The Summer Son (9 page)

D
AD HAD COFFEE WAITING
for me when I came into the kitchen.

“What time is it?”

He chuckled. “Quarter after eleven.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

He handed me a cup and, when I hesitated, rolled his eyes and fetched me cream and sugar.

“A little hard work wears you out, huh?” he said.

No doubt. It had taken some coaxing to get my legs moving, and a dull burn radiated across my shoulders and in my biceps. Could I really be this far out of shape?

“I work hard, but yeah, physical labor is a bitch.”

“You don’t work hard.”

I looked at Dad, and he grinned. He was picking a fight just to entertain himself, and damned if I didn’t give it to him, proving that my brain was as soft as my muscles.

“You ever sell five-million bucks’ worth of something, Pop? I’ve done it in a weekend.” A long time ago, I silently conceded.

“That’s not so hard.”

I took dead aim.

“It’s easy to sell bullshit,” I said. “You’ve done it your whole life. But bullshit isn’t worth anything.”

Dad skittered into the living room, laughing at me.

After I showered and dressed, I came back into the kitchen and shook some cereal into a bowl.

“Don’t eat,” Dad said.

“I’m starving here.”

“No, you’re not,” he said, jabbing his forefinger into my gut. “We’re having lunch at the Elks.”

“Why?”

“It’s Thursday. I always eat there Thursdays. Don’t you want to get out of here for a while?”

Dad insisted that we drive over in my rental. On the five-block drive to the Elks Club, he fiddled constantly with the car’s gadgets.

“Satellite radio? What’s that?”

“It’s beamed off of satellites, hundreds of stations. Anything you want. And you don’t have to worry about losing a signal.”

Dad whistled approval.

“I don’t drive enough to get something like that,” he said.

“You can get it for your house.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“I might have to do that.”

Dad’s buddies were in the Elks dining room, playing cards. After a round of back slaps and busted balls, he introduced me.

“This here is Pete Rafferty,” Dad said, guiding me to a slight, stooped man wearing a USS
Hornet
ball cap.

“You were on the
Hornet
?” I asked.

“Same time as me, too,” Dad said. “We met at a reunion in ’99 and found out we lived in the same damn town.”

“Didn’t know each other then, though,” Pete rasped.

“Or don’t remember now if we did,” Dad said. He gave Pete a chuck on the arm.

I cut Dad off on his next introduction. I’d chatted with Ben Yoder, Helen’s brother, after her funeral.

“Hi, Ben,” I said. “Didn’t think I’d see you again so soon. How are you doing?”

“Can’t complain.”

“You must remember this fella too,” Dad said. He guided me to the last figure at the table.

I took a look at the ample gentleman. His all-white buzz cut, round glasses, and weather-beaten face seemed faintly familiar, but I couldn’t place him. He looked the way a lot of older men look—a tendency I could see making steady inroads into my own face.

“I’m sorry, I don’t,” I said, offering a handshake to the man.

“Well, I remember you,” he said, wrapping my hand in his bigger, meatier mitt. “You’ve grown up since I pulled you out of that ditch.”

“Charley Rayburn?” I said.

The man cracked a wide smile. “The same.”

“Holy crap.”

He laughed.

Charley Rayburn. Jesus. Did I ever owe that guy.

We enjoyed a gloriously greasy lunch. I had a bacon cheeseburger and fries, and Dad got liver and onions. I leaned away from him, lest the stench from his meal bring me to full-on nausea. I figured that once Dad’s generation passed into the great beyond, liver and onions would disappear as a food source, since I had never seen anyone younger than sixty-five eat the stuff.

For a while, Dad, Ben, and Pete tangled in vigorous conversation—from my brief listening in, I deduced that it involved the absence of desirable women at the Elks—and so I leaned over to chat with Charley.

“You still live in Split Rail, Charley?”

“Yep. Still on the ranch. I’m not much use up there anymore, but my daughter and her husband are letting us linger on while they run the place.”

“What’s Jeff up to?” My memories rewound to that summer, to the week we spent in Split Rail, and to Charley’s son, who had befriended me.

Charley’s smile drooped, and then he picked it back up.

“Well, we don’t see a lot of Jeff these days,” he said. “He’s in the prison in Deer Lodge.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

“It’s OK, son.”

I scrambled to reset things.

“How often do you get down this way?”

“Once a week, for this little gathering. Wouldn’t miss it.”

“That’s great.”

