The Summer Son (8 page)

I
AWOKE
to Jerry’s shaking me.

“Mitch.”

“What?” The light from the table lamp filled my eyes and cut a bleary path through the darkness of the trailer.

“Take this.”

He slipped a folded piece of paper into my hand. “Don’t let Dad see it.”

I clutched the paper and tumbled back into slumber.

“Motherfucker.”

Dad stood at the table.

“That son of a bitch. That goddamned, worthless son of a bitch.”

“What?” I said.

“Your brother. He’s gone.”

I tried to shake the sleep from my head.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Read it for yourself.”

Dad put the paper on the table and headed to the bathroom, cursing my brother all the way.

I picked it up.

Dad—

I don’t know why you did what you did. But that’s it for me. I’m out.

I’ve tried to look past everything, tried to do what was right, but I can’t do that anymore. You beat me up and you scared Mitch. I can’t do anything for him, but I can for me.

I hope she was worth it.

Jerry

The haze of sleep receded, and I remembered that Jerry had given me something. I dug the paper out of the tangle of blankets. When I unfolded it, three twenty-dollar bills fell out.

Mitch—

I have to leave. After tonight, there’s no way I can stay.

I’m worried about you, but you’re just a kid. I don’t think he is going to hurt you.

If he does, you call Mom. Call her right away. She’ll buy you a plane ticket, and this money will get you to Cedar City.

Dad’s calling card number is 40655287679829. Use it any time you need it.

Don’t spend this money on candy and crap. Hold it. Use it only if you have to.

Don’t let Dad see this. Don’t let him know you have this money.

Keep your head down and do what he says.

Jerry

I stashed the letter and the money in my back pocket until I could find a better hiding place.

When Dad returned, he said, “Let’s go. We’ll find him.”

“Where’s that girl?” I said.

“What girl?”

“From last night.”

“Don’t worry about her. She’ll find her way out.”

At Jerry’s place, we found only Toby, who sat in the kitchen in his work clothes, sipping a cup of coffee.

“He woke me up around three, Jim. He said he was leaving.”

Dad stalked around the place, throwing open empty drawers in Jerry’s room, picking through the newspapers and magazines.

“He took everything,” Toby said. He stood in the doorway.

“He didn’t say shit about where he was going?” Dad asked.

“Not to me.”

“I bet you he told that girl,” Dad said. Then he looked at his watch. It was after six a.m., and we were late.

“I’ll talk to her later. We’ve got to get to work. You guys get in the pickup.”

I noted ruefully that things had turned out exactly as Jerry had predicted. Dad had run off another hand, and it now suited his purposes that I could pilot the pickup.

“We’re just a couple of days from a break,” Dad said on the drive out. “I don’t have the time to get a new hand. Toby, you’re moving up. Mitch, you can drive the pickup and do the shoveling. We’ll just push through.”

Toby and I nodded but were otherwise silent.

A few minutes passed.

“He’ll be back,” Dad said.

Nothing Toby or I did was correct—and to be fair, with Jerry gone, our crew wasn’t half as efficient as it had been. Toby, having never been the lead guy, moved slowly, mishandling the pipe, not working in concert with Dad on the connections the way Jerry did.

I was even worse. I wasn’t strong enough to carry two boxes of explosives at a time, the way Toby could, and when he tried to cover for me, he left Dad hanging. I couldn’t shovel fast enough to keep the churned-up earth out of the pit. When I had worked with Toby at shoveling, my effort had been appreciated, in that it lightened the load. As a solo shoveler, I was a disappointment. Dad continually jumped from his perch to augment my efforts, cursing me and his sorry luck to have such an insufficient couple of workers.

Toby and I got lit into something fierce that first day without Jerry, and after four holes had been dug in the time we would usually need for six or seven, Dad announced in a profanity-laced soliloquy that we were “shutting the motherfucker down for the day.”

The only person who spoke on the drive in was Dad, and he punctuated vast stretches of silence with a mix of proclamations, intimidations, and lamentations.

“When that son of a bitch comes back, he’s in for a surprise, because I ain’t taking his ass back on this crew.”

Silence.

“You guys better be a lot goddamned better tomorrow than you were today, or there’s going to be changes around here.”

Silence.

“Two half days of work just before break. It’s pathetic.”

Silence.

“I should have fired his ass before he could leave. Worthless.”

Silence.

“Mitch, time to be a big boy. I don’t want to hear shit about what you can’t do. You need to start doing.”

Silence.

“Jesus. Why now?”

Dad dropped Toby off and demanded directions to Denise’s house. Toby clearly didn’t want to cough up the information, but he seemed aware of the consequences of saying no. He spilled it.

Dad burned rubber getting there.

“Stay in the truck,” he said.

