“Listen up, Shawn,” he snapped at me, getting ready to do some more yelling. But then he looked at me, and his face changed, and so did his voice. “You okay?”
I’d mostly quit crying by then, finally, but I guess my face was a mess, and I didn’t care. Who cared what Mohatt thought? I looked straight at him, and no, I wasn’t okay. “I will be,” I said. Someday. Maybe.
“You look like hell,” Mohatt said.
I shook my head, tired of me. “Did you get them?” All I wanted from Mohatt was one thing: Dillon’s killer in handcuffs. I wanted to know who it was and why he did it. I wanted to look at him through jail bars and know who to hate. I wanted to see if he could face me.
“No, goddammit.” Mohatt sat down at Pen’s table. Sitting down like that, he didn’t seem like such a bad guy. More like a guy who drank too much coffee. Wired all the time.
“We think they’re a small-time drug gang,” he said. “We found some places up there where they planted something, probably marijuana. Gangs do that sometimes, find a piece of public land and move in and take over. Try to scare off anybody who comes around.”
String a trap. Don’t care who they hurt or kill. Don’t care if they kill Dillon. My brother.
Right then it seemed to me, of all the bad things in the world, the worst thing was that some people just didn’t care.
“They’re holed up in the rocks somewhere,” Mohatt said. “That mountain is like a playground to them. They’re laughing at us.”
I burst out at him, “Can’t you—”
All of a sudden Mohatt was steamed. He cut me off. “Son, don’t try to tell me what to do. I know what I can and can’t do. I can’t nab anybody until I know who they are and where to find them. Do you know who they are? Did you see them?”
No, dammit. I shook my head.
“Leppo?”
Pen came and sat down with us. “Nope. All I saw was rifle barrels.”
“Then we’re screwed. For now. I’m gonna go home and get a little sleep.” Mohatt got up, but then he just stood there looking at me. “Listen, Tuff,” he said, “I want these guys as much as you do.”
Not possible. I said nothing, but I looked back at him.
He sighed, and his voice went quiet. “You know I told you to stay away from that mountain,” he said. “My ulcer can’t stand this kind of crap. Next it’ll be you full of holes, and I’ll be standing over you studying the blood splatters and the puke and the dirt under your fingernails. You want that?”
I didn’t know what to say. Pen stood beside me as if to protect me, but Mohatt didn’t make me answer. “Think about it,” he said. “God knows I do.” Then he turned and headed out.
“Hungry?” Pen asked. I was sitting at his kitchen table sometime after midnight. It was like a replay of that first night, when I broke in.
I shook my head.
He sat down next to me and started to work on my face. I had melted the bandages off it pretty good, crying, and he had to tape the splint back on my nose now that I was finally done. “How do you feel?”
“Weird.” I felt light and hollow, like an eggshell with no stuffing. “There’s a hole in me that’s bigger than I am.”
He nodded like he knew. “That’s the way I felt after my wife died.”
“How long does it last?” It was a scary feeling. Lonesome.
“Awhile.”
He finished taping the splint on my nose and put antiseptic on some cuts on my face that had opened. He said, “You’ll get over it when it’s time.”
He pushed the first-aid box away. We sat there.
“You sure you’re not hungry?”
I shook my head. If he wasn’t even my father, why was he so damn good to me? I blurted out, “You’re not pissed at me?”
That made him smile. “Should I be?”
“I stole your gun.”
It was back in the drawer, and the key was in his pocket. But now he took the key out of his pocket and hung it on the wall where I could see it. He said, real quiet, “Well, it’s not going to happen again, is it? You know now that it won’t do any good.”
I said, “You wouldn’t have let me shoot him, would you?” If he was fast enough to snag a copperhead, he was fast enough to knock a gun out of my hand when I went to pull the trigger.
He gave me half a smile, admitting it. “But I won’t always be around,” he said.
“And you’re just going to leave that there?”
“Yes.”
I couldn’t figure him out. We sat there some more.
He said, “I’ve been too worried about you to get mad at you.”
