Blood Father

by Peter Craig

  But Link was so angry that he hardly registered his surroundings. He kicked repeatedly on the aluminum door until it began to dent in the center and bend off the frame. He lowered his shoulder and smashed into it, rocking the entire shed, and then he punched it for a while until his knuckles bled. “Open the fucking door, Cherise.”

  “Link, I’m scared of you right now,” she shouted from the other side. “And I got a loaded shotgun. You get away from that door.”

  He kept stomping the aluminum, mangling it further and increasing the daylight around the padlock; and Cherise shouted, “You twist it any more and I’ll never be able to get the lock off. I’m going to shoot right through the wall, Link. Unless you stop. I can’t be responsible.”

  Link reached around the space at the edge of the door, and she shouted, “I’m going to shoot your hand off! I mean it. Don’t you grab at me!”

  Lydia touched him on the back. Link had grown so deliriously enraged that he had forgotten her, but the moment he saw her large, pleading eyes, he stopped fighting the door. Lydia took his hand and looked at the bleeding fingertips. She said, “Shhh, Dad. Stop, okay. Stop.”

  Cherise kept warning him on the other side while his daughter studied a swollen knuckle. Then Lydia whispered, “Look around, okay? You don’t need to beat down the door—this woman is an idiot. She put us in here with the entire crop.”

  This occurred to Link just as she said it, and he cursed himself for always missing obvious solutions when he was angry.

  Lydia said, “They want thirty g’s—there’s a lot more than that in here.”

  Link stooped down to the open space beside the door, and said, “Cherise? Let us out of here, or I’m yanking up every fucking plant.”

  Cherise called to Preacher, and in a few moments both of them were outside the crooked door, arguing in whispers. Link pulled off one of the PVC pipes for a weapon, holding it like a bat as the circulating water began to pour out onto the corrugated floor. It was saturated with nutrients and fertilizer, and the smell made his eyes water. Preacher was talking calmly, as if to a man with a bomb strapped to him, telling Link that he was letting him out, but that he needed to push the key into the lock at a tough angle. The key scraped. Holding the pipe like a spear, Link paced to the door and thrust it through the bent space, hearing Preacher wince on the other side.

  “Dad! They’re trying to let us out.”

  Preacher yelled, “You just hit me in the shoulder, you son of a bitch. We’re not getting you out of there unless you cut that out.”

  Link told Lydia to hide among the plants, then he waited silently as he heard them fiddling and finally turning the key. When the padlock was removed, he kicked the door open. The edge struck Preacher in the face, and he stumbled backward. Link scrambled back into the long shed and started ripping up plants and throwing them toward the entrance, huge heavy stalks with tangles of wet roots.

  Cherise and Preacher splashed into the room, into the shallow runoff, with their guns cocked. Preacher was talking, on the verge of tears, saying that they had to get rid of Link because he was too volatile; and as Link slipped and crawled forward under the PVC garden, Cherise got the barrel of the shotgun against Link’s neck. “That’s it, I got him.”

  Lydia came forward with her hands up, and she and Link moved out of the grow room, soaked with pungent water. The four began down the hallway, through the Indian bead curtains, Preacher guarding Link, Cherise with her gun on Lydia.

  They stopped before the last doorway, covered by a paisley sheet. Preacher gestured for Lydia and Cherise to move ahead through the narrow space. Lydia passed first, and then, as Cherise followed, Link ripped down the sheet over the top of her. Lydia reacted quickly, escaping across the open portion of the hangar. While Cherise struggled to get the sheet off of her, batting at it like a swarm of flies, Link grabbed the old man from behind and pilloried his arms, reaching his hands around to the back of his head and working him into a full nelson. He pushed his head down hard and Preacher struggled to breathe.

  “Drop the gun, old man, or I break your fucking neck.”

  The revolver dropped onto the floor. Untangled, Cherise pointed the shotgun at them, but her eyes were wide with shock.