He got out and walked to the front door, kicking up dust as his boots, caked with dried mud, landed on the gravel driveway.

Denise answered and looked none too pleased with who she found on her doorstep.

Dad talked first, and Denise shook her head violently at his questions. Then, eyes aflame, she started in, jabbing her left index finger in the air toward him.

I leaned into the passenger door and slowly cranked down the window, hoping to catch a few words. I kept my eyes forward; Dad had been looking back at the truck, and I didn’t want him to know I was spying.

“Calm down, little girl. I’m just asking if you know where he went.”

“No, no, I don’t know,” Denise said. “He wouldn’t tell me. He knew you’d be here. He doesn’t want you to know.”

“Well, then, you’ll tell me when he calls you.”

“Not a chance. I’d never tell you.”

Dad headed back to the pickup. I cranked the window up.

“Listening in, huh?” he said as he opened the door.

“It got too hot in here.”

“Whatever you say, Mitch.” Dad smirked at me.

We were back at the trailer before he spoke again.

“She doesn’t know where he is. Fuck him then.”

I sneaked away after dinner and found a pay phone. I had no reason to be surreptitious. Dad didn’t speak to me while we ate. He disappeared into his own thoughts and grudges, and I was just part of the scenery.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, my prince.” It was somehow comforting to hear her use the nickname that I otherwise detested. “How are you?”

“I’m doing good.”

“How’s Jerry? How’s your dad?”

“Jerry’s fine, I guess. Dad’s OK.”

“Is Jerry there? Can I talk to him after we’re done?”

“Jerry left.”

“What do you mean?”

“Jerry quit and left.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why would he do that?”

“He didn’t like working for Dad, I guess.”

“Is your father there with you?”

“No. I’m at a pay phone.”

“This doesn’t make sense. Where did Jerry go?”

“I don’t know. He just left.”

“And nothing happened to cause this?”

“Not that I know of.”

“I don’t understand this at all.”

The call continued along those lines for a few more minutes, with Mom confused about what was happening in Milford and worried about Jerry, and with me playing dumb. If I told Mom the truth, I knew I would have to leave Milford and leave my father, probably for good. The finality of that frightened me, and so I let Mom flop in confusion on the other end of the line.

The decision, or the compulsion, to keep my mouth closed came with a heavy burden. Damned few days go by without my pondering a question I can’t answer. Had I told Mom the truth, could Jerry have been found and persuaded to reconsider? Could that have changed things for our fated family?

But to do all of that, you invoke the butterfly theory, where the ripples of one decision change everything else. There’s no way to know how things would have shaken out had Jerry stayed. And it’s the not knowing that breaks me down a little at a time.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, Toby met us at the diner at five. He looked nervously at me as he walked in. It turned out that my peripatetic father was in better spirits, a development that served only to throw Toby and me further off-kilter.

“Last day before break, fellas,” Dad said, toasting us with his coffee cup. “Let’s make it a good one.”

We dug into our breakfast, happy that the noose had been loosened and not wanting to tempt a fresh hanging by asking Dad what had changed in twenty-four hours.

It didn’t much matter, anyway.

I rolled onto my back with the grease gun in my hand, ready to go to work on the water truck. My quarry were little steel outlets on the joints that Dad called nipples—a word that could elicit giggles from a boy. But, indeed, that’s what they looked like. I had to find them, pop the extension from the grease gun over them, and pump the trigger until the joint was filled.

I pushed at the brittle earth with my boot heels, wriggling underneath the truck from the back side of it. I found the nipples on the rear axle and transfer case, held the rubber extension in place with my left hand, positioned the metal tubing of the gun against my right side, and cocked the trigger four times. Job done.

I again pushed with my feet, propelling myself nearer the front of the truck. I had moved about two feet when something thumped heavily against my hard hat, knocking it askew.

I tilted my head and nearly dumped my bowels. A rattler coiled against the passenger-side front tire, and it shook the end of its tail furiously.

I froze, resisting the compulsion to roll quickly to my right and out from under the truck. I dared not do it. One move, and it might well strike again. Now that I faced it, it wouldn’t miss. Warm water ran down my leg as my bladder released.

“Mitch, get a move on.” Dad came around the other side of the water truck to see what was taking so long. He kicked at my foot, and my flinch set the rattler to shaking a fresh warning.

“Oh shit,” he said. “Mitch, where is he?”

“Right front tire.” I squeaked the words. The snake persisted in its warning. I stared into its night-black eyes, and I waited in terror.

I heard Dad’s steps carry him away. I learned later that he walked a wide circle around to the other side of the water truck, so as not to set off the snake. In the throes of my fear, I thought he was leaving, and I silently panicked. The snake and I stayed in staring stalemate. I wasn’t going to move, and the snake sensed no safe exit. The thick, aluminum taste of fear spread into my mouth.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I watched as the blade of a shovel moved in slowly from the other side of the truck. I held my breath and kept my gaze on the snake, which watched me just as intently.

