Junior raises his shoulders as if to say I told you so. “Set that gun down and put some wood on that fire,” he says to Patterson.
“You’ll only get one round off,” Patterson says to him. “You ain’t getting me.”
“Please,” Henry says. “I ain’t ready for this.”
“I’m not planning on getting you, Patterson,” Junior says. “I kind of like you.”
“Please,” Henry says.
“Put it down, partner,” Junior says. “This is going to play out either way. No need to rush it.”
Junior’s only about ten feet from Henry. Even if Patterson hits him perfectly, he’ll be able to get his shot off at Henry, if he has the will to do so. And that’s the one thing about Junior that Patterson doesn’t doubt, his will to kill Henry. Patterson crouches, sets his gun in the dirt, then walks to the pile of wood and tosses a couple of crooked piñon sticks into the fire.
The dry wood catches immediately, popping and sparking in a short rush that allows Patterson to see what he hadn’t been able to see before. The mare panting and exhausted in the dirt, the afterbirth soaking into the ground. The foal collapsed forward, its body slick and ethereal in the firelight and its coat spackled with dust.
“Where’s Emma?” Patterson asks. “Did you kill her, too?”
He shakes his head. “Little bitch run off somewhere.”
“You shouldn’t have killed Sancho,” Patterson says.
“I told you I didn’t,” he says. “Henry did. Besides, he bit my leg.”
“Henry just pulled the trigger,” Patterson says. “You killed my dog.”
“You don’t believe that,” he says.
“Well. What’s next?” The mare snorts, snorts again, and scrabbles upward in a sideways motion until she is standing. The umbilical cord between her and the foal breaks away and Junior shrugs.
“We keep going where it takes us,” he says. He raises his gun and takes aim at the foal. But just as he’s squeezing the trigger, a small rock swings out of the darkness, like on a string, and smashes into his temple. He reels sideways a step and swings the gun out at the night, flipping blood from his head in an arc. “You cunt,” he calls. “I will fucking kill you when I get hold of you.”
Another rock floats in from the side. A glancing blow on the back of the head. He slaps where it hit like he’s been stung and turns back to the foal, which is now struggling to stand alongside the mare. The next rock comes from behind, crashing into the base of Junior’s neck. It knocks him forward, almost on top of Henry. Henry makes a feeble grab at his leg. Junior kicks at the old man.
That’s all Patterson needs. He dives onto Junior’s back and all three of them collapse forward in the dirt.
Then there’s a howl from out in the darkness, and Emma barrels into the light, her lips white and her mouth open wide. She swings a rock down double-fisted at Junior’s head, but Junior jerks sideways and the rock hits Patterson on the shoulder instead. His arm goes instantly numb.
Junior kicks free and grabs the rock in Emma’s hand, slamming it back into her face. She explodes blood. Patterson stumbles to his feet, holding his arm, staggering for the gun. But by the time he has his hand on it, Junior is standing with his boot on Emma’s throat, his Glock pointed at her forehead.
“Shoot him,” Henry slobbers. “Shoot him, Patterson.”
“He’s a brave one, ain’t he?” Junior says. “He wasn’t telling you to shoot me when it was his head, was he?”
“Shoot him,” Henry says again.
Junior ignores Henry. “You’re something, you little bitch,” he says to Emma, leaning forward on the boot on her throat. She coughs, her face plumping like a balloon being squeezed from one end.
“Shoot him,” Henry says again, and Patterson has to stop himself from shooting Henry instead.
“Go ahead,” Junior says, reading Patterson’s face.
The pasture is spinning out from under Patterson. Their voices so thick and weird he can barely understand them at all anymore. All he can hear is the throbbing in his shoulder, and what feels like broken glass moving under his skin when he moves it. This is shock, he thinks to himself, that’s all this is. But thinking it does no good. He crumples to his knees.
“I told you he didn’t change,” Junior says. “Quitting drinking wasn’t quitting anything for him. It was just more of Henry’s horseshit about Henry.”
“This ain’t me,” Henry says. “You can’t put everything on me, son.”
“Shut up, Henry,” Junior says mildly. “This ain’t about you, dumb motherfucker.” He squats down by Patterson. “How’s the shoulder?” he asks in a low voice, almost conspiratorially.
Patterson can smell the whiskey on him, see the cocaine residue around his nose. His handsome face isn’t handsome now, and Patterson doesn’t think it’s coming back. It’s swollen and discolored, as though something has torn loose inside his head and flooded him. “It hurts,” he says.
