Butternut Summer

by Mary McNear

  “Dad, I’ll just be here for a minute, okay?” he called out. “I won’t keep you long.” He watched through the screen door as his father shuffled into view. He came over to the door and peered through it, but he didn’t open it.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  Will felt a flicker of anger, but he quickly smothered it. He needed to keep his cool. “I want to talk to you,” he said.

  “About what?” his father grumbled, still watching Will warily through the screen door.

  “Dad, I haven’t seen you in three years. Do I really need a reason to want to talk to you?”

  Will heard his father sigh. “All right, come in,” he said. He stepped aside and propped the screen door open, just wide enough for Will to angle himself inside the house.

  He held his hand out then for his father to shake, but his father had already sidled away.

  “I’m not really set up for guests here,” he mumbled, gesturing around the small front room. That’s an understatement, Will thought, looking around at the shabby, haphazard furnishings.

  “That’s all right,” Will said, walking over to a rusty-looking lawn chair in the corner and sitting down on it carefully. His dad sat down—slumped down, really—on a nearby couch that had springs breaking through its threadbare slipcover.

  “I’d offer you something to drink, but . . .” His father’s voice trailed off. But I don’t want you to stay, Will finished for him silently. He studied his father now. He’d been in his forties when Will was born, so he would be in his sixties now. He looked the same, more or less, as he had the last time Will had seen him. He was a little leaner, a little grayer, a little more grizzled, maybe, but basically unchanged. Now his father narrowed his blue eyes at Will—mean eyes, Jason had called them—and rasped uneasily, “What are you here for, Will? Spit it out.”

  But Will wasn’t ready to tell him yet. Instead, he looked around the little front room, which, even on a summer day, had a chilliness and a mustiness about it that was hard to ignore. Will wondered what it was like in the dead of a northern Minnesota winter, and he barely repressed a shudder.

  “Are you doing okay, Dad?” he asked. “Money-wise, I mean?”

  “Why do you want to know?” his father asked, immediately suspicious.

  “I just wondered if you had enough, you know, for groceries, your utility bill, stuff like that. I mean, you’ve got your heat on in the winter, don’t you?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “I don’t want you to freeze to death, Dad,” Will said bluntly, his patience wearing thin.

  “Nobody’s freezing to death,” his father said. “In fact, I’m doing just fine,” he added, his chin jutting out with a pride that seemed a little misplaced, given his surroundings.

  “That’s . . . that’s good, Dad. But if you needed money, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

  “You? Why would I tell you if I needed money, Will?”

  Will felt his jaw clench involuntarily. “So I could give it to you, Dad.”

  “Oh, I see. My son, the big-time mechanic, is making so much money now he has to give it away,” his father said with a humorless laugh.

  “That’s not it,” Will said, his patience slipping again. “But I’ve made enough money to put a little aside. And it’s yours, if you need it.”

  “Well, I don’t need it,” his father snapped, his blue eyes suddenly blazing. “I don’t need anything. But that doesn’t seem to stop people from trying to give me something, does it? Last year, right around this time, someone came from some organization and wanted to know if I needed them to drop off lunch and dinner here every day. Like I was some old goat who couldn’t even open a can of beans by himself,” he said, disgustedly. “They said one of my neighbors—I’d like to know which one—told them I was a shut-in. I said, ‘You’re not a shut-in if you choose to be a shut-in.’ And then I told them to get the hell off of my property and—”

  “Yeah, okay, Dad,” Will said, trying to cut him off. But his father wasn’t done yet.

  “Then, last fall, a nurse comes here. Said she’s from the County Health Department. I had my doubts, though. She had some ID card, but it’s not hard to make one of those yourself. Anyway, she says she’s here to make ‘a home visit.’ Wants to do an exam and give me a flu shot. A flu shot, Will. I said, if you are still on this porch in ten seconds, I swear to God I will—”

  “Okay, Dad, I get it. You don’t need help,” Will said, breaking in again. “I’m sorry I asked, all right? You’re obviously managing fine on your own.”

