American Masculine (15 page)

“I’M TALKING to Devin,” Mom had told Devin’s father.

“Get in the car,” he’d said to her.

“In a minute,” she answered.

“Now!” he said, yelling at her.

Devin had turned to him and said, “Shut up.” Small words, but profane between him and his father, something Devin had never said. Devin didn’t want to really, but once he got started he kept going and it was hard to hold back.

“You’re a fool,” Devin said to him.

“Quiet, boy,” said his father.

“No,” said Devin. “Someone disagrees with you and then you think you’re God. Not anymore. Not with me.” They stood over the hood from each other on the far edge of the dirt parking lot above Worthington Arena. Some strands of cloud skirted the sky’s most distant edge. The mountains seemed small out there. It was just after graduation from Montana State, and Devin knew his father had hated the whole ceremony. His face bore the length of it, the tedium. He never cared, thought Devin, about burdening me and Mom with things like that. His agenda above all, as if it were her fault or mine how inept he was at celebrating someone. There were a few families near, getting in their cars. Devin despised him.

“You’ve said enough,” Devin told him. “You’re done.”

People stared at them now, Devin’s father tall and broad backed in his weathered Stetson, and Devin almost skeletal, still in his gown. Devin had notched himself up to get physical if it came to it. But what could he do really, twenty-two years old and so threadlike next to him.

“Get in the truck,” his father said as he stared at Devin’s forehead, eyeing the boy.

Devin gave the people a helpless look and shrugged at his father like he was crazy. But he got in the truck. His father glowered while he drove and Devin stuck his hands under his legs and stared out the window. Touching neither of them, his mother sat between them with her neck tight, her face like something made of glass pointed at the road. They’d done this before.

They were silent the whole way home, and mostly silent as they settled in, but seven days later Devin’s father made sure the backtalk would stop. They lived off east of Bozeman then, in a thin-walled trap of a ranch house near the break toward Livingston. This time they stood face-to-face in the kitchen after Devin’s father had criticized his mother again.

“Shut up,” Devin said, an echo of the parking lot exchange at MSU. “You’ve got nothing to say to her.”

After coming in from driving hay Devin’s father had cussed her for failing to get milk.

“Back at it again?” Devin’s father asked him, still glaring at Devin’s mom. “Keep it up.”

Devin thought later he should have heeded this.

Instead he said, “I suppose it’s none of my business how you sneak around on her either.” At this, his father’s face angered so suddenly the roots of his hair stood like white whiskers at the red edge of his hairline.

“For your own good, you better shut your mouth,” he said.

“Like hell,” Devin said. The boy’s voice sounded high and weak. His mother was in the corner of the room in a vinyl-backed chair. She had her arms crossed. Her eyes were teary. “Back in Colstrip, you think no one knew?” Devin said, “We all knew. You shamed her whenever you got the chance. Came home drunk and sexed-out like a male whore. Smelled of it every time you stumbled down the hall. Everyone knew.” They’d moved out here when he found work with one of the big ranches, and maybe he’d stopped what he’d been doing in Colstrip. But Devin didn’t care. He’d have his say.

Devin’s father grabbed him and hauled him to the couch and shoved him down in the corner of it.

“Probably doing more of the same to her here, aren’t you?” Devin continued. From her place in the chair his mother’s voice made a small, pinched sound, like the sound a cat makes when it gets squeezed.

Devin’s father was on top of him then, his hands working to grab Devin’s face and shut him up. But he couldn’t stop the boy.

“Why else would you treat her like a dog?” Devin said. “You’re the dog, not her. Everyone knows it.”

“Stop, Devin,” his mother said.

Devin’s father put the boy’s neck in the crook of his arm while he dug the heel of his free hand into the boy’s lips and teeth and threatened him. But things kept spilling from Devin, pent-up things urged on by the precision of how he released them. His words were sharp, bred from seven days of silence, sent now in a clean blade of articulation. “You’re a reservation dog,” Devin said, stealing one of his father’s own phrases, a phrase taken from the half-dead, mange-infested hounds that roamed the streets in Lame Deer, over by Colstrip, and humped everything that moved.

