by Gregory Ashe
“I messed you up.” North’s dad was rubbing his neck now. “That’s a riot. Kids mess you up, that’s what happens. You’ve got a good woman, a good job, a good life, and kids come along fuck the whole thing to shit. How do you like that? How does that make you feel?” The last question was delivered in a sneering tone, petty, almost childish. The kind David McKinney would have knocked out of North’s mouth if he’d ever heard him use it. “Well?”
“Awful. Pretty goddamn awful. Dad, I’m not—”
“Who taught you to pick yourself up after a fight? Who taught you to work a full day? Who taught you that your name and your word mean something? Who put you on a job and showed you that you could make your own way in this world if you’d keep getting up after you got knocked on your ass?”
“Take a breath.” North meant that literally; his dad’s chest rose and fell rapidly, but his breathing sounded like air blown through a straw. The cannula dangled, limp and tangled now, from the walker. “Let’s both take a breath.” On his knees now, North reached for the plastic tubing. “You need—”
David McKinney swatted him away. The blow clipped North’s hand, hard enough to knock the cannula loose, but not hard enough to hurt. It felt like something more, though. This was a blow struck not from anger and dissatisfaction and shame and drink. This slap had come from a place of raw hurt. Hurt that North had caused.
He got to his feet slowly, gaining some distance from his dad, who had dropped his head and was now massaging his chest.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine.” The AC seized up, and David McKinney’s words seemed intended to fill the silence it left. “Heartburn. Those Jew hot dogs.”
Whatever had locked up the AC passed, and it resumed its chug, chug, chug. Something clattered on the roof, and a moment later, North’s brain told him it was a branch. Big trees. Big old linden trees. All over the place here. Sometimes, in a big wind, the twigs falling sounded like rain on the asphalt shingles.
“I’m glad you taught me those things. Anything good in me, you and Mom put it there. But there’s a difference between self-confidence and self-esteem. And the kind of love we get as children, all the things we mix up with that love, that sticks with us. It stuck with you. It stuck with me. That’s how everybody is. And I need to tell somebody—I need to tell you—that that’s how I ended up with Tucker. Because I never thought I was worth shit. Because I thought he needed me. Other stuff, I guess. Because his family seemed nice and normal. They laugh a lot, and his parents have been really good to me. But part of it, Dad.” Now his chest was seizing up like the old window unit. “Part of it was because when he hit me for the first time, it felt normal. For a long time, I didn’t know how to get out. There were a lot of reasons for that too, and I guess I don’t need to go into those. But now there is a way out, and I’m taking it.” That locked-down tightness in his chest was worse. North wasn’t getting any air at all. “And I want you to know that I forgive you. And I love you. And…and that’s about all of it.”
A crow cawed outside. Something heavy and black and ruffled shot past the window. North wanted to close his eyes.
“You forgive me?”
The cotton under North’s arm was damp and tight. He pulled on it.
“I don’t have to listen to this shit.”
“No, you don’t.”
“What is this right now? What do you want me to say to that?”
“I don’t know. You don’t have to say anything. I needed to tell you is all.”
“I did what I could for you. I did the best I could. I put food on the table. I put clothes on your back. Didn’t sleep nights, thinking about my son, what the world does to queers, all the shit waiting for you down the road you chose.”
A car passed on the street. Sunlight bounced off the window. For a moment, the kitchen was full of it, incandescent. North blinked to clear his eyes, and then the kitchen was darker than he remembered it. His father’s face gray, almost white, the sparse hair wild. Had he been running his hands through it and North hadn’t noticed? Now he was massaging his chest so hard he was pummeling it.
“I couldn’t be your mother. That’s not my fault.”
“I don’t want you to be Mom. I don’t want anything from you except what you want to give me.”
“How you’d have turned out with her babying you, Christ only knows. You needed a man in your life. You ever think about that? You ever think you ought to thank God somebody toughened you up, gave you a spine, taught you how to throw a punch? You ever give that one goddamn minute of thought?”
