Cry Father

by Benjamin Whitmer

  “How long have they had you?”

  “Since last night.”

  “You need to go to the hospital?”

  “They didn’t have time,” she says. “They drove all night, scared the police was going to get them.”

  “All right,” says Junior.

  “They didn’t,” she says again.

  “All right,” says Junior. “We’re trying to figure out what to do with you.”

  “You don’t have to do anything with me. You can leave me right here.”

  “How’s about if we take you to the next bus station? Buy you a ticket to San Antonio?”

  “You can take me to the bus station,” she says.

  “But you ain’t going back to San Antonio,” Junior says.

  “Never.” She shakes her head. Her eyes redden and her chin trembles. “Fuck him.”

  Junior presses his bad eye into his shoulder. His eye patch having disappeared sometime during the night, there’s no telling where. “You got anywhere to go at all?”

  “I got a cousin in Casper,” she says.

  Justin

  I don’t know how Junior knew what was happening. I’m not sure Junior even knows how Junior knew what was happening. Or if he even knew anything was really happening at all. It could be that he just needed something to recover him from our night in El Paso, and that was the first thing he spotted. That he just got lucky and there really was somebody who needed helping.

  But that’s not what’s eating me up. It’s that there are men who would do that to children. To their own children. There’s times I don’t sleep for three or four nights. It’s like somebody stuffed a rag down my throat and parked a truck on my chest. I can’t think about anything else but sitting in the hospital with you. Or about him, Dr. Court. I go whole nights sitting awake thinking about beating him to death with my own hands. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to bring you back.

  And then there’s his kind. Who’d run off his own daughter. Who probably raped her or beat her, but who definitely, and worse than anything else he ever could have done, abandoned her. Who left her out there alone, easy pickings for any psychopath on the road. To starve, die, or smash herself against his absence for the rest of her life.

  They put people in prison for taking drugs. They lock kids away for stealing money from gas stations, for joyriding in cars. But men who abandon their children, they float through life, as light as air.

  44

  more

  Junior cuts the engine in front of his house. Then he has to sit for a while, staring at his lap with his arms draped over the steering wheel. He feels like the world’s driving out from under him. Maybe Jenny’s got the right idea. Maybe he just needs to get the fuck out of Denver. Not Highlands Ranch, no way he could do that, but maybe Greeley. Get his CDL and drive a truck or something.

  Then he raises his head and sees the man sitting on his stoop. The sheer size of him, somewhere between a bear and a mountain. When Eduardo’s not sitting next to the much smaller Vicente it’s not quite as striking how big he is. But it’s still enough to take your breath away.

  Junior knows the day’s not yet done.

  “A rough run?” Eduardo asks when Junior gets out of the car. Even the ruin that is his face is the size of Junior’s chest.

  Junior eases himself down next to him on the cement stoop. “I was going to get cleaned up before I made the drop.”

  “That is a good idea,” Eduardo says. “Vicente would worry if he saw you like this. He would think you had been in a fight.”

  Junior looks down at his battered hands. And the dog blood and filth covering his clothes. “Not really.”

  “Not really, like you weren’t in a fight?”

  “Not really, like there wasn’t much fight to it.”

  “Ah,” Eduardo says. He’s wearing a leather vest. He reaches into an inside pocket and pulls out a cigar, his brown arms tattooed so thickly and long ago it looks like a pattern of intricate bruising. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Knock yourself out,” Junior says.

  “I was hoping to talk to you alone.” Eduardo incinerates the end of the cigar with a lighter that looks like a small jet engine. “Vicente is already worried about you,” he says. “More worried than he will show to me. Which means that I should be even more worried than he is. For him.”

  “Ain’t a thing in the world to worry about me for,” Junior says.

  “Is it the cocaine?” Eduardo asks. “Is that the problem?”

  “No,” Junior says. “That ain’t the problem.”

  “We can get you treatment if cocaine is the problem,” Eduardo says. “If cocaine is the problem it will be hard work for you, but there is help, and we will get it for you.”

  “Cocaine ain’t the problem.”

  “Well, then,” Eduardo says. He blows a stream of cigar smoke at the leaves of the cottonwood in front of Junior’s house. “What is?”

  “Life, maybe,” Junior says. “Hell, I don’t know.”

  “It’s hard to be young,” Eduardo says.

  “Life’s a shit sandwich and sooner or later everybody takes a bite,” Junior says. “That’s how I’d put it.”

  “Have you read that book?” Eduardo asks. “The one I gave you? Brave of Heart?”

  Junior nods. “Just finished it.”

  “There is some help in that book,” Eduardo says. “There is a reason La Familia uses it.”

  “I thought the book was gibberish. Isn’t that what you said?”

  Eduardo shakes his head. “Vicente said that. Vicente is quick to dismiss things.”

  “But not you?”

  “Not me. A man does need more. He needs a greater orbit than exists for him. He needs a life worthy of his heart. Of God’s heart. He needs a war, a crusade, a maiden to rescue.” Eduardo looks up and down the street. “If this was my life, the only life I had to live, I would choose not to live it. The life of the people in these houses. Useless work and more useless wives. That is no life.”