  Link backed away, moving the old man around as easily as a scarecrow, and he said, “All I got to do is lean into him, Cherise—and his spine breaks. I can feel his vertebrae right now, like little Rice Krispies. Drop the gun.”

  “You hurt him and you’re going to die,” she said.

  “So what?”

  “And then I’ll go outside and find your little girl.”

  “She’s long gone. Probably already hitched a ride.”

  “I’ll shoot you right around him.”

  Link moved back farther along the drywall. “Try that, Cherise. Good idea. With a shotgun.”

  Preacher could hardly get enough air to speak, but he tried to whisper something. Link lifted him up and made him dance like a limp marionette, showing her how easily he could move him as a shield. With his face raised slightly, Preacher said, “Put the barrel on his head. Back him into a corner.”

  “Oh, that’s a great idea!” said Link. “Get it right up into my face, baby. In fact, wait—here, I’ll open my mouth. Go ahead.”

  Link had moved all the way back into a corner in the twisting hallway, and as Cherise pushed the barrel forward, Link opened his mouth and nibbled at it like a fish. She was trembling and wiping her nose as she moved forward.

  Link said, “Uh-oh, I heard something pop in his back. You okay, Preach? Yeah, he’s still okay. I thought I broke his spine there.”

  Cherise maneuvered the barrel past Preacher’s down-turned head and planted it on Link’s temple. When her mouth straightened out, he could tell that she was about to fire. He rotated and threw Preacher against the barrel. Her aim was knocked off and she blasted into the drywall, throwing dust and powder outward into a splash.

  Link let go of the old man, grabbed the gun, and wrested it away from Cherise; then he rushed out of the cloud and found the revolver, saying, “This is the saddest fucking shakedown I ever saw.” In the office, he rifled through the desk, finding a drawer full of money stacked neatly. “I’m sick that I ever worked for such amateurs.” He stuffed bills into his jeans pockets, and when they were overflowing, he turned onto the next drawers and searched through papers.

  “Where are the keys?” he yelled.

  Preacher came sullenly into the room, rubbing his neck, while Cherise sat solemnly with her back against the drywall. “Link, let’s calm down and talk about this. You have to understand my dilemma here. Try to put yourself in my shoes. You know I still love you, you were the best foot soldier I ever had.”

  Link put the gun down, picked up the computer monitor, and threw it at him across the room. The glass shattered and the keyboard and mouse dragged around it. “Where are my keys?”

  “Second drawer in the file cabinet behind you.”

  Lydia was outside hiding in the trees and brush along the dried riverbed when she heard a loud series of blasts. She rose up out of the yellow grass as her father shot out of the hangar on his bike and wound downhill toward her. She was already running toward him by the time he called, and she leapt onto the back. He kicked into gear and she grabbed on to him around his broad torso, leaning with him into the turns. They burst out past the open wooden gate in a swirl of dust and wind, moving onto the paved road and accelerating eastward toward washed-out skies.

  The landscape trailed away on all sides as her hair flapped over her face. She leaned back and felt some of the anxiety trail off in the rushing air. The chopper was a monstrous thing; she had never been on anything like it—the firing decibels and the climbing speed and the way the road seemed to grind beneath them like a belt of sandpaper. The air was full of grit, the seat was hot, and they rode so fast that she felt as if she were sliding in a low orbit along the ground. Her father smelled like gunpowder and fertilizer, and his hair flapped in streame
rs around her. Lydia leaned down into the windward spot behind his back, resting her head against him and feeling the engine through the hollow of his chest, trembling like a struck bell.

  They stopped at a gas station near the Arizona border.

  His skin was raw from the wind. He wiped his dirty hair from his face, then said to her, as the tank filled, “We need to change the program here. We got a lot of people on our trail.”

