Winter Loon(14)

Burt Rook took three great strides and was at the booth. “Girls,” he said to Kathryn’s friends, who perched on the edge of their Naugahyde seat, birds on a power line.

Kathryn swung my arm like we were on a walk in the park. “Hi, Daddy,” she said. “This is Wes. You know, the one living with his grandparents.”

His eyes were fixed on Kathryn’s hand around mine, and for a second there I thought he might be set to blow. But his fluster dampened, and he held out his hand to me. “Burt Rook, Kathryn’s father.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, wrenching my sweating palm free of Kathryn’s grip. “Wes. Wes Ballot.”

“I knew your mother some. Sad story. Tragic,” he said, shaking both my hand and his head.

“Yes, sir.”

Kathryn’s friends slurped the dregs from their milkshakes, eyes peeled on this encounter. I glanced down at my old boots, my oil-stained jeans, and plain shirt. Burt Rook didn’t want me around his daughter. It was in his voice and in the way he surveyed me.

“I do business with your grandparents.” He rolled his eyes from side to side. I could see he’d blanked on their names. “Furniss,” he said, like he’d looked up the name in the phone book. “Gip and Ruby. Ballot your father’s name?”

I figured it was probably all he could do to keep himself from tossing me out with the trash. I was guilty by my association with people whose names he barely knew. My mother hadn’t died from something respectable or tragic like cancer. In families like mine, mothers die young of their own mistakes and fathers run off like cowards, and lowlife boys like me are left with the likes of Gip and Ruby, who don’t matter a lick to people like Burt Rook. A length of embarrassment ran through me. Another “yes, sir” was all I could muster.

“And he’s?”

What could I say? I had no answer to that question. There’d been no letters, no phone calls. Nothing. “Working in Montana. Be out here for me come spring.”

I believe Burt Rook relaxed on that bit of news that this boy his daughter seemed keen on would not be around much longer. “That right,” he said. “Well, then.” He turned his attention back to his daughter, telling her she had to be home soon, that her mother was expecting her.

“I’m out of money, Daddy,” Kathryn said, her hand out.

He gave me a look that said he could see my cash balance on the sleeve of my shirt. He pulled a bulging wallet from his back pocket and peeled out a ten-dollar bill. He scowled at the plate of half-eaten french fries, the puddle of grease, the smear of ketchup. “No more fries,” he said to Kathryn. “I thought your mother talked to you about that.”

Kathryn flushed, pulled the hem of her tight top down to meet her jeans, and snatched the bill from her father’s hand. A how-dare-you, well-you-had-it-coming look passed between them.

“Girls,” he said. And to me, “Ballot.”





CHAPTER 5

SPRING TRICKLED DOWN the foothills with the melting snow. Even lifeless Loma turned green. I walked from town along the railroad tracks, my jacket unzipped to the mild weather. I’d been growing antsy as the temperature ticked up, knowing my time in my grandparents’ house was coming to an end. I’d distracted myself with the liberties Kathryn allowed me to take—a handful of breast in the darkness of the theater, a rub along her crotch under the cover of a table, a mouthful of sugar-coated tongue. The want of her was a lump of clay lodged in my groin, taking shape on its own. It bothered me that it didn’t include her face or her voice in my ear, but that didn’t stop me, which bothered me, too.

I hopped off the rail and cut through backyards to the house. From the corner, I could see the sheriff’s truck parked out front. My thoughts sank right to my father. Maybe he’d been locked up again. Or worse. I imagined him on the lam, getting cornered, putting up a fight, barricading himself in a farmhouse, taking hostages. At least that would explain why, in three months, he hadn’t returned for me.

They were in the kitchen, Gip with his back to the door, Ruby at the table, the sheriff next to her, his brown Stetson in his hand. All eyes turned to me when the metal door slapped shut. “It’s my dad, isn’t it?” The sheriff started to say something, but Gip cut him off.

“They found your mom out there at Bright Lake, Wes.”

A cruel glimmer leapt inside me. I could see her clawing her way out just like he said she might, exhausted and cold, searching for her family. “She alive?”

“Is she alive? Don’t be stupid,” Ruby said. She rose and her cigarette quaked between her yellow fingers. The chair pushed away from her, the unstoppered legs scraping the linoleum. “She’s been under that ice since January. How you think she’d have lived through that? Jesus H. Christ.” She shook her head at me. A snake of ash dropped to the floor.

“No call to be cruel, Ruby. The boy’s been through plenty,” the sheriff said. “Their medical examiner said you all can make arrangements, for the transfer and whatnot. You call Pete down there at the funeral parlor. He knows what to do.”

“I want to see her then,” I said, though what I pictured was my father’s kicked-off slippers sunk to the lake bottom.

“She ain’t fit to be seen no more, son.”

“How do you even know it’s her? Maybe it’s somebody else.” Again, she was there, reaching for me, trying to pull me in. Is this what it felt like for her? I wondered. Futile grasping for a frayed line that would keep the near dead from dying?