  Will’s father nodded, seemingly satisfied, and Will breathed a sigh of relief. He thought he’d succeeded in heading off his father before they’d gotten to his favorite topic, which was his hatred of everything and anything having to do with the government.

  “Look, I came to say good-bye, Dad,” Will said, cutting to the chase. “I’ll be leaving soon.”

  “You left here the day you graduated from high school,” his father pointed out.

  “I don’t mean ‘here,’” Will said, gesturing around. “I mean this town. This state, actually.” His father nodded but didn’t say anything. Then, almost imperceptibly, his blue eyes narrowed.

  “You in some kind of trouble, Will?” he asked.

  “No,” Will said, flinching. “That’s not why I’m leaving.”

  “No trouble with the law?” his father asked challengingly.

  “No, Dad,” Will said, irritated. “That’s not it.”

  “Hmmm,” his father said, unconvinced. Then something else seemed to dawn on him. “You get a girl pregnant, Will?”

  “No,” Will said, exasperated. He almost told him about Daisy then, but he didn’t. He didn’t because he knew his father would never understand how he felt about her. He’d cheapen it somehow, make fun of it. And Will knew he wouldn’t be able to stand it if he did. So instead he asked, “Why do you always have to assume the worst about me, Dad?”

  “Why?” his father said, studying him coolly. “Well, maybe because that’s what I’ve always gotten from you, Will. When you were in high school, I used to get a phone call from them every week at least. Once, I had to come in and meet with your counselor. Another time, it was with the principal. And it was always the same thing. You were cutting classes, smoking on school property, talking back to teachers. You were always in some kind of trouble.”

  Will only shrugged. “I didn’t like high school, Dad,” he said, trying to be patient. “You know that. But I’ve got another opportunity now.”

  “An opportunity?” his father repeated, immediately suspicious.

  “Yes. I have a chance to . . . to do something better with my life. But I’ve got to leave here to do it, Dad.”

  Will waited for his dad to ask him more about this, but he didn’t. Instead, he asked, his eyes narrowing again, “You know who else left, Will?”

  Will tensed. He knew.

  “Your mother left,” his father said. No, he didn’t say it, really—he snarled it.

  “I know that, Dad. That’s not why I’m here. I don’t want to talk about her. I came to say good-bye.”

  His father shrugged, looked away. “So say it.”

  Will felt anger flare up inside of him. “Forget it,” he said, standing up. “I don’t even know why I came here. It’s not like I expected some kind of Hallmark moment from you, Dad. You know, like, ‘Good luck, son.’ Or ‘I’m proud of you, son.’ No, that’s not your style, is it, Dad?”

  “Sit down,” his father barked, and Will, almost involuntarily, sat down.

  “Now you listen to me, smart-ass,” his father said, leaning forward on the couch. “You think you’re so smart. You think you know so much. Well, you don’t know anything, not one goddamned thing. You think it was easy? Raising a kid by myself? And your mother—your mother—leaving one night, in the middle of the night, and you, two, two and a half years old, screaming your head off because she was gone.” His blue eyes blazed.

 
Will felt his pulse quickening, and his adrenaline spiking. “You know what, Dad?” he said, louder than he’d intended. “I used to think about her leaving, too. I used to think ‘what kind of mother would do that?’ Leave a child alone with a man like you? But then I realized something.” Will’s anger was building, the blood thrumming at his temples. “I realized that she would have taken me with her if she could have. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t because she had to make a break for it. She had to get the hell out of here, and I would have just slowed her down. If she’d stayed here with me and you, Dad, she never would have made it. She would have just given up.”

  His dad started to say something, but Will kept talking, faster and louder, knowing he was losing control, and not really caring anymore. “You know what else I like to think, Dad? I like to think that wherever she is, or whatever she’s doing, she’s happy. And that she’s had a good life, a good life with someone who cares about her.”

  His dad scowled at him. “Is that what you think, Will? Well, you know what? That’s not what happened. You don’t know anything. You’re just like your mother,” he muttered. “She was a loser, and so are you.”

