The Summer Son (15 page)

I
DUMPED THE STORY
on Cindy as I sped back to Dad’s place. Her reaction traced the arc of mine—first confusion, then intrigue, then sorrow, then horror.

“Mitch, this explains so much.”

“What does it explain? I have more questions than ever.”

“Don’t you think this tells why he is the way he is? He never had an example of love in his life. It’s no wonder he never let you in. He didn’t trust anybody.”

She was right. But this was big—bigger than anything I had seen. The canyon between us, always treacherous, was now laced with land mines. I yearned for closeness with this father of mine who refused to give it to me. Now I could see him more clearly than ever, and still I could not bridge the distance. What was I supposed to do with that?

“I don’t even know where to start,” I said.

Billings sped by as I waited for my wife, wiser than I in such things, to speak.

“I don’t either, Mitch. I really don’t.”

“Shit.”

“What?”

I rolled into an empty driveway at Dad’s.

“He’s not here.”

“Mitch,” Cindy said, “slow down and think this out. It’s just as well, because you’re not ready for him yet. You can’t mess this up by charging in on him. Not now.”

“I know. I’m going to be bouncing off the walls until he gets back. And then what?”

“Well, call me tonight and tell me how it goes.”

“I will.”

I found a note waiting for me on the kitchen table.

Mitch—

That’s the longest shopping trip I’ve ever seen. Waited as long as I could. I’ll be back in a few hours. We need to talk.

Your dad,

Jim

I had been gone awhile. A few hours from when? I had no way to know. I took my wife’s advice and settled into the recliner and examined my meager options.

I’d promised Kelly that I would tell Dad we had talked, but the simple fact was that Kelly’s fifty-some years of lighting a home fire was, at best, a secondary concern. I would tell him that I had spoken with her, but I had big questions about how to do it.

How much of our conversation would I reveal? How much should I reveal? It was a cruel twist to find that a life of yearning for a way to get from me to him could be sold out once I learned what that meant. I had known about Dad’s burden for an afternoon, and it had pushed everything else out of my head. I wondered how he could have borne it for so long.

I began to peel back through the years, pulling out scraps of memory and holding them to the light, to see if I could spot lost truths hidden in the scenes and sounds I’d stashed. The images and the moments had my fingerprints all over them, so commonly were they retraced by me, and still I flipped them over and looked at them from new angles, hoping I would see something that had eluded me before.

Were I inclined to rationality, I would have conceded that it was pointless. I could find little instructive in what had gone before, at least as it pertained to my life. I also knew that I couldn’t trust the pictures in my head. The moments weren’t frozen in time; they changed, sometimes imperceptibly, as the years dragged on and my sensibilities shifted. Whatever came to me as I put down my time on earth affected my inward and outward views of the circumstances of my life and the lives around me. I was older, wiser, less tolerant, less motivated, more distant—and so was my lens. I could no longer trust my interpretation of long-past events. I could only try to do my best with what came at me now.

My thoughts turned to my mother, and to Marie. Did they know what I now knew about Dad’s life? Had they too carried his secrets? If they had, what difference did it make now? Neither one could tell me so, or tell me what to do.

The move was mine, if I dared make it. I was pretty sure I had it in me, but first, I had to get rid of something. Before I was ready, the tears came, and as I sat there, my chest and shoulders heaving for this man—this beautiful, fucked-up survivor of a man—I knew that my tears fell also for me. I had wasted so much time in anger, holding a grudge for what he had done to me. It’s not that I didn’t have reasons, but my reasons didn’t make much difference at such a distance.

I slipped the key into the lock on the shed and tried to turn it clockwise. The mechanism didn’t yield. I jangled the key and tried again, and then in the other direction. Nothing.

“He changed the lock,” I said, to no one.

The tools that could sidestep this problem lay inside the shed.

I took two steps backward, then lunged toward the door and kicked. The first shot from my ramrod leg rattled the building. The second loosened the bottom hinge. The third knocked out a screw. The fourth tore the little piece of brass from the plywood. Five more kicks higher up the door took care of the top hinge, and I was in.

