“What about her?”
“I’m getting to that part. A few months ago, I came home and found some notes on the computer. She and this guy were writing e-mails to each other. She was emotionally involved.”
“What do you mean, emotionally involved?”
“Just that. It’s somebody she met over the Internet. I found a bunch of their e-mails. They talked to each other intimately, the way she and I used to. It wasn’t sex or anything like that. It was just stuff you wouldn’t want some other man to say to your wife, or your wife to say to another man.”
“The Internet, Jesus. What did you do?”
“I confronted her. She admitted it. She didn’t have a choice. She couldn’t hide it. She ended it. It wasn’t about this guy, per se. We’ve been seeing counselors, and she says she needed attention she wasn’t getting from me. But…I can’t get past it. I close my eyes, and I picture her with another man.”
“You’re sure it wasn’t sex.”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“How do you know?”
“She told me.”
“And you believe her?”
“Yeah.”
“Typical.”
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel.
“You have something to say, Pop?”
“You’re a dope.”
“Great. Thanks. Real supportive.”
“Hey, I’m trying to help here. Your wife’s screwing around, and you can’t see that? Maybe somebody should point it out.”
The blood rushed to my face. I swung the car to the side of the road and slammed on the brakes, put it into park, and faced Dad.
“Look here, you asshole. Don’t try to tell me what you think you know about Cindy. You don’t know her. You’ve never given her a chance. You don’t give other people a chance. You didn’t give one to Mom, you’ve never given one to me, and you damned sure didn’t give one to Jerry.”
“We’re talking about your wife, not Jerry or your mother,” Dad growled.
“Maybe we should. You think you know so much about how other people cheat. What can you say about your own? Mom left you because you’re a cheating son of a bitch. Same with Jerry. Just because you’re an expert, don’t act like you know what goes on in my house.”
The double-barrel shot of my anger left Dad looking worn down.
“You know shit-all nothing,” he said.
“Yeah, I do know,” I said, and I steered the car back to the road. Ahead, I saw the turnoff to Split Rail, where I could show him just how much I knew.
THE ROAD TO SPLIT RAIL | JUNE 30, 1979
IT WAS STILL dark when Dad shook me awake. “Mitch, let’s get moving.”
I stretched and yawned. “What time is it?”
“Just after five. Come on, sport, get up. Take a shower if you want. I’ll load up.”
I pulled on pants, socks, and tennis shoes, grabbed a pillow, and stumbled out to the pickup. I climbed into the back and found sleep again.
By the time I awoke, almost three hours had passed and we were nearly to Provo. Dad’s cap—emblazoned with “JQ Drilling Co.”—rode high on his forehead, almost the opposite of how I wore mine, pulled low with the fabric on the bill pressed smooth by my constant shaping it. The yellow highway lines shot past, and Dad hummed along to a Ronnie Milsap eight-track.
“I’m coming up.” I slid over the seat, nearly clipping Dad in the face with my feet.
“Watch it.”
“Sorry, Pop.”
It was just after eight, and the sun bathed the surrounding mountains, slowly filling in the darkest corners and sparkling off the road ahead of us.
“You hungry, sport?”
“Yeah.”
He smiled at me from behind his sunglasses.
“All right. Let’s get on the other side of town here and we’ll find a truck stop.”
Dad went back to humming a Milsap tune—“Let’s Take the Long Way around the World”—while I gazed out the window. Provo came into view, tucked into the Utah Valley and lorded over by Mount Timpanogos. Its beauty captivated me in a way that dusty, windy Milford could not. I soaked up the scene, happy to be free of work and worry. I wanted to ride that road, and my father’s good mood, as far as it would carry us.
We steered into a truck stop between Provo and Orem and hopped out of the Supercab. I lifted my arms above my head and reached for the sky, enjoying the tingle as my latent muscles awoke. Dad stepped lively over to the gas pumps and started glad-handing. If a trucker showed an inclination for conversation, Dad would oblige him. He spoke the language of the long-hauler, and he would quiz the drivers about their cargo and their destination, offering any information he had about speed traps and accepting any reciprocal wisdom. Jokes he heard would be rewarded with a gut laugh. Those he told would be accompanied by his grasping his newest buddy’s shoulder as he delivered the punch line.
You would have thought he was running for office.
After an extended tour of the pumps, Dad ambled back my way and we headed inside. The lady at the cash register got a wink and a “darlin’.” The haggard, fifty-something waitress got the same.
Dad asked for eggs over hard, toast, bacon, and hash browns, the breakfast he’d had every morning since I arrived. I went with the tall stack of pancakes.
“Did you have fun last night?” Dad asked.
I should ask him that question, I thought, and then I wisely reconsidered.
“Yeah, it was neat.”
“What did you have to eat?”
I told him about Mrs. Munroe’s feast and how the food kept coming. He asked what Mr. Munroe did for a living, and I told him that too, as well as some of the railroad stories that Jennifer’s dad had relayed.
“They sound like nice people.”
“They are.”
“Sort of makes you wonder how they raised such a bitch of a daughter.”