It ended in an instant. Dad dropped the shovel blade onto the snake’s neck, and it thrashed wildly. “Now,” Dad yelled, and Toby grabbed my foot and pulled me out the other side. My chin bounced against the ground, and my teeth clamped on my tongue, gashing it and sending the tinny blood running into my mouth and throat. I heard Dad pummel the rattler with the shovel.

When he was done, Dad came around to the other side, where I sat on the dirt, shocked, my wet drawers clinging to me. My chin bled heavily, soaking my work shirt. He knelt down and took my chin in his right hand.

“Did he get you?” Dad’s eyes widened.

“No.”

“I think I banged him up pulling him out,” Toby offered.

“Are you OK, sport?”

“No.”

My father wrapped his arms around me. I dropped my head into his shoulder and wept.

After Dad patched me up and rounded up a new shirt and a fresh pair of pants, we put in a full day. I was unharmed, at least physically, although I returned repeatedly to the rattler’s strike at my head and thought of how a change to the geometry—a strike that found skin instead of hard plastic—would have made the situation dire. It seemed that the episode shook Dad more than me. For the rest of the day, we went quietly about our work, and when Toby or I messed up, Dad simply stepped in to help, with none of the profane barking and belittling we had come to expect.

When the last of the holes had been dug and Dad had tied his report to the stake, he said we would move the equipment to Milford for the break. If it sat out in the backcountry for a week, he said, it would be stripped bare before we returned.

I instantly grasped the import of this, at least for me. Three of us and three trucks. I would have to drive the pickup twenty-five miles to town on a state highway, at eleven years old. Adrenaline and fear flooded into my head and my gut. I would be using the upper two speeds of the four-speed pickup, traveling faster than I ever had while bouncing across the sagebrush.

Dad saw the faraway look in my eyes.

“Mitch, I want you in between us,” he said. “First me, then you, then Toby. You take your cues from me. You got that?”

“Yeah.”

That drive was easily my crowning moment as a kid. I settled into the driver’s seat, pulled my cap low on my head, slipped on a pair of Dad’s sunglasses, which were far too big for my face, and lurched the pickup into gear behind Dad.

We traversed a few miles of rugged country and dirt roads before reaching the Ely Highway, where we turned right, toward Milford. The big rig took a while to dial up to cruising speed, and so I gradually guided the Supercab into second gear, and then third, and then, finally, fourth. I periodically checked the rearview mirror and saw Toby plugging along behind me.

As we met vehicles traveling the opposite way, I knew that Dad would give them the standard, understated trucker salute—a left index finger lifted off the steering wheel—and so I did the same, and I thrilled every time my greeting received one in kind. There I was, piloting a pickup, and other drivers were buying it. I would have stories to tell back at Garfield Elementary.

The drive to Milford, seemingly endless on most days, finished far too quickly. Dad pulled into a gas station on the town’s edge, climbed from the rig, and went inside to ask if we could put the trucks there. When he emerged, Dad signaled that it was the place. I shut off the pickup and got out to help lock everything down.

“You did good, sport,” Dad said as we walked back to the pickup. He grabbed the bill of my cap and shook it from side to side.

“You’re going to be a truck-driving man yet.”

I showered and changed into fresh clothes, then packed up my stuff. Dad sat at the table, reconciling finances.

I itched to get outside. The rush from the drive still coursed through me, and the tiny trailer couldn’t contain my exuberance. I wasn’t sure anything could. Maybe I’d just go to the park across the street and run in circles until I was spent.

“Dad, can I go out for a walk?”

He glanced up from his work and looked me over.

“You all packed?”

“Yes.”

“Go ahead then.”

I banged out of the door and ran into the receding daylight.

I walked the drag toward downtown. At the Hotel Milford—its glory faded but still the most beautiful building in town—I turned right and headed up into the heart of town. At the town park, I saw a familiar face.

“Hi, Jennifer.”

Denise’s sister was with a group of three or four kids. One, a kid bigger than me and wearing only cutoff jeans, tube socks, and shoes, walked toward me.

“Who is this kid?” he said, sneering at me.

“Leave him alone, Damon. He’s my friend.”

Damon turned back to his friends and started a little chicken dance, chanting, “He’s my friend. He’s my friend,” as the others broke into laughter. I clenched my fists.

“You guys are jerks,” Jennifer said. Damon and his merry band of buttholes ran toward the other side of the park, mocking her. “He’s my friend, he’s my friend.” Damon turned around and made kissy noises.

“Just ignore them,” she said.

After the kids were gone, we started walking.