D
AD’S FEET COULDN’T FIND
purchase once we reached the house. I grew weary as he shifted weight to me to compensate. His left arm hung heavy around my neck, and I held tight to his wrist and slipped my right arm around his backside as I guided him to the stairs.

“Come on. Five steps.”

He flopped his right foot onto the first step. I strained to push him forward so the left foot would follow. Then we did it again and again and again and again.

Inside the house, I flipped on the living room lights to show him the path to bed.

“Just a little ways more.”

We hurtled down the hallway as if we were running a three-legged race in an earthquake.

At the finish line, the bed, I gave Dad a shove and let inertia carry him the final few feet. He landed face-first on the mattress, crawled until he found a pillow, and then lay still. For all I cared, he could sleep in his clothes and wake up in his stink. I wrenched his boots off and nearly retched at the stench of sweat and leather steaming off his socks.

I knelt near his head and listened to his wispy breathing. He looked serene—unfair, considering.

“Good night, you old goat.”

The next few days were stultifying in their sameness. I woke up early, grabbed the keys to the truck, and rode out to find the herd. The shunned calf needed only a day to associate me with the bottle. When he saw the truck, he came at a half run, hassling me until I offered him the nipple.

I named him King. I didn’t consider him particularly regal, and I knew that his destiny lay in somebody’s freezer, which was about as ignoble a fate as there was. But the name stuck, and he didn’t mind. As he gulped down his morning meal, I scratched his head and talked to him because I had no one else.

After the feeding, I circled back to the ranch house and had my own breakfast—cold cereal, mostly, since I was fending for myself—and then cleared the house of Dad’s empty beer cans. I found them everywhere—the floor, the bathroom, the yard. His consumption grew as each day fell off the calendar, and my worry grew with it. His days started with a beer and ended at the Livery. The in-between hours were soaked in alcohol, too.

After that first night in Split Rail, and for a few days afterward, I didn’t see Dad up and moving until around noon. On my passes through the house, I sometimes crept to the brink of his bedroom to see how he was doing. He sawed on sleep, sometimes lying on his stomach, sometimes on his back. He would shed his clothes during the night, although not always fully. The first morning, I found him half in and half out of his pants—one leg free, the other hopelessly tangled in denim. I stifled laughter and left him to his mess.

Once he was up, his presence did little to stanch my loneliness. He grumbled through the day and the tasks he felt up to, mostly minor maintenance around the ranch—replacing fence posts, cleaning the barn, fiddling with the tractor, an ever-present beer at his side. We ate our meals together but in isolation, neither of us speaking very much. I staved off hunger with canned ravioli. Dad subsisted on cheese sandwiches. We passed through each other’s days but didn’t make much of an impression, at least not until night came and delivered us to our respective downtown mischief.

Mostly, I rode my motorcycle as long and as far as it could take me. I always found a fence, though, whether put there by a rancher who had come before or by my own heart. I yearned to set a course—any direction would do—and ride for the horizon, but I also knew that I could never catch it, and that I would miss Dad once I left.

I always returned to the house.

Friday morning, Charley Rayburn rolled up into the driveway in his patrol car. He and Jeff climbed out.

I saw them from the living room window. Dad, up early, was in the bathroom, getting ready for his trip to Billings.

My heart raced as I heard their footsteps on the stairs. Had Charley found out about our mischief from the few nights earlier? Briefly and stupidly, I considered running out the back, but where would I go? The knock came, followed by Dad’s admonition to open the door.

Charley smiled at me through dark glasses.

“Hey, Mitch. Is your dad around?”

I looked at Jeff. His face was a blank slate.

“He’s in the back. I’ll get him. Come on in.”

They stepped inside, and Charley doffed his hat.

“Who is it?” Dad bellowed.

“Charley and Jeff,” I said.

“Just a sec.”

Charley scanned the living room while Jeff fidgeted next to him. I looked across the room too, to see if anything revelatory had been missed in my daily cleaning up. The tension choked me.

“How are you, Charley?” Dad stepped into the room wearing his Sunday best: a button-front shirt, slacks, and his stepping-out boots. “What are you doing here?”

