George Jubal Cooper had no time for any man that beat his kids. And he would no more raise his hand to his wife than Mary would have ever stood to let him do it. Any more than she would have stood by and let him get behind the wheel when he was fighting his demons.
(Some use prayer, some use the bottle, and some use the truth.)
George Cooper was big and strong, and good at fixing trucks. He could shoot straight, and he was sound in wind and limb. Wouldn't even cross his mind to dodge the draft – his country called him, and he went. Did his tour, and most of him came back – (left a part of his soul somewhere in the mud and heat) – gaunt and hollow-eyed, and not all of his scars visible. But he married Mary, whose letters had kept him sane, and then there was little George Jubal Junior, kicking like a frog and yelling for 'Da', and that kept the darkness at bay as much as the liquor. Didn't need a head doctor to tell him he wasn't right any more – stood to reason, a man cannot kill and remain unmarked, because his country might tell him it was his duty, and God might forgive him, but he might never forgive himself. And then there were the twins, his pretty bright-eyed daughter, and his solemn younger son. They had a dark thought that maybe the boy was an idiot, he was that quiet – except it turned out he wasn't an idiot, he just thought things through so deeply he went out the other side.
George worried about him. Because the world didn't let you stand by and look at it, it would knock you down in the mud and march right over you. You had to be able to take it on, defend yourself against it. Tried to teach the boy, all he knew, and he knew too that it wasn't enough, wasn't what he needed, but it was all he had to give.
'Genius'. Well, it's a word. Means squat in practical terms, except you got real used to being woken up in the small hours by strange smells or small explosions (flung back across a lifetime, and reaching for a gun that isn't there before your mind comes into the now.) Learn to look carefully before you step, too, and an ache in your collar-bone to remind you about it. Or sitting by a hospital bedside while a small, serious face, all eyes, tells you that it didn't mean for whatever went wrong this time to do so. (Set the damn guinea-pig on fire – set himself on fire, the once.) The Public Library for the first time, and the panic when they couldn't find him in the Children's Section, found him somewhere in Reference, with a couple of startled and amused scholars. Wanting to know 'why' and it made a man feel helpless, not to be able to answer, to be the all-knowing god-presence who would always keep them safe.
He understood his other children. Talking football and mending engines, a copy of himself without the blood and darkness, and a girl that had all her mother's sass, his princess. But he didn't understand his odd, clever son.
Didn't mean he didn't love the boy fiercely, though. Even when the kid handed him his ass at chess.