Winter Loon(93)

“Yeah, okay,” she said. When they had it out, I knew by the caution in her voice, it wouldn’t be in front of me or anyone else.

My father wrapped the towel around his shoulders, followed her into the kitchen. His shaving kit was on the kitchen counter. So this was a ritual already established. I took the spot in the doorway that she vacated.

She cut his hair first, carpeting the newspaper she’d laid under the chair with slick S hooks. She clipped away at his overgrown beard, then told him to slide down. He stretched his legs and bent his head back over the chair. His arms dangled to his sides. He kept his eyes closed while Aveline slathered shaving cream on his cheeks, his lip and chin, and down his stubbly neck. She twisted a new blade into the razor and dipped it in hot water plugged up in the steaming sink. She touched his shoulder, the back of his head. One hand seemed to always be on him. He tried to reach for her, too, but she steered clear, brushed him off. “Stop it,” she said quietly. Her long strokes plowed the foam away. I thought of that knife of Ruby’s, still in the sheath, still in the tomato box. How clean a cut it would make.

“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” I said. “A fresh start.”

Aveline pulled the razor away. My father sat up, wiped his face with the towel. He started to talk but I couldn’t hear it. I dressed for the weather and walked out of the house.



SNOW MELTED IN THE BRIGHT sun and clumps fell from the trees onto the street and shoveled walks. On Main Street, city workers wrapped poles with bell-shaped tinsel and blood-red bows. Colored lights were strung crisscross from streetlamp to streetlamp. I found a phone booth outside a saddle and boot tannery. My pocket was full of all the coins I had. I shoved them into the slot, dialed the familiar number, felt a rock form in my gut. The operator told me I’d bought myself five minutes of talking time. Troy answered the phone, and I realized instantly how much I missed them all. In that pause after his “yell-oh,” I understood my father a little more, how you could be gone, miss a person. How too much time could pass, how time could become a river no bridge could span.

Is it snowing there? Has Jolene started talking about graduation yet? Lester eating you out of house and home? Is that fry bread I smell? Have you fixed that busted step on the porch? Will Bull make it back for Christmas? Will Mona be satisfied with the tree this year? Is she ever?

This is what happens when too much time passes. You end up with so many questions that need answers, but there’s no time to ask. Wait much longer and they don’t matter anymore. Then you’re left with, Do you miss me? Are you happy? Wait too long and there’s not even that left to say.

“Troy. It’s me. Wes.”

“Yeah, okay, good to hear your voice. Any news yet?”

“I’m still out here in Montana. And, well, he showed up. My dad.”

Troy grunted low into the phone, the sound of a person taking a soft punch. “Are you in trouble? You need something?”

“No, nothing like that, but I’m wondering if maybe Jolene’s there, if I could talk to her? I only have a few minutes.”

“Sure, sure. Let me go find her. Hold on. And Wes?”

“Yeah.”

“Watch yourself there.”

“Will do.”

It snowed here, big, wet flakes. The kind that glisten like crystals at daybreak. I think about you every single day. I wonder where you are, who you’re talking to. I don’t miss Loma but I miss the river. I miss your porch roof. I miss that turn off the highway, where the hardtop goes to gravel and sentinel trees lead to that abandoned farmhouse, our make-out spot where we talked about having a place of our own someday. I like being in the mountains. I feel sheltered. I saw a girl who looked like you walking a brindle pup. I knew it wasn’t you, but I slowed down to watch her, to pretend she would look my way and I would see your face. I wear the pouch you gave me. My father showed up on Thanksgiving Day. This woman Aveline, I’m not sure what to make of her. On one hand, she seems to love him more than my mother ever did. On the other, I don’t see her putting up with him the way my mother did. I had a dream about her. I thought I could be him instead of me.

I could hear Troy call her, imagined her running to the phone. She said my name in notes, like a song, drawn out to a question at the end, like I was already something long gone, that it would be some great surprise to us all if I ever returned.

“Hey,” I said.



HE WAS ALONE IN AVELINE’S house when I returned. I carried the tomato box in from the car and set it down on the living room floor, daring him to not recognize what it was. I’ll confront him with all of it, I thought. March through my list of grievances one by one. He folded down the page of the Reader’s Digest he was thumbing through.

“So what, you’re the keeper of the sacred tomato box now?” He watched me lift the lid like there might be worms or snakes inside. The letter addressed to me was still on top. I tossed it at him.

He set it on the glass-covered coffee table next to a white knobby vase of plastic flowers. “You want to do this now?” he asked. “Just jump right in?”

“Money’s still in it. I don’t want it.”

“My money’s no good? You independently wealthy now?”

He was a head taller than the back of Mrs. Blue’s swivel rocker. The old woman’s figurines crowded around him, her delicate watercolor paintings on the walls surrounding him. Even though he was clean, something about his ruggedness made him look dirty sitting there, like there was no way he wasn’t soiling what he touched.