The Summer Son

by Lancaster, Craig

  After Marie walked out, I went to the window and pressed my face against it. I heard the pickup fire up, and then I watched it head down the access road, spitting dust in its wake. I lifted my hand and waved. I don’t know if she saw it.

  I heard Dad in the kitchen, digging into the refrigerator for another beer.

  “It’s just us men now,” he called out.

  “Yeah.”

  “We’re going to have fun now.”

  I didn’t answer. I hoped so.

  I wasn’t inclined to lay a bet on it.

  Dad didn’t object when I made a move toward the motorcycle, so I stuck to trails away from the house for much of the afternoon. Every now and again, I would cut through the main yard and down the access road, the longest, most uninterrupted stretch on the ranch. I rode until stopped by the steel gate, and there I lingered. I cut off the engine and stared down the road that led into Split Rail. Maybe Marie would turn around and come back and we would just try again. That would be nice, I thought. Couldn’t we just do that?

  Alternately, I grew agitated at myself over my weird longing for Marie. I knew well enough that she was as responsible as Dad for the way things had gone to pot, and I knew that if she came back, things wouldn’t be better. I winced at the fresh memory of Dad’s suggestion that he could get his gun and end it all for everybody. Terror welled inside me. If Marie came back, I thought, we might well find out if Dad could turn declaration into deed.

  I whispered a prayer for all of us and hoped Marie stayed gone.

  Dad had chased Jerry away. He had chased Marie away too. He and I were the only ones left.

  As the sun beat down on me through the afternoon, I found it difficult to put off a return to the house. I grew thirsty. A sunburn clawed at my neck. I had eaten more slow-flying bugs than I cared to count.

  I went back in. When I removed the helmet, the perspiration popped inside my ears. I rubbed at my neck, massaging the dust and sweat into grimy balls that I pressed and rolled, repeatedly, between my thumb and forefinger as I went up the steps and slipped into the house.

  Shadows, enlivened by the late-afternoon sunlight, played on the walls. I skirted through the living room and headed to Dad’s room. I opened the door and looked in. He wasn’t there.

  Back down the hall, I cut to my left at the dining room and pressed beyond it to the den. A cartoon played underneath the static on the set. Dad lay on the couch, blasting a baritone snore. I knelt down and retrieved a half-drained can of warm beer from in front of the couch. I carried it into the kitchen and poured the rest into the sink, and then I counted the empties. The one in my hand made eight. It was just before five thirty. I retreated to my room.

  Dad’s rapping at the bedroom door woke me.

  “You in there?”

  I sat up in bed, and the haze fell from my eyes.

  “Yeah.”

  Dad came in. He looked like hell.

  “Are you hungry?”

  I shrugged. “A little, I guess.”

  “Come out and help me with some chores, and we’ll go into town.”

  “I have to take a shower.”

  Dad belched.

  “Chores first. Then shower. Come on.”

  I smelled the beer on Dad, but he gave no outward indication that a six-pack and beyond had impaired him. I followed him from the house, and he walked a perfectly straight line, right up to the pickup.

  “Can I drive?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  I climbed in and barely managed to close the door before we were moving.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Got to find that herd.”

  Dad charted a course for the back side of the property, where I had spent the early part of the day, when Marie was still part of our lives. We hit the top of the hill, and the swale dropped below us. Cattle dotted the landscape.

  “There they are,” I said.

  “Yep.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Dad drove a half circle to the other side of the herd, drawing a bead on a calf standing apart.

  He shut off the engine and popped open his door.

  “Hop out, Mitch.”

  I did as I was instructed. While Dad dug around in the cab, I watched the Hereford. It walked toward us.

  “It’s coming.”

  “I know,” Dad said. “Come over here.”

  When I got to the other side of the truck, Dad handed me a quart bottle with an oversized rubber nipple atop it. What looked like soapy water sloshed back and forth inside.

  “Shake that up and give it to the calf. Hurry.”

  I shook the bottle like a maraca. “Like this?”

  “Harder,” Dad said. “Shake it up good.”

  The calf was upon us. He nudged his anvil head against my stomach and pushed.

  “Hey!” I protested.

  Dad laughed. “He knows it’s dinnertime. Better give it up.”

  I presented the nipple, and damned if he didn’t take it down to the nub. I wasn’t ready for his prodigious sucking, which nearly pulled the bottle from my hands. I pulled back too hard, taking the nipple from the calf. He aggressively reclaimed what was his.

  “Hold it steady, Mitch,” Dad said. “He’ll be quick.”

  In about a minute, the youngster drained the bottle. He sucked for a few more seconds, until he was satisfied that nothing remained, and then he ambled away.

  “What did you think, sport?”

  “That was pretty neat.”

  “Glad you think so,” Dad said. He put an arm on my shoulder. “That’s your chore for the week. Morning and evening, you feed that calf.”

  On the ride to the house, I asked Dad, “Where’s his mom?”

  “Oh, she’s out there.”

  “Why do we have to do her job?”

  “Because she won’t.”