“What happened to your chin?” Jennifer asked.

I touched the bandage, fresh since my shower.

I told her about the rattlesnake, and she gasped.

“I’m glad you’re OK.”

“Me too.”

“I heard about your brother.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know where he went?”

“No. He didn’t tell me.”

“He didn’t tell Denise, either. She’s so sad.”

“So am I.”

We made laps in the park, talking about my brother and her sister. A couple of long silences intruded, but they didn’t faze me. I liked being with her.

Finally, she said, “I have to go home for dinner.”

“OK.”

“Do you want to come?”

“I’ll have to go ask my dad.”

“I’ll come with you.”

I expected a no. I knew Dad’s feelings about Denise, and I explained that Jennifer was her little sister.

He seemed delighted that I had shown up with a girl in tow. He told Jennifer that she was pretty, and he asked questions about school and her folks.

“Just be home by nine, Mitch,” Dad said. “We’ve got a long day tomorrow.”

Jennifer and I walked back through the park and over the hill to her house.

“Denise says such mean things about your dad,” she said. “I really like him.”

Jennifer’s mother made barbecued spare ribs, potato salad, corn, and bread and butter. Everything tasted so good, and Mrs. Munroe encouraged me to have seconds, then thirds. I happily obliged her on each offer.

Mr. Munroe told about working for Union Pacific. He was a second-generation railroad man. Earlier that day, he said, a train had been dead on the line fifty miles outside town. That’s railroad talk for a train whose crew has reached the end of its hours. When that happened, the train would shut down wherever it was. Mr. Munroe had to do what he called “dogcatching”—riding out in a shuttle and helping to bring the train in.

I had grown accustomed to the whistle of the trains arriving hourly before heading to Salt Lake or Las Vegas. I reveled in hearing about what it was really like in the rail yard, with all the shift changes and the loads of scrap, coal, new cars, and whatever else you could imagine coming through town.

“It sounds like a fun job,” I said.

“It’s a job,” Mr. Munroe said. “The four a.m. calls to do this or that, I could do without.”

“The missed holidays,” his wife said.

“Those too.”

I told them about Dad’s work and how I was helping now. I even told them I had driven the pickup on the highway, although I probably shouldn’t have.

“Hell, on a farm, boys come out of the womb driving trucks and tractors,” he said, and Mrs. Munroe clucked her tongue.

“Tell about the rattlesnake,” Jennifer said, and so I did, but I skipped the bit about peeing my pants, just as I had with her. Mr. Munroe whistled.

“You’re lucky, son. Real lucky.”

“Yeah. I’m glad my dad was there.”

Denise, who hadn’t said anything, spoke up.

“I think your dad’s a real asshole.”

“Denise!” her mother scolded. The table fell quiet. I filled the awkwardness by stuffing bites of spare rib into my mouth. Denise, crying, stood and ran out of the room.

“We sure hated to see your brother go, Mitch,” Mr. Munroe said as he watched his wife chase after Denise. “We liked having him around here.”

After dinner, Jennifer and I went for a walk.

“I’m glad you came,” she said.

“I’m glad you invited me. I like your family.”

“Yeah.”

We walked on.

“Mitch, are you OK here?”

“Sure. Why?”

“I don’t know…never mind.”

I stopped.

“Hey, my dad’s a good guy,” I said. “I’m sorry about Jerry too, but…well, it’s hard to explain.”

“It’s OK.”

As we rounded a corner and headed back toward her house, Jennifer slipped her hand into mine.

I intended to walk to the trailer, but Mr. Munroe shot down that plan.

“It’s getting dark,” he said. “I’ll drive you over.”

Jennifer rode with us. Nobody talked very much, but when we rolled up behind Dad’s pickup, Mr. Munroe told me, “You come see us any time, Mitch. I mean it.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Bye, Mitch,” Jennifer called out as I walked to the trailer. I turned and waved.

The trailer lights burned. I figured Dad was watching some TV before hitting the hay. Nearly eight hundred miles of driving to the ranch in Split Rail awaited us in the morning.

Inside, I didn’t find Dad. Only a note.

Mitch: Be back soon. Go to bed. Dad.

I locked the door and turned off the lights, then fired up the TV.

An hour went by, then an hour and a half. The test pattern came on the TV.

After midnight, I heard Dad walking up the gravel driveway. I flipped off the TV and dove into the covers.

Dad fiddled with his keys, trying to unlock the door. Once he was in, he came over to where I lay, and the stench of whiskey floated off him.

“Are you asleep?”

I kept my eyes shut tight.

“Mitch?”

I didn’t move.

He stayed a few moments longer. It was all I could do to keep my eyes closed. Finally, he said, “Good night.”

When I heard the bedroom door close, I opened my eyes.