His Father's Son

by Bentley Little

  Steve was exhausted, but he couldn’t sleep, and after a night of fitful tossing and turning, he got out of bed shortly before dawn to make some coffee and toast. He left a message on Gina’s voice mail that he still wouldn’t be coming in to work, then phoned Sherry, waking her up to tell her that he would be busy this morning and would call her at the library around lunchtime. Afraid that in a fit of pique his mother might throw out his father’s belongings before he had a chance to look at them, Steve decided to drive over to his parents’—

  his mother’s

  —house and sort through what he could before his ten-o’clock meeting at the mortuary.

  Like him, his mother had not slept much. She was in the kitchen when he arrived, drinking coffee and listening to talk radio. They spoke briefly, politely, distantly; then she told him that his father’s clothes were in the bedroom and everything else was in the television room. He needed to go through it all now because she was going to donate it today.

  Steve was taller than his father, so none of the clothes would fit, but he took a look at the pile of shirts and pants anyway to see whether he might want to keep something for sentimental reasons. He did not. As he dug through the boxes of belongings that his mother had assembled, however, his gaze alighted on a brown hardcover copy of Cervantes’s Don Quixote. He had read that book in high school, and even then had wondered how it had come into his father’s possession. Joseph Nye had not been a reader, and the other books in his possession all seemed to be biographies of sports figures and famous businessmen. So why Don Quixote? Steve didn’t know, was not even sure that his father had bothered to read the book, but Steve had been intrigued by the cover art—a faded old-timey picture of a skinny knight with a long white beard riding on a bony horse next to a fat man on a donkey—and he’d picked up the book for that reason. Despite the density of the prose, he’d found himself engrossed in the story of the dreamy, deluded old man and his earthy, practical squire. Something about Cervantes’s novel spoke to him, and over the next several years Steve had read it more than once, even writing a term paper in college on the work’s layered narrative voice.

  It was Don Quixote that had first made him want to be a writer.

  Feeling a touch of nostalgia, he picked the book out of the box and opened it, looking closely at the flyleaf, searching for some indication that it had been a present given to his father at some point.

  By his first wife?

  There was no inscription, however, no dedication, no marks on any of the opening or closing pages. Perhaps, Steve thought, it had belonged to one of his father’s victims, and he had taken it as a souvenir after dispatching the man. Or woman.

  He liked that idea.

  He put the book aside and read the spines of the other books in the box, finding nothing of interest. Discovering in the next box over an old notebook listing competitors’ auto parts and their prices, written in his father’s tight, cramped hand, he wondered whether the old man had kept a personal journal or a diary, if his dad had jotted down notes about his . . . kills. Steve doubted it. Doing so would not have made much sense, and if there was one thing his father had always been, it was sensible. The odds that he would create and leave around incriminating evidence defied all logic. Yet Steve wished he had, and he spent several hours searching not just through the boxes but in every nook and cranny he could think of, trying to come up with something that would explain or describe exactly what his father had done in all those cities.

  A road map he could follow, part of his brain told him, but he pushed that thought aside.

  “What are you doing?” his mother asked finally, annoyed, and Steve stopped his search. It was getting late, and he had to drive to Santa Ana and meet with the funeral director.

  Not for the first time, he wondered if his mother knew more than she let on. Was that why she’d been so afraid of her husband at the end? Not just because of the stroke-fueled attack but because she was aware of the violence of which he was capable? Steve didn’t know, and he could think of no way to hint around about the subject to test her out. He looked at her face, trying to determine whether he believed his mom knew of his father’s hidden avocation. Would she keep that sort of secret for him? Would she carry it to her grave?

  There was no way to tell.

  “Are you done here?” she asked him.

  “Yes,” he said, picking up Don Quixote. “Do you want to come with me to—”

  “No,” she said flatly.

  He looked at her for a moment, saw the hardness in her mouth. “Okay.”

  He went directly from there to the mortuary.

  Fifteen

  The funeral was short and simple. Neither Steve nor his father had ever been religious, and though his mother was—to a wacky degree—she did not belong to any church, so there were no required rituals for them to go through, no specific traditions that had to be honored or observed. He had instructed the funeral director officiating at the ceremony to keep everything as brief and generic as possible, the bare minimum required for decorum’s sake, and the man was as good as his word. There was no wake, no memorial service, no viewing of the body at the mortuary, only a nonspecific Joseph Nye-was-a-good-man-and-we’ll-all-miss-him speech by the graveside as the coffin was lowered into the ground.

  If it were up to Steve, there would not have been even that much of a concession to convention. He would have been alone with his mother right now, watching silently as his father was buried without fanfare. But there were other people to think about—not family but friends, acquaintances—and this was the compromise.

  After the coffin had been lowered, his mother took out her well-worn Bible and began reading, in fiery, angry cadences, a series of long judgmental verses that had nothing to do with his father and did not seem apropos of anything.