  “I’m not a loser, Dad,” Will said, an almost blind fury building in him. “But if I end up one, it’ll be because you raised me. Maybe if you’d given me a little encouragement, Dad, or had a little faith in me, just a little, I would have gone to trade school, or college. Maybe I’d already be someone now, Dad. Maybe I wouldn’t have to—”

  “Get out,” his father barked, standing up. “Get out right now.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m going,” Will said, getting to his feet and heading for the door. “I don’t know why I came here anyway.” He pushed open the screen door and walked across the front porch and down the front steps. He glanced back long enough to see that his father had come out onto the porch.

  “Get off my property,” he shouted after Will, his voice shaking with rage. “Get off it or I’ll throw you off it.”

  Will kept walking, his breath coming faster now, as if he’d already been running, hard. He thought, for one wild moment, about picking something up—the rusted-out tire iron he’d just stepped over, maybe—and flinging it through one of the house’s windows. But he didn’t. He didn’t because he knew that was exactly the kind of thing his father wanted him to do. So he just kept walking, just kept putting one foot in front of the other. “You’re just like your mother,” his father shouted again to Will’s retreating back. “Do you hear me? Just like her. And don’t you come back here again, either. I mean it. Don’t you ever come back here!”

  Will stumbled, once, as he rounded the bend in the driveway that took him out of sight of his father’s house. He kept walking, almost blindly, aware that his father was still shouting after him, but unaware of what the words he was shouting were. And the next thing Will knew, he was back on the road again, back at his truck. He didn’t remember getting there, but a deep scratch on his arm and a rip in his jeans told him he hadn’t stopped to find the opening in the barbed-wire fence. He’d just gone right through it. He leaned over his truck, his elbows resting on its hood, his head down. He stayed that way for a long time, his heart pounding, his chest heaving, his stomach churning. He felt as if he was reeling from a punch—a hard punch—to the gut. He wondered now, not for the first time, if a punch to the gut would have been preferable to listening to his father’s words. He knew everyone who’d ever met his father—Jason, Jason’s parents, his high school counselor—had assumed that he beat Will. But he never had. Physical violence wasn’t his father’s style. Not once, when Will was growing up, had he so much as raised a hand against him. No, he’d preferred words. He hadn’t been as bad when Will was a little kid, though he hadn’t exactly been affectionate, either; he’d always been quick with a hard word and slow with a kind one. But he’d gotten worse over the years, and by the time Will was in high school, the man had gotten so bitter and mean that Will had learned to avoid him whenever possible.

  Now, draped over the hood of his pickup, Will tried, and failed, to draw in a lungful of air. He felt as if he was drowning, drowning on dry land, and for a second he almost panicked. But he thought about Daisy then, and he felt his panic recede a little. So he thought about her some more, starting with all the little things he liked about her, like the way her strawberry-blond hair always worked itself loose from her ponytail and then brushed softly against her creamy white cheeks; and the way she always looked a little surprised, just for a second, right before she laughed; and the way her head rested perfectly on his shoulder when they slow danced, as if her body had somehow been designed specifically to fit together with his.

  He sucked in a little welcoming breath and felt his heart rate slow a little. He thought then about the bigger things about Daisy, about how she made him want more. Not more money or more things, just more—more of her, more of her love, more of the world she already lived in. It was a world so different from the one he’d grown up in. Hers was a world where people were, by and large, kind to each other. People made plans and had dreams in that world. And there, even when life wasn’t perfect, people found ways to be happy.

  He drew in a deeper breath now and realized his heart was beating almost normally. God, she believed in him, he thought, believed in him more than he believed in himself. And maybe that was enough for now, having Daisy believe in him. Maybe the rest of it would come later, and he’d become the person who didn’t just need Daisy, but deserved Daisy. He’d thought a lot about that lately, about how to change his life, change it in a way that would make a future with her possible. His trip to Duluth several weeks ago had been a first step in that direction. Unfortunately, it was a direction that would take him away from her, at least in the short run. But in the long run, he hoped, it would mean they could be together.

