The Broken Places

by Susan Perabo

  Monday was gray. Clouds hovered in the valley. The air smelled of snow, of returning winter, and the thought of sitting in a dim classroom on a dim Monday was almost more than Paul could stand. He was thinking of his father, living at Station #1, where he had lived as a boy. He wondered if Phil was right, if that place was really home to him, more home than their house would ever be. He trudged toward school, his backpack unnaturally heavy on his shoulders. A block away, he changed his mind, turned toward downtown on a whim, headed for the station house.

  He found Sonny inside the garage, sitting in the driver’s seat of Engine 14, checking all the equipment on the dashboard. He knew this was something his father did every morning, first thing. Most of fire fighting, he had told Paul many times, was preparation; the one time you slacked off on equipment checks was the time whatever you’d neglected to check would malfunction.

  Paul climbed up into the truck and sat down beside his father in the cab. Sonny looked surprised but happy to see him.

  “What’re you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

  “No school today. Conferences or something.”

  Sonny looked worried. “Parent conferences?”

  “Nah,” Paul said. “Just some teacher thing.”

  “Huh,” he said, either convinced or lacking the energy to call Paul on the lie. He looked tired, drawn. Had he slept? Was anyone sleeping? “Well, okay then.” He scribbled something down on the chart on his clipboard.

  “Are you gonna come home ever?” Paul asked.

  “Sure,” he said, continuing to write.

  “But really,” Paul said. “Are you really going to?”

  Sonny sat back in the seat of the cab, laid the clipboard on his lap, sighed. “Your mother and I . . . I guess we’ve got some work to do.”

  “She’s scared too,” Paul said.

  “She tell you that?”

  “Almost.”

  Sonny smiled weakly. Above them, from the kitchen, came the rattling of pots and pans. Someone would be frying bacon soon, cracking eggs into a skillet, buttering toast.

  “Do you want to come home?” Paul asked.

  “Almost,” Sonny said. He glanced quickly at Paul and then looked out the windshield into the street. “I’m thinking you can’t think very much of me. After everything that’s happened.”

  “That’s not true,” Paul protested. “I —”

  “You know,” he interrupted. “My old man, no matter what, I always knew he’d do the right thing.”

  “He wasn’t such a great dad.”

  Sonny thought about this. “Maybe not,” he said finally. “But he was a great man, Paul. I wish you’d a known him. Just walk around this town and everybody over the age of forty’ll tell you the same thing: a great man. A legend in his own time. And my time. And someday your time too.”

  “I don’t care,” Paul said. “I don’t see what that has to do with me.”

  Sonny chewed on the eraser of his pencil, bit a piece off and spat it out the door. “I never had trouble looking at him, quarterback, I can tell you that. I looked at him every chance I got.”

  “So?”

  “So I don’t want to walk around the house feeling like you can’t look at me. I don’t think I can live like that. I think I’d rather never see you again than always be thinking you can’t look at me.”

  Paul felt tears sting his eyes. Ashamed and enraged, he hopped out of the truck. Never see him again? Fine, he thought. If that was the way his father wanted it, then that was the way he was going to have it.

  He hurried out of the station house. A chilly rain had begun to fall. He wanted to walk away from his father, walk forever, but suddenly his legs grew weak and the weight of the rain drove him to his knees onto the pavement of the driveway. This driveway, this was the very spot his mother had pulled up thirteen years before, left her car idling in the street, ran to meet his father as he leapt off the roof of the engine and into her arms. They were soaking wet, both of them. The hose whipped and spun and they didn’t care because they were together, already planning their home and their dogs and their cars and maybe even Paul, in that instant, seeing even Paul in each other’s eyes. It must have been a wonderful moment, perfect even, the life they had laid out so carefully now snatched back from the abyss, never — so they thought — to escape them again.

  Sonny sat down on the drive beside him.

  “Hey, quarterback?”

  He didn’t dare look at him. “What?”

  “I was just thinking about what I said about my dad, about how I wished you’d known him.” He paused, cleared his throat. “Funny thing is, I think what I really wish is that he’d known you.”

  Paul blinked the rain from his eyelashes. “How come?”

  “ ’Cause you’re the best thing I ever did.”

  Paul tried to scoff, but it came out barely a squeak. “Right,” he said.

  “Listen,” Sonny said. “Try to understand this. You’re great, kiddo. It’s me I’m not so sure about. I kinda feel like I’m starting from scratch. I feel like I gotta earn everything all over again. I feel like . . . like I gotta earn you all over again.”

  “Dad,” Paul said.

  “Yeah?”

  He sat back on his heels. “We did have school today.”

  Sonny looked at him curiously. The rain was pouring now, drenching them both, flattening their hair and weighing their clothes. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Paul said, meeting his eyes. “But I didn’t want to go. I wanted to come here and hang out with you.”

  Sonny was silent. He drew his knees into his chest and hugged them tightly. Across the street, old Mr. Dewey came to the window of Dewey Drugs, looked out at the downpour and shook his head. The postman, shrouded in a blue slicker, trundled his bag down the puddled sidewalk. A scrawny white cat scurried across the street and into the basement window of the barbershop. Soon, the rain would end and the sun would burn away the clouds. Soon, Sonny Tucker would return to the house on Willow Lane. Soon, Paul Tucker would pass by the Hess Station with a group of his friends and would not turn his head toward the pack who hovered at the edge of the dark woods, would not look for the face of a hero among them. Soon, the Tuckers and the Casey firemen would gather before the television and listen to the voices that had once belonged to them. But now, for the morning, Paul and his father would remain in the drive of the station house, drying themselves naturally in the coming sun like dogs, like leaves, like heavy wings of birds and cowered blades of grass. And then, as humbled blades, they would rediscover their ability to stand.