“Denise doesn’t like you very much, either.”
“What’d I ever do to her?”
The arrival of food ensured that I wouldn’t have to answer his question.
Dad, chipper right up through breakfast, didn’t have the energy to keep it going. The road began to wear on him. The morning rush in Salt Lake had pretty well cleared by the time we hit town, but even the slight crowding of the freeway put him on the defensive. He yanked out the eight-track tape with an “Enough of that shit.” As we pushed through the gut of the Salt Lake, Dad told me to hush up and let him concentrate on driving. The towns that sat beyond—Layton, Clinton, Ogden, Brigham City—came into view and then dropped back, and Dad seemed to sink deeper into his seat, his gaze growing longer as each mile clicked off. We had covered nearly three hundred of them. Five hundred more lay in front of us.
It became an endurance test, with his patience pitted against my happy chatter pitted against the asphalt.
I punctured silences with futile attempts at conversation.
When Dad whistled admiringly at a passing Peterbilt hauling cattle, I asked him, “Is that a good truck?”
“Peterbilt does good work, yeah.”
“How come you bought an International?”
“Deal was right.”
“Do you wish you had a Peterbilt?”
“No.”
“What about Kenworth, is that a good truck?”
“Mitch, shut up, huh?”
And then later:
“Dad?”
“Huh?”
“Did you play baseball when you were a little kid?”
“A little.”
“My team was good. I wonder if they won their last game.”
“Don’t know.”
“What was the name of your team?”
“I don’t remember.”
“What position did you play?”
“Is there a point to this, Mitch?”
And then, finally:
“I’m going to ride my motorcycle when we get there.”
“It’ll be late. You can ride it tomorro
w.”
“That’s what I meant.”
I waited a few beats and then said, “Dad?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I get a new motorcycle this summer?”
He looked at me. “What’s wrong with the one you have?”
“I’m a lot bigger than I was two years ago.”
“I don’t know.”
“Please?”
“Don’t beg.”
“OK, but will you think about it?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll—”
“Shut up about it. Jesus. Do you ever stop talking?”
In Pocatello, we gassed up again. Dad slipped me a fiver and precise instructions.
“Buy a magazine or a book, something that will help you fill the time. You need to stop jabbering at me.”
“Yeah, OK.”
I slunk into the store as Dad handled things at the pump. I should have been happy to have the money—five dollars was a lot of money to a kid my age—but I wasn’t. I didn’t understand why it made him feel better to make me feel worse.
I returned with my arms full of comic books—Archie and Jughead, Richie Rich, Donald Duck, and whatever else I could lay my hands on. The comics, particularly the back pages, proposed a hundred ways a boy like me could burn his cash. Sea monkeys, selling Grit magazine, X-ray goggles, you name it. I had no cash to blow, having spent the money Dad gave me on the magazines (and remembering Jerry’s words that the other sixty dollars I had was off-limits to capricious spending). I disappeared into the magazines as we continued our long slog north, and back on the open road, Dad finally loosened up again, popping some Willie Nelson into the eight-track. Blackfoot and Idaho Falls and Rexburg beckoned, and then we would see West Yellowstone, by far the prettiest part of our drive. Soon enough, we would be on the last stretch to the ranch.
In West Yellowstone, we stopped for a late lunch at a drive-in hamburger joint. Dad shoved fries into his mouth. I slurped soda and thumbed through a comic book with greasy fingers.
“What do you have there?” Dad said.
I held up a Richie Rich.
“Richie Rich and his girlfriends,” Dad read from the cover. Four girls were popping out of a big birthday cake.
“Those are all his girlfriends?” Dad said.
“Yep.”
“Lucky guy. Do you have any girlfriends?”
“No.”
“What about that girl from last night?”
My face flushed red.
“Yeah,” Dad teased. “You like that girl.”
“Dad, I have to go pee.”
He looked at his watch. “Hurry.”
I didn’t really have to go. I jogged into the restaurant anyway and went into the men’s room, locking the door behind me. Instead of doing business, I read the walls, which had been well marked by the lavatory’s many bored visitors. I could see that the management of the restaurant had made a few losing attempts at stemming the flow of bathroom innuendo. The graffiti apparently reached a critical mass, and there was no more sense in resisting. It wasn’t literature, of course, but I could see some merit in the knife-scratched words of someone who proudly called himself the Shithouse Poet:
West to East
East to West
Across This Great Land
Of Fruit and Grain
High and Low
From Door to Door
The Shithouse Poet Rides Again
THE ROAD TO SPLIT RAIL | JUNE 30, 1979
I WALKED OUT of the drive-in doors and saw Dad talking to a long-haired man in tight jeans that frayed at the bell bottoms. Dad spotted me and pointed, and the man turned and waved. Dad jerked his thumb toward the back of the pickup, and the young guy threw his duffel bag into the box.
As I walked to the front of the truck, I got a close look at the guy, who was holding the door open for me. He was in his early twenties, I figured. His freckled face had been darkened by the sun and was ringed by a thin, scraggly, dirty-blond beard. He gave a cheerful smile and ushered me into the pickup.
