by D. K. Wall
Danny reached out from his chair and wrapped his hand around Nathan’s arm. “Calm down. You don’t know that.”
Nathan’s body quivered. “I know a lot of things. Hank lives in Atlanta, so why would he buy lottery tickets at Abe’s? And I know my lottery ticket was in my jacket I left at my house when I found them boning each other. And my wife tells you she cleans my jacket, so she admits she had it. And, amazingly, that thief who already stole my wife and is trying to steal my son calls his brother and tells him he won the lottery. I think I know exactly what happened.”
“That’s a whole bunch of assumptions, so hold on and calm down.”
“How much more am I supposed to let him take from me?”
“Think, Nathan. Donna wouldn’t do that to you even if Hank would.” He motioned toward the parking lot. “Let’s go out to the van and check the duffel. My bet is she put it in there with your clothes.”
Nathan stood, grabbed his jacket, and walked toward the door. As he rolled outside, Danny waved his hand at Sammy, an indication he would be right back inside. No one risked being banned from one of the few bars in town by stiffing an unpaid bill.
Out in the parking lot, Danny pulled open the van doors to reveal the large canvas duffel. Nathan opened the bag and removed neatly folded clothing, at first slowly but then with increasing franticness. Halfway through, he picked up the bag in frustration and dumped the contents on the van floor. He rifled through the clothes without success.
Defeated, he sat down on the bumper and faced his friend. “Told you. Not here.” The anger he had felt melted from his body, replaced with an aching emptiness. “He steals my wife. Makes it so I can’t go to my own house. He’s taking my kid to Atlanta so I’ll never see him. And now he pockets my lottery winnings.” His voice faded off. He half-heartedly kicked a pebble on the asphalt.
Danny watched the rock bounce across the lot. “So, what do you want to do?”
Barely above a whisper, Nathan said, “I don’t know if I have any fight left.”
Danny rolled close, bumping his knees into Nathan’s and forcing him to look up. “You’re not a quitter. Never have been. So don’t you dare give up on me.”
A faint smile crossed his face. “Yes, Coach.” He stared at his boots and mumbled, “But I need a timeout. I need to think.”
They sat for several minutes, neither speaking, before Nathan stood, sucked in a deep breath, and picked up a shirt. Without any attempt to fold it, he stuffed it into the duffel. Danny watched until all the clothes were jammed into the bag. “So does this mean you want to go back inside and make a plan?”
“Nope. I’ve got something to do first. Let’s catch up over dinner.”
“What could possibly be more important?”
“I have a game to watch. I want to see my son play while I still can.”
18
Nathan planned to drive straight to the Point, but his house was just a couple of blocks off the main route, a short diversion that wouldn’t make him late for the ball game. Donna and Hank should already have been at the park, enjoying a picnic lunch with Matt, Colette, and the boys, so the house would be empty.
And if not—if they were still home—he would just keep driving. No harm, no foul.
He didn’t want to go inside. He didn’t even want to get out of the truck. He just wanted to see the house, the place that held so many happy memories—watching Jacob ride a bike without training wheels on the short driveway, playing catch in the backyard and quitting only when it became too dark to see the ball, teaching him to use tools as they worked on projects together around the house.
As the house came into view, he could see no one was home. He relaxed and parked the truck, engine idling, just down the block.
The driveway was empty. A small oil stain marked where Donna’s Ford Fiesta normally parked. Despite his best efforts, Nathan couldn’t keep the car from aging. Every time he fixed one problem, another cropped up. But he’d kept it running, saving them from having to replace it and add debt.
Could Hank fix it? Would he even try? When Abe had shown the boys how to fix something on a car, Hank would wander off through the garage, bored and inattentive. Danny, Charlie, and Nathan would have parts spread across the shop floor, figuring something out, and Hank would be sitting on a stool, regaling them with stories they had heard a hundred times.
