by Garth Stein
“Abuse?” Evan asks.
“Okay, I’ll say ‘warm’ when you’re getting close and ‘cold’ when you’re going the wrong direction: your hand is on fire right now.”
“Frank was beating Dean.”
“Ouch. Put out the fire, Evan. You’re too close.”
“He was just a kid, ” Evan says.
“Yeah, you’re right. Think about that for a minute, Evan. He was just a kid. Your kid. And you weren’t protecting him.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Sure. The Germans said the same thing. They didn’t know.”
“Go on, ” Evan says.“Tell me.”
“So Tracy came home one vacation and saw what had happened.”
“What happened?”
“You don’t know? You know.”
“Frank hit Dean.”
“‘Hit’ is a good euphemism.”
“Punched?” Evan ventures.
Brad doesn’t answer for a moment.
“You ever watch boxing, Evan?”
“Yeah, sometimes.”
“Yeah, well, you know how it’s illegal for one guy to hold the back of the other guy’s head while punching him?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you know why?”
Of course Evan knows why. Because if a fist hits a head and the head recoils, the energy of the blow is diminished. But if someone is holding the head, there’s nowhere for the energy of the blow to go but into the head.
“I know why, ” he says.
“Okay, then. Next question.”
“Is that what happened?”
“Next question.”
“Brad, is that what happened?”
“Don’t make me hang up on you, Evan. I won’t answer again. Next question.”
Evan takes a deep breath. He wants more information. He can’t piss Brad off yet.
“Did she finish law school?” he asks.
“She did.”
“That must have been hard.”
“It was.”
“That’s when Frank and Ellen moved to Walla Walla?”
“Good, ” Brad says.“You’re doing great.”
“Then what?”
“You tell me.”
“I need help, ” Evan says.
“She started out working for the union, the apple pickers union. She did a great job. Too great.”
“What do you mean?”
“The growers sent someone to have a little talk with her. She defended herself fine, but she realized that it wasn’t worth it. She didn’t want to worry that one day her house might get burned down because some disgruntled grower was pissed that she got an extra five-minute bathroom break for the pickers, you know?”
“Which house?” Evan asks.“The house I’m in now?”
“You’re in Yakima? Good for you. No, not that house. She was renting a dump somewhere else. The house you’re in was her reward.”
“You lost me.”
“It wasn’t worth it, ” Brad says “I told her it wasn’t worth it. So she took their offer.”
“The growers.”
“They weren’t stupid. They knew how smart she was, so they offered her a bunch of money to join their side. They created some new post for her, ‘worker advocate’ or something. It was all a sham, of course, but it was an irresistible sham. She jumped ship. Everything that she stood for. She chucked it all for money. Money does strange things to people, Evan. But I cut her slack on that. She had Dean to worry about, after all. And Dean didn’t have a father.”
“That was two years ago, ” Evan says.
“Very good, Evan.”
“When she bought her house. She bought her house two years ago, didn’t she?”
“Excellent.”
“Suddenly she had a lot of money. Investment account, IRA, college account for Dean.”
“You’ve been doing research, Evan. I’m impressed. Can I go back to sleep?”
“No, ” Evan says.
“There’s something about you, Evan, ” Brad says. “I don’t know. I can see what she saw in you, to a certain extent. I mean, you seem like you don’t know what’s going on, but deep down you know exactly what’s going on, don’t you? That’s the double-edged sword, Evan. I like you for it, but I also hate you for it, you know?” Evan. I like you for it, but I also hate you for it,
“She was really smart, ” Evan says.“Go on.”
“Yeah, she was smart, but she was also stupid. He used to beat the crap out of me, but the second I had a chance, I was out of there. He used to hit Tracy, too, but she never left. Why not?”
“He never hit her.”
“Yes he did, Evan.”
“No—”
“Body shots. Nothing that couldn’t be covered with a T-shirt.”