“Dad—”
“I do not have to listen to this shit. Get—” The expression on his face was so relaxed and easy that North mistook it for a moment for wonder. Then it contracted into agony. “Oh Jesus.”
“Dad?”
David McKinney started to fall, and North knocked aside the walker to catch him.
“Jesus God my chest. My goddamn chest.”
“Hold on,” North said, easing him to the floor. “Hold on. Hold on. I’m calling 911.”
Chapter 30
NORTH NEEDED TO CALL Shaw, needed to tell him to come to the hospital and pick him up, but he couldn’t. He’d lost his phone at some point, either left in the ambulance or forgotten at his dad’s house. He ought to have placed the call from the nurses’ station, if they’d let him, or collect from a payphone. But he sat there. He felt numb. Anesthetized all over, at least half an inch deep. But alert. He could pick out the sting of hand sanitizer from the pumps all over the room. When a nurse in chunky green shoes passed him, she left an invisible trail behind her of green apple shampoo. Underneath all of it was a faint bleachiness that made him grit his teeth until his jaw ached. On the waiting room TV, Wheel of Fortune reruns played. A blank of trouble. A blank of trouble. A ream of trouble! No, I’m sorry, Liz, Pat said with a sorry face.
“A heap,” North told her. “A whole fucking heap of it.”
The room’s only other occupant raised his head. He was old, and he looked like he’d been boiled down a few sizes like those shrunken heads North had seen in museums. His shirt had a detachable collar, and it was half undone, popping up on one side and making him look like he was coming apart at the stitches. When North didn’t produce any more stimulating conversation, his chin dropped to his chest again. He fumbled with something in his pocket. North bet on either root beer barrels or cinnamon discs.
Root beer barrels.
Hell, North McKinney couldn’t solve a murder, but he was a tiger when it came to old men. Guessing candy? Chump change. Watch this guy put his old man six feet under.
The door to the waiting room opened, and North and the old man both looked up. The nurse there was young, white, with an orangish cast to his skin that suggested he was balancing out these night shifts with plenty of time in a tanning bed. Or maybe—there it was, the slightly darker patches on his fingers and around his ears. Drip marks. Spray tans. North wanted to tell Shaw this guy got spray tans, and Shaw would say something about the time North went to a tanning salon before he and Tucker went to Cancun, and North had stayed in the bed too long and burned his wiener. But Shaw wasn’t there, and North had to rub his eyes.
“Mr. McKinney?”
“Yeah.”
North got to his feet, still rubbing his eyes, and followed the nurse out into the hall.
“Your dad’s asleep. We’ll be keeping a close eye on him, but for now, he seems stable.”
“Can I see him?”
“He’s asleep,” the nurse repeated.
But in the face of North’s silence, the guy made a come along gesture. He led North through a pair of fire doors, past several sectioned-off areas, and stopped. He pulled back a paper curtain and ushered North into a tiny, partitioned area. It was barely big enough for the bed and machines. And even in that small space, David McKinney looked smaller, engulfed by the hospital johnnie. The knobs of his wrist poked out from too-thin sk
in. The tape for the IV line covered most of the back of his hand. Under the thin blanket, his legs were sticks. His breathing was high and raspy beneath the cannula. A machine beeped steadily.
“Ten minutes,” the nurse said. “Then he needs to rest. You both do.”
The paper curtain’s grommets chimed along the rod. Then North was alone. With his dad.
David McKinney’s chest rose and fell. He made a soft noise and shifted, restless for a moment. North pulled up the blanket, turned down the top, and smoothed it until it lay flat. He pulled one of the molded-plastic chairs up to the bed and sat. Then, closing his burning eyes, he leaned forward and rested his forehead on the rail. The chrome was cool. His first black eye had been in fifth grade, when he and Loren McKay had slugged it out on the playground on account of Loren saying North wasn’t a name, and North saying Loren was a girl’s name. Now, in hindsight, North knew the fight had been stagey and strangely old fashioned, the two of them taking turns throwing punches. Loren had cried first, but North had cried plenty too. What he remembered was his dad wrapping a flour sack towel around a bag of a frozen peas and carrot mix and holding it against North’s eye, a big hand gripping his shoulder.
