Cry Father (4 page)

7

creek

J
unior drools blood into the creek. The middle of the creek where he’s standing. He tries to spit, but he drools instead. Shards of tooth slip out over his swollen lip with the blood. The middle of a creek. He’s got the feeling he’s coming awake out of a very hard sleep. The tendons in his left arm sing a strained and painful note, and there’s a hard chord of nausea that cuts through him when he breathes.

It’s raining, he thinks very clearly. He can hear the raindrops pattering around him in the creek water. But he can also see the stars and moon spinning over him, tilt-a-whirling. And there are the lights of Denver, orange through the cottonwoods and creek willows. He touches his head and realizes it’s not rain at all he’s hearing. It’s blood, pouring from his head down into the black water.

He can hear something else, too. Something happening not too far down. It sounds like a party and there’s a kind of light wavering through the cottonwoods. A strange smoking yellow by the bank,
ringed by shadowy figures. Some of them capering in the flame and smoke, and some just standing there seeming to smoke as if on fire themselves. He takes a step toward them.

“I wouldn’t do that, motherfucker,” a voice calls out from the light.

Junior’s not sure what it is he shouldn’t do. He takes another step, against the current, the creek sucking at his boot. Before he can find footing on the bottom, a rock plugs him directly on top of the head, dropping him to his knees like he’s been hit on the point of his skull with a ball-peen hammer. Another rock plunks down a foot to the left of him. A third splashes his face with creek water.

He tries to stand, can’t make it. Another rock hits him in his shoulder, a repulsive jolt jamming up his arm like he’s grabbed on to an electric line. He scrabbles for the bank, his hands and feet slipping. His right hand goes out from under him, his elbow slamming down on a stone. Pain rips up his forearm, explodes in his fingertips. He scrambles up the creek bank, through a stand of creek willows, collapses.

He does all he can to not pass out.

It’s not enough.

8

bathtubs

T
he sun sends yellow runners of light streaking across the creek’s surface like water bugs, and Junior sits up and vomits into his lap. Then, when he’s sure he’s done, he takes off his brand-new alligator-skin cowboy boots and dumps the filthy water. Then peels off his socks and squeezes them out. He has to do it one-handed, because he can’t raise his left arm, the shoulder useless. And every time he moves his head the vision in his good eye washes away and he has to force back another round of retching.

He doesn’t know which looks worse, his feet or the boots. So he doesn’t think about it. He rinses his mouth out with creek water. Then somehow stands and hunches his way back toward the roadhouse. For some reason walking down the middle of the creek instead of along the bank, staggering out of the mud like some new species of amphibian monster, making his way through the empty parking lot.

He passes the still-smoking corpse of his 1969 Charger. Thinking what a goddamn good thing it is that he made this particular trip down to the San Luis Valley on his own time. That he wasn’t stopped on his way back from a run down to El Paso for Vicente. That would not have been a loss he’s entirely sure he would have survived.

It’s the same bartender as last night. A ruddy middle-aged man in a fringed buckskin shirt, reading a tabloid newspaper behind the bar. “I’ll be damned,” he says, when Junior takes a stool at the bar. “I thought you were dead.”

“Give it a little time,” Junior says. “The matter ain’t entirely settled yet.”

The bartender pours a beer glass half-full of bourbon and hands it to him. Then he leans on the bar, watching Junior as if he might do some new trick. Sprout flowers from his head, maybe. Or spontaneously combust. “Did they do that to your eye?” he asks.

Junior shakes his head, holding the glass of whiskey. It’s not often he’s scared of a glass of whiskey, but he’s a little scared of this one. “What time is it?”

“Four o’clock in the afternoon. You just now waking up?”

Junior takes a drink of the whiskey and it hurts just as much as he thought it would. “Yep.”

“Where you live?”

“Forty-seventh and Vine.”

“That’s got to be five miles. How you going to get home?”

“I ain’t thought it through yet.”

“You ain’t got anyone you can call?”

“Who would you want to tell this story to?” Junior asks.

The bartender nods at that, fingering a Camel cigarette out of a
pack on the bar. “You know, I had a wife once,” he says. “I caught her with a nigger.”

“I’d be careful who I commented on it to, partner.” Junior makes a point of not smiling when he says it.

