As they got out, Linda was already talking.
“Hi, Danny! Wow, you look skinny!” They hugged, kiss on the cheek. “Here’s little Jason…” Danny looked into the little boy’s alert eyes. “Sorry there’s so much drool. This kid is slobbering already and he’s not even close to teething.”
Danny gently touched the boy’s arm and smiled at him. He had always wanted a child with Melissa. The little boy grabbed Danny’s finger when it was offered.
“How old is he now?”
“Two months.”
“He’s healthy enough!”
“Well, all he does is eat!”
They collected his things and entered the house to the rattle of the garage door. Danny set up in the spare room. Scott knocked softly, and poked his head in.
“Danny, Lin made sandwiches, if you’re hungry. The Raiders game is on in about thirty minutes.”
“Thanks. If it’s okay, I’m gonna crash for a bit…feeling tired. Flight was pretty bumpy. You know I’m a Niners fan anyway,” he said with a smirk.
“Asshole! Okay, I’ll keep it down, bro. If you get hungry, come out and get some food. We have cold beer also.”
He walked over to Scott and shook his hand. “Thanks for everything, Scott. Sorry I’m a bit of a downer right now. Just a lot going on, you know?”
“Yeah, I understand. Get some rest.” He closed the door quietly.
Danny sat on the bed, and looked across at his reflection in the dresser mirror. He knew he looked drawn. He eyes were dark. Deeply set. He knew he had lost a lot of weight, but it actually felt good on him. But he looked into his own eyes, and didn’t like what he saw. He saw the darkness within. He looked away. Without changing, he sprawled out on the bed and slept.
XXIII
Scott always had a habit of keeping the volume down when they watched football together, something that always annoyed Danny. He had always wanted to hear the commentary, and loved learning interesting facts about players and hearing the color commentators share details of the game. Though not much of an athlete, he had played enough football to love the sport. He felt Scott just wanted to see who won.
“Do you need a top up?” Scott asked.
Danny drained his glass, and gave out a strong exhale as the smooth Scotch punched him in the gullet. “Yeah. Thanks” he spoke huskily. Danny rarely drank straight alcohol, but Scott liked expensive Scotch. “I’d better get some ice too” he said, watching Scott chuckle a bit. He knew Scott thought ice was for “wimps” and that it diluted the flavor of the whiskey. Danny got up, went to the freezer, put in a few cubes, and came back. Scott poured Glenlivet to the level of the ice.
“It’s great to have you back in town. Hoping you’ll stay.” His eyes confirmed his words.
“Yeah, it’s great to see you…” but he didn’t answer the intended question.
“So how was it in Mexico? You haven’t said much about it.”
“Well, not too much happened. I went up and down Baja a couple times. Ensenada. Cabo. Bus trip to Mazatlán. Met some people. That kinda stuff. The last two months or so were great. An experience I needed, I think.”
“Any pictures?”
“None. I had other things going on.”
“But you sold your car down there?”
“No, it was stolen.”
“Stolen? Fuck! Did they catch the thieves?”
“Nah, I didn’t even report it stolen. It wasn’t something I really needed.”
“Man, you’ve had bad luck with cars.” He instantly regretted saying it. Danny’s eyes flickered, but he made no response. He quickly tried to change the topic a bit. “So I guess that livened things up a bit? Getting your car stolen?” Scott laughed a bit, but Danny just looked down.
“Yeah, man, Mexico made me realize a lot of things.”
“Like what?”
“Stuff. Things.”
“Oddly specific!” Again, a laugh. Danny didn’t reply, and just stared into his drink. “Danny, you okay, man?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.” Still looking down.
“Well, I feel like I’m talking to a brick wall, man. Maybe you could communicate a little? Just a thought.”
“Sorry, man…it’s just…things feel so different now.” A slow sip of whiskey.
“Different…yeah, I get that. But we’re still friends, yeah?”