  In the mini-mart, he bought groceries while she waited on the curb. He gave her a bag of potato chips and a root beer, then he tilted the bag to show her the scissors, soap, shaving cream, and razors. “Be careful,” she said. Close to twenty minutes later, when he emerged from the bathroom, he had completely shaved off his beard and given himself a crooked, short haircut. Lydia sat gaping. Aside from the one arm with a sleeve of tattoos and his crusty jeans and T-shirt, he looked like any middle-aged man. She recognized his face. He had the same breadth and fleshiness across the cheeks as she did, the same weak chin under an improbably wide mouth, the same high, almost Indian cheekbones. His skin was pale and tainted gray against black eyes and lashes that seemed longer now.

  Lydia held a swig of root beer in her mouth, and, from her spot seated on the curb, began running her legs in place. She burst out laughing, throwing her head back and wailing at the sky.

  “Shut up,” he said.

  She abandoned herself completely to the laughter, falling down onto the sidewalk and howling at the stucco overhang of the roof, then rolling over and covering her face. Root beer came out of her nose.

  “Yeah?” he said. “Well, you’re next, you moron.”

  She lay on her back, sighing and recovering her breath, saying, “I can’t even look at you without laughing.”

  “Just keep going. I’m going to cut your hair like a middle-aged lesbian.”

  Her chest seized again, and the wheeze intensified into another bout of now-painful hysterics, and she got onto her hands and knees and gasped for air. “Oh my God, I think I just ruptured my spleen.”

  An hour later they were safely ensconced in a motel room in Yuma, Arizona, prepaid and signed into the register under fake names. Lydia stood in front of the mirror, fretting at her new short splash of black hair. Link had bought her blonde and red dyes, and she had been arguing that her hair was too thick for this kind of coloring. Scattered across the counter in front of her were crumpled papers and debris from her pockets, the napkin map to Preacher’s hideaway, the faxed bulletins sent to the motel, which she was attempting to smooth out under the weight of soap packets and tissue boxes for inclusion in her scrapbook. Link interrupted their discussion to call his sponsor, complaining that all his friends were turncoats and that his daughter was driving him crazy. After Link had described his ordeal at the ranch, he asked Kirby to look up all of the meetings in Yuma.

  There was something concerned and curious in his voice. He frowned and asked Kirby if he was feeling all right, and listened for a while to some outburst on the other end of the line. Lydia worried that the sponsor was having a breakdown, and that he might drag Link down with him. Link became calm on the phone, explaining that everything was all right, and that Kirby hadn’t disappointed him at all, that people made mistakes, that life was brutal. He was sorry that he had put Kirby through so much. “No,” said Link. “I don’t want to talk about the ranch out there—it didn’t go well. No, Kirby—I said we’re not there anymore. We left some stuff there, maybe I’ll go back. I just need you to look up a meeting down here for my daughter. Kirby? Kirby, focus, man. Kirby, you got to call your sponsor, buddy.”

  When he hung up the phone, he simply stared ahead with his mouth open. Continuing their earlier conversation, Lydia said, “To get my hair blonde, you would have to use a nuclear weapon. I’m not going bald for this. I think I’d actually rather die than damage my hair the way you’re asking me to.”

  On the bed, Link put a damp washcloth over his face. “I don’t want to argue anymore, Lydia. You need to look as different as you can.”

  “Well, most of that is fashion sensibilities. We have to get new clothes anyway, and we’re not going back there just for our stuff.”

  “I’m going back. Tonight.”

  “No, Dad. No, you’re not.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  Through the mirror, she could see his boots facing upward on the flowery comforter.

  “Dad—that’s stupid.”

  “I’m going back for your clarinet.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “And all of your things—your letters and your stupid bag full of Kleenex and matchbooks. And your cell phone.”

  “We can’t use the cell anyway. The cops could probably, like, trace it or something.”

  “Lydia, if anybody gets ahold of your phone, they’ll have every number you called in the past two weeks. Do you understand me?”

  “Just leave it. Please. Just let it go. I think you’re going back to get that creepy old man, and—”

  “There’s a lot more to this than you know here, Lydia.”

  “Dad, take the washcloth off your face and look at me.”

  “I’m just going to get the evidence you left, and then I’m going to hurt them really bad.”

