MATTHEW

I was in the passenger seat holding his Four Roses, my daddy driving slow, but still barely able to stay on both lanes of the road, let alone one.

Hell, take a swig, boy? said my daddy, nodding at the jug. Maybe it’ll cure you some.

No, thank you, I said.

No, thank you, he said, in a mockingly effeminate way. Now when did you stop calling me sir, boy?

When I lost all fucking respect for you.

My daddy found that funny. You’re plenty brave for a faggot, he laughed.

I stared out of the window as if looking for an answer. It didn’t happen, I said. Whatever you heard back there, she made it up.

Is that so? said my daddy. Is that so? I could see him checking his rearview mirror all cockeyed, so I turned to look over my shoulder. Hannah was a few hundred yards back, trying and almost failing to stay upright on her bicycle, leaving our driveway. But here’s the thing, boy, said my daddy. Why would a pretty girl like that make up something so ugly, just the two of you in a room? You think I’m dumber than a box of rocks?

She got the wrong end of the stick, I said.

Ohhh, so there was a stick? said my daddy. Well, why don’t you tell me about it, this stick?

I looked out my window again as my daddy chuckled away to himself.

Come on, said my daddy, isn’t that what she said? Now that would be one helluva lie for a young thing like that, sayin my son took an old dick and put it in his mouth. And we ain’t the kind of family for lettin stuff go. My daddy slowed to a halt and squinted into his rearview again. You really sayin that girl’s nothin but a filthy liar, boy? Because slander like that deserves punishin, he said. Now you listen good. If that little girl’s a goddam liar, I’ll turn right around and me and my friend, we’ll be havin a few words with her, he said, touching the pistol in his waistband. Otherwise, if she’s tellin the truth, me and my friend, we’ll be havin a word with old faggoty Pete. Either way, me and my friend, we got some serious fuckin talkin to do. So what’ll it be? Is that girl a goddam liar? he said. Or are you a goddam faggot?

I looked him straight in the eyes and said nothing.

My daddy shrugged and spun the wheel sharply before braking so that the car straddled both lanes of the road, and then shifted from drive to reverse.

Stop! I said. Just … don’t turn around, please.

OK, said my daddy, but I’m only gonna ask you one more time. He clamped his eyes hard on me and said, Are you … an old man … cocksuckin … faggot?

I looked straight back at him and nodded.

Say it, then, boy. Say I am a faggot. I won’t hurt you. I’m your daddy, for chrissake.

The alcohol was already beginning to drip from his pores.

I’m a faggot, I said, refusing to mumble my words.

My daddy put his hand to his ear anyway. Little louder for your old man, he said.

I could see Hannah wobbling closer on her bike, pausing when she saw the car stopped up ahead in the road, and I shouted it hard in his face. I am a faggot.

Good boy, he said, patting my knee ever so gently. Good boy.

*   *   *

WE STOPPED IN THE CONSERVANCY parking lot, only a couple of other cars there, and headed out on the red-blazed trail. As we walked, my daddy hung back from me five or ten paces, smoking his Larks and drinking his whiskey. Whenever we’d hit a fork in the trail he’d ask which way we should go to find Pete, squinting hard at me as I answered, sometimes nodding OK, sometimes chuckling, calling me a sneaky little so-and-so and waving his pistol in the other direction, a regular dowser of truth. Not that any of this mattered—I couldn’t have led him to you anyway, it’s not as if you worked at a desk.

My daddy was mumbling to himself as we walked, a monologue about fighting and faggots and gooks, questions as to my true paternity, a conclusion that in all likelihood I couldn’t be his, that probably I was the son of some pillow-bitin sailor boy.

After a mile or so, just as we were coming to another fork, I heard my daddy swear loudly. I turned around, hoping he’d stepped on a rattlesnake, but unfortunately the cause of annoyance was simply that he’d finished his Four Roses. My daddy put the bottle down on a rock, marched away ten paces and then spun around with his black pistol pointed at the offending vessel. When he pulled the trigger there were two sounds, and neither of them was breaking glass, only the gunshot rippling through the air and the sound of a ricochet, bullet glancing from rock.

My daddy shrugged. Sometimes chicken, sometimes feathers, he said, staggering toward the empty bottle and picking it up. Then he walked over to me, passed me the bottle, and motioned for me to start moving. Up against that tree, he said, I need incentive to shoot straight, that’s all.

I gave him the most hateful look I could muster.

I said stand against the fuckin tree and put the fuckin bottle on your fuckin head, boy. I gotta be sure my aim’s workin good when the time comes.

I did what he told me. I can’t explain to you why I wasn’t afraid, maybe it was just that I was overwhelmed by hatred, but I did close my eyes, I closed my eyes and thought about you, Pete, remembering the time you rushed up to me and Tricky one time to tell us the rules, no fishing in the lake, boys.