“No—”
“Dude, what’s your deal?” Brad suddenly shifts, the tone of his voice changes.
“My deal?”
“Your deal. What is it? I mean, you gave her money to have the abortion, she told me all about that.”
“Well, yeah.”
“And then you stopped calling. You never called her. She was up all night, every night, crying, trying to hide being pregnant, and you never called her. What were you thinking?”
“She wanted the abortion.”
“She said she wanted the abortion. Theoretically she wanted the abortion. But did she really want the abortion?”
“Well, how am I supposed to know something like that?”
“I don’t know, Evan. By calling her and asking?”
“But I—”
“Hey, Evan, did I tell you I heard your song on the radio? They were playing it all the time for a while. Remember that?”
“Yeah.”
“Tracy heard it, too. She called me and was practically crying into the phone she was so proud of you, you fuck.”
“What?”
“Why didn’t you ever call her, you fuck?”
“She—”
“Fuck you. She didn’t do anything. You came to see her in the hospital, which was totally inappropriate, by the way. I saw you there. I saw you pressing your nose up to the nursery window. I saw you running down the hallway, trying to escape. What were you thinking?”
“I—”
“Shut up, Evan. You know? Why didn’t you ever look for her? You knew she had the kid.”
“I tried.”
“Bullshit, you tried. Did you hire a P.I. to look into it? Did you canvass the state with flyers with her picture on it? Did you put her face on the back of a milk carton? Did you contact the real estate company? Call the phone company? Try sending her a letter with ‘please forward’ written on it? Did you make one single effort to find her?”
“No.”
“Then tell me, Evan, how did you try?”
“I—I asked around.”
Brad laughs bitterly. “Passive-aggressive theater, ” he says. “You asked around.”
“I was just a kid.”
“Yeah. So was she. But she was a kid with a baby.”
Brad pauses for a response, but he doesn’t get one.
“You know how Frank found out?” he asks.“You’ll like this. I mean, you understand that Frank had to find out. If Frank hadn’t found out, she would have had the abortion and that would have been that. But since she didn’t want to have the abortion, she had to let Frank find out, because she knew he would stop it, and she would have the baby, which is what she wanted—but, of course, you didn’t know that because she never told you that. So, you’ll like this, Frank got drunk one night—”
“I thought Mormons didn’t drink.”
“Welcome to Planet Earth, Evan. He got drunk one night and he was mad as hell, and she said something at dinner, I don’t even remember what, but it was obvious that she was jerking his chain. I mean, looking back on it, she had it totally set up. She mouthed off to him and he told her he was going to beat her, and she broke down, she said she was pregnant and she didn’t want him to
kill the baby. Oh, man, he blew. He asked her who the father was because he was going to kill him. She started crying; she wouldn’t tell because she had to protect you. So I made a stupid crack: I told him it was me. I was just trying to deflect the energy, you know? But he beat the shit out of me that night, Evan. I took it for you. He knew I wasn’t the father, but he knew that she would never tell, and he was mad, so he beat the shit out of me. I still have scars from that, Evan.”
“I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. Listen, Evan, I’ve always liked you. But you think you’re the victim in all this, and you’re not. You’re the one who got away clean. You owe me one, Evan. One day I’ll call you on it.”
“Yeah, okay, ” Evan says, completely rattled by Brad’s claims.
“I gave you Dean, ” Brad says. “I put him right in your lap. You think they would’ve called you? Think again. I gave him to you.”
“Thanks, Brad, I owe you one.”
Brad laughs derisively.
“Fuck you, Evan, ” he says.“Take the one you owe me and shove it up your ass, you pompous fuck. Don’t call me again.”
The line goes dead.
• • •
EVAN IS BLOWN away by his conversation with Brad. Is everything that Brad said true? All of it? The beatings, mental anguish, the way it all came to be? He staggers to Tracy’s room and throws himself on the bed. It doesn’t make sense. Frank would punch Tracy in the stomach? No. Evan saw her with her shirt off plenty of times. Not on a regular basis, maybe, but often enough, when they would fool around. Although sometimes they didn’t fool around, she didn’t feel like fooling around—Wait. This is crazy. She kept her shirt on because she was covering up her bruises? No.