“What about you? You’re in California?”

“Yeah. San Jose.”

“Family?”

“Yep, I’ve been married eleven years. We have four-year-old twins, a boy and a girl.”

“Congratulations, Mitch. What are their names?”

“Avery and Adia.”

“Beautiful.”

I ate the remaining fries on my plate.

“What do you do for a living, Mitch?” Charley asked.

“I sell medical equipment.”

“Do you like it?”

“Not lately.”

He chuckled. “Well, it’s work. The enthusiasm comes and goes.”

“I guess. Listen, Charley, I don’t think I ever took the time to properly thank you—”

He smiled and cut me off.

“No need, son. It was a long time ago.”

After the dishes had been cleared, out came the cards again for
Texas Hold ’Em
. I soon learned that I was out of my depth. The stakes weren’t high—five-cent smalls and ten-cent bigs. True, it was no-limit poker, but with four guys on fixed incomes and me playing with ten dollars’ worth of nickels each, nobody was going to go broke or get filthy rich. That did nothing to rein in the competition at our table.

An hour in, Pete and Ben were wiped out, and I was well on my way to joining them. Dad and Charley sat behind impressive stacks of coins. I had a much smaller stack, maybe two dollars.

Dad dealt a card to me, one to Charley, one to himself, and then he made another pass. I cupped my hand around my hole cards and turned up the corner. Pocket aces, spades and clubs. It was the most promising start I had seen.

I tossed in twenty-five cents.

“Big spender,” Dad said.

Charley threw his cards in. “Nothing here,” he said.

Dad called.

He burned a card and then set the flop: four of diamonds, four of spades, ace of hearts. There it was, the boat. Now I just had to reel Dad in.

I checked.

Dad smiled and checked behind me. All right, I told myself, you know this guy. What’s the buzzard got? Probably nothing. I’m going to see a bluff here.

Then came the turn. Jack of spades. It didn’t help me and couldn’t help him.

I checked again.

Dad smiled again and said, “Fifty cents.” He threw in the coins.

He’s bluffing, I thought. He’s in too far now, and he’s trying to salvage it. I called the bet.

Dad turned the river card. King of diamonds.

I checked yet again.

This time, Dad didn’t smile. He pushed fifty more cents to the middle, trying again to buy the pot. It was time to bring the big fish aboard the boat.

I counted out my remaining nickels—a buck and thirty-five cents—and pushed them in.

“All in.”

When Dad grinned, I knew it was done. The guy looked like he had just bedded Miss America.

“Here’s the thing, Mitch,” he said.

I tasted bile.

“You have the aces. I knew that when you leaned forward—that’s a tell, sport—but I didn’t care much. You see, I have the fours. Oh, and I call.”

He turned his cards over. The clubs and the hearts.

I couldn’t bear to validate him by showing my cards. I threw them in and said, “Bastard.”

“No mucking,” Dad said. He reached for the cards. “When you get called, you show your cards. I’m going to see them.”

I fixed Dad with a stare, and he stared back. Charley laughed nervously.

Dad flipped the spades. “There’s one.” Then came the clubs. “And there’s two. Pleasure taking your money, Mitch,” he said while he raked in the stack.

Pete and Ben howled in laughter. Charley gave me a sympathetic look, and I appreciated that. A half hour later, the old man dispatched him too, and poker was over. What I wouldn’t have given to play a game of
Sorry
instead.

As we headed back to the house, Dad again took up his fascination with the satellite radio.

“We could drive around and listen to it,” I said.

“Waste of gas.”

“Not if we’re heading somewhere.”

Dad looked at me. “What have you got in mind?”

“I want to go see Split Rail.”

“Why?”

I shrugged. “Seeing Charley again got me to thinking. I haven’t been up there in years. I’d like to see it again.”

“Damn, Mitch, it’s a long way.”

“It’s only eighty miles or so, isn’t it? We could go up, look around, have some dinner, and come back. I’d like to go.”

Dad shrugged.

“All right. Go.”

I turned off Lewis and started slicing back through town to the Rimrocks. Above sat Highway 3, the stretch of road that led us deep into central Montana, and me deep into my memories.

I
N
B
ROADVIEW,
about halfway to Split Rail, Dad said, “What’s up with you and your wife?”

I tried to hide my surprise.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve seen you. When you call, you go outside. Like yesterday. You do know that voices carry, right?”