Junior’s whole face seems to close and open again like a blind. He tilts a little in his squat, then rights himself. “You want me to check and see if it’s broke?”
“There ain’t no need to check.”
“I guess not.” Junior grins at him. “Seems like I’m always patching you back together.”
“Is that how it seems to you?”
“If there was any other way, I would have done it,” Junior says. “If there was any way at all.”
Then a hole appears in Junior’s throat. A small hole, almost like a large mosquito bite. He and Patterson look at each other, stupefied, registering the sound of the gunshot. Then Junior wobbles, grabbing at his throat, gurgling at the blood and saliva stringing out of his mouth. The second bullet punches through his jaw, leaving a small, jagged hole of tissue and bone. Finally understanding what’s happening, he swings to his father, raising his pistol, but Henry empties the rest of the Kel-Tec’s magazine into Junior’s face.
Patterson hears someone grunt who sounds like himself. He jerks to move for Junior, but the pain in his shoulder rends his consciousness. Then he’s back, and he’s fumbling at the blood on Junior’s face. He’s wiping it away with the thumb and fingers of his good hand, and finds what’s causing the blood. They’re little more than leaking dimples, the bullet holes. And Patterson realizes that’s not what he’s looking for. That what he is looking for in Junior’s face, it’s no longer there.
“It fell out of his pocket when we were wrestling,” Henry says. “Jesus, Patterson, he didn’t give me no choice.”
Patterson gropes for his .45 and raises it on Henry.
“Go ahead,” Henry says. “If you think you got the right, you go ahead. You son of a bitch.”
Patterson drops his gun in the dirt and holds on to his shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Emma crawl across the dirt and collapse on Henry. Henry pulls her mangled face to his chest and holds it. “It’s over, honey,” he says. “We got him. We got the poor bastard.”
Behind Henry and Emma, off the north edge of the mesa, the five peaks of the Blanca Massif look like earth torn out of the sky. Patterson wishes that he could just lie down right there, but he can’t. Breathing tears ropes of pain down his broken shoulder, his lungs ripping free of his rib cage. Every breath pins him in place.
Then Henry is helping him up by his good arm. “Me, too,” he’s saying. “Me, too.”
Justin
I haven’t seen Henry since we buried Junior. I never went to visit him again, and he never came by the cabin. Now that the summer’s over, I guess we both know where we stand. I know what Junior was. I probably know it as well as anyone. And Henry’s right, everything wrong with Junior wasn’t his fault. Junior didn’t turn out the way he did because his daddy was a piece of shit. At least not only because of that. There was plenty wrong with Junior that Henry had nothing to do with.
But I ain’t gonna give Henry any kind of justification for what he did. He doesn’t deserve it any more than Court does. Or than I do fo
r what I did to Chase and Mel. Reasons and justifications don’t mean shit.
I went to see your mother one more time, though. Just yesterday, in fact. I drove into Taos for supplies and stopped by her house. She and the boy were sitting in the yard at the picnic table. Every light in the house was on behind them, and they were eating hamburgers on paper plates, talking over their food and laughing.
I sat in my truck for a long while watching them. I was far enough back that they couldn’t see me, almost all the way around the bend in the road. There was a wind blowing. It was one of those fitful late summer winds, stopping and starting like it might come on strong at any minute, like it just might blow their little dinner party right out of existence. But you wouldn’t have known it from them. Both in short-sleeved shirts, eating and laughing.
Then the wind kicked up a cloud of dust between me and them. It’s been a long, dry summer, and there’s not much left to keep the soil in place. And when the dust cleared, Laney was sitting motionless at the table, her hands in her lap, staring my way. The boy was still talking, still laughing, he hadn’t seen me. But your mother was just staring. Then the boy caught what she was looking at and he stopped talking and just stared, too.
She said something to him and then walked out to me. I rolled down my window and waited for her.
“Hello, stranger,” she said. “I was thinking about that yesterday. That it was getting close to time for you to get back on the road.”
“It is,” I said.
Her nose wrinkled as though she was about to sneeze and she put her hands in the pockets of her jeans, her shoulders shuddering against the early autumn chill. “We’re having dinner,” she said. “You want a burger?”