And the idea of punching Dean in the face. That can’t be true. Just can’t be. What kind of a human being would do such a thing? Who could hit a child at all, no less a clay-handed ogre hitting a nine-year-old kid? No.
There’s no point in trying to sleep. It won’t happen. He’s too upset. He turns on the TV, hoping to drown out his thoughts with electronic white noise.
HE’S STARTLED AWAKE by a rustling sound in the hallway. He leaps out of the bed. Is someone in the house? Burglars? Thieves? His heart pounds. He checks the clock; it’s three-fifteen. He feels especially dazed.
He walks across the room and peers down the hallway. Someone is there. It’s hard to see. Someone in the dark hall standing at a door. It’s the door to the linen closet. The person doing the rummaging is Dean.
“What’s going on?” Evan asks.
Dean mumbles something that Evan can’t hear. He walks toward him.
“What?”
“I have to change my bed, ” Dean mumbles a little louder.
“Why?”
“I threw up.”
Evan reaches Dean and sees, in the dim glow of the yellow bug light that spills through the front window, that Dean is practically green; he’s quite ill.
“Let me help.”
Evan takes the sheets and goes into Dean’s room. It smells awful; foul, rank, dark vomit is splattered on the sheets and blankets.
“You couldn’t make it to the bathroom?” Evan asks.
He looks back at Dean who’s swaying in the doorway, barely able to keep himself upright. Dean shakes his head slightly, then retches, tightens his lips, but a few drops spurt out; he turns and runs to the toilet, Evan hears the vomit come; he hurries to help. He waits until the round is over.
“Is it a flu? Are you sick?”
Dean shrugs listlessly, leaning against the wall of the bathroom, his legs splayed out around the toilet bowl.
“How do you feel? Are you achy? Feverish?”
“My back hurts really bad.”
“How bad?”
“Bad, bad.”
“What part?”
“Here.”
Dean points to his lower back, his kidney.
“One side, or both sides?” Evan asks.
“One side. It hurts real bad. I think I’m dying.”
Evan takes a moment to think. Projectile vomiting and severe pain in left kidney. What could that be? Kidney failure? From what? Poisoning? No—wait. From a blow. A severe blow to the kidney. Holy crap.
“Which side did you land on when you fell at the skate park?”
“I don’t know, ” Dean moans.“This one.” He points to his left side.
Oh, man. Evan’s stomach drops. Dean’s done severe damage, internal bleeding, urine is backing up, he might die—
“Let’s go!” Evan commands.
“I’m sick.”
“I’ll carry you. Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“To the hospital.”
• • •
THEY FLY THROUGH the black streets without hindrance; everyone in Yakima, including the police, sleeps at night. They fly, fly, fly to the hospital. Dean groans and turns uncomfortably in the backseat, one second lying, one second sitting up, one second heaving into a plastic garbage bag Evan has brought along. The town is silent. There is nothing to hear but the sound of four tires on rough pavement and the uneven rhythm of a boy vomiting.
The hospital comes into view, a yellow brick building all lit up like a beacon of hope for the frail and sickly. Evan skids into the parking lot and stops at the ambulance entrance. An empty ambulance is parked by the curb. The lights under the awning are so bright they hurt his eyes. Two-foot-tall red letters announce the importance of the portal: EMERGENCY ONLY.
Evan leaps from the car, rushes in. A woman sits behind a desk and is startled by Evan’s entrance.
“My son. He’s having kidney failure. He was hit. He’s vomiting. He’s in the car. I can’t carry him—”
Bam! She hits a button somewhere because in an instant, two giant orderlies come rushing at him.
“Kidney failure in the car outside, ” the woman barks.“Get him into triage, stat! How old is your son, sir?”