  We sawed on our chicken-fried steaks at the Tin Cup. I hadn’t been terribly hungry when we came in, but when the huge platters were dropped in front of us—loaded with crispy steaks, mashed potatoes, sawmill gravy, and corn on the cob—I found my appetite.

  I looked across the table at Dad. He looked good, for the first time all day. He wore his favorite shirt with little blue checks and mother-of-pearl snaps, a crisp pair of jeans, and his going-to-town boots. His Elvis-inspired hair had been sprayed into perpetuity; only a sledgehammer could crack it. His face, drawn and colorless earlier in the day, radiated. It was amazing what a shower could do. Both of us were testament to that. I had wiped away my grit and grime. The Quillen men cleaned up nicely for an evening in town.

  Then, my overtaxed mouth unraveled our progress.

  “Dad, why did she go?”

  He frowned. “I’m trying to enjoy dinner.”

  “I know. But…”

  “What?”

  “I miss her, I think.”

  Dad gazed at his food and started eating again. “Yeah, well,” he said. “You’re just a kid. You don’t know any better.”

  “Don’t you miss her?”

  “No.”

  “I thought since you were drinking so much that—”

  “Look here,” Dad said, pointing a finger at my face. “I don’t want to hear about this from you.”

  “Quillen!”

  Dad’s head popped up, and he scanned the room.

  “Jim, over here.”

  Dad turned to his left and smiled at someone behind me. I turned around to get a better look. A man in a cop’s uniform waved.

  “Come over here,” Dad said, and the cop pushed up from his table and lumbered over.

  “I didn’t know you were back,” the cop said. He towered over our table. I couldn’t look him in the face. Instead, I stared at his meaty forearms and, under the left one, his gun.

  “Just last night,” Dad said. The cop dipped his head and made eye contact with me.

  “Who’s this?”

  “This here’s Mitch, my younger son.”


  “Pleased to meet you, Mitch,” the cop said, extending a hand that swallowed my meek offering. “I’m Charley Rayburn.”

  “He’s the police chief,” Dad said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Charley said. “And the dogcatcher. And the mayor. And a piss-poor wheat farmer, it seems.”

  I squeaked out a hello in return.

  “So where’s Jerry?” Charley asked Dad.

  “Marines. He couldn’t take the work.”

  “He’s in for a surprise, isn’t he?” They both laughed.

  “And Marie?”

  “She’s gone too,” I said.

  Charley slapped Dad on the shoulder. “You’re losing people left and right. Better keep a close eye on this young fella.”

  “You can bet on it.” Dad bit off the words.

  “Well, I’ll be seeing you guys,” Charley said, putting his hat atop his buzz cut. “Got to make my rounds.”

  Dad watched as Charley weaved through the restaurant and out the door. Then he turned to me.

  “Eat up, Mitch, and keep your mouth full. I don’t want any more words spilling out of it.”

  BILLINGS | SEPTEMBER 22, 2007

  WHEN I CAME into the living room, Dad stood up and cut across my path to the kitchen. I followed him to the refrigerator. He turned away toward the dining room table. I poured a glass of orange juice and walked a line toward the seat opposite him. Dad stood up and glided back to the living room.

  We chased each other around that house until midmorning, wordlessly, without circus music to highlight our movement. Only when I jangled my keys and reached for the door did Dad speak.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Grocery store.”

  “You need any money?”

  “I’ve got it covered.”

  At Pioneer Park, I settled in at a picnic table away from the walkers and the din of the playground and the steady thumping of tennis players drawn by a sunny day. Given what I had come to do, I needed whatever solitude I could grab in such a public place.

  I’d scrawled the number, fetched from directory assistance, on my left palm: 406-794-1978.

  My phone sat in my right hand, open and ready to go.

  I couldn’t bring myself to punch in the numbers.

  I closed the phone and stood up. I needed a walk first, if not a stiff drink.

  I tried to noodle the situation out logically, even though the circumstances defied logic. The park fell behind me as I crested the hill. I played point-counterpoint the entire way.

  To an extent, Dad was correct when he said it was his life. If there were things he wanted to keep close, what business was it of mine to contradict him?

  And yet nearly everything that was screwed up about my family—the one I was born into, and the one I was raising—traced back to secrets. Some things need to be dragged into the light. This, I was certain, was one of those things.

  OK, but what about this Kelly person? She bowed out years ago and said she was done. What if she had moved on with her life? What if it were an intrusion to bring this up now?

  “Just stop,” I said, aloud. She didn’t step away because she lost interest. I needed only to think back a couple of days to remember that I was the guy who stared at a house I barely knew in a flailing hope that I would find a deeper understanding of not just my own life but also the lives of people I loved. Did I really think she had let this go?

  I heard my own voice in my head. “If you don’t make this call, you leave, right now. You go back, you give your old man a hug, you pack up your stuff, and you haul ass out of here. This is where the trail forks. Keep going, or go home. Do you think you will ever find peace—with him, with Cindy, with the rest of your life—if you do that?”

  I jogged back to the picnic table.

  Despite my resolve, I stared at the phone for twenty minutes more, rehearsing what I’d say and how I’d retreat if backpedaling were needed, cataloging my questions (many) and my answers (few). Finally, I punched in the number.