Besides, with all that lottery money, he wouldn’t have a need to fix it. He could buy her a brand-new one, never driven by anyone, something shiny and fancy like his Dodge Charger.
Or Donna would talk him into a sleek, little convertible. Bright red. Nathan smiled despite himself at the thought of her driving down the road, hair whipping in the wind. If he had the money rather than Hank, he would buy her something like that.
As the thoughts of those winnings weaved themselves through his head, he also envisioned building her her own bathroom in a wing off the house. It would have a fancy spa tub with wide shelves for candles. She could create the private getaway she had always wanted inside their house while he and Jacob watched baseball on a brand-new wide-screen television.
He shook his head and laughed at himself, realizing he still wasn’t thinking big enough. With those winnings, they wouldn’t stay in this little house. He could build her the fanciest house ever with a private master suite. It would have a big garage to park that fancy sports car along with his brand-new pickup.
But the smile faded as quickly as his vision. Their problems wouldn’t be solved with fancy cars and houses. Their problems couldn’t be addressed with a big pile of cash.
Deep in his heart, Nathan knew they had been drifting for years. Jacob was their anchor, the passion they shared. In a few years, when he struck out on his own, nothing would be left for them. What was happening now was inevitable and probably had been inevitable from their early days of dating. If not for the pregnancy, they would have never married, just another couple breaking apart in high school.
Sobered by the thought, Nathan took a last look around. The house was tidy, well maintained through countless hours of weekend projects. It might have been small and lacking any elegance, but they had always taken pride in it.
The grass needed its weekly mowing, a task that Jacob handled under supervision. The boy was pretty good with his chores, doing most of them without nagging. Sure, he forgot sometimes—don’t all kids?—but he got them done. Doing household chores taught responsibility and contribution, lessons Nathan believed in deeply, lessons he had learned himself from his own father and then from Ronnie.
Would Hank teach Jacob those things? Show him that hard work was the key to success? Or did lucky Hank, slide-through-life Hank, wink-and-a-smile Hank even understand it? Nathan worried he couldn’t impart those lessons in just a few measly days of visitation a month.
His gaze settled on Jacob’s bicycle, leaned against the side of the house. The bicycle was old, but the chain was freshly oiled, the gears adjusted. A father-son team worked together to keep it in good shape. He’d taught Jacob how to do those repairs, how to make things work. Nathan fretted he would never find the time to teach him those necessary skills.
He hung his head as he realized he was fooling himself. Jacob would move with them to Atlanta. He would become a teenager interested in girls and sports and friends and not in hanging out with his father. He certainly wouldn’t have time for a father in some dying little town miles away when Atlanta would offer so much more than Millerton ever could. Why would Jacob want to come back here?
He gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white, silently cursing the unfairness. Hank hadn’t changed diapers. Or hovered over a sick child hot with a fever. Or sat at a dining room table, helping to solve inscrutable homework problems. Or patched up a skinned knee and wiped tears off his son’s face.
Fighting to control his emotions, Nathan shook the thoughts off. He reached down to put the truck back into gear before a voice stopped him.
“Yo, Mr. Thomas.”
He turned to see Josh, the neighbor teenage pothead, walking across his front yard. The boy was shirtless, showing off his skinny arms and hairless chest. His baggy jeans hung below his butt and exposed his yellow-smiley-face boxer shorts. His hair was mussed as though he had just crawled out of bed, and his eyes were bloodshot.
He was a likable enough boy but aimless and drifting toward trouble. His own father had never been in the picture. A stepfather had moved in a few years before, just as the boy entered the teenage years, but they never seemed to connect. Nathan tried some guidance—the boy craved it—but could do only so much in a handful of interactions. He’d been more concerned about keeping the older teen’s influence away from Jacob.
Josh leaned through the window of the truck. “I heard I missed the party yesterday.” He stretched the word party out long—parrrr-teeeee—emphasizing the last syllable as he giggled. Seeing Nathan’s confused look, he continued, “You know, the main event. The championship fight.”
