Father's Keeper
Authors: Parker Ford
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All sexually active characters in this work are
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or
are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events
or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover
Design: Selena Kitt
Father’s Keeper © January 2011 Parker Ford
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Father’s
Keeper
Chapter 1
“So why are we coming here again?”
I glanced at Carl and grinned. “Well,
for one thing it’s a cheap place to stay. Cheap as in free,” I said, making a
left on Wicked Way. Yes, that was the street name and a few blocks down was
Flying Monkey Road. I shit you not. My folks lived in a section of town where
the streets are named for The Wizard of Oz.
When I say folks, I guess now I just
mean Gil. And Gil isn’t even my dad. He’s my stepfather.
“Free is good,” Carl said. Carl works
in honky-tonk bars playing guitar when he can. Works behind the bar when he has
to and in the kitchen washing dishes only when he’s desperate.
“I thought you’d see it that way.”
“But why are we visiting Gil when
you’re mom’s not even here, Jenny girl?” he asked.
I hate being called Jenny girl. Truth
be told, I prefer just Jen. Jennifer if you have to be formal. I shrugged,
taking the long, steep hill that would lead to my house. All of Pleasant Parks
was visible from up here and I put my foot on the brake to still our
progress--just to look. Seeing my hometown did odd things to me. Part of me
felt comforted to be home, part of me felt claustrophobic. Like I wanted to
smoke a pack of cigarettes, drink a bottle of cheap wine and hit the road in a
beat up old muscle car. And run like hell.
Nostalgia can be sickly sweet.
Delicious in one instant, cloying in the next.
I shrugged, lifted my foot off the
brake and let us drift down hill, let gravity and small town roots do their
work. “I want to check on him. Gil and I didn’t get a great start,” I said,
stopping at the corner before hitting the gas and dragging us closer to my
house. “But he was a good dad to me. And now Marian’s up and left him. And me,
if you must know. She won’t call me back or contact me or any of it. My mother
has started a new life. It does not include Gil and it does not include me,” I
said.
“Think he’ll care?”
“Yes and no,” I said. “I think I’ll be
a suck ass reminder of her, but that’s the way the gene pool goes. But I think
he won’t much mind the company and he is a family man--a good man. This is
always to be my home. Told me so when I left.”
“Ah, but what about me?” Carl laughed,
putting his big, nicked up hand on my thigh and pushing it high up. I wanted to
press myself down so he could reach me, I wanted to pull myself back so he
couldn’t. I wasn’t quite sure where I stood on Carl right about now. Only time
would tell, I figured.
It had been fun and games and sex and
drinking and parties for months. But now I wanted to start a new life
somewhere, and Pleasant Parks was on the way to somewhere. So I was starting
here. Carl was just along for the ride, and something told me that was how he’d
live the rest of his life. Along for the ride. I wasn’t sure if I was okay with
that or not.
“You’re with me. That’s all he needs
to know. I’m a big girl.”
“I wouldn’t say big. I’d say curvy,“
he said and winked at me. That hand crept higher, his fingertip brushing under
my short skirt, under the elastic band of my panties. I let him. When the tip
of his pinky finger tickled at my clit, I held my breath. “What’s he do,
anyway?”
“Stained glass,” I said. “Custom
pieces. He’s been doing it since I was a kid.”
“Make a lot on that?”
I shrugged. “You can. He has. Church
windows and local dedications for big buildings. Funeral memorials and folks’
houses. He’s done okay.” I drifted my crappy Chevy ‘79 Chevy Malibu with it’s
sagging headliner into Gil’s driveway and sucked in a deep breath. Carl pressed
my clit again so that my pussy worked up around nothing and I made a sound in
my throat. Then he chuckled softly and pulled his hand back. “Here we are,” I
said.
“Here we are,” Carl echoed.
For whatever reason, my stomach rolled
over nervously. My skin tingled and my heart felt a few sizes larger in my
chest. Why was I so fucking nervous? Maybe because once I went in that house I
was now in my home. A home without my mother. She had left. Left Gil and left
me. But at twenty-eight, should I care? Probably not, but I did.
“Is that him?” Carl asked.
I brought myself back from spacing out
and looked at the small front porch. Gil caught my eye, gave me a half grin. He
crushed out his cigarette in a coffee can I knew would be full of kitty litter,
though my parents didn’t have a cat, and took the steps slowly.
“That’s him,” I said. “My father. Sort
of.” But for all intents and purposes, Gil was the only dad I‘d ever known.
There when my real dad wasn’t. In fact, Marian had never truly copped to who my
real dad was, just that he’d left us. But it was Gil who had taught me to
parallel park and to change a tire (not that I could still do that). It was Gil
who picked me up when Gary Grace kicked me out of his car one night when we’d
been drinking because I wouldn’t fuck him. It was Gil who watched over me, kept
me safe and paid my way and sometimes, my dues, when it came to teachers and
bosses and anyone who might look cross-eyed at me.
