Ed takes a week off before starting his new position with the state. He gets Pete to come camping with Beau and all their boys.
Benjamin and Justin dump the tent out of its sack and help assemble poles. Ed sits in a camp chair, Beau at his side with his heavy head in Ed’s lap. Beau is always at his side, and Ed absently tugs on the dog’s ears. He’s on his fifth beer.
Hank takes a pole to the creek, and the younger two grab their own and follow.
“Hey now, Ben. You have a fire to help build.”
“I want to fish.”
“Not before you build the fire. Everyone’s got a job.”
“Oh yeah? What’s yours?”
“My job’s to drink this beer!”
“That’s not a job.”
“Go fish,” Pete says. “I’ll build the fire. Don’t argue, Ed.”
Pete splits wood, tepees kindling. Ed holds out his lighter. He hears hollering from the creek, a fish on someone’s line.
“Nothing better, is there, brother?” Ed raises his bottle, and Pete tips his in return.
— —
Ed awakens in the dirt by the dwindling fire, stars overhead. He walks to the tree line and takes a piss, fishes a bottle of whiskey out of his backpack, rights the tipped chair, sits down.
The boys are snoring in their tent, Pete, too.
Ed came to Montana for these moments, damn it. Fire and whiskey and fishing. He’s right where he’s supposed to be. Director of Health and Human Services! Youngest director in the state! More women than he knows what to do with. Easy women who don’t demand anything. He’ll string them all along with him. No promises to any particular one. No wives yelling at him to get home early. Just this—a fire and a bottle of whiskey.
He lights a cigarette, drops it, tries again.
Fire and whiskey and cigarettes. A whole goddamned sky full of stars.
— —
He wakes again briefly to someone shaking his arm and Benjamin’s voice shouting. “Dad! Dad, wake up! Uncle Pete, he won’t wake up!”
“He’s all right, son. Just had a little too much to drink last night. Let him sleep a bit longer.”
— —
The sun is high the next time Ed wakes, and he’s sweating in his night’s coat.
“Good afternoon, sunshine.”
Ed opens his eyes to see Pete standing over him.
“You slept on the ground, brother, cuddled up to your bottle. You know I don’t like to put on airs, but you’ve got to clean it up around the boys. If you needed this kind of camping trip, you should’ve come out alone.”
The sun is too bright. Ed’s head throbs behind his eyes. “Drugs, good doctor. Bring me some drugs.”
Pete laughs.
— —
He joins the boys at the creek in the evening, and they make a good haul of brook trout. They fry them whole to eat with potatoes cooked in the coals, a couple cans of beans heated in their tins. Ed sits back, sips a beer—he’ll stick to beer tonight. The air chills with the darkening sky. Stars appear. Hank and Justin tell stories. Benjamin stares into the fire and rubs at his neck.
“Your neck sore, son?”
“It’s okay. I slept on it funny.”
“Tent sleeping will get you every time.” Ed scoots his chair back from the fire and stomps the dirt in front of him. “Have a seat. I may not look it, but I give a great massage.”
All the boys laugh, and the anger Benjamin has been sending toward Ed dries.
Ed digs his fingers into the skin and muscle of the boy’s small neck and shoulders, promising himself he’ll do better.
— —
After the camping trip, Ed drops Benjamin at his mother and Tim’s house and goes directly to Dorothy’s, where he gets exquisitely drunk. He will do better when Ben is around, but that is a part-time responsibility. The woman he goes home with asks if he has kids.
“Occasionally, I have a son.”
— —
The day before he’s due to start his new position, he lays off the booze and the ladies. He takes Beau for a long hike on Mount Helena. He goes to the barber. He polishes his shoes.