  He pushed himself up from the hood of his truck and looked at his watch. It was later than he’d realized, he saw with surprise, and he wondered how long he’d been standing there trying to catch his breath. He needed to go; he needed to see Daisy. He slid his cell phone out of his pocket and checked to see if there were any texts from her. Nothing. He called her now, but she didn’t pick up. He didn’t leave a message, though. He didn’t trust his voice to sound normal yet. He’d go back to his apartment, he decided, and do something about his arm, which by now was bleeding a lot. Then, if he didn’t hear from her by this evening, he’d drive over to see her. He wouldn’t tell her, yet, about his going away. That could wait, at least for one more day.

  So he walked slowly, as if testing his legs, over to the driver’s-side door and got into the truck. He started the engine and pulled out onto the road. And he never looked back.

  CHAPTER 19

  Caroline, for God’s sake, calm down. You’re shaking all over,” Jack said, sitting next to his ex-wife on a couch in the visitors’ lounge at the hospital.

  “Calm down? Are you serious, Jack? Daisy almost died, and I’m supposed to calm down?”

  “She did not almost die,” Jack corrected her gently. “The doctor said—”

  “Oh, the doctor. The doctor,” she said, rolling her eyes. “What does he know?”

  “Well, he just operated on our daughter, so I hope he knows something,” Jack said mildly.

  But Caroline wasn’t listening. “And that boy, Will. Wait until I get my hands on him. This is all his fault, I know it is.”

  “Because he gave her appendicitis?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Because he must have known something was wrong with her. And after keeping her out all night, God knows where, he just dumped her on our doorstep, like a newspaper, and—”

  “Caroline, that’s not fair.”

  But she ignored him. “That’s it,” she said, getting up and pacing back and forth in the little room. “I have put up with that relationship all summer. I’ve looked the other way, while Daisy’s walked around in a complete daze every day, going out to some dive bar every night. But when Daisy comes h
ome from the hospital, I’m going to tell her exactly what I think about Will.”

  “She already knows what you think about him.”

  “Well, I’m going to tell her again. Less politely this time.”

  Jack sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “Caroline, you can tell her whatever you want to, but if you think it’s going to stop her from seeing him, you might be disappointed. She wants your approval, but she doesn’t need it anymore. And I think that’s as it should be, don’t you?” he added, carefully. “I mean, she is an adult now.”

  Caroline stopped pacing and stood in front of him, hands on her hips. “There you go again, Jack,” she said, glaring at him. “Taking her side. And his side, too.”

  “I’m not taking anybody’s side.” He shrugged. “But we don’t know the whole story yet, do we? Maybe he didn’t know there was anything wrong with her, Caroline. Or maybe he did, but assumed that whatever it was, it wasn’t serious. The doctor said a lot of people with appendicitis mistake it for indigestion at first.”

  “Humph,” she said, sitting back down on the edge of the couch. She was still wound as tight as a spring.

  “And another thing,” Jack said, bracing himself for what he knew would be her response. “I think we need to tell him she’s here, don’t you?”

  “What? No! Absolutely not. Why would you even suggest that?”

  “Because . . . because I think he has a right to know. And I think Daisy would want him to know, too. She just doesn’t want to bring it up in front of you.”

  “Well, I’m not telling him,” Caroline said crossly. “I’ll leave that to you.”

  She was silent for a minute and then added, “Honestly, Jack, I don’t understand how you can be so casual about this whole thing. You act as if Daisy gets rushed to the hospital every day.”

  “Caroline, I’m not being casual about this,” he said, tensing. “It scared the hell out of me. Following the ambulance here, waiting in the emergency room, waiting again while she was in surgery—those were some very long minutes, trust me. As long as they get. But unlike you, I’m somewhat reassured now. Maybe because the last time I saw Daisy, when the nurse finally evicted us from her room five minutes ago, she was eating a chocolate pudding and watching Wheel of Fortune.”