the mending from bed and the two men worked sun-up to sundown to bring home food for her to cook. Neither of the men was able to be present for Hannah's birth, but by pure luck Bucky ran into Steve on his way to the harbor that morning and mentioned that Ma thought she was real close, and Steve mentioned it to his own mother, and Sarah decided to come check on Winifred despite just having gotten off a night shift and Bucky's parents never having been fully approving of him hanging about with Irish folk. Mother and baby survived, likely as a result of the nurse's presence, but Ma never fully recovered.

~1935~

They lost Ma and Elizabeth just a year later. Elizabeth caught a sore throat at school and didn't tell them until the rest of the family had gotten it too. A local doctor who owed them a favor was called, but Elizabeth had gone too long untreated and Ma was too delicate and it turned into rheumatic fever before they could head it off. Pa held it together through the funeral itself, seemingly too in shock to do anything, but in the time that his surviving children's backs were turned to accept Steve's condolences at the end of the service he disappeared and didn't return until several days later, reeking of liquor.

After that, it was back to mean drunk Pa. Bucky was scared to leave his sisters home alone with him, but with Pa in the bottle again he was their only source of income. Becca, mercifully, had gotten good at this delicate dance of keeping Pa marginally in check. As she confided in Bucky one night, she'd taken to watering down anything he brought home. He'd be grumpy and sick with withdrawal, but not fly into blind rages. As long as he didn't catch on, it worked.

~1936~

When Sarah came down with tuberculosis, a new idea that sat well with neither of them started being discussed. Steve would be on his own if Sarah couldn't shake this, Becca pointed out. If that happened, maybe the four of them should find a place together. The idea assumed the death of someone they liked, and it would mean abandoning Pa, and it would be seen as horribly improper to have an unmarried young lady living under the same roof as a man she wasn't related to, but it would keep the girls safe and there would be two salaries to pay one rent. They could figure out later how to explain to Steve why Pa wasn't included.

As it turned out, an explanation wasn't necessary, because Steve insisted on getting by on his own.

~1937~

Eventually, Pa did guess about the watered-down liquor. He came home from wherever he'd been drinking, in a rage. He didn't seem to have a particular target or plan, just knew that he was angry at something in his home and made a beeline for the only source of noise in the apartment with the intention of pummeling it, which was Becca telling a bedtime story to Hannah. Bucky, woken by the door slamming open, got to the girls' room just in time to grab him from behind as he lunged at them.

Fights were old hat to Bucky, what with a dozen years of getting dragged into them by Steve. They were of a size and Bucky was stronger and sober, but Pa was enraged at the interference and stupid with drink. Blows that would have sent street bullies fleeing to nurse their wounds and pride only made him angrier. There was no time for it to really sink in that he was fighting his own Pa, not until after the other man stopped swinging at him and stumbled away to pass out on the floor.

Pa never woke up. By agreement between Bucky and Becca and careful coaching of Hannah, the siblings never told anyone more than that he had come home drunk. Nobody pried too much; drunks got into fights all the time, and as a physical laborer with a best friend who constantly needed to be dragged out of back alleys, what few scrapes and bruises Bucky couldn't cover up weren't enough to strike anyone as out of the ordinary. Nobody needed know that Pa had tried to hurt his daughters.

After the funeral, the siblings were split up. Second cousins took Hannah upstate with them when they left. Becca enrolled in a nursing school and found a young ladies' home close to it. Bucky moved into Steve's tiny apartment. It was strange being separated, even if it was for the best.

~2015~

I think I killed my father. Bucky wrote in a cheap notebook, sitting on a mattress covered only by a sleeping bag in a studio apartment in Bucharest, water dripping down a metal hand that he hadn't yet noticed had crushed the plastic bottle in its grip.