Cry Father

by Benjamin Whitmer

  “Well. Why the hell not?”

  “You’re missing the point. I’m not telling you about it to make you embarrassed, I’m telling you about it because you need to simplify your life. You’re overcrowded and disappearing at the same time. You’re a fucking disaster.” He puts his hand on Patterson’s shoulder, and he leaves it there for a while. Then he pulls it away. “You do good by them tonight,” he says. “You’re going to need their goodwill.”

  “I know it,” Patterson says.

  55

  pause

  After it gets dark, long after they’ve eaten the chickens and Patterson has passed the baseball with Gabe for a little while, he pours a gallon of gas over a pile of twisted piñon pine and sagebrush and lights it with a twig. There’s a low boom, the wood flaring a sudden blue and yellow, and when Patterson looks over Gabe is giggling at him like no kid he’s ever seen. Laney just shakes her head, but she’s doing it in that way that means Patterson is just fine. That means something to Patterson. He knows what’s coming.

  Then Gabe falls asleep and they put him to bed up in the loft. And Laney’s brought a joint, and Patterson is lying on his back in the dirt by the fire, his Avrilla sweatshirt for a pillow, and Sancho stretched out next to him. Laney sits cross-legged, scratching in the sandy dirt with a stick, her face veiled by her hair. He can feel her looking at him, and he knows what she’s about to say before she says it.

  “It’s coming up,” she says.

  Patterson nods.

  “I’m not going to bug you about it,” she says. “But you could come with us if you wanted.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “We usually put flowers on his grave and then eat pizza at Ha Ha’s,” she says. Then, after a pause that seems longer than it probably is, “We were hoping you could come.”

  “We?”

  “Me,” she says. “But Gabe would like you to come, too. He loves you. And he is Justin’s brother.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “You mean you’ll think about it, but I’d better shut up.”

  “I mean I’ll think about it.”

  “Okay,” she says. She doesn’t talk for a minute. “Why do you think Henry lives out here?”

  “He thinks he’ll be safe when the shit hits the fan. He’s of the opinion the government’s out to kill everybody, and they won’t be able to get him here.”

  “Like the stuff on that radio show? Brother Joe?”

  “Exactly like that.”

  “You know I listen to that show sometimes when you’re on the road. I listen to it when I’m lonely for you.”

  Patterson looks at her.

  Her forearms and hands are tan and dusty. She draws something in the dirt and then crosses it out. She cranes her neck toward her failed artwork. Her neck is as long and white as the belly of a snake, so faintly lined with veins that they seem to live just above her skin.

  Something cold runs down Patterson’s sun-battered face, and he knows he’s in trouble. He starts to say something, probably something stupid, just to stick a knife in the moment and let the air out of it, but she beats him to it. “Do you want to know what I think? About why people believe all those things?”

  “Tell me,” he says.

  “I think it’s about loss. That when you lose someone or something important there’s a hole that gets left where it used to live inside of you. I think that’s where all of those conspiracy theories come from. It’s like there’s a bottomless hole in the people that believe them and they can’t tell anybody about it, because it’s only a hole, so they make up stories just as awful and terrifying as it is. They throw all these things down into it, hoping to fill it up.”

  Patterson refuses to take the bait. He turns his head away and watches the sparks from the fire flutter briefly in the updraft before being extinguished by the inky sky, bobbing along to their end. Like he knows that it’s time to make his exit, Sancho whines, rises, and wanders off out of the firelight. Patterson watches him go.

  “And do you know why you live up here?” she continues.

  “Because it’s cheap,” Patterson says. “Because most of the time people leave me alone.”

  She shakes her head. “It’s because you won’t let anything fill the hole that’s in you. And that’s not any better.”

  Then she’s on top of him, her breath hot with marijuana and tobacco. She’s running her hands over his face, kissing him in bursts. And he’s jamming his hands up her shirt, clamping her against him, pawing under her jeans. Her hands following, unzipping his jeans. She’s dehydrated and dry from the weed, but they fuck in the dirt, making it through with water and spit. And when they’re done they collapse in a heap. But there’s none of the urgency gone, and nothing is changed.

  After Laney is up in his loft, asleep with Gabe, Patterson sits outside on the porch. The Blanca Massif is obscure against the night sky, a black and broken patch of sky, somehow hidden, as if eclipsing the moon. Patterson thinks of Snippy again, the horse that became the first mutilation. He’s seen spooked horses before. Seen them here on the mesa, seen them with Henry. The duck and the sideways bolt, the head flinging back. And Patterson thinks of Snippy in a way that he never has before. Of what it must have been like to be that mare. Whatever she was taken by, it was alien to her, and Patterson doubts whether there could even have been a measure to her terror. To her, there wouldn’t be the slightest difference between a helicopter and a spaceship.

  There’s times he wishes the porch had been built to face some other direction. Maybe south, out of the valley. But it wasn’t, so he sits there and stares north and breaks all over inside.