Danny looked up and made eye contact. “Yeah, Scott…sorry, man, that’s not what I meant. It’s just that I feel everything I was focused on before is gone. Mexico made me realize that everything I had wanted before was wrong for me. I don’t want any of it now. I feel I want something different. I don’t intend to stay, man; I’m just here to sell the house. I have other things to do…other places to go.”
“You’re selling your house? Seriously? You’re gonna lose money in this economy, you know.”
“Yeah, don’t care…just want to get rid of it. Mel’s insurance paid it off, so whatever I make is fine. I would feel guilty making too much out of it anyway.”
“Does it remind you of her? Is that why you’re selling it?”
“It does, but that’s not why I’m selling it.”
“Why not rent it out? Wait for the market to improve?”
“Nah, I’m cutting all ties.”
“Cutting all ties to what?”
“Sacramento…California…the US. Just cutting ties.”
“I don’t even know what that means. You’re cutting ties to the US? You’re American! What the fuck does that even mean?” Scott couldn’t hide his growing aggravation. Danny didn’t even look up, but he could feel it too. He took another slow sip of the Scotch, then looked down into the glass.
“I’m going on a ‘one-way.’ I’m going to sell all my shit. Already running ads on Craigslist. Gonna give away whatever doesn’t sell. I have a buyer for the house. When it’s all gone, I’m flying out again. I won’t be coming back…not anytime soon anyway.”
Scott felt like he had been slapped. His face felt flushed. He could feel his jaw clenching.
Danny spoke again, looking into his glass. “Scott, please don’t take this personally. This isn’t about leaving you or anybody. This isn’t about hurting anybody’s feelings. I just don’t feel I belong here anymore.”
“How fucking long were you in Mexico?”
“What?”
“You heard me…how fucking long were you there.” Danny saw the flash in Scott’s eyes.
“About three months total, I guess. Three and some change.”
“So you live here your whole life, and in three months you decide you don’t belong here anymore?”
Danny lifted his head and looked him in the eyes. “Scott, calm down, okay?”
“Fuck you and ‘calm down,’ okay?” Danny’s serenity aggravated him more. His face was beet red, he knew, but the sanguine anger let him say what he felt needed to be said. “Your family and friends have always stuck by you, but then you disappear on us and then come back and then you tell me you’re selling all your shit and not coming back? I took care of your house while you were gone. I made sure the bills were paid. I made sure nobody broke in and stole anything. ‘Thanks a lot…fuck you…I’m leaving.’ That’s what I get? No, fuck YOU, Danny! I can’t believe you’d disrespect me like that.” He put his glass down on the coffee table, and turned his face to the television, but didn’t watch it.
“Sorry, Scott.” He too put his glass down. “I’m sorry you feel that way.” He stood up. “I understand though. I get it. But this isn’t about you, and it isn’t about Melissa anymore. I need to find something out there. It’s not here in Sac…I don’t belong here anymore. Something is out there for me to find, and I gotta go get it. You’re my friend and I love you, but I have nothing to give right now.” He stood there for a second.
“So where are you going?” He was still looking at the screen.
“Cambodia.”
“Cambodia? The fuck?”
“Yeah.”
Later Danny w
ould wonder why he couldn’t say anything else. Scott looked away, and Danny didn’t have anything else to say. He walked slowly to the front door and walked out into the late summer weather. It was dry now, so he just went for a walk. Jim’s house was only about a mile away, but he wasn’t ready to go there directly.
He would always wonder why he couldn’t say more when faced with anger. Something in him just froze inside. It was something about himself he hated. He hadn’t always been this way, but for years he had moved away from anger of any sort. He didn’t know why.
Out into the warm night he walked. He loved the smell of the air in Sacramento. It was home. It smelled “right” but he never really noticed it until he went away and returned. And he noticed it tonight. He heard his shoes on the pavement, still damp from the rain, and felt his body move forward.
It was about movement, after all. That was his life now. Movement. He had to be going forward or sideways, but never back and never stopped. Was that always something in him? Was this new? He didn’t know.