Nathan shrugged, not wanting to discuss his marital problems with this kid. Undeterred, Josh rambled on. “I got home, and the whole neighborhood was buzzing about it.” He giggled again at the word “buzzing.”
Nathan tried to smile to match his neighbor’s amusement but could only bring himself to mumble an apology. “Sorry about all that.”
“Heard the cops were here and everything.”
“I guess one of the neighbors called them.”
“Nah, man, I asked around. None of them called. They never would.”
Nathan didn’t want to argue about it. It didn’t really matter who had called. Josh was probably just happy he wasn’t sitting stoned on the front porch when the police had arrived, drawing unwanted attention to himself.
Though Nathan shifted the truck into gear, the boy remained, leaning through the window and babbling. “Was it over that dude with the badass car? Man, that thing is sweet.”
“Just an argument.” He pointed down the street. “I have to get on over to the park to see Jacob’s game.”
“Game day—awesome. Super-sport Jake will be slugging homers today.”
“I sure hope so.” Nathan rolled forward but stopped and looked at his neighbor. “Josh?”
“Yeah, Mr. T?”
“Do me a favor? Don’t tell Donna I was here. I was supposed to go straight to the park, and she’ll think I forgot.”
“No worries. I forget stuff all the time. Occupational hazard and all that, you know. So I’ll just forget that you forgot.” He chuckled again, continuing to amuse himself with his own wit.
Nathan drove off, more determined that his own son would not drift down the same path Josh was on.
19
After leaving the neighborhood—and kicking himself for having driven by the house and risking the addle-brained teen telling Donna—Nathan drove to the last intersection of town, the dull traffic lights hanging from the wire marking the entrance to the industrial park.
Abe’s Market sat on the corner, the parking lot still crowded with hopeful idiots spending money they couldn’t afford on lottery tickets that would never win—or, if lightning struck twice and they did win, former friends and unfaithful wives would steal.
Several cars turned to the right, the entry to the town park. The grass around the faded entrance sign was neatly trimmed, and fresh spring flowers bloomed. Volunteers worked on Saturday mornings to handle the maintenance the town couldn’t afford. The parking lot was cluttered with cars, their occupants sitting on folding chairs or blankets and enjoying a warm spring afternoon. The younger kids’ game had just ended, and the eleven- and twelve-year-old teams were warming up on the field.
Nathan needed to find a place to watch the game before it started, but rather than heading into the park, he turned left, taking the twisting two-lane road up the hill into the forests and away from town. The timber companies still owned much of the land, so only a few sparse houses dotted the road, most barely visible through the dense trees. The ridge at the top marked the county line, the rural farmlands beyond belonging to an even poorer county, as hard as that was to imagine.
His pickup truck strained on the incline as he searched for the opening to the fire roads crisscrossing above the town through the former timberland, a turn he had taken dozens of times as a teen but rarely as an adult. Spying the two faded No Trespassing signs nailed to trees, barely visible and largely ignored, he flipped on his signal, slowed, and eased the truck onto the dirt road.
The woods were dense and his path overgrown with weeds that brushed against the undercarriage though the road was still passable. The truck’s radio antenna swung back and forth as tree limbs clipped it. The tires slipped through the ruts, bouncing against loose boulders and rough potholes. Three deer bounded across the road in front of him, startled by his intrusion on their quiet world.
The farther he went from the main road, the thicker the trees grew, blocking the sun from the ground. He bounced over a fallen tree, its trunk crushed by previous visitors. At each fork, he instinctively took the turns memorized in carefree high school days.
Light returned as the trees thinned to reveal a gurgling creek hemming in a sharp curve in the road. Giant boulders jutted out of the ground, covered with graffiti from high school kids.
Andy + Maria 4Ever
Gravity Is False. The Earth Sucks.
