For the next three e-years, Claude followed the same routine every day. Mrs. Ridgeway did her best to provide him with special instruction in programming, and the old math teacher, Hudo, died and was replaced by a young man who immediately saw Claude’s potential and set him to studying calculus while the other students laboriously worked through algebra—something Claude had mastered quickly, and soon grown bored with. More and more, he felt himself to be a separate being from the other students. He made no real friends and only stayed out of fights because he was known to strike back with vicious abandon and a disregard for any rules of honor, as it was practiced among the boys.
Not only was he growing physically, his body was changing in other ways, as well. One day, while working in the greenhouse snipping at the plants, his fingers slipped and he sliced into his thumb. The pain was intense and exquisite and, much to his surprise, Claude felt something odd happen in his pants. When he went to the toilet to check himself, he found that a sticky liquid had encrusted his underwear. Claude had, of course, read about such stuff during library period, and was quite aware of what had happened. The why was a little puzzling.
“Well,” he said to the toilet bowl, “I guess I’m a man now.”
After a little experimentation, Claude found that it was not necessary for him to break the skin to make himself come. It was the pain that produced the pleasure, and pain could come in less visibly damaging forms. Following this discovery, Claude masturbated by jamming wooden splinters under his fingernails—he’d found this created maximum arousal in the most reproducible fashion—and only occasionally resorted to a burn or a puncture when he was, as it were, in the highest throes of passion.
By his fifteenth birthday, Claude was taller than his father by half a foot and outweighed him by a good ten pounds. Delmore was drinking more than ever, and the good Rhein wine and whiskey was a thing of the past. He bought his liquor wholesale from a moonshiner who worked in the greenhouse and had a still in one of the back rooms. Claude continued his Shakespeare, but he knew that the next time Delmore made to hit him, he would have a little surprise for his father. The thought of killing his father had become one of Claude’s favorite fantasies, and he now carried an extendable knife with him whenever he went to recite the immortal lines of the bard before Delmore.
But Claude never got the chance. One evening, after they’d both come home from work, Delmore had gone into the bathroom, taking his bottle of liquor along with him. About five minutes later, Claude heard a cry.
“Oh shit, oh no!” screamed Delmore. Claude rushed into the bathroom to find his father on his knees, bent down by the toilet. The bowl of the toilet was bright red with arterial blood.
“I’ve busted a gut. Ah God, I’m ruined!” cried Delmore. Claude watched in fascination as his father crawled out of the bathroom and into the living room, leaving a trail of blood behind him.
“It’s all coming out of my ass,” his father moaned. “I’m bleeding out of my ass.”
Delmore turned around three times in the living room, as if he were a dog preparing to lie down. Then he collapsed in a puddle of his own blood. After a moment, Claude bent down and felt no pulse in his father’s neck.
Amazing, he thought. He sat down in one of the living-room chairs.
“No Shakespeare tonight,” he said.
Claude thought about this fact for a while. And then he thought of all the nights in his life that would suddenly be empty of obligation. If he wanted them to be. He could do anything he wanted now, and no one could stop him.