When Dad Came Back (9 page)

“It's like camping,” he told Lucky, who was gnawing at a flea on his shoulder. He scratched and scratched until his attention was drawn to Gordo, who was now on the neighbor's roof, his back still turned toward them.

Gabe had sodas, bottles of water, chips, and candy bars as his rations for the evening. He had a bag of
chicharrones.
He had grapes, too, and was eating a handful when his mother appeared in her pink slippers.

“It's cooler out here,” she remarked, as she gazed up at the neighbor's garage roof. “What's Gordo doing up there?”

“He's jealous,” Gabe answered. “He's going to have to get used to Lucky.”

Lucky was pretending to be king. He had climbed into a plastic chair and placed his front paws on one arm, almost toppling it. He barked at Gordo until Gabe's mother removed him and sat down in the chair.

“He is cute,” his mother said. “You used to be as cute as him.”

“I'm not anymore?”

“No, Gabe, you're not. Now you're handsome.”

This compliment brought a smile to his face. He plunged his hand into the ice chest, the cold nearly hurting his heart, and brought out a bottle of water for his mother.

“This is great service,” she remarked when he delivered the bottle, twisting off the plastic top. She sipped and wagged a finger at Lucky, who was sniffing her slippers. “Don't even think about carrying them away!”

Lucky spun his tail and briefly let his tongue peek from his mouth.

Gabe knew that he had finally seen happiness, and it was in the shape of a dog. He was glad that he had risked a thumping from the Torres family. They didn't care for Lucky. In time, the law would knock on their door.

“Did your father say he would come?” his mother asked. She ran her hands up and down her arms from the chill of the evening.

“He said he would,” he answered. He could tell by his mother's voice that she didn't want him around. “Is it OK?”

“Yeah, it's OK, but he can't stay long. He can't sleep here, not even on the lawn.” She had bent down to pluck a dandelion. She tossed it like litter as she stood up.

“He won't,” he promised. He spread his sleeping bag on the ground and sat down, cross-legged. Yes, he was waiting for his dad. It would only be a short time before he unlatched the gate and entered the yard. He would return, dragging that suitcase and years of toil.

“You know we can't get back together,” his mother remarked. She had flipped off her pink slippers and crossed her legs. She frowned and pinched her thigh. “He's not a bad man.” She was examining a blue vein that had once been buried inside her flesh but had now surfaced. She was none too happy.

After his mother went back into the house, Gabe and Lucky lounged on the sleeping bag. Lucky had wound down and, exhausted from the day, lowered his head onto the grass.

The night deepened like a bruise. Gordo disappeared from the roof, taking his jealousy elsewhere. The crickets began to sing, and the stars seemed to pulsate in the faraway heavens. A cool breeze rattled the pie tins.

Gabe had been shirtless, and now he reached for his T-shirt. He slipped into it and pulled Lucky onto his lap. After a while, he struck a wooden match and tossed it on the coals, which flared and threw up bluish flames. Startled, Lucky leaped away, his tail pulled under his belly.

“It's OK, Lucky. It's just a hibachi. It's a Japanese barbecue.”

Lucky whined and barked.

But Gabe knew that it was more than a small grill with hot embers. It was a signal for his dad that there was a place called home, that there was forgiveness. If he unlatched the back gate, he would find a son keeping a fire warm for him.

The sweep of stars glowed like distant fires. Gabe watched them and followed the occasional shooting star. He stroked Lucky's short fur until the dog lay still with his head in his paws. In time, dew gathered on the grass and a chill spread through him. The neighbor's bathroom light went on, then off after the toilet flushed.

His dad never came. The coals in the hibachi died, and something in Gabe's heart died as well. His dad was undependable. The next morning, he spread the coals in a flowerbed, as if he were performing a funeral. “My dad is dead to me,” Gabe grumbled to himself.

His mother fumed. Coals of anger shone in her eyes that morning. At breakfast, she drank her coffee without cream, in big sips that convinced Gabe that his mother had finally put her foot down. She told him that his dad was a good-for-nothing. She threatened to call the cops if he ever came around.

“See! Your father can't keep his word!” she snapped at Gabe, as if it were Gabe's fault. She opened a small package of Sweet'N Low and poured its contents into a second cup of black coffee.