Charley said, “I figured since these two young guys hit it off so well, maybe they could hang out together. I’ve got some business up in Judith Gap, so I thought I’d drop on by before I left.”

I exhaled.

“I’m headed down to Billings,” Dad said. “But LaVerne Simms is coming by to watch Mitch. If you’re OK with her looking after Jeff, it’ll be fine, won’t it, Mitch?”

“Yeah, absolutely,” I said.

Dad and Charley chatted at Charley’s patrol car. I turned to Jeff in the living room.

“I thought he’d found out about the beer.”

“Nah, he doesn’t know,” Jeff said. His blithe surety set me only slightly at ease.

“Where’s your dad going?” he asked me.

“Him and my stepmom are getting divorced.”

“Wow, really?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know anybody whose folks are divorced.”

“Mine are. This will make two for Dad.”

“So you live with your mom?”

“Yeah.”

“Where?”

“Olympia, Washington.”

“Wow. I think that would be weird.”

Jeff made me feel self-conscious. It’s not like I could do anything about divorce. I was just a kid. Besides, it wasn’t that weird. I lived with my mom and I went to school, just like other kids. Every other summer, I saw my dad. It was no big deal. I knew a lot of kids whose parents were divorced. I wasn’t used to someone making a federal case out of it.

“What do you feel like doing?” I asked.

Jeff carried my pellet gun as we skulked through tall grass at the base of the buttes. I fell in behind him as we walked diagonally across the incline. I had no idea what we were tracking—I don’t think Jeff did, either—but it was fun to pretend like we were trailing a mountain lion or something equally terrifying.

We rode on my motorcycle after saying our good-byes to our fathers. The ride had been ridiculous. Alone, I was too big for the Honda. With Jeff—older, taller, and heavier—riding behind me, the bike groaned under our bulk. We left the motorcycle sitting on the road.

“Hey, city boy, are you ready if we see a mountain lion?”

“I don’t think our gun is big enough,” I said.

“Forget the gun. It won’t help. You know how you get rid of a mountain lion, right?”

“No.”

“You throw a handful of shit right in his eye.”

“Come on.”

“No, seriously, that’s how.”

“Where am I supposed to find that?”

“Just reach into your pants.”

Jeff cackled. He had put one over on me and had a laugh at my expense, but it was pretty funny. Still, I hoped I wouldn’t have to find out if he was right.

We decided to head back when we saw the lightning crack down from the gathering dark. It looked like a Montana summer cloudburst, a brief, thunderous drenching, was galloping our way. I sure didn’t want to be far from shelter when it hit.

We’d just started down the hill when Jeff came to a halt.

“Don’t move,” he whispered. I stopped, and I ran my eyes across the hillside in front of us, trying to pick up what he saw. A snake, maybe? Another mouse?

Then I saw the bird, about ten yards in front of us, perched on a green ash tree.

I watched Jeff raise the barrel and sight it. Before my protest could well up in my throat, he pulled the trigger and dropped the bird. Its body toppled from the branch and fell to the ground.

“One shot!” Jeff squealed. He took off on a run to see what he had done. I followed, amazed that it had unfolded so quickly.

The pellet hit the bird below the eye, exploding the feathers in blood and rendered skin. The eye remained open, staring back at us.

“That was great,” Jeff crowed. “Did you see what I did? One shot.”

“Why?” I pushed Jeff in the chest, and he dropped the gun.

“What do you mean?”

“Why would you shoot a little bird like that?”

“Why not? We’ve been shooting at stuff all morning.”

“Yeah, rodents. Not birds. Look at him.”

“Jeez, man, settle down. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

I pushed him again. “It was stupid.”

“OK, man, take it easy.”

I pushed him again, and Jeff got mad.

“Stop pushing me, Mitch.”

I went to push him again, and as soon as my fingers touched his chest, Jeff belted me across the left jaw. It didn’t hurt at first, but my legs went rubbery as the tingle radiated across my face. Jeff grabbed me by the shirt and shook me. “I don’t want to fight with you, Mitch, but stop pushing me. I’m sorry I killed the bird. OK?”

“OK,” I said.