With Devin’s last string of words his father pummeled a knee into the boy’s chest and straddled him. He blocked Devin’s flailing arms with one hand and slammed his forearm into the boy’s face. They both heard the crunch of Devin’s nose as it broke, the sound like a bootstep on fresh snow. It was the kind of broken nose that bled freely and it’s likely they both thought Devin’s father might stop then, but he pushed Devin’s face into the thick twill of the armrest and held him down until Devin lay spent, his breath heaving as the blood made an oblong stain beneath his mouth.

When Devin’s father got up and went outside, his mother came and knelt by Devin, her body shuddering over the curve of his ribs.

All this time Devin had convinced himself he needed to say what he’d said to his father. But he didn’t know anymore, seeing him as he was now.

When it was all finished, Devin’s father had shut him up all right. But Devin just bided the hours to morning and when he walked out the front door he never looked back.

It took Devin’s father seventeen years and a few months of calling before he apologized. When he did, Devin was alone in Santa Monica, sitting on the edge of his bed with the phone pressed between his shoulder and his jaw. He had his face in his hands as he stared down through his fingers to the floor, to his feet and the way the veins moved when he lifted his toes. Tiny upraised rivers. Rivulets bending over ligaments, bending around bones. Devin’s father had called late, and it was taking him some time to get to what he wanted to say. Devin had the light off. From the window, the city put a faint line on the floor, an oblique angle from behind Devin’s heel to the far corner of the room.

“I’d like to ask you to forgive me,” his father said.

His voice had a fine quality, thought Devin, wonderful in its way, but Devin couldn’t give back to him. Devin held the phone out and squeezed it with both hands until his fingers hurt. His face felt pinched, his eyes like knots in his head. He put the phone to his ear again. His jaw trembled.

Devin said, “I’ve got a long day tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” his father replied. “Probably be good to get some sleep.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” said Devin’s father. “Good night,” Devin said.

“Good night.”

Devin listened, but he didn’t hear his father hang up. Devin slipped his hand over the receiver.

“I’ve been learning a lot these days,” his father went on, starting them up again.

Devin stood and stared out the window thinking how odd it was to be listening to this. It was what Devin had been unable to do with his wife, he knew it, what she had hoped he’d do just once instead of fueling his words with criticism, instead of shutting her out.

“I’ve been wondering about how to be different than I’ve been,” said Devin’s father, then he waited for Devin’s response.

“It’s been on about five years now since I started in on those meetings,” Devin’s father continued. Quiet on the line.

“Haven’t missed yet, and don’t plan to. Keeps me sane.”

More quietness. Devin’s father breathing, Devin breathing.

“Keeps me from craving like I did,” he went on. “Holds me back from wanting to get ugly.”

“I’m not sure I’d like to hear about it,” Devin told him.

When Devin was young his father’s father had died with a bottle of Jack Daniels under his pillow. Ended it in Colstrip, isolated from everyone who knew him, angry at them all. His throat had collapsed. A passing tenant found him after he’d been dead three days. He was nothing to anyone.

“I’m busy,” Devin said. “I need to put in sixty hours this week, maybe seventy. I gotta go.”

“Okay,” said Devin’s father. “Take care, son.”

They hung up the phones.

The exchanges had built to this. Him talking of the man he was trying to become as Devin pretty much closed him down and talked over him or ended the conversation, at times just flat condescending to him. A feeling of loneliness and dark intent always accompanied the calls, but Devin wasn’t going to stop, even if he knew his father’s voice had changed. The tone had lessened in power, and softened. He’d brought it back to what it was when Devin was a boy, in the times they’d had together. Devin convinced himself not to think about it.

DEVIN’S FATHER relaxed in the kitchen chair. He wore an old western shirt frayed at the cuffs and patterned with fine crisscrossed lines.

“Thank you for coming up, Devin,” he said.

Just peace now, thought Devin, there among the creases around his eyes, looking out as he does, looking in. Seeing him that way, Devin thought it odd he wasn’t at the wedding. Devin hadn’t invited him, didn’t even tell him until a couple of years had gone. But seeing him, Devin knew Cherise would’ve liked him and wanted him there.

