Cry Father (21 page)

61

sorry

D
r. Court still lives in the same little adobe house, near downtown Taos. He bought another place up in the ski country, but his main house is in Taos. When Patterson rings the doorbell, it takes a few minutes for him to answer. Long enough that Patterson starts to wonder if he finally left town.

But then he hears him fumble with the lock.

Patterson lets him get the door wide enough open that Court can see his face, then he shoves it all the way open with his knee and punches the old man square in the nose. Court falls back hard, landing with a muffled thump. Patterson lunges, looking to give him a boot in the side, but he’s already rolling across the wood floor, his dark robe swirling in a tornado of fabric, slamming into the umbrella stand.

Patterson comes after him, too slow. Court’s already on his feet, swinging a hickory cane. The knob explodes into the side of Patter
son’s jaw, sets every nerve ending in his head screaming. Patterson ducks the second swing and it punches through the drywall. Patterson catches the third swing on his forearm, grabs the cane with both hands, and yanks. Court lets go and the knob smashes into Patterson’s nose. Something back in his nasal cavity snaps like a dry twig and blood sheets down his face.

Patterson jabs the cane at the old man, who sidesteps easily. He’s moving fast, faster than any man of his age has any right to. Patterson throws the cane at his head and he snatches it out of the air. He readies it in his hands, but before he can fall back into a fighting stance, Patterson plows into him center-mass with his shoulder.

They fall together on the wood floor. Patterson lands on top of him. He plants his left elbow in Court’s solar plexus and rears back to punch him, but both of Court’s hands shoot out, take Patterson by the back of his neck, and he head-butts Patterson square in the mouth. Teeth break. Patterson spits bone and blood on Court’s face and Patterson grabs him by the throat with his right hand.

Patterson squeezes down on him. It’s like holding on to a boa constrictor, but he holds on. That stops him from dodging. Patterson chokes the old man, he chokes him hard, and when Court stops moving, Patterson punches him three times in the nose, feeling it break, and then climbs off him and sits with his back against the wall.

After five or ten minutes Court stirs and crawls his way to the wall opposite Patterson. Both of his eyes are filling with blood, his nose is crushed, and there are a series of gashes in his forehead from Patterson’s teeth. Patterson spits tooth fragments out of his mouth. He tries not to swallow his tongue. “You motherfucker,” Patterson slurs.

“I’m getting married,” Court says. His voice is hoarse and swollen. He breathes heavily.

“You motherfucker.”

“I’m so sorry.” He’s crying, the cocksucker. “This has to stop.”

Patterson leers at him through the blood. “Or what?”

Court pulls a baby Glock from the underside of a hallway endtable, the duct tape he’d used to affix it in place looping away in a curl. “Or you’ll have to kill me.”

Patterson stumbles to his feet. “See if I don’t.”

“I can’t do this anymore,” Court says. He’s still crying. “Nobody deserves this.”

“You do,” Patterson says.

62

robots

L
ater, much later, Junior sits on Casey’s bed and watches her sleep. He’s climbed in through the window. Her five-year-old face seems to have plumpened in her sleep, her eyes swelling behind the lids. She looks like some exotic fruit, ripe almost to bursting, just waiting to be bruised.

Then Junior feels bad for thinking of her as a fruit. Then for everything, right up until now. And for knowing that he won’t see her again, and there’s nothing he has that he can leave her to make her life any easier.

Junior loves her so much that it makes his bones go soft when he thinks about it. But there’s nothing that’ll make you hate yourself like having a child. Nothing to better expose all the holes in the person you’ve been telling yourself you are for your whole life. And when you make the mistakes a parent will make, even parents who aren’t Junior, the guilt eats at the edges of those holes until there’s nothing left but the holes.

He looks at her face. Plentiful and delicate. He sits on the bed and wells with guilt and love. And some other things, too.

Her eyes flicker open. “Daddy?”

“Hey, baby.” He puts his hand on her cheek and then on her forehead. It’s clumsy and blocklike, his hand. Not only the beer, but whiskey, too. And cocaine.

She yawns. “I was having a dream about robots,” she says.

“Good robots or bad robots?”

“Robots are always good. It was the witches that were bad. But you were there to protect me.”

“That’s my job.”

“That’s what Mommy says her job is, too.” Her nose wrinkles. “Your breath stinks.”

“It happens when you grow up. Your breath stinks more.”

“I know,” she says. “Yours is worse than most grown-ups.”

Junior laughs out loud. And then he stops. Those nights when Henry would come home, drunk and feeling sorry for himself. Junior’d hide so Henry couldn’t hold on to him, crying and breathing whiskey all over him.

It occurs to Junior that there’s nowhere to run. In the United States, it’s prison. In Mexico, it’s La Familia. It’s almost a relief, knowing that there are no more questions. That his life is down to one choice. And all he can think of is Henry. Henry, who up until now has managed to take Junior’s campaign of minor terror and fold it into his own story of himself.

“I don’t care about your breath,” Casey says. “Give me a kiss and I’m going back to sleep.”

