The Stories of the Wild One (continued)

His father had never been a violent man, John reflected.

Sure, he yelled once in a while. Usually at me, he recalled with a faint, wry smile.

Even those times had been exceedingly rare. His father had generally been patient and calm, usually resorting to a kind of moody silence rather than explosive outbursts of emotions.

Sure, John remembered. He’d been known to lose his temper . . . but it took a lot for him to do it. A lot.

The ceiling creaked above him. It was so soft that it might have been a natural movement of the beams.

But then again, it might not be.

His father was not a large man, but he had gained some weight over the past few years as he had gotten older. He had never been, that John could imagine, someone who could move throughout a house without being heard.

John climbed the stairs, feeling the knot tighten within his stomach. He paused just as his head cleared the floor, peering across it for any signs of his father’s passage through the thin carpet. Swirled patterns revealed someone’s passage through the hallway, but there was no way to tell how recently. He tried to remember when his father had vacuumed last.