“Fourteen.”
“Does he have any history of kidney failure?”
“No.”
“Has anyone in your family ever—”
“No, no.”
“Why do you think it’s kidney failure, sir?”
“He fell really badly, in a skate park, you know, where they jump off ramps and spin around. He hit his lower back and got a giant bruise. He seemed fine, but then he started vomiting everywhere and he can’t move and his back hurts so much—he can’t even walk, I had to carry him to the car—he’s probably bleeding to death internally—”
“Please, sir, don’t panic.”
She picks up the phone and dials.
“Dr. Katz, we have a fourteen-year-old male with a blunt force trauma to the lower back, suspected internal bleeding and kidney damage. He is extremely ill, vomiting, lethargy, acute localized pain, inability to ambulate. Yes, sir. Of course, Dr. Katz. Very well, sir.”
She hangs up.
“Dr. Katz is our attending trauma doctor, ” she says to Evan. “He’s instructed me to bypass triage. He’s on his way.”
The gurney bearing Dean is wheeled through the lobby at high speed. Dean groans horribly. He’s covered with a sheet and is belted down.
“Prep Two, ” the woman shouts at the orderlies. She turns to Evan, “The best thing you can do is relax. Why don’t you fill this out for me?” She hands him a clipboard.“Do you have your insurance card?”
Insurance? Clipboard? His son on a gurney? No. It’s too much for Evan: he’s suddenly assumed the role of his parents, the sit-and-wait role, and he doesn’t like it. It’s easier to be the patient than the one who waits.
“Sir?”
His head starts to spin. He’s tired. Very tired. And stressed. Oh, god. Is that rubber he smells? Burning rubber?
“Is something burning?” he asks.
“No, sir. Are you all right?”
He feels not-so-all right, actually. A little dizzy. His insurance card. A clipboard. Dean disappears down a hallway. Evan hears meta
l rings scrape against a metal rod as a privacy curtain is snapped shut. He hears a wail of pain from Dean.
“Sir?”
“I have epilepsy, ” Evan says to her. He holds up his hand, shows her his bracelet. “Please call my neurologist in Seattle. He will tell you exactly what to do.”
“Sir?”
“Don’t do anything until you’ve called him.”
“Are you all right?”
“Don’t touch me until you’ve called him. Do you understand me?”
“Sir?”
And then the blow comes, the blunt end of an axe swung hard by a big, strong man intending to chop down a tree with one magnificent swing; the blow comes, striking him just below the base of his skull; his head snaps back, his arms flail, his legs go rigid; he falls.
EVAN GAVE HER the money she asked for one afternoon as they walked home from school together: he handed her the envelope he had gotten from the bank, blue with a white stripe and holes neatly punched in it for some unknown reason.
He offered to drive her to the doctor, to wait for her, to drive her home. She said no. He asked her if there was anything he could do. She said no. He asked her if there was any way she would reconsider, if there weren’t some way they could grow up quickly, keep the baby. She said no.
“Tracy, I—”
“What, Evan?”
“I want . . .”
“You want what, Evan?”
He wanted so much. He wanted to be older and more mature and to tell her again that he wanted to keep his child. Even if she didn’t want him, he wanted to keep the kid.
“Are you sure we can’t try to make it work?”
“And if it doesn’t work out, Evan, what do we do then?”
She smiled sadly when she saw that he had no answer.
“You can’t force someone to be a father, Evan, ” she said. “My mother forced my father, and look at him. Bitter and mean. I won’t do that.”
But it wouldn’t be forcing anything. She wouldn’t have to force.
“Go, Evan, ” she said, “follow your dream. Be famous. Make me proud.”
“But I—”
“But what, Evan?”
What could he say to her? That he didn’t want to be famous? No. She was giving him a gift, releasing him, giving him a mission. Go, be famous.
She turned and walked up the street, flat and dry, dirt for sidewalks and ditches to collect the rain.