  “That ain’t what my old lady’s telling me,” Junior says. “She’s telling me that the key to my life is to get me into a real job, not out of one. She’s of the opinion that drug running ain’t the best of all possible life choices.”

  Eduardo reaches behind his head and adjusts his ponytail. Then he looks for a second or two too long at Junior. “It’s not the drug running. It’s the decisions you make and the things in your head. Decisions and thoughts worthy of a man, that’s what you need.”

  “In fact, I done the rescuing of a maiden lately,” Junior says. “And if you know where the war is, you just point me at the motherfucker.”

  “I cannot do that for you,” Eduardo says. “It’s your battle.” He claps his huge hand on Junior’s shoulder. “Another thing.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Somebody else has been looking for your friend.”

  Junior feels his whole body go tight. “What friend?”

  “The gringo alcoholic.”

  “Yeah, who?”

  “It is a woman,” Eduardo says. “A woman with black hair.”

  Junior laughs.

  Eduardo looks at Junior for a long time. His eyes are black and limpid.

  “Right,” Junior says.

  “This woman is the head of a biker gang that runs most of the meth in St. Louis,” Eduardo says. “That is what she does.”

  “Right,” Junior says again.

  Eduardo squeezes his arm. “You cannot afford friends who attract this kind of attention. Even if they do not know what it is that you do. I know that you would not be stupid enough to expose yourself, but you cannot afford friends who expose you. And this friend of yours, that is what he does. He exposes people. He endangers people.”

  “I understand,” Junior says.

  “Good.” Eduardo stands. He stretches, his arms spanning horizon to horizon. “Read the book,” he says. “Try to think clear, straight thoughts, and read the book. It will help.”


  45

  progress

  Patterson wakes up bundled up on the couch, a bandage on his hand and his nose taped up. Sancho is curled up on his legs, looking at him balefully. Worse, Laney is sitting at the table, drinking a cup of coffee and reading a book, Gabe next to her drawing something in a coloring book. Patterson opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. He clears his throat, drags up a mouse-sized hunk of mucus, and swallows it. The room swims in a nauseous yellow cloud. He gags.

  “Hello,” Laney says. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m all right,” Patterson says.

  “No,” she says. She holds her slightly red nose over her cup of coffee and inhales. “You’re not all right.”

  “I’m not?”

  “Do you remember the hospital?” she asks.

  He shakes his head.

  “You have two hairline fractures, a pulled muscle, and your wrist is sprained. I didn’t even know you could sprain a wrist, but you did it. You also have a broken nose, apparently from falling face-first into the floor about two steps after you made it into the cabin. And there was some talk about the amount of cocaine and alcohol in your system, both in quantities that probably should have killed you.”

  “It felt worse,” Patterson says.

  “Exhaustion, too, but Henry, Emma, and I had stopped listening at that point. That was who found you, by the way. Henry and Emma. If it wasn’t for them, you’d still be lying on your floor.”

  “I was pretty tired,” Patterson agrees.

  “Also,” she continues, “there was blood on you that the doctor said came from different sources. And at different times. Some on the cuffs of your pants and your shoes, and some more on your shirt.”

  Patterson nods. “What was on my pants and shoes was dog’s blood. Most of it probably dog vomit, actually.”

  “Good. That clears that up.”

  “You’re being sarcastic.”

  “Yes, I am. Is it safe to say that if the blood on your pants is from a dog, then the blood on your shirt isn’t?”

  “That’s safe to say.”

  “So the blood on your shirt, who is that from?”

  “I didn’t catch her name.”

  “Her?”

  “She was a pedophile.”

  “Good,” she says again. “As long as she deserved it.”

  “You’re being sarcastic again.”

  “Yes, I am. Do you think you’ll be seeing your friend again? Henry’s son? Or do you think maybe Henry might have a point about his character?”

  Patterson thinks about Henry. And about Junior. And about the girl on the road. “I don’t know,” he says.

  “That’s progress,” she says. “I don’t know is actually great progress. I’m not trying to nag you. But I really, really, really do think that Junior might not be the best influence on you.”

  46

  scientists

  The doctor from the hospital has written him a prescription for Vicodin, so Patterson eats pills by the fistful, pounding himself into a haze until his hand starts to look like a hand again. Vicodin’s something he got pretty well acquainted with from the time shortly after Justin died. The thing about grieving is how much you need to just sit still and stare, how little you need to try to figure things out. That’s what’s always made him like pills. It makes it easier to sit still and stare at things without trying to make sense of them.

  Laney takes care of him while he recuperates from the El Paso trip. She cooks meals, cleans the cabin, feeds Sancho. She talks to him about books she’s reading, and even borrows Henry’s generator and television so he can watch Westerns. And she doesn’t once mention anything about a lawsuit or signing papers. She seems to understand how poorly that kind of talk is working out for Patterson.

  Henry stops by on the third night of his recuperation. “How you doing, Patterson?” he asks, standing in the doorway.

  “I’m good.” Patterson’s eating an apple and reading some of what he’d written leading up to his trip to El Paso, trying to figure out what the hell he’d been thinking. “I hear I owe you a thank-you.”