  Justin

  Most of the time I can’t stop seeing your face. And most of the time I make sure of it. I write to you because it forces me to pull you up out of my memory and hold you in front of me. It’s that nightmare about looking for something that I can’t find and then realizing it’s you. I know that if I don’t keep writing you’ll sink down so far I won’t be able to pull you up anymore. You’ll go under for good and I’ll be left holding what everybody else has. A memory of a very nice little boy who is gone. But you’re not gone for me.

  The only time I can’t lift you out is now. Right now. As we get nearer to the anniversary of your death I can’t find your face anywhere. It happens every year. It doesn’t matter how hard I grope around, you’re just not there.

  But he is. Court is. Where I’m looking for you, I can’t help but find him.

  The first anniversary, I thought I had to kill him to get you back. As we got nearer to the date and I couldn’t find anything but him in my mind, that’s what I arrived at. That the only way to clear him out of my head, to get you back, was to wipe him off the planet. And not with a gun, either. Nothing as neat as a bullet. I planned to beat him to death with my fists.

  It was your mother who stopped me. It was a phone call with her. I told her the whole thing. How I couldn’t drive Court out of my head. How I could pick up a picture of you, stare at it, and then put it down and forget what you looked like in twenty seconds. How I couldn’t sleep anymore for being scared I’d forget you altogether.

  She explained that it was happening to her, too. That it was the anniversary, that it was trying to bury our memories of your life with your death. She told me that she was sure it would pass. That the anniversary was like a moon drawing our memories in a tide, but that it would pass. She convinced me that it would be no different for Court. That there was nothing I could do to punish him worse than that itself. She convinced me to leave him alone.

  56

  shitass

  The thing about going for three or four days without sleep at a stretch, running on cocaine and fumes, is that when sleep does finally hit, it hits like a sledgehammer. Which is how Junior ends up passed out behind the wheel of his car, parked on the street with a good view of Jenny’s house.

  That is, until somebody slaps the window his head is rested against. Then he tries
to jump in three directions at once, banging his head on the doorframe, then swatting away the cigarette that’s burnt down between his fingers.

  When he looks out the window and sees Jenny’s face, he thinks about just putting his keys in the ignition and driving away. But he doesn’t. He rolls down the window and tries on his best grin. “How you doing, lady?”

  “Unlock the door,” she says.

  He reaches across to the passenger’s side and pulls the lock while she walks around the car. “What are you doing outside my house?” she asks, stepping into the Charger.

  He rubs sleep out of his good eye, then lifts his eye patch and takes his handkerchief out of his pocket and rubs at his bad eye. “Sleeping.”

  “Don’t get smart with me, Junior,” she said. “Sure as hell not right now.”

  Junior finds a half-full beer between the seats and takes a drink. It’s warm and flat.

  “Don’t stall, Junior,” she says. “What’re you doing spying on me?”

  He shrugs.

  “Junior?”

  He takes another drink of the beer. Gags on it a little, but swallows.

  “Junior?”

  “You want the truth?”

  “I want the truth,” she says. “That’s all I want.”

  “The truth is I got no idea.”

  She nods. “I guess that’s about the only thing I’d believe.”

  Junior knows he should keep his mouth shut. But he can’t quite yet. “Your boyfriend lives with his parents.”

  She looks at him.

  “That’s all I’m saying about it. If you’re gonna get yourself a boyfriend, at least find one who can take care of my daughter.”

  “How do you think you’re doing at that, Junior? Taking care of your daughter?”

  It’s Junior’s turn to be silent.

  “I’m not gonna apologize, Junior.”

  “I ain’t asking you to.”

  “I mean it. Not for anything. Not for moving, not for getting a job, and not for anybody I see. You ain’t got no right to say anything about my life.”

  “I know.” He takes another drink of the warm beer and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “But you can do better than some shitass who wears his uniform pants on a date.”

  “Jesus, Junior.” She just stares at him, her shadow-battered face bending in on itself in the street light. He tries not to look at her, but can’t help it. “What the hell are you gonna do with yourself?”

  He shrugs.

  “What you’re doing ain’t working. Just so you know. I know you think it is, but it ain’t.”

  Junior picks up the beer again as if to take another drink, but decides against it and drops the can out the window.

  Her voice softens. “You’re welcome to be around as much as you want, Junior. I meant what I said. Once I start working I can help you find something else besides the driving. And you can see Casey, anytime.”

  “How’s about if I want to just sit out here and watch the house,” he says.

  “That, too,” she says. She reaches over and puts her hand on his cheek, and he bends his head into it. “We miss you, Junior. I don’t think you know it, but we do.” Then she opens her door and steps out, walks back toward her house.

  Junior watches her go. Watches her all the way up to her door, to where she disappears inside the house.

  And for just a second he thinks about following her.

  57

  almost

  So Patterson hunkers by a neighboring gravestone and watches Laney and Gabe. Laney’s wearing black. Black jeans and a black shirt and a short black leather jacket, which does nothing but make Patterson realize that he isn’t wearing anything black at all. Justin’s stone is just on the edge of a small cottonwood grove, and even as thin and underwatered as the trees are, they tower over the small, plain gray marker.

