More Than Good Enough(40)

Yeah, I was a little obsessive.

Did she think about me, too?

Doubtful.

The beer wasn’t helping, so I pounded a couple more. Then I got up and stumbled to the bathroom. Right away, I knew something was sketchy. I almost slipped, walking in there. The floor was damp. At first, I thought Dad had taken a shower. He always left the curtain open, spraying a tsunami of water everywhere.

Not water.

The tiles on the floor were spackled with blood.

My stomach clenched. The room smeared as my legs buckled. I couldn’t stand up straight, couldn’t catch a breath. Normally, I wasn’t the kind of person who freaked over blood.

Judging by the color, it hadn’t been there long—a red glob, though more sticky than wet. I shoved my foot under the shower faucet and teetered on one leg, desperate to rinse off the nastiness. Then I splashed my eyes, as if that could scrub away what I’d seen.

All around the house, I yelled for Dad. His bedroom was landmined with dirty clothes. The stereo glowed faintly in the corner, a CD spinning inside, silent.

No sign of him.

I checked my room in the back of the house. My sleeping bag was rolled tight, like I was geared up to hike the Seven Summits.

I grabbed my heavy duty Maglite. Might as well check outside. The backyard was thick with mosquitoes. I searched behind the house, where the Everglades spilled all the way to the patio. I stood there, under the chickee hut, and squinted at the “River of Grass.”

Where the hell was Dad?

I circled the patio. As I headed toward the house, I bumped against something in the sawgrass. I took a step back, half-expecting to find a gator. They liked to hang out near the canal at night. Instead, it was a pair of legs crumpled on the lawn.

Dad. He was lying facedown, in nothing but his boxers.

I crouched next to him. “Shit.”

That’s all I could say.

I grabbed his arm, flopped it over, and checked his pulse. I had no clue what I was doing. His forehead was shiny with blood. Maybe he fell in the bathroom? How he got out here was anybody’s guess.

Here’s the most degrading part. I was too f*cked up to move him. I could barely push him onto his side. I racked my brains, trying to remember what I’d learned in Health class—all that stuff about choking to death and swallowing your tongue. Maybe it was too late to try.

God. Please. Make him wake up.

I tugged off my shirt and pressed it against his head. The blood sopped through the flimsy iron-on letters: Native Pride. I balled it up and flipped to the clean side, but it darkened within seconds. I needed to get him into the house.

Again, I tried to hoist him under the arms, but it was like wrestling a fallen log. My uncle could drag an eight-foot gator in circles by its tail, but I couldn’t move a grown-ass man. The best I could do was whisper at him. Try to nudge him back to planet earth.

“Dad,” I said, over and over.

He breathed my name.

“Trent?”

“Yeah. I’m here.”

He wasn’t dead. At least not yet. I wanted to turn around. Run. As fast as possible. Just leave him there to rot. After what he did to me, there was nothing I wanted more.

But I didn’t run.

Lights blared from Uncle Seth’s house. “Don’t move. I’m coming right back,” I said.

God, that sounded idiotic. I started marching toward the lights, still half-wasted, and I fell, more than once. When I finally got to the porch, I must’ve looked like hell. I couldn’t get myself together. I was pacing back and forth in my bare feet, trying to make up my damn mind.

Knock.

Or don’t knock.

Near the door was a stack of cans filled with BB pellets. Girls would strap them to their legs to make music for the Green Corn Dance. The girls would spin because the universe spins, the same as everything in it—plants and animals and people, too; the way it always was. The way it always will be.

I knocked.

When it opened, a woman leaned on the door frame. She wore a straw hat tipped low on her forehead and a heap of beads around her neck. Her thighs reminded me of bedposts, thick muscle packed into khaki shorts.

She squinted. “You’re Jimi’s boy.”

Around the Rez, people still called my dad “Jimi.”

“You don’t look too good,” she said, scratching her neck. “You don’t smell too good, either.”

Who was this crazy lady? All this time, I’d thought she was the girlfriend. Now I wasn’t so sure.

“Where’s Uncle Seth?” I asked.

“Gone.” She steered her gaze to the yard, which ended at a wall of stringy pines near the canal. “No use fussing about it. Can’t keep him away from the city lights.”

I felt like she was talking to the trees, like I wasn’t even there.

“It’s the lights that draw young people,” she said.

Inside the house, the TV crackled applause. A woman was screaming, all hyped about winning a year’s supply of Cheerios or a trip someplace that wasn’t here, one of those countries whose names I memorized then forgot how to spell.

“My dad’s hurt,” I said. “He needs help. I can’t do it by myself.”

“It shouldn’t be up to you.” She shoved her feet into a pair of flip-flops. “Come,” she said. As we marched across the yard, her gray-stained braids swung down her back. She was a lot older than I’d guessed. What did she mean, not up to me ?