Gabe stirred his soggy cereal, which he could barely get down. He spooned the sweetened cereal into his mouth. Nothing tasted good that morning.

“Here you make a nice little fire for hot dogs—and does he show up? No, he's too busy getting drunk or something.” She sipped her coffee, set the cup down, and announced out of the blue, “You're going to stay with one of your uncles.” She rambled about how Gabe needed to get away for a week, if not longer, in case his father showed up with a basket of excuses.

Gabe didn't dare argue. He brought a spoonful of cereal to his mouth. It had the taste of soggy cardboard.

She got up and told Gabe to clean up the kitchen. She was late for work. She hugged Gabe and said, “Think about where you want to go—Uncle Jerry or Uncle Mathew.” She swiped the car keys off the counter and was gone.

Gabe was reluctant to go to either uncle. There was one more softball game before the end of season. Plus, there was Lucky, who in only one day since his arrival had learned the art of pulling his clothes from the chest of drawers. He was such a rascal, but he was a happy dog. His mother promised to take care of Lucky, and she even brought home some high-end dog food. But she wanted Gabe gone for a week.

He chose Uncle Mathew, who lived on a small ranch in the foothills east of Fresno. Gabe packed clothes and things into a cardboard box—nothing as fancy as a suitcase would please his uncle. His mother took a day off from work and drove him there.

She didn't visit long, just long enough to drink two glasses of ice tea and admire Uncle Mathew's vegetable garden, which covered nearly two acres. She left three wet kisses on Gabe's cheek and warned him to be a good boy.

Gabe had to be good. His uncle was tough as beef jerky, and dark as jerky, too. The skin around his eyes was pleated from wincing at the sun. His teeth were yellow as candles, and his hair springy as wire.

“Gabe, you need to know about life,” Uncle Mathew told him the first day, when he complained about the absence of a television. Not only was there no television, but the radio worked only if you banged it right. And you had to
work
to live under Uncle Mathew's roof.

“Don't you have a cooler?” Gabe asked, after he returned from hoeing the corn. Air conditioning was out of the question. He was pouring sweat from head to toe.

“Yeah, I got a cooler,” his uncle answered and slowly grinned. “It's called an open window.” He laughed at his own feeble joke.

This is going to be boring, Gabe thought. He was also worried about Lucky. The pup had just come into his life, and now he was alone—for a week at least.

Gabe was given not a bedroom but a small room on the back porch, where his uncle stored cans of food, sacks of rice and pinto beans, paper sacks of walnuts and dried apricots, and hammers, saws, drills, and any tool that would rust if left in the barn. Uncle Mathew kicked a pile of dusty clothes into a corner. He unfolded a wooden cot, set a blanket and pillow in the dented center, and punched the pillow.

“Just like a fancy hotel,” he remarked. He laughed and scratched his chest. “You got a view, too.” He pointed at the yard, where chickens pecked the dust for any kind of meal. “If you get hungry at night, you get one of them.”

The ranch was ninety miles east of Fresno, near Dinuba, above the smog line. The air was clear, and Gabe's responsibility equally clear. He had to work the vegetable garden and do odd chores.

“You need to know something other than iPods,” his uncle said, holding a rasp in one hand. He had been planing a table that he had scavenged from the side of a road. “You got to know how to live without things.”

Gabe was braced for a lecture that he had it made in Fresno, that he was even spoiled. As far as Gabe was concerned, his uncle was a hillbilly.

“Don't make a face,” his uncle ordered.

Gabe grinned in mockery.

“And don't grin either. Life is serious, Gabe!” He then returned to planing the table, little blond curls of wood falling onto the floor.

After a day at Uncle Mathew's place, Gabe second-guessed his decision. Maybe he should have gone to Uncle Jerry's instead. He was exhausted from shouldering splintery boards removed from an old barn. The neighbor's barn had buckled from age, and Uncle Mathew had asked him if he could tear it down and salvage the wood. This old, watery-eyed farmer, who seemed older than the barn itself, spat and growled, “It's all yours. Don't sue me if it falls on your head.” The neighbor laughed, then his laughter turned into coughing. He spat into a coffee can, looked into the can, and made a face.

