The Summer Son

by Lancaster, Craig

  “Charley looks good.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He told me Jeff’s in prison. What happened there?”

  “I don’t really know, Mitch. He doesn’t say, and I don’t pry. Maybe you shouldn’t, either.”

  My ears singed. I doubled back to the topic of Split Rail.

  “Three years? Who knows, maybe the place has changed.”

  “Split Rail never changes,” Dad said.

  I hadn’t been to Split Rail in twenty-eight years, not since that last summer with Dad. I soon found, though, that Dad was right. We rounded a bend and started down the back side of the butte, and Split Rail lay out before us, the same as I remembered her. The tripod water tower with the red top, the block letters spelling out “Split Rail.” The main drag that took in a gas station, the Livery bar, a small grocery, the farmers’ credit union, the Tin Cup diner, a grange hall, Split Rail School, and the weekly paper, the Standard. Of the four hundred or so residents, just a handful lived in a smattering of clapboard houses in town. The rest spread out across the country like cattle. Literally and figuratively, Split Rail sat at the end of the road. The dusty lanes that shot off the main strip led to farms and ranches of various shapes and sizes. Those who wanted to get goods to market would have to look south to Broadview and the railroad. For a night on the town or to load up on supplies, Billings was the ticket.

  Living in Split Rail wasn’t easy, and from what I recalled of the people who called the place home, they liked it that way.

  There were rewards for the hardy few, though. On a clear day, like the one gracing us, you could scan the horizon and see many mountain ranges—the Snowys, the Little Belts, the Castles, the Crazys, the Bulls. I took in the scene as I nudged the car into town.

  “Beautiful,” I said.

  “Yeah.” Dad sounded as awestruck as I did.

  I cruised up the main drag until it petered out, then turned the car around and made another pass. The diner was still an hour from opening for dinner. We saw a couple of cars at the grocery. Other than that, Main Street kept quiet vigil.

  “I’ve forgotten the way,” I said. “You’re going to have to give me some directions here.”

  “The way to where?”

  “To the ranch.”

  “We’re not going to be able to get in there.”

  “Let’s go take a look anyway.”

  Dad didn’t fight me. As we passed the Standard, he pointed to his right, and I turned onto the gravel road. Soon enough, Split Rail proper was behind us, and we headed into the maze of ranch roads that ringed town. For the first time since we had started our little day trip, my stomach began churning.

  I thought about Dad and his ranch, and how bittersweet it must have been for him to think of it, much less see it. Dad lost it in 1983, six years after he had bought it in a fit of joy and a cascade of cash.

  Mom had predicted that ending a year or two earlier, though I don’t think she was particularly proud of her perspicacity. Her signal that things had turned badly for Dad came when my child support checks stopped in 1981. He ran late for a few months, rallied, and then stopped altogether. Mom and I badly needed the money, but she wasn’t the sort who would have withheld his right to see me over it. That mattered little; the plug had already been pulled on my visits. I had never come back this way.

  Years after Dad lost the ranch, when Mom was gone and a bit of long-distance détente set in between him and me, we talked about it during one of our semiannual phone conversations, and Dad had sloughed it off as his decision. The ranch, at two sections and more than twelve hundred acres, was too big, he said. He wanted a life closer to town, he said, and so he sold out and moved to Billings. The public records I sought later suggested something different: bankruptcy. When the energy crash came, he had stayed on top of the ranch mortgage for as long as he could, trying to patch together a living with water-well work. Eventually, though, he succumbed to the wave of creditors who took his rig, his ranch, his boat, his life’s work. He limped out of Split Rail with a failing Ford and that old Holiday Rambler.

  When we got the news about Jerry, Dad lived in a trailer park in Billings, subsisting on unemployment and odd jobs. Mom offered to buy him a plane ticket to come out for the funeral—a gesture she didn’t need to make and one she couldn’t afford. I told her as much, but she said she and Dad made Jerry together and that they ought to see him off together. In any case, her offer was moot. Dad declined. He might have sat there in squalor until the end of his days had he not met Helen, who lifted him up and gave him another shot at prosperity—or at least comfort.

  I thought of all this as we bounced along the gravel road. It always seemed to me that Dad had gotten a fairer shake than any he had offered to the rest of us, but now I wasn’t so sure. We were coming up on the access road that led to the old ranch house, and I felt sorrow for this man who had once had so much and now had so little. Feeling sorry for him pissed me off. It wasn’t why I’d come.

  The steel gate, put in by Dad to dissuade trespassers during his long absences, was locked up tight. We climbed out of the car and rested our arms on the gate as we started across a newly tilled field abutting it.

  “Looks like they’re getting it ready for wheat planting,” Dad said.

  “Yep.”

  We looked a while longer.

  “Do you miss it, Dad?”

  “This?”

  “Yeah.”

  He chewed on the question for a few seconds. I wondered if I would be sorry that I asked.

  “I do. Sometimes.”

  “I think about this place a lot.”

  “Why?”

  “A lot of things happened here. This is the last place I ever saw Marie.”

  “That’s no big loss.”

