Free Beowulf: Explosives Detection Dog by Ronie Kendig Page B

from the side. A hand swung at him.
    Instincts flared.
    Tony arched his spine backward, narrowly missing a collision with the experienced fist.
    Dad!
    “James, no!” his mother cried out.
    “What’s Grandpa doing?”
    “Get them out of here,” Tony shouted as he deflected another punch.
    “James, please,” his mom said as Steph hurried the children to the living room. “It’s Tony!”
    Heart in his throat, Tony responded to the attack. Cursed what happened to his dad. Cursed the way his father had been tossed aside, written off. The accident made everything worse.
    “Dad, it’s me.” Tony kept his moves smooth, fluid. Nothing aggressive. Nothing that would make his dad feel any more threatened than he already did. That state of mind threw his father back to ’Nam, to confidential conflicts in the years thereafter that his father wasn’t allowed to talk about. Conflicts that shattered his mind.
    “Don’t give me any of your lies! You killed my team!”
    “Dad, I’m Tony. Your son.” Don’t know why he said it. The dialogue never made a difference. It had in the early days, but not anymore.
    “Get away from me, you piece of—”
    “James!”
    The fist came at him again. Adrenaline and grief strangled Tony. But it wasn’t time to think about it. Knew what he had to do.
    Tony stepped in. Caught his father’s fingers. Locked his grip. Pushed down, bending the wrist backward. His other hand went to his father’s shoulder, giving him the needed leverage. He swung the arm up and pinned it behind his father’s back, then he used his free hand to turn his father’s head away, thereby blocking any punches and gaining control. He pressed his thumb into the carotid, blocking the flow of blood to the brain.
    Four seconds later, his father went limp.
    Tony caught him. Held him the way he would a child. Slid along the wall to the floor, cradling his unconscious dad in his arms. Tears begged to be freed. Anger resisted. Frustration pushed them out.
Oh, Dad …
He touched his father’s cheek. Stubbled but shaven. The scar along his cheekbone, the only evidence of what had happened. The only proof that something changed his father.
    Tony held him close, burying his face against his father’s cheek.
Dad … God! Why?
    “Let me give him the sedative. Then hurry him to the bedroom, won’t you?” His mother knelt beside him and slid the needle into the meaty part of his father’s thigh. “Before the children see him again.”
    “He didn’t know me.”
    Her brown eyes held his. “You weren’t expected. I didn’t have time to try to prepare him.” She sniffled. “Though I’m not sure that matters anymore.”
    Tony frowned, the tears drying on his cheek but not in his heart. “Is it that bad, Mom? Has he gotten that bad?”
    Her tears slipped free. “Worse.”
    Pushing himself up, careful not to bang his father’s head or legs, Tony tried to pick up the pieces of his heart, too. His mom guided him through the house and into the room they’d converted for his father. Tony knelt and gently laid his father on the bed.
    Mom went to work, covering him with the blanket and checking his pulse. “He’ll only be out a short while. Hopefully, when he wakes, he won’t still be in his fight-or-flight mode.”
    There was nothing like staring down at the man he’d just had to incapacitate, knowing he’d been a hero, earned a Purple Heart, several Bronze Stars … And yet there were days James VanAllen had no idea what planet he was on.
    Tony’s confliction went deep. He’d gone into the Army to be like his father. And he lived with the terror every day of knowing one wrong incident and he could be just like him.
    I’d eat a bullet before I became a burden
.

        Eight        

    S team rose from the mug he cradled between both hands, forearms propped on his knees as Tony sat on the back patio, staring at the trees. He took a sip and cringed at the stinging the hot liquid created against his