The bartender lights his cigarette. “They weren’t fucking neither. My wife and the nigger.”

Junior takes another drink of the whiskey. It doesn’t hurt nearly as bad this time. “You got an extra one of those?”

The bartender slides the pack to him. “Keep it.”

Junior lights up, wincing at the pain that shoots through his head as he draws smoke. He pulls the cigarette out of his mouth. Blood on the filter.

“He was pissing on her, is what he was doing.” The bartender clears his throat. “They’d been doing it for more’n a year before I caught on.”

“Pissing on her?”

“Pissing on her.”

“Seems like that wouldn’t be a hard one to catch on to,” Junior says. “Seems like you’d notice the wet spots around the house. Maybe smell it.”

The bartender nods his head. “They did it in the tub, mainly,” he says. “They met on the computer. Turns out there’s whole groups of people for that kind of shit.”

“You can find most anything on computers these days,” Junior says.

“It wasn’t just him, neither.” The bartender pours himself a bourbon. “I mean it was only niggers. Just not always the same one. That’s what she told me. She could only get off if the guy pissing on her was black.”

“She told it to you?”

“Yeah. I asked her why she didn’t just let me piss on her instead.”

Junior folds a cocktail napkin into quarters and holds it on his dead eye. Then he barks out a single laugh.

The bartender’s face reddens. He doesn’t look at Junior. “I just mean I can give you a ride home,” he says.

Junior crumples up the napkin and drops it on the bar, then holds up his fist. “Solidarity, brother.”

9

drunk

I
t’s only after the bartender pulls away that Junior realizes he doesn’t have his house key. And that he already knew that. That his house key has gone the same way as his wallet and cell phone. He stands on the porch cursing himself for a fucking idiot for maybe two minutes, then stumbles off, finds a hunk of blacktop in the gutter, and walks it back up to the door, his head plunked down in his shoulders like he’s been hit over the crown with a sledgehammer. But just before he chunks the asphalt through the window he stops, a rare moment of reflection passing over him. Knowing the last thing he wants to do is spend the next day caulking in new glass. So he drops it and walks up to Forty-seventh, toward Jenny’s. It’s ramshackle houses and chain-link fences and the occasional chicken coop, and it’s dark enough that it looks almost like any other working-class neighborhood in Denver. The houses a little smaller than most, sure, but at least you can’t see the way the vinyl siding’s peeling from the combined fumes
of the oil refinery, rendering plant, and dog food factory. And it’s late enough that most everybody is off their porch. Or at least those that aren’t know Junior well enough to keep from doing anything that might get his attention at this time of night.

Jenny opens her bedroom window right away when he taps, like she’s been sitting up waiting for him to stop by. Which, maybe she has. A smile takes ten years off her battered face, some of the bags and lumps disappearing as shadows, those still left unable to crowd out the weary good looks that remain. But the smile flashes away like heat lightning when she gets a better look at him. “I’ll meet you at the front door,” she says.

She’s sitting on the stoop with two bottles of Budweiser in her lap when he comes around the house. “Do I even want to ask?” She lights a menthol cigarette and squints through the smoke at his face.

He sits down next to her. “I went up to see Henry.”

“Run into a rugby team on your way back?”

He grunts something that isn’t quite a laugh.

“You want to be careful with that face,” she says. “It’s pretty much all you got going for you.”

“Except for the eye,” he says.

“Nobody minds the eye but you.”

He shrugs. “I don’t think anything’s broken. Maybe a tooth or two.”

The smoke from her cigarette wisps into her eyes. She waves her hand at it. “So you know, I can’t fuck you,” she says. “I’m on my period.”

Junior stands and walks around the side of her house.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“You got any plans tomorrow?” Junior asks, unzipping his pants.

“No,” she says. “Tell me you’re not pissing against the side of my house.”

Junior answers her by pissing against the side of her house.

“I’ve got a bathroom. It’s about ten feet from you right now.”

Junior returns to the stoop, standing. “Mind driving me to a car lot in the morning?”

“I probably don’t want to ask, do I?”

“Probably not,” he says. “Also, I lost my house key. I need yours.”

“Am I getting it back?”

He holds out his hand.

She pulls her keys out of her pocket, strips his house key off the ring, and hands it to him. “You can stay for a little while if you want,” she says. “I got a joint.”