“Hey, man,” he said. “I’m Brad.”
I acknowledged his handshake and said, “Hi.”
“This fella’s going to ride with us for a bit,” Dad said.
“OK.”
Brad piled in next to me, and I returned to a familiar position—wedged between two men on the pickup’s bench seat. The new guy smelled ripe.
We rolled out of town, skirting the stands of conifers on the western edge of Yellowstone National Park.
“Appreciate the lift, Mr.…”
“Quillen,” I said.
“Jim,” Dad said.
“Appreciate the lift, Jim.”
Dad nodded. I thumbed at my magazines idly, but I had lost interest in them. I looked up at our guest.
“Why are you hitchhiking?” I asked.
“I was working.”
“At what?” Dad said.
“I was with a road crew for a while, a flagger. Now I’m just trying to get back to Bozeman and figure out what’s next.”
“You looking for work?” Dad said.
“Yeah. Do you know of some?”
“Maybe.”
I didn’t like Brad at first. He had intruded on us and was trying too hard to be liked, plus he stank to high heaven. Soon, though, I was happy to have someone who would talk to me. He said he had dropped out of college in California the previous fall—“I missed Montana really bad,” he said—and had moved home and hooked a job with a road crew. It ended in West Yellowstone.
“What happened?” Dad asked.
“Didn’t get along with the boss. Personality conflict.”
Dad grunted. I knew he wouldn’t see such a thing in Brad’s favor. Dad had fired a whole lot of guys, and it had never been his fault. And personality conflicts? The only personality that counted was Dad’s.
Once I figured out that Brad would lend an ear, I spilled loads of chatter on him. I told him how my parents had met, that we had lived in Billings, that she had left. I told him about Jerry. I told him about Marie. I told him about my driving the pickup. On and on I talked, with no revelation too personal or trivial. My loneliness was such that any listener, even one desperate for a ride, represented a chance to unload.
“I don’t think your dad wants you giving out family secrets,” Brad said, sending a nervous glance in my father’s direction.
I turned and looked at Dad. His jaw clenched hard, but he said nothing. I’d put him in a hell of a spot. I knew he wanted me to pipe down, but I also knew he wouldn’t berate me in front of a stranger.
I turned away and started chattering at Brad again.
We reached Bozeman at dusk, and Dad pulled over at a gas station. Brad would have to cover the last stretch on his own.
Before Brad left, Dad said, “If you’re serious about work, we’ll be here a week from today, around ten in the morning. You can come with us back to Utah and work on my drilling crew.”
“Seriously?” Brad said.
“Serious as a heart attack.”
“Ten a.m. next Saturday. I’ll be here.”
“Make sure of it. If I get here and don’t see you, I’m gone. On this crew, you’re on time.”
“You can count on it.”
Brad gave a wave and started walking. Dad put the pickup in gear.
“About next week,” he said to me. “Your endless talking is over with. You got that?”
I averted my eyes.
Dad eased the Ford onto the road in front of the gas station, then barreled down the ramp onto I-90 eastbound. I rode in silence for ten minutes or so and then drifted off to sleep.
It was dark when I woke up. Dad had stopped the pickup, and I watched the headlights illuminate him as he fought with the lock on the steel gate to the ranch access road.
“You were dozing pretty good,” he said when he climbed back into the cab.
“We’re here?”
“We’re here.”
We bumped along on th
e pockmarked route, until I saw the ranch house. Every light in the place was on, and the beams cut gouges into the dark.
Dad eased the pickup into the driveway, and when he saw that Marie’s car wasn’t in its place, he punched the dashboard. I flinched.
“What the hell?” he said.
I sat still, waiting.
Dad sighed.
“Well, grab your things,” he said. “Let’s go in.”
SPLIT RAIL | SEPTEMBER 20, 2007
I CLUTCHED THE STEERING wheel hard, relenting only after the pain hit my shoulders, and Dad sat indignant in the passenger seat of my rented Ford. We rode in silence those final few miles after the turn toward Split Rail. The well-worn state highway dropped behind us, and we climbed a sandstone butte, stacked layer upon layer like a wafer cookie. The deeper we pushed into the country, the angrier the road to Split Rail became.
“How long since you were out here?” I asked. As the curtain of silence fell, I exhaled.
“Long time.”
“I don’t remember the road being this bumpy.”
“People here don’t pay their taxes,” he said. I smiled. All my life, that had been his stock answer for anything that wasn’t right with the world. Roads in bad shape? People don’t pay their taxes. No emergency clinic in the neighborhood? People don’t pay their taxes. Dropouts plaguing the high school? People don’t pay their taxes. For everything I wished were different about the old man, I found comfort in just as many things that never changed.
We fell silent as I chewed on whether to push the question. I decided to risk it.
“No, seriously, how long since you’ve been here?”
I held my breath.
“It’s got to be three years, at least. Helen and I came out and saw Charley once in a while, but that didn’t last after she got sick.”
The Summer Son Page 10