Hannah Gives Great Head
Tammy had been replaced in this generation by Hannah, whoever she was. No doubt, the current Hank of the high school had spray-painted her claim to fame on the granite, whether she wanted the reputation or not.
Nathan hoped Andy and Maria would find longer happiness than he and Donna had. And, with his present problems, he agreed with the anonymous muse’s thoughts on the earth though even his weak grades in high school science didn’t prevent him from understanding gravity was quite real.
Though he intended to drive straight out to the Point, he brought the truck to a stop instead and stared at a specific large boulder that loomed in his memory. A large scar was gouged out of its face from the force of a violent impact, a reminder for generations to come. A single tag spray-painted across the top had faded over the years but was still visible:
Charlie Mills R.I.P.
Graffiti on other boulders had been marked out and painted over many times, but not this one. Even though the present-day visitors to this area had been toddlers when the accident happened—the youngest might not have even been born—they honored the memory. Nathan grimaced as he realized they probably even made up ghost stories about this area being haunted by a drowned high schooler.
Torn between wanting to see the opening of his son’s game and a desire to linger in this sacred site, he reluctantly pushed open the door and stepped out into the shaded clearing. Birds whistled in the trees. Limbs swayed in the breeze. The creek sang its bubbling song. The peaceful sounds were much as they had been that night so many years before though the air was much warmer and more comforting.
As the memories flooded back, he ran his hand along the streaks carved deep into the rock face high above the ground. The screech of metal filled his ears. The helpless feeling as the car rolled over into these woods. The agony of breaking bones. The stench of spilled fuel. The distant splash as a body landed in the midst of the flowing water.
Tears filled his eyes as he carefully stepped over the tangle of rock to the tree, its bark still bearing the scars where the car had come to rest. He stared at the spot where he had lain in the dirt, holding Danny’s hand as Charlie drowned just a few feet away.
He had always been haunted by his inability to reach his best friend. The further the memory of his own pain receded, the more convinced he became that he should have been able to ford the water. He hadn’t needed the strength to pull Charlie to safety, just to hold his head above the current.
He stared at the boulder in the middle of the stream, the rock that had been Charlie’s pillow, as the bubbling waters flowed around it. In the bright light of
an April day, the creek didn’t look as intimidating as it had seemed that cold November night. The current wasn’t as swift, the water not as cold or deep. His doubts about his own efforts swirled through his mind.
He sat down on the bank, picked up a small rock, and bounced it across the surface of the stream with a flick of his wrist. The ripples disappeared quickly in the rolling water. He glanced around, sure he was alone but confirming it anyway, and said aloud, “Charlie? Can we talk? Like old times?”
The weeks and months after the accident had been some of the loneliest times in Nathan’s life. Isolated from everyone else by grief, he had no one to talk to about his empty feelings.
Once discharged from the hospital, Nathan found home life quiet and depressing. His own room wasn’t a comfort because it had been Charlie’s room first. The posters on the wall heralded music never to be heard again and movies never to be seen. The bookshelf overflowed with novels, reminders of his friend’s passion for reading. The closet door hid all the clothes hanging, waiting to be worn. But the worst was the empty bed across the room, neatly made and horribly vacant.
Still, Nathan stayed in his room as long as possible before school to avoid facing Ronnie. Only once he heard him leave for work each day would he venture into the rest of the house.
And at the end of the day, Ronnie picked at his dinner then sat in the dark den, staring at nothing, no TV or music playing. As bad as the weekdays were, the weekends were much worse, nearly interminable, hours of deafening silence.
They tried to talk, but Ronnie was so overcome with grief—and Nathan with guilt—that they found connecting nearly impossible.
School, despite the normalcy of its routine, was equally awkward. Friends treated him like damaged goods, scared to laugh and joke in case it intruded on his mourning. They tried to include him. People invited him to parties, but if he went, the mood would quiet when he arrived as people put down their drinks and drifted away. He stopped going, not wanting to kill everyone else’s fun.