  The cemetery was surprisingly crowded. Jason came, and Dennis and Will, though he could not remember inviting any of them. He had been in charge of the arrangements, but he realized that he did not recall inviting most of those who showed up. Standing next to Sherry, Steve looked around. There were a lot of people from the past. Men and women he hadn’t known he’d known but whom he recognized immediately upon seeing again. Smiling politely, he greeted them as, one by one, they filed past, offering condolences. His mother, too, had on her public face, and though she was the grieving widow, she made sure to tell everyone that it was the second stroke that had killed Joseph; the first stroke had almost killed her because it had made him attack her like a crazy man.

  Behind them, the grave lay open, the coffin unburied. He had never been to a funeral before, and had always gotten the impression from movies and TV that all of the mourners waited and watched while all of the dirt was filled in. But people were leaving, and though there was some sort of digging machine off to the side, there was no one around to operate it, and the pile of dirt that had been taken from the grave lay untouched. He had no idea what his mother’s plans were, but he was going to wait here until his father had been buried and the grave was filled. And since she had ridden to the cemetery with him, she was going to have to wait, too, if she expected a ride home.

  Will came over. He felt Sherry’s hand stiffen in his. She didn’t like Will, and had never tried to disguise the fact, although she made an effort to be polite.

  “Sorry, man,” Will said. And that was it. He was moving off with a nod, ignoring Sherry completely, not stopping by to see his mother.

  Dennis awkwardly stuck out his hand, and Steve awkwardly shook it. “If there’s anything you need . . .” he mumbled, and then he was following Will.

  Jason came up and offered real sympathy, hugging first Sherry, then Steve, and while Steve wasn’t a big fan of hugging and stood there stiffly, not reciprocating, at least he understood and appreciated the effort. “I’ll call you in a few days,” Jason said. “Once everything’s settled down. We’ll talk.”

  Sherry had arrived in her own car, but she remained after everyone else had gone, coming
with him into the adjacent mortuary as he asked when the actual burial would take place and requested rather forcefully that they do it now so he could watch. The three of them watched together—he, Sherry and his mother—and after the dirt was replaced, the tarp protecting the nearby grass removed and the cemetery workers gone, his mother stood in front of the grave, eyes closed, and began reciting a prayer.

  “When do they put up the headstone?” Sherry asked.

  “Next week sometime.”

  She lowered her voice. “Do you want me to meet you back at your place? I could stay over tonight if you want.”

  He looked over at his mother and sighed. “Yeah,” he said. “That’d be good.”

  Sherry was in the kitchen cutting chicken when he returned to his apartment after taking his mother home. She’d stopped off and bought groceries on her way over, and he saw a variety of foodstuffs spread over his counter.

  The second he walked in, she quickly washed her hands and rushed over to give him a big hug. It wasn’t sexual; she didn’t even kiss him. She just threw her arms around him and held him close, pressing her cheek against his, silently offering her love and support. Improbably, he got an erection anyway. Embarrassed to have such a thing happen at such an inappropriate time, he shifted slightly, pressing his chest into her while pulling the lower half of his body away. She caught his move, though, and pushed herself into him, and then they were waddling over to the couch, still entwined, frantically pulling down pants and underwear. They did it fast and rough, coming at the same time, she with an escalating series of high-pitched screams, he with a single animalistic grunt, and afterward they pulled on their clothes without speaking.

  “Are you all right?” Sherry asked, concerned, before heading back into the kitchen.

  He nodded silently, still breathing hard, and turned on the television. He wasn’t sure how he felt or what he felt or if he even felt anything, but he didn’t want to dwell on it and knew that TV would keep his mind distracted enough that he wouldn’t think about himself or his father or anything difficult.

  After dinner, he told Sherry she could go home if she wanted—

  I don’t need you here I’m through with you

  —but she insisted on staying, and she did the dishes for him, took a quick shower and met him in bed. They were both naked but neither of them seemed to be in the mood, and they were strangely tentative with each other as they kissed chastely and said good night.

  “At least today’s over,” Sherry told him. “At least the worst of it’s past.”

  “Yeah,” Steve said, rolling over and away from her.

  He closed his eyes.

  He fell asleep instantly.

  He dreamed.

  In his dream, there was a clown lying in his father’s uncovered casket, oversize shoes sticking up higher than the coffin sides. The clown’s eyes were closed, but open eyes had been painted on his eyelids and the effect was disconcerting. As was the fact that a downturned mouth lay hidden beneath the red-painted smile that shone so brightly against the white pancake makeup. A wake was in progress, and it was attended not by clowns or other circus performers but by children from his elementary school, all grown up. No one looked sad; everyone looked bored, and Steve alone stood in front of the casket. He felt afraid and wanted to leave, but he understood that he was the host of this event, and it was his responsibility to make sure the clown stayed dead and did not attack anyone. He glanced down again at the open casket, but something was wrong; something was different. It was the clown’s eyes, he saw. They weren’t just painted open now; they were really open, and they were staring at him with a hatred so fierce he could feel it. The clown sat up, and Steve screamed, jumping back. The room was empty now, all of his former classmates were gone, and he started running, hearing the slap of leather on linoleum as those big floppy shoes came chasing after him.

