Page 24 - Leather Blues

12 Jack Fritscher

the stairs. In the kitchen the man’s voice was raising, against
that of the woman. She begged him never to beat the boy
again. Then Denny lost the words, but heard the slap that
ended the argument and brought her to tears. He heard his
father’s bass grunting as he took his woman on the kitchen
floor. He buried his head deeper into the darkness of the old
house. He pulled the covers and pillows in around himself.
The pain in his buttocks caused his temperature to rise
under all the blankets. His chest and back sweated in the hot
leather jacket. The warm smell of the new leather soothed
him, lying hurt in his bed as it had protected him when he
lay hurt in the street. The thick musk of it both times had
given him the strength to endure. He knew wearing it he
could take anything because it told him he was a boy, getting
to be a big boy now, a big boy ready to become a man.
His hands, locked together under his belly, felt some-
thing new in the warm moist curve of his groin. The damp
of sweat, the heat from the beating with the leather strap, the
musk smell of the cowhide jacket: he was alone, abandoned
and helpless before everybody. Until now. Now he eased into
a way to alleviate the pain and the aloneness. Rolled into his
leather, he was exploring a way never to be on the bottom
again.
The jacket tripped his mind to the books he had read:
of boys and men who endured the cold cabins of the lumber
camps and the windbitten range. He sensed their toughness
had a point beyond his father’s. Their leathering into each
other was rough but it was respect. They had become their
own men. Tested in the raw, they pitted their lean muscular
strength against the outdoors and against each other. They
could take it, Denny whispered to himself. They could dish
it out. I took it this afternoon and I took it tonight. I’m
learning how to take it today so tomorrow I’ll know how to
hand it out.
His hands cupped around the soft warm handle of his

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