Cambodia, he thought. What will I be there? Will I be the same guy? Will I be the same Danny when I’m there? How will I be different? Different. He knew he’d be different. He didn’t know how, but he was positive he would be a different person there. Mexico taught him that.
What he had wanted to tell Scott was that he had changed in Mexico. He wasn’t the same Danny. The Danny he was before was dead…or hiding…or sleeping…but he wasn’t that guy. While only a few months, these months loomed large in his life. He knew the person he was now could no longer be the person he was before. He couldn’t wear those clothes or work that job or drive that car, even if it hadn’t been stolen. Instead, he was a new incarnation…new skin, though same appearance. Was it Mexico or was it the events that sent him to Mexico? Was it the people he met? The food he ate? He just knew he was different, and there was no going back. He wanted to tell that to Scott, but knew he wouldn’t understand.
He felt…realized. People who left were not the same people as those who stayed. Yet to think that sounded horribly arrogant. It wasn’t arrogance, though. It was simply a factor of the act of leaving. Leaving made everything different, he now felt. Every sound was interpreted through different ears. New lenses saw the world. If he returned again he would be a person he wouldn’t recognize now, and he knew his old self wouldn’t recognize the person he was now. He had sloughed that old snakeskin, and it sat on the side of Jacinto Road…lying next to Melissa’s body. Her dead skin and his dead skin beside each other. Death seeking death. Underneath old, dry skin is new skin, waiting to come out. Not better. Not worse. Just new. That was it, then. He just simply sloughed off what his friends and family could not.
He knew that in Cambodia he would be different still. He knew that stepping off the plane would immediately change him. What would that new Danny feel like? What would the air smell like? What would the food taste like? How would his discernment and understanding change? What eyes would he see in the mirror?
He walked on into the night, thousands of miles away.
XXIV
Danny remembered. He remembered summer Saturdays in Sacramento. All summer days are amazing, aren’t they? He remembered the hot sun burning his shoulders. Running in the grass barefoot. Playing in someone's sprinkler. His family didn't have a lot, so he spent his time riding his old, rusty bike to friends' houses, or at the schoolyard shooting baskets. It was a magical time in his life. He didn't know what he didn't have. He would breathe in the warm air, and it fed him raw energy. He ran or rode or swam without rest. A friend's mother would give him some KoolAid and a PBJ, and he was back out to play. His parents would have to hunt around the neighborhood to find him in the evenings, when a light breeze would soothe the sunburn and dried sweat.
Those were innocent days. Carefree days. His only worry was wondering who he would play with that day. Friends around the neighborhood were always out. There was no reason to be in. Long bike rides. Kicking a red rubber ball around the street. Throwing a baseball or football. It didn’t matter. Sometimes they’d just dig in the dirt or find a place to throw rocks.
Scott became his friend at this time. Scott arrived at his elementary school when his family moved up from Galt. They were best friends instantly. He and Scott were both quiet, dutiful boys. Both worked for good grades. Both were neat and tidy with their work. They would ride their bikes on those hot Saturdays. Yellow sun blazing. They’d spend the summer playing outside until the sun was gone for hours. Night held its own adventure.
Freedom! That was the point of summer days. They didn’t have to be anywhere. They only had to do exactly what they wanted to do. That’s a frame of mind only children and old people can enjoy…the absence of responsibility…their only duty to find entertainment and distractions. Both work on limited time.
Things changed, though, when Danny’s mother died. Lisa Shields died suddenly one morning. When Danny and Jim were both in school, and their father was at work. Lisa was in the kitchen cooking and then just collapsed. It was the smoke from her burned cooking that alarmed her neighbor Marilyn Fairbanks. She came to the side door and knocked when she saw the smoke, and found her lying on the floor, already stone dead. The coroner’s report listed “Acute MI” as the cause of death. The massive heart attack took her at the young age of forty-four. Danny and Jim never knew that their father had to go to the coroner’s office and identify her body. They never realized that their father had to plan the funeral of his wife. They never thought that he had to plan their lives moving forward, now alone. They were young, and the painful, dirty work of someone’s death, even their own mother’s, was invisible to them.
