Three Weeks to Say Goodbye (7 page)

“Let’s talk about timing. While we have every right to demand the baby right here and now, that wouldn’t be compassionate. And we want to avoid any scene of sheriff’s cars rolling up to your house with lights on and having them forcibly return the child. So we’ll give you three weeks to say goodbye—until the end of the month. That’s a Sunday. That should give you enough time to get new adoption proceedings under way—with my help—and to say goodbye to the child. I’ve already notified the sheriff of the date, and he and his team are available. He won’t come unless he has to, so please
don’t make him have to. That’s the best we can do, I’m sorry. Three weeks.”

Garrett stood there, his face stoic, giving no signal of what he was thinking.

“Well,” Moreland said, “we had best be going. Go Broncos, I guess,” he said. “At least we can agree on that, right?”

He closed the door behind him. Melissa joined me at the window. There didn’t seem to be much oxygen in the room. We watched Garrett climb into the passenger seat, close the door, stare straight ahead. Moreland paused before reaching for the door handle to gaze at our house, as if making a decision that pained him. He looked remorseful, but at the same time he had a determined set to his face. My heart sank. I knew then he would never change his mind.

But he couldn’t leave yet. My friend Cody had chosen that moment to pull up to our house in his police department Crown Victoria and unwittingly block the judge’s car in the driveway. The judge stood there with his hands on his hips, glaring at him. Cody was oblivious. He swung out of his car and opened the trunk, his always-present cigarette dancing in his mouth. I could hear the loud twang of country music from the Crown Vic’s radio. Cody grabbed the power drill he had borrowed months before and finally remembered to return as well as a twelve-pack of cheap beer and turned toward the house. That was when he saw the judge, and the judge saw him.

I couldn’t hear their exchange of words, but it was obvious Cody was apologizing all over himself and backing up. He threw the drill and beer into the trunk and quickly backed up to let the judge and Garrett out.

Melissa saw none of it because her face was buried in my chest.

“This can’t be happening,” she cried.

“I know.”

She looked at me fiercely. I’ve never seen such absolute manic conviction. “Swear to me, Jack, that you’ll do everything you can to save our baby from them.”

I nodded, squeezed her tighter.

“
Swear it to me!
”

“I swear,” I said. “I promise.” My stomach churned.

Cody let himself in the front door. His sandy-colored hair was uncombed, and he wore stained sweats. “Jesus Christ, I hope that judge didn’t recognize me out there. I’m not supposed to use the car when I’m off duty to run errands. What was he doing here, anyway? Hey, what’s wrong with you two? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

From the other room, we heard Angelina stir over the baby monitor. We listened as the baby yawned, gurgled, sighed. We heard the crib squeak as she tried to pull herself up. She said, “Ma …”

T
WO MINUTES INTO THE
first quarter of the Broncos game that evening, I heard the bass burbling of a car motor outside in my driveway. Melissa was upstairs bathing Angelina.

The doorbell rang.

There were three of them: Garrett, a young Hispanic covered in tattoos who looked like a gangster, and an emaciated red-haired Caucasian who was dressed in the same hip-hop style as the Hispanic. Garrett’s bright yellow H3 Hummer was parked in the driveway, looking like the muscle-bound older uncle of my Jeep Cherokee.

Garrett said
hey
in an overly familiar way. Then: “I hope you don’t mind that I brought my friends Luis and Stevie.” They’d come, Garrett said, to hang out.

I said nothing.

“Problem?” he asked, wide-eyed and mocking. Stevie smirked.

Luis said, “Hey,
amigo,
” and nodded at me with a deadeye stare.

Garrett and Luis sat on the same couch Garrett had occupied earlier in the day. Stevie sat on the arm. Stevie’s body language suggested he was subservient to them. The three boys watched the game in utter silence, not
commenting on anything. I can’t say they looked bored, because they were alert and didn’t miss a thing. They both watched Melissa come downstairs and go into the kitchen and close the door. And I caught the “
See? What did I tell you?
” look Garrett gave Luis after she was gone.

