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I bring thee another culled snippet from TAGD V. In this passage, Danny Messer is musing on the tension between Flack's parents and his wife. I cut it because it was florid even for me and largely irrelevant at this point in the proceedings. Rest assured, however, that the Flack family dynamic will come up again.
They were never the Rockwells, the Flacks. The old man lived at the precinct and came home long enough to change clothes and conceive his son. Mrs. Flack keeps her counsel and fusses over her son, and that son is dutiful and good to the mother that bore him. But there are too few visits and fewer phone calls. There is a fracture that has never healed, a void where something used to be.
He won't talk about it, not even three sheets to the wind, but it's in his face and in the minute hesitation when you bring up family. He listens, and he commiserates, and when the topic shifts to his family plot, he changes the subject. He talks about the Yankees or how shitty the Mets are doing this season or the perp who tried to take a dump on his shoes, and he waves his fork around and laughs, but you hear the scream underneath.
You never pressed the matter. He could be a righteously stubborn bastard when he set his feet, and besides, you were hardly one to talk about opening up. You have more You have more than your fair share of secrets in the dark spaces where the light refuses to shine, and you wouldn't appreciate him digging in the fertile soil of your secret garden. So you let it ride. It was easier, and who wanted to rock the boat?
Maybe you should have, because the air in here is venomous. There are wounds long and deep that you can't see, echoes of words spoken in anger or swallowed in the name of family harmony. Old queens have been deposed in favor of the new, and the king is frail and impotent upon his throne. They wait with teeth and claws and daggers concealed beneath their stony, frozen faces. If the silence breaks, the walls will bleed.
They were never the Rockwells, the Flacks. The old man lived at the precinct and came home long enough to change clothes and conceive his son. Mrs. Flack keeps her counsel and fusses over her son, and that son is dutiful and good to the mother that bore him. But there are too few visits and fewer phone calls. There is a fracture that has never healed, a void where something used to be.
He won't talk about it, not even three sheets to the wind, but it's in his face and in the minute hesitation when you bring up family. He listens, and he commiserates, and when the topic shifts to his family plot, he changes the subject. He talks about the Yankees or how shitty the Mets are doing this season or the perp who tried to take a dump on his shoes, and he waves his fork around and laughs, but you hear the scream underneath.
You never pressed the matter. He could be a righteously stubborn bastard when he set his feet, and besides, you were hardly one to talk about opening up. You have more You have more than your fair share of secrets in the dark spaces where the light refuses to shine, and you wouldn't appreciate him digging in the fertile soil of your secret garden. So you let it ride. It was easier, and who wanted to rock the boat?
Maybe you should have, because the air in here is venomous. There are wounds long and deep that you can't see, echoes of words spoken in anger or swallowed in the name of family harmony. Old queens have been deposed in favor of the new, and the king is frail and impotent upon his throne. They wait with teeth and claws and daggers concealed beneath their stony, frozen faces. If the silence breaks, the walls will bleed.
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