When the grommets hissed along the steel again, North cleared his throat and wiped his eyes. He followed the nurse back to the waiting room. On the other side of the windows, the world had fallen into darkness; North had lost track of time. The nurse said something, but it didn’t process. North stared at the ghost in the glass, trying to catch up with the son of a bitch on the other side, the one who looked fucking wrecked. Then, after a while, the nurse went away. The window looked down on a parking lot lit by blue-white halides, and a glimpse to the west showed the trees and the summer prairie grasses and the old stone bridges of Forest Park. Down there, a man in baggy jeans and a ripped t-shirt was pushing another man in a wheelchair down the sidewalk. The cement had buckled in places; they got stuck in one of the depressions, and the guy in the baggy jeans was putting his back into it. The need to run out there, to help, was like a scream building in North’s head. And then they got the chair rolling again, and they passed out of sight.
When another ghost passed in the glass, he had twist-out hair, and the unconscious grace and ease of someone young and beautiful. It only took a moment for North to recognize Will. A dead moment passed inside him, a lack of surprise that made him suspect something vital had been extinguished in him. Then he turned and said, “Hey.”
A few feet down the hall, Will glanced over his shoulder. He slowed. He stopped and turned. “Hi.”
North’s throat felt crackly. He swallowed a few times. “No need to run off and call Jadon; I wasn’t following you.”
“Yeah, no, I didn’t think you were.” Will looked more closely. “Are you all right?”
“Sure. I just come around here for the laughs.”
Will’s mouth tightened. “I don’t need this. I’ve spent the last two hours getting shuffled around, and nobody can tell me why I’m not allowed to see my mom.” He turned and started down the hall again.
“No, wait.” North caught up to him. “I’m sorry. That’s what I wanted to say: I’m sorry.”
Will slowed, stopped again, this time in a recessed section of the hallway where various medical supply cabinets stood, all of them marked STAFF ONLY.
“It’s been a weird fucking week,” North said. “I went over to my dad’s house. I have no idea why. And he and I—God, it doesn’t matter. You don’t care. I wanted to say I was wrong, about what I said to you. And I’m sorry we went after you like that. I haven’t been thinking clearly. About a lot of stuff, it turns out.”
Will finger-combed his dark curls. Up close, he smelled like cocoa butter and summer sweat. He was wearing a button-down and chinos, and he must have eaten a taco or spaghetti or something because an orangish-red drop of grease had stained the cuff of one sleeve.
He was looking at North intently again. “Are you ok?”
North nodded, but what came out was “I don’t know.”
“What happened?”
North shook his head.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
And to North’s surprise, he did. He told Will all of it. And sometime in the telling, they ended up in the abandoned cafeteria, and Will got coffee for them from a machine. The paper cups were too thin, the coffee burning North’s hand when he accepted it, and somebody had brewed the shit from pencil shavings. But by the end of it, when he’d told Will all of it, it was like finishing x-rays at the dentist, the lead apron coming off his chest, breathing easier even though he’d gotten used to the weight.
“Are you going to try again?” Will asked. “To fix things with him?”
“I don’t know. Yeah, I’ll try.” Then, breaking out of him: “I don’t know.”
“You don’t have to know right now.” Will folded the paper cup’s rim. “I loved my dad. I hated him too. Sometimes those feelings, they’re so close together, you can’t even tell them apart anymore. I couldn’t, I guess. You love them because they’re part of you, and that never goes away. And because they’re part of you, they can hurt you worse than just about anyone. I don’t think that goes away either.”
“For a guy who recently became able to buy his own beer, you’ve got it all figured out.”
A smile broke that soft, sandy-colored complexion. Full lips. Good teeth. The kind of smile that guys would do cartwheels for, to see it again. “God, you try really hard to be an asshole, don’t you?”
“I don’t have to try; I come by it naturally. Stop by and meet my dad sometime.”
