we never spoke of the cancer , and in some of those silences i thought that we must speak of it , that there would be nothing else and we would be stuck with it like kids caught without a place to sit in a game of musical chairs when the piano stops , and i would become almost frantic , trying to think of something-anything ! -to say so that we would not have to acknowledge the thing which was now destroying my daddy , who had once taken butch bowers by the hair and jammed his rifle into the shelf of his chin and demanded of butch to be left alone .