  “True. But it happened just the same. Don’t you ever think about that stuff? Think back to what happened and wonder what might have been?”

  Dad scoffed.

  “Things work out the way they work out. I’ve told you that before, Mitch. You live with your head in the clouds. There isn’t anything that fixing the past can do for you now.”

  I kicked at the ground and turned toward him.

  “It’s not fixing I’m talking about. That’s not what I said. I’m talking about trying to figure it out, to see what can be learned. I guess it’s easier to be dismissive about the past if you don’t care. Well, I care.”

  He wheeled around and faced me.

  “It sounds like you’ve got something to say. Why don’t you unburden yourself and say it.”

  Maybe it was that word, unburden. It was so similar to what Cindy had said before I left: “The man has some sort of burden.” Maybe it was the years of carrying my memories around, alternately trying to sort them out in my own head and fighting with myself over whether to drop them all on Dad and make him account for the things he had done. Whatever the case, I decided right there, on that dirt road, that if he wasn’t going to own up to whatever was bothering him, to this great mystery that had brought me out here away from my home and my family, I’d damn well spill my grief. Split Rail, to my mind, was a poetic scene for the confrontation.

  “OK. I hate you for what you did to us, to Mom, to me, to Jerry. I hate you for a few weeks from twenty-eight years ago that no matter what I do, I can’t get out of my head. I hate that she’s gone and he’s gone, and you’re the one who’s left. I hate that for all the time I’ve carried this around, you won’t even see me, won’t let me in, won’t help me deal with this. Even now, you’re doing the same old thing. You’re jerking me around, because that’s what you fucking do.”

  Dad quaked. He balled his fists. His eyes bore in on me.

  “Are you fucking done?” he hissed.

  “Not even close. I can’t forgive Marie. She drained you. But you deserved it. You deserved to lose what you lost.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Fuck you right back, Dad,” I said. “I can’t blame you for Mom, but I’m glad for every day she
never had to see you, never had to be with you. I’m happy that when she died, she died free of you.”

  “You don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about,” Dad said. His body twitched.

  I kept going.

  “But Jerry,” I said, and I saw my father’s jaw drop, “you didn’t plant the bomb. But you killed him, just as sure as if you’d put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.”

  Dad swung a right hand that grazed my neck as I bobbed out of the way. I dropped my shoulders and rammed his midsection, and the breath blew out of him as his back hit the steel gate. He wrapped his right arm around my head and pounded my back with his left hand, but I ended that by wrestling him down. He moaned as his back hit the ground. I scrambled on top of him and pinned his shoulders under my knees. He kicked wildly but couldn’t dislodge me.

  “You’re going to listen to me,” I said, spittle hitting Dad in the face. “Mom and I watched Jerry’s coffin come off that plane. We took him back home. We watched him get buried. Why couldn’t you have been there, you piece of shit? Why couldn’t you have owned up to what you did, to making him leave us? You’re such a coward. You have no idea how many times I’ve wished you were dead.”

  “Fuck you,” Dad said.

  “Fuck you back.”

  He strained beneath me, his face burning crimson. I dropped my ass into his chest to further restrict him.

  That’s when I heard the pump of the shotgun.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  I whipped my head around. A man stood on the other side of the gate, looking down the barrel at me.

  “This is my dad,” I said.

  “You ought to treat him better than that.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Nope, I don’t. Don’t want to. Also don’t want any trouble. So how about you climb off the old man, get into your car, and get out of here?”

  I clambered to my feet. I offered Dad a hand, but he slapped it away. While he slowly rose, I dusted off.

  The rancher kept the gun on us and watched as we made our way to the car and climbed in. I thought about telling the guy that Dad used to own his place, but that would have been even more absurd.

  I fired up the car and we left.

  Silence again carried us along, back to Split Rail and over the butte to the highway. The bumpiest part of the ride—and our day, I hoped—behind us, I said softly, “I’m sorry.”

  “About what?”

  “All of it. But mostly about the fight. Are you OK?”

  “You can’t hurt me.”

  I had no stomach for another go-round. Not now. What had Cindy told me? Don’t take the bait. What had I done? I took it.

  Besides, he could hurt me. I could match him “fuck you” for “fuck you,” but that didn’t matter much when they were the only words we knew. I’d said it behind his back for years, and now I’d proved that I could say it to his face. A useless skill. Our words expended, we remained poles apart.

  We slid past Broadview and the diner where we had planned to stop on the way home. Hunger wasn’t part of our reality now. Shared solitude was.

  I stole glances to the side. Dad sat stoic and stared ahead, his face contorted in a fist.

  “I’m trying to find a place where I fit in with you,” I said.

  He kept his eyes and his voice low.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  I lowered my own voice to a soothing tone. “I’m not talking about Mom here. I’m not talking about Jerry. I’m talking about you and me.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Your time. Your thoughts. Your ears. I think if, just once, I could talk to you about these things, I might be able to put them away for good.”

  Dad at last looked up, and I swear to God, he was crying.

  “Why does it matter now? What good will it do?”