It was meant to be a joke, but his throat tightened at the end.
Will gripped his arm. “You’re a wreck. Come on.”
North stared at the laminate tabletop, trying to master himself.
Squeezing his arm softly, Will said, “You shouldn’t stay here by yourself, so come on.”
In the always crowded garage, Will had parked the Cayenne across the stall’s yellow line, which meant he’d taken two spots. Someone had left a note. Will read it, gave a wry grin, and crumpled it. He let it fall as he climbed behind the wheel. A moment later, the locks disengaged, and North opened the passenger door. The smell of good leather wafted out. Tacos, too. That’s North McKinney, everyone. North McKinney. Root beer barrels and taco grease. He’s two for two, and he’s headed for the hat trick. Just don’t ask him to solve a murder.
As North eased himself into the seat, the SUV roared to life, the dash brilliant with crisp, white light. Will gave the media console a few taps—calling it a stereo felt like calling the space shuttle a bottle rocket—and Drake started crooning. Lots of good speakers, and all of them placed right. They backed out of the stall, and Will guided them toward the exit.
North directed him south on Kingshighway. A couple of lights later, though, Will turned west on Manchester. On their right, single-story brick warehouses sprawled on generous lots. Metal racking held tarp-covered pallets. In gated parking lots, box trucks waited for the next day’s work. On their left, the railroad was a dark glimmer. A sodium lamp flickered, and then they raced past it.
“No, you need to flip around,” North said.
“There’s a place up here I like. And you look like you could use a drink.”
“Thanks, but I need to get home.”
Drake was singing. He wanted that Ferrari. He wanted that Bugatti.
“Maybe we could have a drink at my place, then,” Will said. His hand came to rest on North’s knee so lightly and so casually that for a moment, under the fog of exhaustion, it seemed to make sense. “You’re right: you need somewhere quiet, somewhere you can unwind. I’ll make you a couple of drinks. You’ll feel so much better.”
North moved his hand away.
“What?” Will said, a faint note of banged-up youthful pride in his voice. “You know about me, now. No point hiding who I am. I’m into you. Have been since you walked in on me in my
dad’s office. And like I told you: I’ve given lots of blowjobs. I’m good at them. You know what would be hot for me? I make you a drink, whatever you want. I bring it over to you. You’re sitting in my dad’s chair. I get down on my knees, and you whip out that big fat daddy dick and make me choke on it. You’re into it too; I can see it in your face.”
“Bad timing,” North said. “I’m kind of attached right now.”
“That doesn’t sound very solid. ‘Kind of attached.’ That doesn’t sound like a wedding ring. You don’t even have to do anything. You sip your drink, and I’ll go to town on your cock. Do you get how fucking hot that would be? You can pretend I’m not even there. You can watch TV. Of course, if you want to fuck my face and pull my hair, I’d be into that too.”
Drake. Drake. That mellow beat. Suck yah mada. Yeah, North thought, wanting to press his face against the glass and the condensation jewel-dropped along it. Suck yah fada, more like it.
Will’s hand came to rest on his knee again. North moved it again.
“What does that even mean, ‘kind of attached’? With who? Tucker?”
“How do you know who Tucker is?”
“He killed my dad. Yeah, I know you were married to him. I did some digging. I like you, but if you’re shacked up with my dad’s murderer, it’s really going to put a strain on this thing between us.”
North shook his head. It was like only hearing half a conversation, and none of it making any sense. “He didn’t kill your dad.”
“Sure he did. That guy confessed, but it was bullshit, so it’s got to be Tucker.”
“It wasn’t Tucker.”
“This semi-attached thing, is it Shaw?”
Again, that half-second pause to catch up. “You need to turn here.”
Instead, the Cayenne sailed straight through the intersection.
“Sorry,” Will said with a smirk.
“It’s fine. The next light.”
But ahead, crossbuck lights flashed. Drivers tapped their brakes, and red washed across the asphalt. They were two cars back when the crossing gate arms came down. Will brought the Cayenne to a halt.