“I’m drunk.” He sways a little when he says it.

“That’s never stopped you from anything I ever heard of. You at least wanna look in on Casey?”

“I don’t wanna wake her up.”

“You won’t. She sleeps like me, not you.”

“Not tonight.”

She lowers her head a little to take another drag off her cigarette, and she doesn’t look back up at him. He knows it’s because she doesn’t want him to see whatever she’s thinking. And, as always, that makes him wish he was just about anywhere else. So he walks to the gate.

“I really do like your face,” she says to his back. “Try taking a little care of it for me, if nothing else.”

10

whiskey

W
hoever built the cabin had the sense to set it facing the Blanca Massif, which is pretty much the only criteria Patterson had when he bought it. Right now he’s on his porch, just finishing watching the first sunset of the season play over the west side of Mount Blanca, when Henry pulls into the driveway. He climbs out of his truck and, holding on to the doorframe, fumbles his cane out from behind the driver’s seat. “Sieg Heil,” he calls, rollicking his way up to the porch.

“Cut that shit out,” Patterson says. He stands and takes Henry’s arm, helping him up the crooked steps.

Henry hangs his cane over the porch rail and sinks down in one of the camp chairs. “Where’s that bachelor mutt of yours?” he asks.

“I don’t know.” Patterson peers out into the gloom for a second. “He ain’t been back all day.”

“Probably found himself a little bitch,” Henry says.

Patterson looks at him.

“Right.” Henry chuckles.

“I found a bottle of whiskey in the outhouse. You want a glass?”

“Whiskey in the shitter,” Henry says admiringly. “How many exactly would you say you’ve got stashed away around here?”

“I
t ain’t entirely his fault,” Henry says later, much later. They’ve let the kerosene lantern run out of fuel hours ago, and the stars are so numerous and low you could soak your feet in them.

“Which part?” Patterson asks.

“The part about him hating my guts.” Henry’s holding on to the hook of his cane with both hands, resting his chin on it. “I wasn’t around much, and it’d probably have been better if I hadn’t been when I was.”

“You were hard on him?”

“I was a sorry son of a bitch.” Henry leans forward toward the darkness. “There. I thought I saw something move.”

“Where?”

“Past my truck.”

Patterson narrows his eyes and tries to stare himself sober. Then he spots it, a quick dog-sized hole in the darker darkness. “That’s Sancho.” Patterson leans back in his chair.

“Why ain’t he coming in?” Henry asks.

“He’s embarrassed.”

Henry chuckles. “He’s got a lot of personality, your dog.”

Patterson raises two fingers to his mouth and blows a loud whistle. Sancho’s head raises. “Can I ask you a question?” Patterson asks Henry.

“I don’t think he’s coming,” Henry remarks.

“SANCHO,” Patterson yells. “GET YOUR ASS UP HERE.” His voice sounds strained and weak in his ears, like it’s coming from an
accordion with torn bellows. But the dog rises to his feet and mopes toward the porch.

“What was the question?” Henry asks.

Sancho slinks warily up the steps, making as if to head through the flap in the front door. Patterson grabs him by the skin of his neck and yanks him yelping by his leg. “Did he give you the money to move out here?”

Henry barked a laugh. “I was only coming from Cheyenne. He loaned me two hundred bucks for gas. I paid that off with my first paycheck.”

Patterson pats Sancho down for injury. Nothing but mud and burrs. He scratches Sancho’s head with one hand, strokes his neck with the other. Then he puts his face into Sancho’s neck and holds it there. Sancho smells wild and happy. Happy to be wild, and happy to be home from it. “He says otherwise.”

“Yeah?” says Henry. “Well. He may even believe it.”

11

lemonade

T
he Adobe Bar is the hotel bar for the Taos Inn, right downtown in tourist central, modeled on the real Taos Pueblo where the Pueblo Indians have lived for more than a thousand years. It has a neon thunderbird sign out front and hosts new age flute players most weekend nights, but if you can stand all that there’s every kind of bourbon you could want. And that had seemed pretty important to Patterson when Laney had said she needed to talk to him.

She’s already seated at a table. She looks good, too good. At least ten years younger than Patterson. Which is not exactly some great feat, but is still no fun to look at. She’s lost weight and replaced it with lean muscle, and her broad Irish face has mellowed some, either because of her age or because of something she’s had done to it. Whatever it is, it’s softened some of her shrill edges, and almost gives her the illusion of tenderness.