Uncle Mathew intended to sell the wood for paneling to a city slicker. So Gabe helped pry the boards from the frame and stack the lumber in the bed of his uncle's truck. They made three trips. On the fourth, they gathered bent and rusty nails.

“Someone will buy these,” his uncle stated, holding one up. “They're collector items.” He handed Gabe a steel rake and said, “See if you can find some more.”

Gabe did find more nails, but he also found dead bats. Their faces were shrunken and their teeth small and yellowish.

That night, with his feet throbbing, Gabe heard coyotes howling. The wind rattled the house's galvanized roof and whistled through the windows, many of which were cracked and taped. How could this place be better than home for a week?

But Gabe kept the answer in his heart. His mother had sent him there because she expected his dad to drag himself to their house and beg forgiveness. He would smile and show his ruined teeth. He would make some excuse for not showing up.

On the third day, Gabe watched in fear as his uncle led a goat from the corral. Gabe had been pulling weeds—his back hurt, his chin dripped sweat, and dirt ringed his neck—when he was stung by a bee. The bee had gotten him on the back of his neck. He had gone looking for his uncle to help him.

But suddenly, the sting was nothing. Gabe knew that the goat was being led to his death, for his uncle had a large knife in his hand. The goat's eyes were half-closed, as if it didn't want to see its own death.

Gabe moaned when his uncle brought the knife up to the goat's throat and raked it against its thick fur—blood spilled brightly against the ground and the goat let out a last cry before it fell, twitching. The scene was scarier than any horror film.

“It's not pretty,” Uncle remarked, with remorse, as he stood up, the blade winking in sunlight. “I didn't like doing it.”

During his week's stay, Gabe ate a portion of that goat (most went into the freezer), and he also ate two of the chickens that had roamed the yard, oblivious to their fate. He flavored the meat with salt and pepper, plus chili and bell peppers, but he grimaced when he thought about what he was eating. It wasn't that his Uncle Mathew was mean. Gabe could see how poor he was—a small plot of land, meager crops, a few cattle, goats, and chickens. He had to rent a portion of the land to a woman who had horses.

The woman was nice. On Gabe's fourth day there, she swung a truck into the yard, got out in a cloud of swirling dust, and smiled through the haze.

Gabe liked that—she was the first smiling person he had seen in days.

“Can you help me?” the woman asked, as she went around to the back of the truck, which was loaded with hay bales. She unchained the gate and let it fall.

Gabe, who had been digging at the roots of a dead tree, was already wearing gloves, so he hurried over and began to pull out the first bale. He bucked the bale to the barn, surprised by its weight. He bumped a second and third along with his knees, and tried not to stagger and fall. He wanted to show the woman that he could do it.

Even before they were introduced, Gabe had guessed her name: Heather. That's what he had decoded from her license plates, which read, HTHERST. Heather's truck, he figured, and he also figured that Heather was doing more at the ranch than just renting a small space to corral her horses. He figured that she liked Uncle Mathew. His uncle had come from behind the barn, where he had been sorting the lumber they had salvaged.

“Hi, Heather,” Uncle Mathew greeted her. There was music in his voice, a country twang. He hitched up his pants, pitched back his cowboy hat, and moved languidly toward Heather, smiling all the way.

He likes her, Gabe thought. He looked at Heather and could see that she also liked him—why, Gabe couldn't understand. His uncle was wearing a dirty work shirt and his hair was uncombed.

His uncle's smile disappeared, and confusion scrambled his face. “Where's Corky?” He looked over at the cab of the truck.

Heather sighed heavily and bit her lip, as if punishing it for what she was about to say. “I had to put him down. The vet said it was best.” Her shoulders sloped noticeably.

Gabe sensed what was not said directly. She was speaking of a dog that he envisioned as a collie, a breed as sweet and golden as she was. He thought of his own sweet dog, Lucky. He pictured the puppy sitting by the front door, waiting.

Suddenly, Gabe missed him terribly.

That afternoon, Heather saddled two horses. One was for Gabe, who had never ridden a horse before, except on the merry-go-round at Roeding Park. As he swung a leg over the animal's back, Gabe was amazed at the feeling of a large living creature beneath him. He gripped the saddle's leather horn with both hands, scared. The horse twisted its head, which was the size of a small duffle bag, to look at him. His large eyes were like mirrors: Gabe could read the fear in his own face.