They’re back in the truck again, one pointless trip after another, just a short way over the hill to Elizabeth’s house, which Jim paid for, by the way. All the money he’s spent in his life, all the waste, houses and building the commercial fishing boat that lasted only one season to be sold at a tremendous loss. Staggering to think of it all together. The problem was no reliable plan, just fits and starts all moving too quickly, the future always waiting with a surprise. You’ve bought a new red Mercedes convertible, but right before it’s finally delivered by ship all the way to Ketchikan, your wife finds out about your affair with Gloria, so you drive it around Ketchikan’s eight miles of road for one afternoon, then it goes back on the ship and you pay thousands in restocking, congrats. Or you buy a new Uniflite cabin cruiser, brand-new shiny gelcoat and upholstery and new-boat smell and engine so perfect in its just-oiled haze and gleaming paint, then you forget to put in the drain plugs and it sinks the first day. You look at it submerged in maybe twenty feet of saltwater below the docks and you know everything about the boat will be fucked forever because of this. Mysterious electrical shorts hidden behind bulkheads, an engine that never hits full power because of residual rust in the cylinders, pumps turning on when no switch has been flicked, lights going out just as you need to come into the harbor at night, a VHF radio and other electronics that will need replacement on day two. You are master of your destiny. Kids you will have but not live with anymore and your son who will say no to a year in Alaska so you get to be the vacation father only, congrats. A second marriage you will fuck up the same way as the first marriage, by being unfaithful, because why not pay alimony to two ex-wives, and the kicker is that when you want to get back together with her she finds a poor fuck named Rich. And the tax dodges. That worked out magnificently. The IRS was fooled just long enough for all the penalties and interest to become something monstrous. And who knows what else. The expensive new house in Alaska, forgetting that, oh yeah, houses are supposed to have people in them, but this house is out of sight of any neighbor and you have no family up there and no wife or even girlfriend, and who are your friends? You have some down here in California, whom you aren’t planning to visit this trip, oddly—Tom Kalfsbeck and John Lampson, why aren’t you visiting them—but no friend in Fairbanks. Nice one on that. Good thing you made the house two stories with three bedrooms.
“I need to see John or Tom,” Jim says. “What the fuck am I doing this trip?”
“Jim,” Gary says. He’s grim at the wheel, nothing new there, evergreens and various bushes swept by the headlights as he turns along this mountain road. Paved and faster, but not so different from the ranch at night.
“I’m going to see them.”
“I’m not sure when we can fit that in.”
“Tomorrow we go to Lakeport, and John is close enough. Then Tom on the way back down to Santa Rosa.”
“It’s not on the way to go through Williams and the Central Valley.”
“Close enough. And when am I seeing Rhoda? When do we fit that in?”
No response, of course. And Jim should be paying more attention to his children. This may be his last time ever seeing them, this short ride over the hill and goodbyes that will no doubt be quick since everyone has been crying.
“Remember that money doesn’t matter,” Jim says. “David and Tracy. Remember that. Do something you like in life. Don’t be like me. And try to be kind when you remember your dad. He didn’t mean to be as fucked up as he was. You’ll see when you get older. Sometimes a life just goes beyond your control.”
Tracy is jammed in close next to him on the bench seat, and David between her and Gary, straddling the stick shift. Jim looks at both of them in shadows and light that keep sliding away, but they don’t look at him. Both with their heads down, enduring, same instinct as adults when cutting someone out of the pack.
He has an arm over them, and he shakes David’s shoulder until he looks. Jim grins. “Come on, son,” he says. “Don’t be hard on your dad.”
David grins just a bit, still sad, and gives a nod, some acknowledgment but faint, just a tad more than you’d get from the wind or a pile of rocks. Jim curls his arm around Tracy and pulls her even closer. “I’ll miss you, Tracy,” he tells her, and then he’s choking up, out of nowhere, eyes watering and mouth hung. “Even the monster feels something, eh?” he says, but he has trouble getting the words out.
Bundled so close beside his children who are so far away. And the time so short. They top the hill and descend into Hidden Valley, take just a few turns, up Rolling Hill Drive and down and there’s the house. The life he’s excluded from now. His own fault, but still exclusion.
“Don’t forget me,” he says. “Try to remember our best times, out hunting or fishing or skiing, wrestling on the carpet or playing pinochle. Think of times when I was happier, not the way I am now, okay?”
Gary has already pulled into the driveway and cut the engine. Elizabeth is out on the porch, and Jim has to open his door to let them escape. “A hug,” he says. “Give your dad a hug.” They pause long enough to do that, but not real hugs, not enough for the end, then they’re gone and he’s back in the truck weeping as Gary drives away. Such a weak sound, this choked little crying, so high-pitched. And the terrible feeling of loss, as if his children have been taken from him, as if they have died. A cavern inside him without limit. A stone would fall forever.