  He awoke with the slapping sound still in his ears, and for a brief, confusing second thought that the clown was here with him in his room. Then reality reasserted itself, the nightmare faded away, and he was in bed, next to Sherry, on the night of his father’s funeral. He glanced at the clock. They’d gone to bed early after the stress of the day, but he was still surprised to see that it was only ten fifty-five. One or both of them had kicked off the sheet that had been covering their bodies, and Steve noticed that despite all of his thrashing around, Sherry was still dead asleep. She was on her side, next to him, but facing away. He watched her for a moment. He had an erection again and wondered what she would do if he just scooted a little bit closer and slid it up her ass. The thought made him smile, but he wasn’t brave enough to do it, and instead he reached for the sheet, pulling it over them. He picked up the remote control from the nightstand next to the bed. Turning on the television to help him fall asleep, he closed his eyes and dozed off sometime in the middle of the weather forecast on the late local news.

  He awoke again several hours later, instantly alert, and sensed immediately that he and Sherry were not alone in the room. Skin prickling, he looked to the right and saw his father sitting in the chair by the closed curtains. The television was still on, the host of a late-late-night talk show babbling in the background, and light from the TV illuminated his dad’s motionless form. There was no smile on the frozen face, and the unblinking eyes appeared black and shiny in the flickering bluish glow, but there wasn’t the expression of blank confusion that had been the fixed cast of his features since the stroke. He seemed . . . normal.

  Steve didn’t know whether it was a ghost or a figment of his imagination—the latter, he assumed—but the apparition seemed so real that he squinted into the dimness, trying to see it more clearly. The old man, he noticed, was wearing not the suit in which he’d been buried, but the type of dark pants and white shirt that had often served as his workday attire. Dark splotches were visible on the left sleeve and side of the shirt, irregular stains of various sizes, and though Steve couldn’t be positive, he was pretty sure they were blood.

  That should have made him afraid, but instead he found it calming. The instinctual fear he’d experienced upon waking was gone, replaced by a general feeling of sadness. There were so many things he wished he could have said to his father while he was alive. Not that he would have. Even simple communication had been beyond them since his early teenage years, and the complexity of the subjects he wanted to discuss was well past their comfort level. Still, if he could have talked to his dad, if they could have talked to each other, he knew they would have had a lot in common, a lot to discuss.

  Life was a series of missed connections.

  What was it that Jason had said about fathers and their grown sons?

  We still crave our dads’ approval. We still want them to be proud of us.

  It was true, and Steve would have given anything to hear the ghost of his dad say something positive, something reassuring, something nice. But the figure remained silent, and when Steve looked away for a moment to see if his father’s reflection was visible in the dresser mirror, the form vanished.

  He was left with a sense of loss so profound that tears came to his eyes and there was a sick, hollow feeling in his gut. Then Sherry rolled over on the bed beside him, and he quickly wiped his eyes so she wouldn’t see. By the time he realized she wasn’t waking up, was only stirring in her sleep, the feeling was gone, and he settled back into his pillow, closed his eyes and within moments was sound asleep himself.

  This time, he did not dream.

  Sixteen

  He was rereading Don Quixote for the first time since college, poring through his father’s book each night after work, and it was turning out to be quite a slog. He was forcing himself to get through it, but the going was slow, and seemingly everything distracted him. He would finish a paragraph, then decide he needed a drink of water; read a page, then feel uncomfortable and need to change his seat or take off his shoes; get through part of a chapter, then tell himself that the nightly news was on and he should watch it to fi
nd out what was going on in the world. . . .

  Sherry admired his ambition, and it was partly for her that he continued on and did not give up. But it was not only for her. There was something else involved as well. An attempt to recapture the past? An effort to relive old glories? Steve didn’t know. Whatever it was, he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

  He realized, however, that he was not the reader he used to be—he was not the person he used to be—and if he had picked up Cervantes’s novel for the first time today, he doubted that he would have gotten past the first few pages. Something about that seemed sad, and though he wasn’t sure why, he felt as though he had lost a part of himself.

  In many ways, he and Sherry had grown closer after their trip. And his father’s death had only drawn them together even more. They’d been engaged now for over six months—he’d proposed on her birthday in a breezy, lighthearted manner—but it was a casual, open-ended commitment to be married sometime in the indefinite future that he wasn’t sure she took any more seriously than he did. Recently, though, they’d begun discussing their lives together in a less frivolous fashion, and rather than avoiding thinking about the subject, as he had in the past, Steve found that he liked imagining what they planned to do in the months and years ahead.

  With his friends, on the other hand, he’d grown more distant and detatched. He’d given up the Friday get-togethers, and though Jason had called twice and they’d made tentative plans to meet next Wednesday evening at the gym, he hadn’t heard from Will or Dennis at all. Not that he felt sorry about it. Things would be much easier, in fact, if they just drifted out of his life forever and he never had to see or hear from them again.

  He and his mother had fallen back into their old habits. For that, he felt guilty. She was alone now and needed him more than ever, if not emotionally then at least to perform manual labor around the house. There was the car, the lawn, and God knew what else: light-bulbs to be changed, trees to be trimmed, rock salt to be put in the water softener, leaky faucets to be fixed. But she didn’t ask, he didn’t volunteer and the last time they had spoken, to discuss the funeral bills, the call had lasted barely over a minute.