As soon as he let go, I took off down the hill. When I kicked the motorcycle to life, Jeff figured out what I was up to. “Hey!” he said, but by then, I was spitting up dust on the way back to the house. A walk would do him some good. Jeff said he was sorry, but by the time he walked all the way back in what was coming for him, I could be sure that he really was.

LaVerne Simms looked at me askance when I came in.

“Where’s Jeff?”

“He’s coming. He wanted to walk.”

She looked at me with a smirk, one that suggested she wasn’t satisfied with my explanation.

“I hope he hurries. It looks bad out there.” She turned back to her book.

I crept deeper into the living room.

“What are you reading?”

She held up the book, and I read the title aloud. “
A Woman of Substance
, Barbara Taylor Bradford. Do you like it?”

“It’s good,” she said. “Intriguing.”

“Would I like it?”

She laughed. “Maybe. But I doubt it.”

“I like to read,” I said.

LaVerne peered at me over her glasses.

“Yes, Mitch. So do I.”

I got the message. I sat down opposite her and massaged my throbbing jaw.

Jeff dragged in about fifteen minutes later. His hair lay flat on his head, held down by the residue of the rain that had hit him. His T-shirt and pants were soaked.

“Good lord, boy, get in here,” LaVerne said, standing up and fussing over him. “What happened to you?”

“Got caught in a gullywasher,” he said, gulping for breath.

“Why did you walk? Couldn’t you see it coming?” LaVerne, like any rancher, knew what a storm in summer could bring. The rain fed the land, but woe be unto those who had nowhere to hide when the lightning came cracking down. I knew from experience that a cowboy looked skyward not just to tell the time but also to be vigilant against a storm. The cloudbursts appeared and moved on quickly, but they could wreak damage in so short a stay.

“I told you, he wanted to walk,” I said, shooting a look at Jeff.

“Yeah, that’s right,” he said. “I just wasn’t thinking.”

“No, you weren’t,” LaVerne said, clucking her tongue as she headed off to see if she could find some dry things for Jeff.

LaVerne cooked hamburgers and homemade french fries, and I tore eagerly into the first decent lunch I’d had all week. Jeff wasn’t talking to me, which was just as well. He’d gotten his.

Jeff had been lucky; he came out of the storm with nothing more than wet clothes and hurt feelings. The longer we sat there, the more I regretted abandoning him, even though I was pissed at what he had done. He must have been terrified, hopscotching all the way back to the house as the thunder and lightning roiled around him. I watched him glumly eat lunch, and my smugness over my revenge lost its luster.

After lunch, Jeff offered me a handshake and a single word: “Truce?” I accepted. There was no reason not to.

The storms rolled in all day, pinning us down in the house. I hauled out board games—
Yahtzee, Battleship, Connect Four
—and Jeff and I lay on the floor in the den and played. We were restless, though, and the afternoon slogged by. I began looking for excuses to get outside, the weather be damned.

“LaVerne,” I said, “what am I going to do about that calf?”

“We’ll keep an eye outside,” she called back to me. “When we see a break, we’ll go get him fed.”

Later, back in my room, Jeff suggested another game.

“Do you have a pencil in here?” he asked.

I dug through the drawer in the desk and found one.

“Is the eraser good?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Why?”

“I’ll show you.”

Jeff called the game
Man or Mouse
, and it involved neither skill nor strategy. It was simply a test of tolerance. Jeff flipped the pencil upside-down in his right hand and began rubbing the eraser on the back side of his left hand, right on the long bone that leads to the middle knuckle. Rubber flakes left the eraser and drifted across his hand.

“You just do this to the other guy,” he said. “You just keep rubbing and rubbing, for as long as he can take it.”

“That doesn’t look so bad.”

“You can go first, then,” he said.

Put off by Jeff’s enthusiasm, I offered my right hand, and he grabbed hold of my wrist and pushed it down to the table.

“Hold it still,” he said. Then he started to work the eraser. At first, it kind of tickled, but after a half minute or so, I began to understand how the attrition worked. The eraser built up friction against my skin, and the small area where Jeff insistently rubbed began to grow warm. Not long after that, the pain set in. I winced and turned my head a bit.