I begged him, “You sure you’re not my father?” And if I was made of eggshell, I had just cracked open. I thought I was worn out enough to talk about things now, but I wasn’t. My voice started to come apart. I couldn’t look at him.
He reached over and put his hands on my shoulders. I could almost feel him thinking. Then he said, very softly, “Tuff, what is a father? You tell me. Is it the guy who gets your mom pregnant?”
I didn’t answer. I still couldn’t look at him.
He said, “Tuff, listen. I loved your mother.” Just like that, like saying water is wet. “She was…” He tried to think of a way to put it. “She was, you know the song, she was like the wind. The wildest, most beautiful, laugh-at-the-devil thing I had ever seen. But she collected big, good-looking men. She didn’t want a little fat boy like me.”
That made me look at him. “You’re not fat!”
“Sure, I’m not. Tell me another.” He grinned at me, but then he stopped grinning. “She did care about me some,” he said. “That’s why she told me to stop hanging around, to go take a hike. She told me she was poison, she would make me miserable, she wanted me to be happy, I should get the hell out while I could.”
I hated her for his sake. “And meanwhile she was banging every guy in three counties.”
“She did it with whoever she wanted, Tuff. She was a rebel.”
God, he still… “But she told you to get lost.”
“That’s right.”
I didn’t want to start crying again. My ribs wouldn’t take it. I closed my eyes.
Pen said in that no-fuss way of his, “Tuff, listen, if a father to you is a specific guy who had sex with your mom, then I think you’re out of luck. But if a father is a guy who—who cares about you….”
His voice wasn’t no-fuss now. He was having trouble saying this. I opened my eyes and stared at him.
He tried it again. “If a father is a guy who cares about you, I think I qualify.” His voice would not behave for him. “Look, Shawn, son, I—I’ve been happy, I’ve had a lot of good things in my life, but I never had a kid. If you—listen, money’s not that much of a problem, I can get a job. We can close the store, make it into a room for you—”
I was barely breathing.
“What I mean is, if it’s okay with your mom—and you want to stay here with me—”
I don’t remember what I said. Maybe I didn’t say anything. Probably not, because I didn’t need to. I just leaned forward a little and put my arms around him, and we hugged each other like crazy.
8
That night I slept like a baby from the minute I finally lay down. I don’t remember moving or having a dream. I don’t remember a thing until Pen woke me up close to noon the next day.
“Hey, Pa!” I stretched out my hand to him, grinning. I felt a little drunk.
“Morning, Son.” He took my hand and shook it like we had reached an agreement. But he was a lot more sober than I was, and he was dressed in a suit and tie.
Oh, my Christ. We had to go to a funeral today. Dillon’s funeral.
It hit me like a club, and for a minute I couldn’t move. Pen must have seen it happen. He said softly, “Shawn, you’ll be okay. Whoever tagged you ‘Tuff’ got it right. You can do what you have to do.”
I nodded and got myself in gear enough to sit up. Shower, I told myself. Get dressed.
&
nbsp; “You want something to eat?” Pen asked. “I can fix you some pancakes, or a sandwich.”
The thought of food made my stomach flip. I shook my head.
“Tuff, when’s the last time you ate? Yesterday morning?”
“I guess.” I stood up. “I’ll eat afterward, Pen, I promise.” I was afraid I would puke or something.
In the shower I felt like I was going to faint, I was so dizzy. When I got dressed, Pen had to take care of my tie for me. I kept fumbling with the knot like I’d never done one before. Well, I hadn’t, or not very often. Pen stood behind me and reached over my shoulders and tied the thing for me. Then he turned me around and stepped back to have a look.
“You look good,” he said.
I did look okay, I guess. It was the best suit I had ever owned. Actually, it was the first suit I had ever owned. Dillon would have teased me. Stud muffin, he would have called me. Hey, Tuff, you studly dude, you. When you gonna do it, Tuff? When you gonna find you a girl?
“My God, you’re smiling,” Pen said.
“I’m light-headed,” I told him.