Mark Shields didn’t take the loss of his wife well. When she passed, he began to drink. A little at first, then progressively more. The boys got older, and didn’t need much. They shared the chores, though many waited far too long. They took turns cooking things teenage boys could cook (mostly hotdogs and spaghetti, or anything in a can). They watched their father sit silently at the table and eat. With a drink. Then he would watch the news and drink more. He never showed emotion. He was as silent as a post. Too often, he would drift off to sleep with an empty glass next to him, snoring loudly from the comfort of his recliner.
Danny was in his first year of college when their father died. He had chosen to stay in town and attend Sacramento State, in large measure to help out his somber, unsober father. He continued to cook for him. Danny worked part time, mostly on the weekends, to help pay for school. He received a partial scholarship, which helped. His father rarely spoke to him, and he had continued to drink, now very heavily. Still, Mark Shields almost never missed a day of work, the bills were paid on time, and he was never cruel or belligerent.
One day, he went to his accounting class, and came home to cook dinner. He realized his father hadn’t left his bedroom. Everything was where it was that morning. His father didn’t respond when Danny called. He didn’t answer when Danny knocked on the door of his bedroom. When he looked inside, he saw his father was already cold and stiff. He had died in pain: Danny could see the twisted expression, mouth gaping open and hands in claws. He imagined, though, that Mark Shields didn’t so much as let out a cry. That just wasn’t him. When his liver failed, he died slowly and painfully. Alone in his room. Though he had a phone on his nightstand, he apparently never reached for it, as it sat there unmolested. Though his son was in the next room of their cinder-block house, Danny never heard a shout or a groan or even a whimper. The liver failure must have taken place over several days, and his father must have been feeling increasingly ill, to the point of being unable to move. Mark Shields never showed an outward sign. Large ulcerations burst under the stress of his years of alcoholism and poor diet. His body cavity filled with blood over minutes and hours. There are not many deaths that would be as agonizing. Mark Shields kept it inside and let himself die slowly. Perhaps he didn’t want to bother anybody. Perhaps he feared scaring his child. Perhaps that’s just how he was.<
br />
Jim drove home from Reno, where he was working. As the oldest, Jim planned the funeral of their father. Nobody cried. Eyes were dry, though downcast. After, neither spoke of him much. There wasn’t much to say, honestly. When friends asked him, Danny simply said, “He was my dad, and I loved him. But I honestly didn’t know him well. He kept to himself. That’s the way he was.”
They were never sure if he was so somber because of his wife’s death, or because he was naturally quiet. They didn’t have memories of their father playing catch with them, or hide-n-seek. That wasn’t their father. He worked in an office, with tie and briefcase. He was sullen, but friendly and polite. He kept to himself and never minded solitude. He was frugal but not cheap. Being a man of that generation, he showed his love for his family by working every day, and never taking sick days. By paying the bills on time. By ensuring his sons had adequate clothing and decent shoes. That they had food on the table, even if his teenaged sons had to do the food shopping. He showed his love in a thousand ways that went unnoticed, like most of his life.
Jim moved back to Sacramento. He and Danny lived together in that cinder-block house by Tahoe Park. Jim took their parents’ room, and Danny stayed in his old room. Both worked. Danny attended college, now with the help of Social Security. They made ends meet. When Melissa moved in, she helped keep the place clean, helped pay the bills, and broke them of their canned food diet. When Danny and Melissa finished college and began working full time, he and Jim made the decision to sell that old house. Danny used his share to pay off Melissa’s student loans and to put a down payment on their own home.
Mark and Lisa Shields’ quiet, unremarkable lives were forgotten quickly.
XXV
“Scott’s called a couple times today…he said he wants to talk to you…I think he wants to tell you he’s sorry,” Jim said.
“Yeah?” Danny, thought for a second. “I should call him. Hate to part on bad terms.”
The One Way (Changes Book 1) Page 11