63

darker

P
atterson’s chewing Vicodin with broken teeth, swallowing blood and tooth fragments. He stops at the Questa Stop & Go for beer and drives out of New Mexico into Colorado, past the mesa, through San Luis, the valley rolling by in a long, aching blur. He drives with the window down. He drives fast, too fast, working his way through the first twelve-pack of beer, doing whatever he can to keep the night’s fog over his mind. He drives pumping at the wheel, sometimes punching the dash. Then it dies down and he just drives. Left on 160 at Fort Garland, through Alamosa. Into the Rio Grande National Forest, up into the San Juan Mountains. It’s dark in the San Luis Valley, it’s darker in the San Juans. The flat black nothing of the valley floor trading in for the ragged black of the passing alpine forest. Deep into the night. Now and then a car, a pinpoint of light off in the distant black, a flash. The flare of his lighter illuminating the cab in a quick burst, gone. The coal burning red against the green dash lights.

Then there’s a side road, then another. Dirt. Banging the truck over the ruts. Then, at the top of a rise, a place to stop. A valley below, more mountain above. He climbs out of the car, bringing his pack of cigarettes and the rest of the beer, and stretches out on the hood of the car and waits for the sun to rise.

T
hen he’s awake. He’s been asleep somehow and he’s awake. The sun breaking over the mountains, ricocheting through the fog over the lodgepole pines and reflecting off the windshield, an explosion of light. His mouth as hard and dry as if he’d spent the night chewing cement mix. He turns to the side, scorching his cheek on the hood, and retches a string of stomach bile off the truck. Then finds his pack of cigarettes accordioned in his front pocket. He straightens one out and lights it, the smoke ripping over his broken teeth and hitting his lungs like a wood rasp.

He can’t see the Blanca Massif from where he is. And he looks around and realizes that he can’t see anything he knows. That’s what drinking and driving is for. For blowing everything you’re used to seeing into the rearview mirror, for bolting from all the shit that builds up in you, if only for your time on the road. And for Patterson, the thing that was building up against him is the Blanca Massif. He’d realized that just after leaving Court’s house.

The problem being that when he tries to recollect how he got to where he is, there’s nothing. Not a street sign, a turn. Nothing but that he’s pretty sure he was heading west. And he realizes that his road atlas is in his Alice pack, back on the mesa.

Then his cell phone rings. He pulls it from his pocket, staring at it in disbelief that he has a signal. He accepts the call.

“Where are you?” Junior asks.

“The San Juans,” Patterson says. “Somewhere.”

“The San Juans. You want to know where I am?”

“The San Luis Valley?”

“The San Luis Valley. I been thinking about our conversation the other night.”

“What conversation?”

“About Henry. About your confusion as to who the motherfucker is.” A lighter flicks in the background. “I thought I’d come down and give you a lesson.”

“No lesson needed. Besides, there’s no telling when I’ll be back on the mesa.”

“If I were you, I’d drive fast.” Junior disconnects.

64

blood

P
atterson drives up the winding dirt road onto the mesa, into the low stars and the lower darkness. The constellations rise in crystalline explosions, endless and dizzying with alcoholic clarity. He drives like somebody falling in and out of sleep, yanking the wheel, and finally brings the truck to a stop behind Junior’s Charger in Henry’s barn’s gravel lot. Where he opens the glove compartment and pulls out his .45.

The first thing as he comes around the barn is the smell. Blood and something else. Something heavy and wet and fertile, something he only remembers back in his snake brain, something that reminds him of Justin. Then there is the flickering of a nearly dead fire a few yards on the other side of the fence, barely illuminating a pile of gnarled brush. And a strange, wet, snuffling sound.

Patterson hops the fence into the pasture and almost lands on the body of a dog, a single leaking hole between its eyes. Patterson stops
and looks down at the dog. Then, not quite believing what he sees, leans over so he’s close enough that there can be no mistake.

It’s Sancho. And all the sounds and smells of the night disappear. Patterson feels like he’s stepped suddenly into a pressure chamber. He can’t move and he can’t speak for it all pressing in on him. But he knows he’s out of options now, if he ever had any. So he stifles a round of dry heaves and forces his hands to stop shaking.

Then he makes his way toward the fire, into the flickering light and the shadow. Seeing as he closes the distance a man’s form, squatting in the dirt and holding on to his knees. His head bowed, his face dripping blood into the dust. “Henry?” Patterson says.

Off beyond the fire, something rises out of a lake of shifting shadow. It’s Junior, his Glock outstretched one-handed at Henry’s head. “Throw some of that wood on the fire,” he says in a thick voice.

Patterson doesn’t move.

Junior flicks the muzzle of the gun at his father’s head. “You better tell him,” he says.

Henry turns his head to Patterson very slowly, and when he does, Patterson feels his muscles flush through and go weak. There’s a silver dollar–sized puddle of gore where Henry’s left eye had been. “Do what he says,” Henry rasps.

“Did you drive fast?” Junior asks.

Patterson concentrates on his breathing, keeping the front sight of his .45 on Junior’s chest. “You shouldn’t have killed my dog, Junior.”

“I didn’t,” Junior says. He reaches in his pocket and pulls out Chase’s Kel-Tec .380, only about as big as the palm of his hand. “Henry did. Wasn’t even hard to make him do it. You’d be surprised how quick he folds.”

“It was me or him,” Henry says. Blood drools out of his eye socket down his cheek. “He was going to shoot me if I didn’t.”

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.”