“You sure you can’t eat?”
“No way.”
We got in the car. He had shined it up a little while I was asleep. He drove slow, like it was Sunday. We didn’t say anything most of the way there, but Pen was thinking. I could see him scowling at the windshield.
“Listen, Tuff,” he said. Here it came. “Why do you figure your mother told you I was your father?”
Now that I had gotten some sleep and my mind was starting to function for a change, I had been thinking about that, too. I said, “Because she wishes it was true.” He was probably the only one who had ever really loved her.
His mouth dropped open and he took his foot off the gas. Then he shook his head. “Nah,” he said.
I had a feeling I was right, but I asked him, “Well, why do you think she did it?”
“Because she knew you would go to me, and she knew I would take you in. See, Candy knows I have this idea of trying to be a hero.” He rolled his eyes, making fun of himself. “She knew I would want to help you.”
Help, hell. He had saved me. Saved my life. In more ways than one.
He said quietly, “See, Shawn, she cared what happened to you. She cares about you more than you think. Give her some credit, okay?”
Mom was the one who had snapped the picture of me and Dillon on that bike, and she’d had to borrow the camera to do it, and find money to pay for film. She never said much or even smiled much, but she did things. She had scrounged me a fishing knife because she knew I wanted one. Then kind of threw it at me so I wouldn’t say thank you. Mom was tough, but she—her life was tougher.
I looked out the window so Pen wouldn’t see my face.
“Okay, Tuff?”
I nodded.
He drove awhile, then he said, “She’s not the only one who cares, either. People in general care about you more than you want to notice. Mohatt—he cares, even though he’d never admit it. And that girl Monica—you like her? She really likes you.”
I jerked my head around to gawk at him. “When did you meet Monica?”
“Yesterday. She came to the store looking for you to see how you were doing because you hadn’t been in school.”
Which was news to him.
“In other words, she saved your ass.”
“You saved my ass,” I told him.
“Only because she was smart enough to figure out where you had gone and tell me. And she called the cops, or we would both be ventilated.”
“Monica did all that?”
“Yep.”
But why the hell would she? I sat there wondering. She seemed to kind of like me—but why? Because I had been going around with my emotions hanging out? Because I liked her?
It startled me silly, thinking that, because I didn’t realize till right then how much I really liked Monica, and it was crazy, because she wasn’t the kind—She wasn’t a girl like the one I was chasing—I didn’t even remember her name—before Dillon died. Monica wasn’t like the kind of girl Dillon would have picked for me at all. She didn’t strut and wiggle her butt and she didn’t have raccoon eyes and pouty lips and she didn’t—she wasn’t hot, you know? But there was something—
“Yeppers.” Pen glanced over at me with his eyebrows twitching, getting set to tease. “You might want to be nice to Monica,” he said. “I know that’s going to be a serious effort for a stud like you.”
“I’ll force myself,” I told him.
I wondered about this love thing between men and women. Did my mother ever really have love? Did Dillon ever have love, or did he just have fun?
Dillon, you idiot. I had to close my eyes. He would not have given Monica a second glance, and I—I had to try not to think about it anymore, how much he had missed out on. I would have wanted everything good for him if he had hung around, but the jerk, he had to go and die.
When we drove up to the funeral home, there were people everywhere. What was going on? I mean, was some important person going to be there or something?
Then some of them came up to me when I got out of the car, and I realized a lot of them were kids from school. Kids who knew Dillon, kids who knew me, kids he’d played ball with. And some of them were people he’d worked with. And some of them were neighbors, river people. They weren’t there to see somebody important—they were there for Dillon. I never knew so many people cared about him.
“My most sincere condolences, young man,” some old lady said to me while Pen parked the car.
“What a pisser, huh, Tuff?” some kid said. Most of them were standing around like they didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to say, either.
“Shawn? The family is inside.” Some big guy in a three-piece gray suit beckoned to me.
“Wait.” I was looking for somebody, and then I saw her. “Monica!” She was wearing a baggy dark dress and standing way in back of everybody. I pushed through the crowd to get to her. “Monica.”