Carl opened the passenger door to beat
me to Gil. Already starting his ass kisser routine. Gotta love a good
bullshitter. Somehow I always managed to find them, too. “Mr. Russell, nice to
meet you, sir.”
I watched him from the car, foot
tapping the gas pedal though I’d cut the engine. Gil allowed Carl to pump his
hand like he was trying to draw water from a well, but his stony gaze found
mine and he cocked one eyebrow and pulled a face that only his daughter would
recognize as a smile. “Who’s this yahoo?” is what that smile said.
I blew out a sigh and laughing softly,
opened the door and got out. “Dad. Gil.” I went to him, let him pull me into the
circle of his arms and hug me. Even after decades, I always floundered with
that Dad-Gil thing. It felt natural on one level to call him Dad and on another
Gil. Ours was an odd relationship.
“Girl,” is what he said in my ear.
Soft like a whispered prayer. He tugged me tight to him and hugged me like he
was dying. For a moment I worried that he had bad news for me. About him, about
mom, about something. But I realized, feeling his heartbeat banging against my
chest, that Gil was lonely. It broke my heart.
“How are you?” I said in his ear.
“I’m still here. Who is this joker?”
he said into my hair and I had to swallow a laugh.
“Give Carl a chance. You might like
him.” I pulled back a bit and kissed his stubbly cheek. At forty-six he wore
the rugged, working man handsome of small towns.
“How many beers will that take?” he
asked. Carl was making busy by taking some small duffels out of the trunk.
I shrugged, rubbing my hand to his
back as he turned to help with the bags. “Four? Five?”
His laugh was dry and soft. “I can do
that. How long you here for?”
“Firstly, I should ask if we can
stay,” I said, glaring at Carl. He’d started to unload as if I had already
cleared it with Gil. My cheeks flamed hot red and annoyed with my boyfriend.
Gil just looked at me, those stormy
eyes pinning me with a look of surprise mixed with disgust. “Of course you can.
This is your home, Jenny.”
Carl glanced at me and I grinned,
shook my head. “Only Gil’s allowed to call me Jenny. Right dad?”
“Guess so,” Gil said and laughed again
as he left Carl standing there looking somewhat put off.
Chapter
2
We grilled fish for dinner. I made
corn and potato salad the way my mother had all the years I grew up. I put out
pickles and pickled onions with the dinner, just as she had. It made me kind of
sad, her not being here. It also pissed me off. Who the fuck was she, anyway,
to up and leave a good man who had pretty much worshipped the ground she walked
on.
Gil came in the kitchen while I was
cleaning up. “I can do all this.” He put his hand on the crown of my head and
just left it there. The way he always had when I was small. When we’d first
met, Gil and I, he’d done it to sort of irritate me. I’d been a miserable brat
to him at first, not wanting to share my mother’s attention with a stranger.
But over the years, his hand on my head had become a sign of affection for me
from him. Something we shared that spanned time.
“It’s fine.” I watched Carl, that
goon, picking out a Lynard Skynard song on his guitar out by the fire pit.
“She left with Marty McMurtry, if you
want to know. They went off on his boat he got with the life insurance from his
old man biting the big one. Thomas McMurtry was a mean son of a bitch, but when
it comes to life insurance, the man bought so much I’m surprised there’s any
left for the rest of us.” His voice was thick and clogged with emotion and Gil
tousled my hair before opening the fridge.
“What a fucker,” I said and rinsed the
potato salad bowl so roughly, I was afraid I might crack it in the sink.
Gil laughed and took the bowl from me,
gently. He dried it and set it in the dish strainer. “He always had a hankering
for your mother,” he said.
“I
meant
my mother,” I said.
“Jenny.”
“Don’t Jenny me, Gil.” Now the tears
had arrived. Hot and angry and overwhelming. I bit my tongue to stave them off,
tasted blood.
Gil pulled me into the safe circle of
his arms again. “It’ll be okay.”
“How could she?”
He smoothed my hair and kissed my
forehead. “She left me. Not you, girl.”
I pulled back, my eyes flowing freely
now. He wiped the tears with his thumbs. “She won’t call me back!” I yelled.
“She left us both!”
“That’ll change, that’ll change,” he
whispered. “She knows you’re going to give her a raft of shit, so she’s
avoiding it all for now. Even you. But Jenny, I promise you, that will change.”
“She has to come back to you,” I said.
“I’m starting to think she stopped
loving me way before now,” he said, letting me go and putting the bowl back
where it belonged. “And Jen, I’m wondering if we maybe fell out of love a long
time ago.”
That made my throat close up and I
shook my head. “But it’s okay,” he said.
“No it isn’t. Don’t say that. Don’t.
You guys
…
I thought you loved each other. It’s
the thing that made me think that one day I could be in love.”
“Goober boy out there is in love with
you,” he said, forcing a chuckle. But his face was a bit closed and he looked
hurt. There was something under it, too, that I couldn’t quite read.