Luis was shorter and darker than Garrett, with a blunt pug face that looked like it had been hammered in. He wore an oversized white T-shirt with an even larger open long-sleeved plaid shirt over it and massive cargo pants. He had close-cropped black hair and dull black eyes, and a tattoo on his neck below his jaw reading “Sur-13.” Unlaced and oversized heavy boots with Vibram soles were splayed out in front of him. Stevie wore the same oversized clothing as well as a red bandana on his head. But his haircut, perfect teeth, and expensive new sneakers gave him away as a rich kid pretending to be a gangster. I could see Stevie as Garrett’s friend. But Luis was the real deal and didn’t seem to fit.

During a commercial for curing erectile dysfunction, I asked, “Garrett, is there anything you want to talk with me about?”

He looked at me sincerely, said, “Yes, there is.”

I nodded, urging him on.

“I’d like a cold drink. Another one of those Cokes would be just fine. I’d bet my friends could use a cold drink, too.”

“I’d like a beer, man,” Luis said, grinning, showing gold teeth.

“Me too,” Stevie said with a slight—and false—Mexican accent intonation.

I shook my head. Unbelievable.

“Maybe some snacks,” Garrett said. “Chips and dip? Nachos? Don’t you have snacks during a game?”

“We always have snacks,” Luis said. “We like snacks during a game.” Mocking me.

I cursed under my breath and went out to get soft drinks. No beer for Luis or Stevie, though, and no damned snacks. Back in the living room, I could hear them chuckling. I had to close my eyes and take deep breaths to keep a handle on my anger.

DURING THE THIRD QUARTER
, I asked Garrett if he’d thought about signing the papers.

“I haven’t thought about it,” Garrett said dismissively. “You need to talk to my father about that.”

I detected an intransigent smirk on Luis’s face when Garrett spoke.

“Does he always speak for you?”

“On this he does.”

“Why?”

He locked eyes with me, and I felt a chill that made the hair on my arms rise.

“We have an agreement,” he said.

Before I could ask what it was, Melissa came out of the kitchen to go upstairs to go to bed and Garrett’s eyes and attention went with her.

Harry, our old Labrador, padded in from the kitchen. Garrett recoiled and sat back in the couch.

“He’s harmless,” I said, smiling. “Harry loves everybody.”

“Can you please get him away?” Garrett asked me, his voice leaden.

“Sure,” I said, puzzled. I am always surprised when someone doesn’t like dogs. I put Harry out into the backyard. When I returned, the boys hadn’t moved, although Garrett had a lingering look of what I can only describe as disgust on his face.

“Somebody allergic?” I asked.

“No,” Garrett said in a way that signaled he no longer wanted to discuss the matter.

“He don’t like dogs,” Luis said. “Me, I got four. Fighting dogs, man. Nobody gives my dogs any shit.”

“Do you mind if I use your bathroom?” Garrett asked.

“It’s upstairs and to the left,” I said, wondering if his plan was to sneak a peek at Melissa in Angelina’s bedroom. But he was in and out quickly. As he came down the stairs, Luis said, “I’m next, man.”

With Luis upstairs, I turned to Garrett. I ignored Stevie. “What do you want from us?” I asked. “Why did you bring your friends here?” I knew I was gripping the arms of the chair too hard.

“What, you don’t like Mexicans?” Garrett asked innocently. “Does Luis make you nervous?”

“It’s not that.”

“Seemed like it to me. What do you think, Stevie?”

Stevie said, “Seemed like it to me, too.”

Garrett smiled to me, “You remind me of my stepmom. She doesn’t like Luis either.”

“Your stepmom?”

“Yeah. My real mother died. Kellie’s my stepmom.”

“She’s fine, too,” Stevie said.

“We both know you gotta be nice to me,” Garrett said, “or there’s no way I sign the papers. You gotta be real nice. I know it’s killing you, but hey.”

“What kind of game are you playing?” I asked.

“No game,” he said.

“Do you have any intention of signing?”