A feeling of loss came when Devin remembered himself with her. Back when they met she wore trim business suits. Her eyes were quick and bright. Three years later she stood in a sweatshirt and jeans near the window in the kitchen, her hand white as she gripped the edge of the counter. Her face bore lines he’d grown accustomed to, permanent grooves that bent in and down. She wore a look of oppression, of the deadness that comes from a long-fought resistance. Devin missed the smell of her skin, he missed embracing her. They’d lost each other.

“You know you’ll be home whenever it’s convenient for you,” she had said. “Don’t tell me about six or seven. Just say it’ll be nine or ten, or one or two, so you’ll have some integrity.”

“I’ll be on time tomorrow,” Devin had said, but he was lying. With the distance between them he could hardly stand being home. He had her in a bad light.

“I’m sick with you,” she said, and pursed her mouth. She walked passed him, down toward the nursery. Then she paused in the hall, turned, and said, “You don’t even know your own daughter.”

“What are you saying?” he said, not looking at her. He sat in the easy chair in the family room, only half-facing her as he looked down and away, more interested in turning channels on the television than listening.

“You’re afraid of her,” Cherise continued. “You hardly come near her. You never say her name. You’re always putting something between you and her—work, or the computer or that television.” She motioned over Devin’s head to where the small voice of the TV accompanied the colored glow of images. Devin turned to her, saw the tears in her eyes. “You don’t know your own daughter,” she repeated with the same tone. “You don’t know yourself. How can you expect to know me?”

She leaned against the wall in the hallway, more plaintive than angry, the angular slant of her body set within her oversized clothing. Her face was flat. She waited for him but Devin had nothing to say so she released herself and moved toward the nursery. Devin kept watching television.

He wouldn’t have blamed her if she had already given herself to Beck. She had been more right than she knew. Bethen was fresh to the world but holding her was so painful his hands ached, and every time he tried, things would get tangled up and he’d fear what was to come, she’d be fatherless with him right there in her presence. He was scared he’d be all he’d been to her mother, all his father had been to him. So he stayed away. In the year since she was born he held her only when her mother pushed her on him. It didn’t surprise him that Cherise took the child and walked away.

DEVIN’S FATHER placed another cut of deer steak on Devin’s plate.

“Dan caught a bunch up near Beartrap Canyon,” he said. Devin remembered faintly Dan was his father’s fishing partner who tied flies for a local sporting goods store, Bob Ward’s, the Sportsman, or something.

“How many?” Devin mumbled.

“One hundred,” his father said. “In six hours.” He said it like it was nothing.

“I stopped at Bob Ward’s,” he continued. “Had Dan show me what rig he used. Do you want to head up there tomorrow and see if we can catch some rainbows?”

He motioned to the window, his fingers slender, knotted at the knuckles.

“Fine,” Devin said.

Devin’s father touched Devin’s arm often as he spoke, and each time Devin felt far older than him. Far closer to death. He’s well over sixty, thought Devin, with me just a shadow of him when he was forty. Dragged and husked out, thinner than I should be, uglier.

“It’ll take two hours,” said Devin’s father. “We’ll have to get up at four to get there about right.”

“Fine,” said Devin, knowing he’d likely be awake then anyway.

IN THE EARLY morning, Devin’s father put his hand on Devin’s shoulder. Devin had the feeling his father had been there beside him for a very long time, watching him, probably praying, patient as trees with the sun in their arms. His father had taken the couch, given Devin the bed. With the touch of his hand there on his shoulder Devin felt he could sleep forever. The apartment was dark and still. His father waited for him. “Are you awake?” his father asked.

“Yes,” said Devin.

They met at the kitchen table, where his father had some toast prepared. He sat reading from his Bible. Devin asked him to read something aloud. Looking to the chapter he was on, his father said, “A friend loves at all times.” He turned to Devin then, gaze of light-blue and gray, affectionate and sad in the same glance.

When they emerged from the building the morning was full of thick white clouds, low on the earth, shrouding the mountains. They drove west from Bozeman toward Four Corners, then south along the Madison toward Quake Lake and the park. The smell of deer blood lined the cab. The truck moved with a loud, firm drone. Beneath the horizon, the sun opened the blue and gray of the mountains, and the pewter of the Madison. The river moved, with the road a thin dark line alongside the water. At this hour the world was new and the clouds lay full on the land. The sun was hidden beneath it all.