Elizabeth Tallent - Mendocino Fire

“Listen to me,” Nate said. “It will all be all right.”

Back jammed against the wall, arms around her knees, Ollie said, “Is it Shug?”

“I’ve called the hospital like five times and they won’t tell me alive or dead. I said I was his brother. I made up some Vietnamese name but they laughed — the nurse laughed. That has to mean he was awake and told them his name. If he was dead nobody would laugh, right?”

Aware of Ollie listening with her back to the wall, Nate said, “Yeah, that’s a good sign. Now listen to me.”

“One of your famous plans, N? I got a plan. Mexico. Tell Rafe so long and he was right, but then you had to go and say that thing about Shug, and Shug, man, Shug is like a father to me.” He coughed.

No longer caring that Ollie could hear, Nate said, “Shug’s not like a father to anybody.”

Ollie uncrossed her arms. Fur Is Murder. Crossed her arms again.

“Why didn’t you two fuckers hold me down?”

Nate didn’t answer.

“My big mouth, shit, I’m sorry, man. That was unjust. You would’ve stopped me if you could, I know that rationally. I got to get going. Hey, I left the bag in your backyard.”

“What bag?”

Petey was gone.

In the five A.M. kitchen Shug was dabbling together a breakfast heavy on salt and lard, whisking eggs and amen ing the cadences of his favorite talk show host. When Nate came through the door Shug dialed down the volume — the jackal voice hectored from a dollhouse — and shook his big head in sullen wonder. “Left it right out there where anybody could come across it. Boone’s been after me about buying the old truck and he could have come by. Then where would we be? Well, you. You would of still been in bed. But me, Boone trips over that bag and I’m looking at jail time. Fish and Game,” Shug added, in case Nate had forgotten who Boone worked for.

Nate barely managed not to say Jesus, Dad, put your shirt on. It didn’t matter how used to each other they were on the boat, here in Louise’s kitchen he was bothered by Shug’s ribby, potent, belly-hanging nakedness, and especially by the scar between the old man’s slabby breasts, the gleaming millipede that should have been decently covered by the shirt hanging on the chair. Curious, that Shug had brought the shirt downstairs but not tugged it on over his shaggy head. Or had he taken it off when he started cooking? Though this time it was a trivial matter, Nate tried once more to figure out why Shug did what he did.

“If it was just you running the risk, I would almost agree you have the right to screw up your own life, but when your lying cheating deviousness threatens this family I can’t turn a blind eye. You think I don’t mean it, or that I can’t handle the Louise on my own, or that I’ll never draw the line because I’m your father, but you fucked up for good, and Ollie and the baby can stay but you’ve got to go. Now. Today. I don’t want you spending another night under my roof.”

Nate’s mind, groping, discovered not a single word of protest, and this was too bad — later he would understand that the one way he could have salvaged the situation was to get right into the old man’s face. That might have worked. It might have meant their lives could go on. Much, much too late, he was to grasp the consequences of his silence and wonder why, when so much depended on it, he had not been able to come up with the straightforward Fuck you of a blameless man. Instead, as he had too many times before, Nate placed his faith in explanation. The problem was, his dad did not under stand . Look how quickly he could clear this up! “Somebody left the abalone in the yard while I was sleeping. Left them without my knowing.”

“Ah, now. Like I don’t know how this world works. Like anybody would leave that bag if you weren’t in on the deal. You think I never wanted to break the rules? Cheat some? But did you ever see me? How much do you think is in that bag? Did you count? I’m guessing — fifteen, twenty grand? You think I don’t know you take divers out? A blind man could tell from the mess you leave behind. You got your cut, and if you hadn’t been drunk you wouldn’t have left the bag out where I would find it. But part of you wants to screw up. Part of you always has.”

“No, Dad, this is about you. What you’ve been waiting for,” Nate said. “And here it is, your chance to end this, because now that Mom is gone there’s nothing to keep me from hating you.”

He ducked, but then stood shaking his head, aware that nothing more would happen, now that Shug had tried to hit him. The words had come out wrong and he would have liked to explain that piece of it. He wasn’t the hater. In his confusion it had come out backward. What he meant was: Nothing to keep you from hating me.

He was almost through town, Highway 1 running between steep old false-front buildings housing four antiques stores and a used bookstore and a shoe store and an art gallery and a hardware store doomed to another day of almost no sales, when he noticed the star sparkling in the rearview, twinkling from red to blue, sharpening, fading, falling behind, his truck running good though he’d neglected to get the oil changed — well, he hadn’t been contemplating any long trips, and even now he wasn’t sure where he was going, except that he had an aunt he had liked when he was a kid, and she lived in a little town in Washington, Wenatchee, and that might work for a while, long enough for his dad to calm down. They could use a cooling-off period. Shug was right, Nate couldn’t see him handling the Louise on his own, not for long, and if Nate chose a lucky evening to call, Shug would answer the phone as if there had been no fight and Nate had inexplicably taken off, leaving him shorthanded. That was exactly how Shug would play it, as if Nate was in the wrong, and this forgiving, exasperating recognition of his dad’s ability to put him endlessly in the wrong was complicated by the realization that the ricocheting red-blue twinkle was for him , and then as clearly as he had ever seen anything in his life he saw Shug rest his knuckles over his dark eye, recollecting the numbers of Nate’s license and reciting them to the officer on the other end of the phone, and as it gained on Nate that scurrying to-and-fro light show would burn brighter and brighter and more righteously, its anger justified when Boone Salazar or whoever swung down the tailgate and dug under the tarps in the pickup bed until, aha, the goodie bag was hefted and swung before Nate’s believing, disbelieving eyes, the shells within chattering like stones poured down a well except these would not be poured anywhere but held as evidence, and it didn’t matter what he said or didn’t say, they had the proof in the Vietnamese diver’s bag, and if Petey was wrong and the man had in fact died this could get very, very bad and Nate could be gone for years, and there would be Ollie alone with their little boy in the trailer in the yard knee-deep in thistles and bindweed, and nothing Nate could do about it when Shug crossed that yard, and he would cross that yard, he’d already been crossing that yard, and with this recognition Nate was alone in icy water and it was time for him to go down and he really didn’t care. It was just too bad that the end was on him before he understood his life. The end had been coming forever and now that it was here he saw no reason to object. He downshifted and pulled onto the shoulder without worrying about it because he was cradled in the shadow of his destined wave, heaping itself, its high rim a spitting, flinging banner of foam, and Nate rolled the window down and rested his face in his crossed arms on the steering wheel and waited.