  “You’d do the same for me if you found me half-dead and full of cocaine.” He still hasn’t entered the cabin. “I take it he’s not doing any better for himself?”

  “He’s doing what he can,” Patterson says.

  “Where’s Laney?”

  “She’s got Gabe out in the outhouse.”

  Henry walks a few steps in and knocks the door shut with his cane.

  “Did I do something to piss you off?” Patterson asks.

  “No.” He pinches his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “Actually, yeah,” he says. “Paulson’s fit to be tied.”

  “I figured he fired me.”

  “He would have. I told him your mother died.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Fuck you.”

  The door opens and Laney walks in, holding Gabe’s hand. “Are you fighting?” she asks.

  “I don’t fight with drunks,” says Henry. “Nor druggies.”

  Patterson grins genially. He’s having an easy time being genial with all the Vicodin floating through his system.

  “Are you ready?” Henry asks Laney.

  “Where are y’all headed?” Patterson asks.

  “Henry bought a telescope,” Laney says. “He’s got it set up on the roof of the barn, and there’s supposed to be a meteor shower tonight. He thought we might want to see it.”

  “Not a shower,” Henry says. “Some activity.”

  “It’d do you good for you to get out of the house,” Laney says. “I was hoping we could talk you into it.”

  “I’ll sit here and thank my own stars, instead,” Patterson says. “Thank them for having the kind of friend who’ll lie to my boss for me. But y’all should go.”

  “Wouldn’t hurt you to see a star or two you didn’t make up,” Henry says.

  “Sure,” Patterson says. “When’d you get interested in astronomy?”

  “Thus is the excellence of God magnified and the greatness of His kingdom made manifest,” Henry quotes. “He is glorified not in one, but in countless suns. Not in a single earth, a single world, but in a thousand thousand.”

  “Well,” Patterson says. “Good luck.”

  “Patterson’s morally opposed to any attempt to make meaning out of the world,” Henry explains to Laney. “If he was a serial killer he’d kill priests and scientists.”

  “Not only priests and scientists,” Patterson corrects him. “Mostly priests and scientists.”

  “It’s also why he never talks about politics,” Henry continues. “He doesn’t like to make sense out of anything.”

  “Can we talk about something else?” Even as genial as the Vicodin is making Patterson, he’s done with this conversation.

  Henry looks at him for a long time. “Another thing about you.”

  “Don’t bother.”

  “No, one more thing. Junior.”

  “Not Junior,” Laney says. “Definitely not Junior.”

  “Hold on,” Henry says to her. “This is what I’m getting at. Patterson and Junior, they’re circling. You know why?”

  “No,” says Laney. “I don’t know why.”

  “They’re two of a kind,” Henry says. “Junior, he can’t stand to make sense out of anything either. He’s another like Patterson. He can’t stand to believe in nothing.”

  “Horseshit,” Patterson says. “He believes in you. And look at all the good it’s doing him.”

  47

  rope

  After they leave, Patterson realizes Laney is right, he does need to get out of the cabin. So he belts on his .45 and goes for a walk. The stars are thrown over the matte black sky like pebbles strewn across a creek bed, and seeing the night overhead makes him think a little clearer. He’s not sure what good it does, but when he gets back to the cabin he pours a drink and stretches out on the couch with a book. Thinking is good, but reading is good protection against thinki
ng too much. As is drinking. Patterson gets the feeling he’s living out a kind of exercise to see which slips under his guard first.

  They don’t bother knocking. The man swings the door open and sweeps inside, his movements clean and practiced. He’s taller than Patterson, gaunt, with long, gray-black hair that runs right down into his beard. There’s a tattoo on his arm of a winged skull and the words Semper Fi, and he’s holding a very mean-looking AR-15 on a single-point sling on his chest. Patterson’s known plenty of his kind on work crews. Ruined by whichever Gulf War they were in, renting themselves out for muscle work wherever they can find it.

  And the woman who follows the biker through the door, Patterson recognizes her immediately. Adrenaline hits him like a bucket of cold water, blood rushing into his ears like a dam bursting. He lays his book on the floor, carefully. “You gotta be fucking kidding me,” he says to her, his voice smearing in his ears.

  “Where’s the dog?” the man asks. Patterson’s heard chain saws with more human feeling than his voice.

  “He’s out. He stays out most nights. I can go three or four without seeing him.” Patterson speaks slowly, thinking his way through the words, letting his body recover from the shock.

  “Stand up,” the man says. “And keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Patterson swings his feet off the couch and places his glass on the floor. He wills his hand not to shake, but it doesn’t do him much good. Then he puts his hands out at the man, showing there’s nothing in them. “You mind closing the door before the mosquitoes get in?”

  The man doesn’t give any indication that he’s heard Patterson at all. He stands by the open door, his left hand resting on the AR-15’s grip, not even bothering to point it at him. “All right,” Patterson says. “We can sort this out.” He tries to look as scared as he can. It doesn’t take a whole hell of a lot of effort. “Close the door and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

  “That’s why we’re here,” Mel says. “I need you to tell me where Chase is.”