  “Okay, listen. For me. I’m asking you not to. I absolutely put my foot down on this. You’re not going back there.”

  “Those people betrayed me in more ways than you can count. They betrayed a code of honor. I’m going to get organized, and then give them a first-class beating.”

  “For me. I’m asking you not to.”

  “For you, I’ll go back and put ten pounds of claymores in his ass.”

  “Why aren’t you listening to me?” she suddenly shouted at him. “I’m asking you nicely. I asked you ten times.”

  “Because it’s not your decision,” he said from under the washcloth.

  “Are my feelings just completely meaningless to you?”

  “You don’t know anything. You’re just a kid. I got pants older than you.”

  “And that doesn’t mean they should be making the decisions.”

  “Say whatever you want, kid. You’re not my mother.”

  His response so riled Lydia that she couldn’t think straight any longer. She picked up the box of blonde hair dye and threw it at him across the room, and then, when it glanced off him, she threw the TV clicker. She threw the phone, and then she pulled out the drawers and hit him with the Gideon’s Bible, which tumbled off him across the room and fluttered like a bird into the corner. “You fucking asshole!” He was laughing at everything she tossed at him, and this incensed her further, until she moved into the bathroom and came back out throwing soap and toilet paper rolls that unraveled across the room. When the floor was littered with streamers, she stormed over and began pounding her fists onto his big shoulders and chest. This didn’t particularly trouble him; but when she tried to hit his face, he grabbed her wrists, cinched them together in his fat hands, and held her still. “That’s enough. Cut it out.”

  “You’re going to go and get killed now, because you can’t let anything go.”

  All of her emotions seemed to have bottlenecked into her stuffy nose.

  “You can’t let anything go,” he said.

  “If you go back there and burn that place down, I’m going to kill myself.”

  “Fine,” he said, letting go of her wrists. “If you kill yourself, I’ll kill myself. And I’ll take a bunch of innocent people down with me.”

  “You think I’m joking, but I’ve tried to kill myself, Dad. I’ve tried before.”

  “Whoo-wee. I’ve tried lots of times.”

  “I took all of my stepfather’s pills when I was twelve.”

  “Oh, pills are bullshit. People take pills when they want somebody to find them.”

  She screamed at the top of her lungs and fled into the bathroom.

  He waited, then called, “Great, Lydia. Great. Now they’re going to think we’re making some kind of snuff film i
n here.”

  She rushed out again, shouting, “I tried to hang myself when I was ten years old!”

  “That’s crap. You wouldn’t know how to tie a noose.”

  “Don’t you even understand how miserable I am?”

  “Sure, I do. Congratulations.”

  “Ten years old.”

  “I knew a ten-year-old kid who killed his whole family with a rock.”

  “Every time I start to think maybe you’re not so bad—”

  “Come here, dummy.”

  “No.”

  “Come here. I want you to feel something. You have to. It’s important, goddamn it. Come here and feel this.”

  He rubbed a spot on his head and knocked on it with his fist.

  Finally she paced over to him and let him guide her fingers onto a patch underneath his hair. She felt something hard and smooth like the panel to a fuse box, and she squealed, leaping backward. “Oh my God, what is that?”

  “I drove my motorcycle off a cliff on the PCH and split my head open. I meant to do it, I think. Fell down into the rocks—and they still saved me. That’s a steel plate in my head. And look at this.”

  “I don’t want to. You’re a fucking cyborg.”

  “This is where I tried to cut my veins open in prison. With a razor I smuggled in. They sewed me up, I lived just fine—and then I almost died of hepatitis. Two months in the prison hospital watching soap operas and game shows. Two months of porridge and Bob Barker. I said, ‘I don’t need to die now. I’m already in hell.’”

  “You win,” she said.

  “If you wanted to die, you should have said so a long time ago. What are we going to all this trouble for?”

  “I don’t want to die.”

  “If you do, let’s go do it. Let’s quit fucking around here. Go out with a party. We’ll get a can of floor stripper and rent a movie.”