And then there’s the little boy with her, her new son, Gabe. He’s three years old now, sucking the sugary life out of a tall glass of pink lemonade next to her. Patterson tries not to stare holes in his face while Laney makes small talk.

How are you doing, Patterson? Still living up on that mesa so you don’t have to be around people? Still drinking yourself stupid every night? Still don’t have the guts to settle down and live like an adult?

None of which is said, exactly, just implied. But, then, she’s always been very good at implication.

Finally, just before Patterson excuses himself for the bathroom to hang himself with his belt, she comes to the point. “I have a lawyer,” she says.

Patterson is still staring at the boy when she says it. Trying hard not to, but still staring.

“You can talk to him, Patterson.” Her voice softens in a way that makes Patterson even more uncomfortable than he already is. “Say hello, Gabe,” she says to the boy. “This is Patterson. Patterson Wells. Do you remember him from last summer?”

Gabe wrinkles his nose, grinning with his lips puckered around his straw. Patterson finishes his first bourbon double and thanks Jesus he had the sense to order himself two.

“He remembers you,” Laney says. “He always remembers men. I think it’s because his father isn’t around.”

Patterson clears his throat, but he has nothing.

“They finally got him,” she says. “He burnt his house down trying to make meth. He never was very good at following recipes.” She smiles at Patterson. “We were never together, not really. But you know that.”

Patterson doesn’t know that. He’s never met Gabe’s father. Whatever happened between them had happened while he was on the
road. He just came back after a season of work one year and she was pregnant. But he nods like he knows the whole story, mainly so she doesn’t tell it to him again.

Laney rubs Gabe’s shoulder. “It was worth it,” she says. The way the boy’s going at his lemonade, you’d think it’d take him two seconds to finish it, but the level of the liquid barely seems to move.

“You got a lawyer,” Patterson prompts. Gabe’s one thing he can’t talk about for any length of time.

“I have a lawyer,” she says. “He’s seen the medical records and he thinks we have a case.”

“A case of what?”

“A lawsuit, Patterson,” she says. “A lawsuit against Dr. Court for what he did to Justin. For letting him die. We’re not the only ones. He has no right to hold a license. What he likes is looking like a doctor. Having everybody impressed with him for it. But he’s messed up all kinds of people. Justin was the only one he killed, but he messed up others. Other kids.”

“You got a lawyer,” Patterson repeats.

“I want to add you as a plaintiff,” she says. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Patterson shakes his head.

“You don’t have to pay anything,” she says. “All you have to do is sign a piece of paper.”

Patterson continues to shake his head.

“If somebody doesn’t stop him, there’s no reason to think he won’t do it again. That other parents won’t have to go through exactly what we did.”

Patterson is still shaking his head.

“Okay,” she says. “Let’s try this. It’s money. Not a little money, a lot of money. You’re too old for the work you do. You were too old
when we met, now you’re too old by ten years. Do you have a retirement plan?”

“I’ve got the cabin,” Patterson says.

“The cabin,” she repeats in a voice that makes it easy to tell she doesn’t think much of the cabin as a retirement plan. She fixes Patterson in place with her brown eyes, smirking so imperceptibly you could almost miss it. “I won’t give up on this,” she says. “I can be persistent. And you can’t keep doing what you’re doing.”

Patterson doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t bother shaking his head again. There are plenty of advantages to being married, though he could never properly enumerate them, but the biggest advantage to not being married is not having to explain yourself. Sometimes Patterson even remembers that in time to keep from doing it.

“Well,” she says brightly, “are you ready to order food?”

“I’ve gotta get back to Sancho,” Patterson lies. “He ain’t feeling good.”

“Sancho,” she says. “I miss Sancho.”

“He’s a good dog.” It comes out warbly. Patterson clears his throat.

“Does he still hate women?”

“Everyone but you,” Patterson says.

“He’s a dog with sense,” she says. “I’d like to see him.”

Patterson nods and finishes his second bourbon. Then he pats her on the shoulder and walks out. It’s probably the cruelest thing he can do, given what she’s asking him. But it’s either that or grab her by her carefully piled hair and start pounding her face into the table.