Then I thought about another rule—no hunting on Conservancy land—and imagined you hearing the gunshot. I could picture the way you’d hold your head trying to work out the direction the sound came from and how, if you found him, you’d walk up to my daddy all smiling and friendly.

That’s when I heard a second shot and the smashing of glass. I waited a moment before opening my eyes. There was broken glass at my feet and my daddy was hands-on-knees laughing. Sometimes chicken, sometimes feathers, he hooted, I can’t believe you fell for that, son, you shoulda seen yourself. Come on, boy, you know I was the best damn shot in my platoon. You don’t remember? You fell for me missin that bottle from ten yards? I wish you coulda seen the look on your face, boy, ooh hoo hoo. That was a picture, that was a regular treat.

My daddy took another few seconds to recover himself and then waved his gun toward the fork on the right, still sniggering away. It was the path that led to Dinosaur Rock, there was a sign saying as much. Now come on, he said, let’s keep moving. We still got us some faggot to hunt.

*   *   *

I CAUGHT SIGHT OF YOU about ten minutes later. We were up high on Sunset Ridge trail and you were down in the barrens, the place you called the pine orchard. Sunlight flashed from your binoculars as you glassed the ridge, searching for the source of the gunshot, but my daddy was too drunken-eyed to notice you off in the distance. You were on the very same trail as us. From where you were standing, it would carry you straight to the bottom of the ridge and then along its base a few hundred yards, before heading up steeply to join the section we were on now. I didn’t know what to do. There weren’t even any trail junctions where I could hope to get lucky or try and trick my daddy into picking the wrong route.

Sunset Ridge was nothing but rocks on rocks, large boulders you had to haul yourself over alongside smaller ones, football or softball-size. We came to a short rise with footholds like steps in the rock face, and when I clambered up, Dinosaur Rock was only a short distance away, big as a school bus, its jaw hanging over the edge of the escarpment. It looked to be the only place to hide from your binoculars for several hundred yards, so as I passed behind the dinosaur’s tail, I faked a fall, letting my toe catch on a small fissure in the bedrock.

Well shit, laughed my daddy, who looks drunker’n a skunk now?

I rolled over and reached for my ankle. I think I twisted it, I said.

Walk it off, said my daddy. I had to make it through that jungle with guts drippin outta my fingers.

I touched my ankle and winced. My daddy pulled his Larks from his chest pocket and lit one. OK then, he said, five minutes, or I’m leaving you here for the buzzards. He sat down with his back against Dinosaur Rock to enjoy his Lark in the sun, closing his eyes against the dipping light and sucking peacefully on his cigarette.

I sat down and tried to think everything through. I pictured my daddy spotting you heading toward us on the trail. You wouldn’t stand a chance—he had a gun, you didn’t—and once he saw you, my daddy would whisper something like, You say a word, boy, I’ll shoot you on the spot. Only there’s no way I’d let that stop me, I’d yell, Run, Pete, run! Anything to give you more time. My daddy could go ahead and shoot me for all I cared, because if I didn’t shout out a warning, I could picture exactly how that would go as well. My daddy would force you to get down on your knees and open your mouth, and then he’d make some kind of joke as he pushed the barrel of the gun between your lips.

I looked across at him in the goldening sunlight, a long husk of ash on his Lark. A moment later the husk dropped to his chest and my daddy didn’t move, at which point a whistling sound came out of his nose.

The plan thudded into me in an instant, no need to think everything through. Right beside me was a football-size rock, Swangum conglomerate, tougher than granite. Picking it up, I moved over to him fast. It felt like nothing, bringing that rock down on my daddy’s head. He didn’t make a sound, just slumped over to one side, blunt force. There wasn’t even much blood to talk about.

After that, I don’t even remember it being that hard dragging my daddy over the polished bedrock, past all the names that had been carved there a hundred years ago. Once I got my daddy’s limp body all the way to the edge, I stopped to look down at the pine orchard, bright green and tranquil and no sign of you. By now you must have been bounding up the steep rise to the ridge. You probably made it to the spot where my daddy smoked his last cigarette not long after it burned itself out.

I stood there for just a few moments enjoying the view, blue glimpses of skylake and cloud shadows drifting over the face of the valley. You can feel like a god in the mountains.

I knelt down beside my daddy, not so much wondering if I could do it, more wondering what it would feel like.

I saw his eyelids flicker, and I knew what he would say if he opened them, if he could see where he was.

You ain’t got the balls to push me off this cliff, faggot.

I corrected him before he had the chance to say it.

It’s called an escarpment, I said. And I pushed.