  “Because twenty-eight years of being quiet hasn’t worked. Do you ever think about Marie and what she took from you? Do you ever get mad about that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, something was taken from me, a long time ago, and I’ve never been able to get it back. Do you understand?”

  “No.”

  “If I promise not to yell at you or to accuse, will you listen? Will you let me explain it?”

  Dad rubbed his eyes.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “When you’re ready, you let me know.”

  “I wish you didn’t hate me so much, Mitch.”

  The last of my energy spilled out, as if I’d been gut-punched.

  “It’s not hate. I wish you could see that.”

  He said nothing else. I stared at the coming bend in the road and waited for Billings to return to our sights.

  “Jesus, Mitch. You actually hit him?”

  “No, he hit me. I knocked him to the ground.”

  “Oh, well, that’s something entirely different,” Cindy said.

  “You know, this doesn’t help.”

  “Well, Christ. You think you’re making progress?”

  “I’m aware of how stupid it is, OK? I just spent eighty miles rethinking every move I’ve made since I arrived. Don’t need you to do a recap, you know?”

  “OK, OK.”

  “I’m in deep shit here. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “And Wallen is about to lose it. This trip is going to cost me everything.”

  “It’s not. We’re right here. We’re on your side.”

  “Yeah, but for how long?”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “I’m here, you’re there, your little boyfriend is there. I’d say you’ve got things set up just right.”

  “Mitch…”

  A voice broke in on us.

  “Hi, Daddy.”

  How long had Adia been listening in? We had done little right, but shielding the children from our meltdown had been one thing we agreed on. My mind raced with fear at what Adia might have heard, and what questions she might have.

  “Adia,” Cindy said, “hang up the phone.”

  “How are you, sweetie?” I cooed.

  “Good. When are you coming home?”

  “Just as soon as I can. What’s your brother doing?”

  “He’s playing.”

  “You better go play with him, huh?”

  “OK. I love you, Daddy.”

  “I love you too, baby.”

  The phone hit the cradle.

  “Oh no,” Cindy said.

  “I think it’s OK.”

  “I hope so. Listen, Mitch, you don’t need to worry—”

  I cut her off again.

  “I know. I’m just lashing out.”

  “OK. But it’s getting old, Mitch.”

  I ran my fingers through my hair. I had no words to corral the entire mess. The problem between us, so insurmountable before I’d even arrived here, had only grown.

  “I’m sorry. Look, what am I going to do, Cindy?”

  “Whatever you can. For however long it takes.”

  “And if I lose my job?”

  “We have money. You have contacts. There will be another job.”

  “You sound rather confident.”

  “Well, I’m not. But what else can I say?”

  “And what if I lose you?”

  “You’re doing the right thing. I said I’d wait. I’m waiting.”

  Dad stood waiting for me in the living room.

  “What’d she say?”

  “It’s between me and her, Pop.”

  “Are you going home?”

  “When we’re done here.”

  “When do you figure that’ll be?”

  “The outlook is cloudy, old man,” I said.

  Before he could stop me, I wrapped him in a hug. For a few seconds, he hung limp in my arms, so I hugged tighter. Finally, he patted my back. So quietly that I barely heard it, he said, “I’m sorry about today, too.”

 
Goddamn. It was a start.

  SPLIT RAIL | JUNE 30–JULY 1, 1979

  DAD STALKED INTO EVERY ROOM. He looked around corners and turned off lights as he confirmed that Marie wasn’t there. I stood in the living room with my bag and watched.

  “Mitch, put that stuff away,” he said.

  I trudged down the hallway to the first door on the left and flipped on a light that Dad had just shut off. Any hint that this space belonged to me had moved out when Jerry moved in the previous year. Now, Farrah Fawcett tossed her hair and smiled winsomely at me. Kiss, The Cars, and Bad Company struck rock-star poses and stared back from magazine clippings. I unpacked and found an empty drawer for my clothes; then I carried my dirties into the utility room.

  I heard Dad on the phone.

  “Every light in the place was burning.…No, she’s not here.…Did she say anything about where she was going?…Has she been spending much time out here?…I’ve got Mitch with me. Can you come out and sit with him?…I don’t know.…OK, I’ll wait for her.”

  “Who was that?” I asked after Dad hung up.

  “J.C.”

  J.C. Simmons and his wife, LaVerne, owned the next ranch over. When Dad had bought his place, the Simmonses were in danger of going under a sea of debt. Dad saved them by buying a passive interest in their place. Their end of the deal was that they looked after his ranch while he was away. They brought in cattle, spread hay, cut the ice in winter. Good people, J.C. and LaVerne were, and after Dad had saved their place, there was nothing they wouldn’t have done in return.

  “Where are you going?” I asked. “Can’t I come?”

  Dad stood in the kitchen, rummaging through drawers and papers in search of anything to indicate where Marie had gone.

  “No, Mitch, you can’t come. It’s been a long day.”

  “I’ll be good. I’ll—”

  Dad slammed a drawer. The silverware crashed violently.

  “Goddammit, no! Somebody in this house, by God, is going to do what I say.”

  I ran to my room.