Chapter 5
He was gone. Left sometime in the middle of the night one night. Merle and his father had a violent encounter, leaving both his father and brother bloodied and raw. Daryl was aware of him leaving, while laying still and silent on his blankets on the floor. Merle was loading a bag with a few clothes, his pill bottles, and who knows what else. Daryl figured he was leaving, going to stay with a girlfriend or something for a few days. He thought he would be back soon enough. A week passed, then a month, now, how long had it been? Time passes strangely for a boy in the wood. He had started school that year. Missed more than he attended though. His mother wouldn't allow him to go when the bruises on his body showed too clearly. He was seven now, in the first grade. He didn't have any friends; all the kids kept a wide birth around him. He wasn't sure why exactly, other than he didn't talk much, never had any lunch to trade and only had one change of clothes. The teacher was friendly enough. When he got to school early, she would help him scrub the dirt from his face and arms. She would offer him a sandwich, and sometimes had his favorite snack, potato chips. He would accept with a shy smile, maybe a nod. She would ask him about his hunting, and how he learned such a skill. He would talk then, sharing stories about his time in the wood. How he had learned hunting from his big brother Merle. As the children spilled in, the teacher's interest would turn. Daryl didn't mind. Talking always made him nervous anyway. Today he was able to go to school.
"Don't forget your shit. Get your bag and get out of here. You better hurry before your father gets home. You deserve the shit knocked out of you for making that mess on the floor." His mother had knocked a bird nest out of his hands.
He had brought it inside after finding one egg left behind unhatched. The other birds had grown and flown away. He had watched and studied them since he discovered the nest high in the tree. He had wondered if he could somehow coax the left-over egg to hatch. He doubted it was possible, but there was no harm in trying. If it worked, he could have a pet. His mother however noticed him walk through the door, his prize nest balanced carefully in his hands. He was in the middle of the main room when his mother walked toward him and smacked the nest with a downward sweep of her hands. The nest crumbled and the egg dropped to the floorboards breaking open and spilling its insides. Daryl stood quietly, internally mourning what he had lost. Breathe in, hold it, blow out. His mother smacked him hard in the back of the head, and he landed hard on his knees in the goo that had drizzled out of the egg. He jumped up quickly, hands behind his back protecting his behind out of habit. He made it to the door, grabbed his bag and ran for school as his mother yelled behind him. He knew he would get a beating when he got home. Once his father saw the nest, he would call him names and probably hit him with the belt or a stick, or worse yet the cord he found in the woods. The worst is when he got the buckle side of his big wide belt, but that was a worry for another time. In Daryl's world, you lived moment to moment. This moment, he would focus on school.
The bell rang, ending the day as the sound of fire trucks rang out in the distance. He started toward home thinking of how he could get to his room and add layers of underwear before his father got to him. He thought he should put on some extra shirts to protect his back from the sting as well. As he got closer to home, a fire truck flew past him. Daryl stopped walking then. He knew, his house was the only house out this far. He smelled the smoke long before he saw it. The house came in to view, with the back half barely standing. A body lay covered in a sheet on a stretcher in the side yard. An officer talking to his father who stood kicking at tree roots grown up in the yard. Daryl realized then that the body on the stretcher, the one under the sheet must be that of his mother. He started to tremble, his body once again turning on him. He focused quickly on his breathing. One breath in, hold, blow out. He did this again and again as the yard started to clear. The fireman returning to their truck, the policeman getting in their cars, and the ambulance with his mother's body loaded carefully in the back silently headed toward town. Daryl shuttered greatly as his arm was grabbed roughly and he was thrown into what remained of their small cabin tucked way back in the wood.