  Patterson didn’t have much to say about where they picked the cemetery. It was one in a hundred things that he didn’t give a shit about when his boy died. But he was glad now that Laney picked it where she did. He doesn’t think he’s ever been in the place when it wasn’t brown. The brown adobe walls around it, the brown iron gate, the brown halfhearted wood crosses that still weed the grounds, and the untended brown dirt in the place of grass. The Chinese elm shoots that have taken over half of Taos, even they’re brown. There’s something steadying about all the brown.

  The fact is, Patterson’s having the old panic attacks again. Sweating, heart surging, vision slipping. It’s like no time has passed at all since Justin died, like it happened just today. He’s using every single trick he knows to create distance between himself and it. And not just all the distractions he’s created over the last month, all the distractions he’s always created. He dry-swallows two more Vicodin and rests his arm on Sancho’s back. Vicodin helps with that distance.

  Laney’s saying something and holding flowers in both her hands that she means to place on the grave. Which makes no sense to Patterson. What boy wants flowers? Gabe, he seems to know better, and he has two comic books rolled up in his fist that he means to leave. For the first time, Patterson is thankful for the boy. Thankful and sorry for him, too, as he watches his mother begin to cry.

  Patterson wishes he could do what Laney needs him to. Not for the first time, he wishes he could be someone other than he is. He scratches Sancho between the shoulder blades. The dog, who he knows is standing there solid because he knows Patterson needs him there. Holding on to Sancho, Patterson’s almost able to convince himself that he, at least, won’t do the one thing that he knows will make this harder for Laney.

  Almost.

  58

  contracting

  Nights in Junior’s house are spent wandering the halls, pacing the living room and bedroom. Whatever cocaine he’s done coursing through his system, jolting him awake at the slightest noise. Even changes in the air currents in the house can wake him up, and he’ll try every spot he can to get some rest. Tonight it’s been the bed, then the couch, then the floor of the bedroom between the bed and the wall, where the hardwood floor is cool on his back. That’s where he is, on the floor of his bedroom, when he wakes with the feeling something has changed in the air outside the open bedroom door.

  Then he hears the front door close very quietly, and he’s all the way awake.

  One other thing about sleeping on the floor in his bedroom, it’s under his bed that Junior keeps his Mossberg autoloader. In his line of work, it isn’t as though he hasn’t considered the possibility of home invaders. He turns just on his side, so he can see the door of the bedroom, and eases the shotgun to his shoulder, sliding it so the ghost ring sights cover the bottom six inches of the opening into the living room. A pair of tennis shoes and about four inches of khaki pants appear.

  The Mossberg holds seven rounds of 00 buckshot, each of them containing nine pellets of .33 caliber ball. Unlike a pump shotgun, the autoloader can unload those rounds as fast as Junior can pull the trigger.

  And he does, pulling the trigger as fast as he can. The shotgun’s report is so loud it blows holes in his hearing, yellow punctures of sound and light. But Junior barely hears any of it once he begins shooting. Time slows and his vision narrows and the pellets drive smoke and tissue and blood and sock and khaki from the man’s ankles, from the bones. There’s something like a shriek, though Junior can’t hear well enough to be sure. Then the man’s falling, and Junior shoots him in the face. It makes a scooped bowl of loose gore of the top half of the man’s head, and Junior doesn’t bother firing again. There’s nothing of the man but a sack of blood emptying on the floor.

  Junior grabs his Glock from the end table and waits. When his hearing finally clears, or at least calms to a dull ring, and he detects nothing else from the house, he steps out from behind the bed. The mess is incredible, blood and bits of the man coat the floor and the walls behind him. And the smell’s worse. Coppery blood and feces. Junior notes the tattoos, the black hair, the patches of brown skin on
the man.

  He walks to him, his bare feet slopping in the blood, and pulls his pockets. No wallets, no ID. Nothing but a little black leather book. Junior opens it, and even with his bad Spanish, he’s able to translate the passage: It is better to be a master of one peso than a slave of two; it is better to die fighting than on your knees and humiliated; it is better to be a living dog than a dead lion.

  Junior hangs his head, squatting there in the blood. He sees the rest of his life like through a tunnel. And it’s contracting fast, shrinking so that he can see right through to the end. He has to put a hand down in the blood to steady himself.

  There’s no way he’s getting away from this. Even in Junior’s neighborhood, emptying a shotgun in your bedroom will bring a phone call to the police. Meaning he’s got somewhere around twenty minutes to figure out what he wants to do with the rest of his fast-compressing life.

  His first thought is to make a run for it. Maybe north, to get lost in Montana. Maybe south to Mexico.

  His second thought is to make sure that those who’ve played fast and loose with the rest of his life, that they understand what that means.

  59

  gentle

  “I know it’s hard, honey,” Laney says to Patterson. Gabe is in bed. He’s fallen asleep on the car ride home, worn out from Laney feeding him stories about his brother.

  “I’ll leave in a minute,” Patterson says. He’s tilting against Laney’s sink, drinking a water glass of bourbon from a bottle that he probably left there. The sink has dirty dishes and dead flies in it.

  “I don’t want you to leave,” she says. She sits hunched forward on a cushioned chair at the small writing desk where she does bills. “I want you to stay. That’s what I want you to do.”