“Tuff, you look nice,” she told me with a little smile. “Could use a haircut, but hey. A person can’t have everything.”
I couldn’t believe it, she almost made me laugh. “Come sit with me?” I asked her. “Please.”
She stopped smiling and looking worried. “Tuff, I can’t do that! I’m not family. I barely knew Dillon.”
“Dillon’s not asking you,” I told her. “I’m asking you.” I reached out toward her, and I guess she understood: I needed her to hold my hand. She nodded and put her hand into mine, and I held on tight.
There were six bawling big-hair girls hanging around outside the doors. Monica and I walked past them and slipped inside.
There were people everywhere in there, too, standing around or sitting in rows of chairs. And flowers—there were bunches of flowers everywhere. Flowers from schoolteachers, flowers from the people at the car wash, flowers from people Dillon mowed lawns for, flowers from, I swear to God, the hairy-chin woman at the boat rental place. Flowers from the old guy who used to take us deer hunting out of season before his arthritis got too bad. Flowers from people we had met on the river. Flowers from people we didn’t even know.
Pen was in there. He smiled at me and gave me the thumbs-up and stayed where he was, pressed against the back wall, near the door.
The coffin was up front.
“Okay,” I whispered to myself or Monica, and we walked slowly up there.
People moved out of our way and gave us a half circle of space. And silence. It was so quiet. All those people in the room and barely any noise.
Dillon was the quietest of all.
I stood there and looked at him, at my brother Dillon—it was him lying there in the coffin, yet it was not him. Just his body. They had him dressed up in a suit, with a tie, and a collar high enough to hide the buckshot holes. They had him lying straight, and all pink colored, with lipstick on him, for God’s sake, and his hair slicked back. It was him, yet it was a stranger, an alien. I t
ouched his face, and he was like plastic. His eyes were closed, but he was not sleeping. I couldn’t wake him up and say, Hey, let’s go down to the river. He had nothing to do with me anymore.
I don’t think I really understood till then what dead meant, and I could barely stand it. I hung on to Monica’s hand and tears ran down my face. The gray-suit guy walked over from somewhere and offered me a hankie, but I didn’t want it from him. He reminded me of a pimp or something.
“Just a minute,” I said to him, like he was going to take Dillon away, and I reached into that damn coffin and mussed up Dillon’s hair. At least his hair could look normal. It was stiff, they had sprayed it or something, but I fixed that. I mussed it up good, like it was blowing in the wind, going fast up a mountain.
That was the last I ever saw him. I went and sat down next to my mother, and they closed the coffin.
Mom looked sober and old. She had makeup on, and her hair was curled like a girl’s, but her face was full of lines that pulled it down. I had never noticed them before.
“You okay?” I asked her.
She nodded.
“You got a Kleenex?” I needed one. Should have taken the damn hankie.
Mom shook her head. I should have known better than to ask. She never had a Kleenex, even when I was a little kid. She was not that kind of mom.
“Monica?” She was sitting next to me on the other side, and I was still hanging on to her hand. “You got a Kleenex?”
“Nuh-uh. Sorry.”
“What is it with you women?” I complained. “Aren’t you supposed to always carry big purses full of Kleenex and stuff?”
“Not this woman.” She said it with that soft little smile of hers. I loved her smile.
“Tuff,” Mom said. I turned back to her, and she had borrowed a tissue from somebody for me. Well, not borrowed. When I finished using it I felt pretty sure they didn’t want it back.
Mom said to me, “The kids keep asking where Dillon is.” She sounded very tired. “They don’t understand. They saw him at the viewing last night, but they still don’t understand.”
I saw them heading across the room toward us, dodging between chairs and peoples’ legs, the oldest one, Tyler, herding the two middle ones, Julie and Eve. Mom must have left the two littlest ones with their father, which was probably a good idea. Three was enough. Mom was in no shape to get through Dillon’s funeral if she had to handle five squirmy kids.
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