He shrugged. “I’m still thinking about it. It depends how nice you are to me and my friends. If you insult me or them, well, you won’t get what you want.”

I wanted to throw myself across the room and slam my
fist into his mouth, but instead I gripped the arms of the chair tighter.

He looked up as Luis finally came down the stairs, his face oddly flushed.

“All through?” Garrett asked him.

“Yeah,” he said. Then, to me, “There’s something wrong with your toilet, man. You need to get that fixed.”

“There’s nothing wrong with…”

“We need to go,” Garrett said, smiling at me. “I’ve got school tomorrow, you know?” To his friend, he said, “Ready, Luis?”

“Catch you later,” Garrett said to me under his breath. They let themselves out. I heard the Hummer fire up. The three of them sat there for a few minutes in the dark with the motor running and a tricked-out muffler pounding out a deep beat. I shut the lights off inside to signal to them to leave and so I could watch them. I couldn’t see them well, but it appeared by the way their heads bobbed that they were talking and laughing, which enraged me. Finally, the car backed out of the driveway and slowly, slowly, went down the street.

As their car rumbled away, Melissa cried out from upstairs, “Jack!”

Stained brown water pulsed out of the toilet bowl, flooding the carpet. The smell was horrific. A floating mass of feces bobbed in the water, breaking apart, pieces of it cascading over the rim.

“I’ll call a plumber,” I said.

“Call Cody,” Melissa said, gagging. “Call Brian, too.”

I
GREW UP ON
a series of ranches in Montana. I remember each one clearly. What I mean is I remember the layout of each place, where the buildings were, the corrals, the hiding places. The ranches were near Ekalaka in eastern Montana, Billings, Great Falls, Townsend, Helena. My father was a ranch foreman, and he moved us around with his jobs. I wish I could say he moved up, but he didn’t. Some ranches were better than others, but all seemed to have owners my dad couldn’t get along with. He had his own ideas about cows, horses, and range management, and if the owner didn’t completely agree with everything he wanted to do, my father would tell my mother that he and the owner “didn’t see eye to eye” and my mother would sigh and they’d start asking around until he found another job. Once the new job was in the bag, he would angrily quit the old one, pack all of our possessions in the pickup and stock trailer, and we’d go off to the next ranch. My only constant was my parents, and as I grew older I became ashamed of them.

I’ve since reconsidered in part, and I feel guilty for being ashamed. They were simple people from another era and mind-set. They were the Joads. They worked hard and didn’t even look up as the world passed them by. They rarely read
books, and their conversation was about land, food, and weather. My dad didn’t buy a color television set until he no longer had a choice. But in many ways they gave me gifts I just didn’t recognize or appreciate at the time. They gave me perspective. I am the only person I know who grew up
outside.
I know hard work and suffering because that’s what my family specialized in. When my coworkers complain about long hours or the amount of paper on their desks, I contrast it with calving time during a spring blizzard where if you don’t get the newborn to the barn within minutes, it will freeze to death in midbawl.

I simply wasn’t hardwired for ranch work. I fixed fence, branded, docked, vaccinated, fed hay out of wagons and pickups to starving cattle in the winter. But it just didn’t take. I was never surly or disrespectful toward my dad and his occupation, just disinterested. He gave up on me early on as a future ranch foreman or competent hand. My mother withheld affection except for unexpected and oddly inappropriate moments. I remember once when I was walking down the dirt road to the school bus stop, and I realized she was running after me. I stopped and ducked, covering my head with my arms, expecting a beating and wondering what I’d done wrong. Instead, she smothered me in her arms, kissed the top of my head, said with tears in her eyes,
Oh, you’re my world, you’re my everything my wonderful, wonderful boy.
She was still kissing and hugging me when the bus pulled up filled with hooting rural kids hanging out of the windows. When I got home that night I asked her what had come over her, and she went pale and looked back at me with wide-eyed horror for bringing it up in front of my father. Only now do I understand the depth of parental love she revealed to me. I feel it myself when I look at Angelina and know that no matter what happens, I’ll love her.