The day before, I stood on the gravel road outside Dad’s place and loudly argued with Cindy over the same old topic that I couldn’t seem to get past, one that I was ill inclined to share with my father.

“It was a quarrel,” I said. “No biggie. It happens.”

“Right.”

“Seriously, that’s it.”

“Do you think I’m stupid, Mitch? You’re here, and you show no sign of leaving. You’re fighting with your wife. What’s going on?”

“The reason I’m here, Pop, is you. Don’t forget that. You’re the one who called and called and didn’t say a thing. You want to talk to me about what’s going on? Do it. I’ll leave tomorrow.”

“This isn’t about me.”

“Like hell. Everything has always been about you. Everything now, everything then. Everything.”

“Get some help, Mitch. Jesus.”

I drove on a few miles, gripping the steering wheel. Finally, I muttered, “Physician, heal thyself.” Dad torqued in his seat, facing away from me, pretending not to hear.

We rode in silence for another twenty miles or so, and I tried to balance what I needed against the ways in which I thought Dad might take advantage of anything I might tell him. I couldn’t deny that I needed to talk to somebody about this thing with Cindy. It’s just that Jim Quillen was the last person on earth I would choose for my unburdening.

“All right, Pop, here it is,” I said. “Cindy and I are in some trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Marital trouble. We’ve got issues. Some real big issues. I don’t know if we’re going to solve them.”

“So she kicked you out?”

“She didn’t kick me out. We agreed that I needed to come see you about this mystery you’ve been dropping on us, and we also agreed that we could use the absence from one another.”

Dad chewed on that awhile.

“So what happened?”

I took a deep breath and expelled it.

“A hundred tiny little things. Inattention, taking each other for granted, a lack of passion.”

I paused, not wanting to get into the next part. I was certain I couldn’t put the emotions into words.

“Before the kids came, we were tight, Cindy and me. And we had a common purpose. We wanted to build a life together and to have children. Now, this is going to sound bad, and I don’t mean for it to, because Adia and Avery are the greatest gifts in my life, but…”

“Yeah?”

“I’m the dad, and Cindy is the mom. But we’re not the parental unit. There’s her, and there’s me, and the kids are between us. So, you know, I threw myself into work for a while. And when work went badly, I soothed myself with nights out with the guys at work. At home, I try to be the best father I can, but I do it independently, just like Cindy does. I paid less and less attention to my marriage, and Cindy knows it.”

“What about her?”

“I’m getting to that part. A few months ago, I came home and found some notes on the computer. She and this guy were writing e-mails to each other. She was emotionally involved.”

“What do you mean, emotionally involved?”

“Just that. It’s somebody she met over the Internet. I found a bunch of their e-mails. They talked to each other intimately, the way she and I used to. It wasn’t sex or anything like that. It was just stuff you wouldn’t want some other man to say to your wife, or your wife to say to another man.”

“The Internet, Jesus. What did you do?”

“I confronted her. She admitted it. She didn’t have a choice. She couldn’t hide it. She ended it. It wasn’t about this guy, per se. We’ve been seeing counselors, and she says she needed attention she wasn’t getting from me. But…I can’t get past it. I close my eyes, and I picture her with another man.”

“You’re sure it wasn’t sex.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“How do you know?”

“She told me.”

“And you believe her?”

“Yeah.”

“Typical.”

I tightened my grip on the steering wheel.

“You have something to say, Pop?”

“You’re a dope.”

“Great. Thanks. Real supportive.”

“Hey, I’m trying to help here. Your wife’s screwing around, and you can’t see that? Maybe somebody should point it out.”

The blood rushed to my face. I swung the car to the side of the road and slammed on the brakes, put it into park, and faced Dad.

“Look here, you asshole. Don’t try to tell me what you think you know about Cindy. You don’t know her. You’ve never given her a chance. You don’t give other people a chance. You didn’t give one to Mom, you’ve never given one to me, and you damned sure didn’t give one to Jerry.”

“We’re talking about your wife, not Jerry or your mother,” Dad growled.

“Maybe we should. You think you know so much about how other people cheat. What can you say about your own? Mom left you because you’re a cheating son of a bitch. Same with Jerry. Just because you’re an expert, don’t act like you know what goes on in my house.”

The double-barrel shot of my anger left Dad looking worn down.

“You know shit-all nothing,” he said.

“Yeah, I do know,” I said, and I steered the car back to the road. Ahead, I saw the turnoff to Split Rail, where I could show him just how much I knew.