“I’m all right,” I said. I looked past her at Gabe. He looked like some kind of ghost, caught between the yellowing lamplight and the sinking sun. He was chewing a bite and trying not to watch us, impossibly small against the coming night.
“You don’t have Sancho to look after you,” she said. “You’ll need to be careful by yourself.”
“I will,” I said. “And I’ll be back in a few months. I’m working a short season.”
She didn’t look like she believed me, and I guess I don’t blame her. She just patted me once on my driving arm and withdrew her hand. But I meant it.
“We’ll be here,” is all she said, and I put the truck in gear and pulled away before I could say anything at all.
But I watched them out of my rearview mirror. I drove slow and watched her walk all the way back to Gabe.
The thing is, I can’t barely see Gabe when I look at him. I hope it’s okay that I tell you that. He looks like he might just flicker out of existence at any second, and I can’t help but see you in his place. Looking at him, I know that the gap I’m walking between what I write to you and what I don’t write, it’s getting narrower every year.
I’m not going to sign your mother’s paperwork, either. I called her and told her that not too long after we buried Junior. She’s accepted it, and is moving ahead without me. I told her not to let me know how it turns out. I know what she needs, for your death to have an end, but I don’t want anything to do with it.
She likes to think of grieving as a journey, your mother. A mappable line that begins with loss and ends with resolution. Or, as she put it, a hole that we’re trying to fill with our conspiracy theories up here on the mesa. Something that we could heal if we just would. It’s the same thing Dr. Court would like to believe, I’ll bet. I’m pretty sure he’s the only person happier about the lawsuit than her.
I know better. If I didn’t before, I learned it from Junior. Nothing ends, ever. And nothing heals because there’s nothing to heal. Losing you is my life now. There’s no resolution to it. The main kick may fade some. Hell, it already has. Like I wrote this spring, returning to the mesa doesn’t hurt like it did. But you’re still there, everywhere. When I sit on the porch, you’re out there behind the Blanca Massif. When I sit in the cabin, you’re what I can’t see in the darkness through the window. You’re in everything I see and don’t see. Nobody gets to resolve that. We’re all everything we’ve lost. Just as my fuckups as a father came, in part, from losses before you. Nothing ends, nothing heals.
Not that I’d have it any other way.
acknowledgments
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to all the folks who read Cry Father during the many stages of revision and were kind enough to say nice things. Their support was the only thing that kept me upright when everything about it seemed to be going wrong. They include Frank Bill, Ward Churchill, Christa Faust, Sophie Littlefield, Natsu Saito, and Charlie Stella.
Likewise, without the discernment and guidance of Gary Heidt, Oliver Gallmeister, and Adam Wilson, there’s no doubt in my mind but that I’d still be wrestling with it, and with no end in sight. Nobody’d be reading it without them, that’s for sure.
On the same lines, this book would have died in its infancy without my brother, Stephen Whitmer, who took a much-needed scouting expedition to the San Luis Valley with me, armed with nothing but Townes Van Zandt and a tent. It also couldn’t have been written without David Staub, who, besides putting in countless hours talking about it on my back porch, took time out of his life to wander the Superfund sites and dive bars of North Denver. I also have to thank Joshua Mork, who, poor bastard, has probably heard me talk about it more than anybody. And I can’t forget Kim and Robert Garcia, who I owe for the loan of their dog.
Which brings me to the one person who is, more than any other, responsible for this book: Lucas Bogan. Not only for all of the tree-trimming stories he let me steal, but for all the hiking, driving, story swapping, and daydreaming. In other words, for a lifetime of friendship. I owe you this one, man.
Lastly, I’ve been blessed with four parents and two children who I’ve done nothing to deserve. There’s no excuse for how lucky I’ve been to have these six people in my life. I wake up thankful for them every day, which I hope they know.
about the author
Photograph by Joshua Mork
Benjamin Whitmer is the author of Pike, which was nominated for the 2013 Grand Prix de Littérature Policier, and coauthor (with Charlie Louvin) of Satan is Real, a New York Times’ Critics’ Choice book.
FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR: authors.simonandschuster.com/Benjamin-Whitmer
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Benjamin Whitmer
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First Gallery Books hardcover edition June 2014
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Interior design by Jaime Putorti
Jacket design and illustration by Lisa Litwack
Author photograph by Joshua Mork
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-4767-3435-4
ISBN 978-1-4767-3437-8 (ebook)
contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Cry Father Page 20