Riot (Fesler-Lampert Minnesota Heritage)
Page 10
Dad groaned. “You were there.…”
“Tell me what to do, Dad.” Bryan’s voice grew louder. “You’ve always told me to stand up for what’s right and I know I should turn this in … but you’re on the stupid tape with all the others!” His hand trembled against his jeans.
His father sighed and rose heavily from the chair. “I never thought …” He rested his warm hands on Bryan’s shoulders.
Bryan’s pain curled into fists. He flung his father’s arms aside. Head down, he threw himself forward and drummed his father’s chest. “You shouldn’t have been there! You shouldn’t have …” His voice faded.
He felt his dad close his hands around his own, holding them still. He let his father draw him into the familiar smell of his flannel shirt, his skin. “I never thought,” Dad said, his voice muffled in Bryan’s hair, “I was capable of going so far.”
Bryan’s head pounded, and he closed his burning eyes tight. The smell of skunk still clung to his skin.
“I’ve really tried,” Dad said, “but look where I am. I couldn’t sleep last night, just thinking about what could have happened. What did happen.”
Voices floated through the hallway. A fly buzzed against the window.
Dad cleared his throat. “Listen,” he said quietly. He stepped back, shrugging his wide shoulders. “If that tape’s evidence, then it’s against the law to withhold it. You know what you have to do.”
He let out his breath, long and slow. His square chin quivered. “More important, Bry … is what I’ve done to you. You stood by me—even wrote that letter to the paper—and I let you down. Big time.”
“It’s not just you, Dad,” Bryan said. “I threw stones at the guardhouse, too … all on my own.”
Bryan hugged his father fiercely, forcing down the hot ball rising in his throat. He knew he’d changed, grown, in ways he couldn’t fully understand, in ways he couldn’t explain to his father. Someday he’d figure it all out. And someday he’d tell his dad to get back out there and try again. But not right now. Not yet.
Some things would take time.
Mary Casanova is the author of more than thirty books for young readers, ranging from picture books such as The Day Dirk Yeller Came to Town, Utterly Otterly Night, and One-Dog Canoe to novels, including Frozen (Minnesota, 2012). Her books have received two Minnesota Book Awards, as well as many other honors, and she speaks frequently around the country at readings, schools, and libraries. She lives with her husband and three dogs in a turn-of-the-century house in Ranier, Minnesota, near the Canadian border.