  The call was picked up on the first ring. A friendly sounding female voice, crinkled with age, beckoned with “Hello,” and I nearly hung up.

  “Hello,” she said again.

  “Kelly Hewins?”

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Mitch Quillen. Do you know me?”

  Silence came back at me. Four, five, six seconds of it. I pulled the phone away from my ear to see if the call was still connected.

  “Hello?”

  “I know who you are.” The clear voice diffused. She said, “I always hoped I might hear from you.”

  “I found your letters to my father.”

  Her voice faltered. “Is Jimmy gone?”

  “Oh no,” I said. “He’s still here in Billings.”

  “Oh good. Do you live in Billings, too?”

  “Mrs. Hewins, I don’t mean to be rude. But who are you?”

  “Jimmy didn’t tell you?”

  “No.”

  She paused. “I’m your aunt. Jimmy’s sister.”

  “What?” I said.

  “I’m Jimmy’s sister.”

  I scrambled to slow the scattering of my thoughts.

  “His parents died in a wreck. He was an only child.”

  “Yes, I know. He and I were adopted out of the St. Thomas home in Great Falls.”

  “I’ve never heard of this. He said he lived at the orphanage until he joined the Navy.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to tell you that’s not what happened. Jimmy and I grew up on a farm up here.”

  “Why wouldn’t he tell me that?”

  “Well, Mitch, I don’t know. But I have some ideas.”

  This struck me as more than just another Jim Quillen lie. I was talking to my aunt, a relative I had discovered only by intruding on Dad. Time and circumstance had taken so many people from me, and here was someone I had found. I fumed that Dad, alone, had decided that I didn’t need to know her.

  Kelly’s words filled my ears, and I watched the people in the park through a long gaze, one that rendered their movement in slow motion. They stepped through the minutia of their lives, oblivious to the fact that a fresh hole had been shot through mine.

  “OK,” I said. “What are your ideas?”

  “Mitch, I’ll tell you everything I can, after.”

  “After what?”

  “After you tell me all about Jimmy. I haven’t seen him since 1954.”

  I drew the outlines of the father I knew, a task beyond my means, given how scant my knowledge seemed to be. I gave Kelly the broad outline of how he and Mom met. I told of Jerry’s arrival in 1960, mine several years later, the divorce, the rich years, the lean years when he and I never spoke, the years when he married Helen and the frost between us melted into a stormy spring of occasional phone calls.

  Kelly proved a good listener and questioner. She expressed sympathy where I expected to hear it, such as when I told her about losing Jerry and Mom, and at other points she pressed for details, some that were beyond my grasp.

  “Did Leila ever say anything about us? I sent all those letters through the years, and I half hoped that she or…what was the second wife’s name again?”

  “Marie.”

  “That she or Marie would press the issue with him.”

  “I couldn’t say. Mom knew what Dad told her, but she never talked about it with me. Marie, I don’t have a clue. I haven’t seen or talked to her in almost thirty years.”

  “It doesn’t matter, I guess,” Kelly said. “I never heard from them. Or him.”

  Finally, I told Kelly about the phone calls that had drawn me to Billings—leaving out the bit about my own marital discord—and how I had found her letters.

  “I have to tell you something,” I said. “It’s damned frustrating to try to figure out what his problem is now, why things happened the way they did all those years ago and now having this new stuff. I keep trying to get close to him, and I keep ending up farther and farther away.”

  Kelly lau
ghed, but not in a manner suggesting that she found what I said to be funny.

  “You’re not alone,” she said. “When Jimmy left the farm, he told us he would never come back and that we would never see his face again. I went down into the basement after he walked out, and I cried until I didn’t have any tears left.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I knew he meant it. Because I was happy for him.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Have you got a little while, Mitch?” It was an odd question. We had been on the phone more than an hour.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “I’ll tell you why.”

  Tears spilled down my face, driven by something so beyond my ability to rein it in that all I could do was turn at the picnic table and hide my eyes behind a hand lodged against my forehead.

  Homer and Dana Elspeth chose a boy and a girl not to give lost children a home but with the craven hope of doubling the labor force on their tiny dairy farm. They got their wish through a legal transaction. They enforced it with threats, coercion, and beatings.

  “I got it bad,” Kelly said, recounting how Dana grabbed her long locks and pulled her to the ground when housework wasn’t satisfactory. “Jimmy got it worse.”

  “Worse how?”

  “He got whipped with straps. He got whipped with chains. I saw Homer bounce a horseshoe off his head one time.”

  “Jesus.”

  The taste of tin seeped into my mouth, and I realized that I had bitten my tongue.

  “I saw Jimmy kicked face-first into cow manure. One time, he dropped a basket of fresh eggs, and Homer clubbed him with a two-by-four until Jimmy screamed for mercy.”

  “Just stop, OK? Please, just stop.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kelly said.

  Orphanages, scheming adoptive parents, a house marked by abuse and neglect—these things smacked of a century earlier. I knew nothing about it, of course, having not even a hint of it until that day, and still I reeled at the notion that Dad, just a generation older than me, would have known such horror. The naïveté he always accused me of harboring? Apparently, I was guilty of it.