The Last Exit to Normal (11 page)

He stood up, and in a flash, a moment in time, my dad showed me where I stood. He nodded. “I
am done talking about it, son. This is your problem to come to terms with, not mine.” Then he went inside,
leaving me to myself.

My dad was never done talking about anything. There was always another hour of getting in touch with
feelings and analyzing the situation and giving me advice. Not here, not now, though. I knew how he saw it. This
wasn’t a dad arguing with his son about stuff. We’d gone beyond that. It was two people parting ways
on the way they felt about life. I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t change it.

After about twenty minutes, I went back inside. Dad and Edward sat at the kitchen table, and their
conversation ceased. “Dad?”

He didn’t turn around. Edward gave me a pleading look, then got up and walked out. Dad sat
there, completely still. “What?” he said.

“I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

“I told you we’re done talking about this, Ben.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want your apologies.”

I stared at the back of his head. “Then what do you want? I’m trying here.”

He turned. “Ben, sometimes what you say doesn’t go away. It can’t be repaired,
fixed, or worked out. It’s just there.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I’m not going to live my life feeling this burden of guilt any
longer. I can’t do it. You’ll either accept me or walk away, but I won’t listen to my life being
condemned by you.”

“And you’re saying I’ve crossed that line?”

He slowly shook his head. “No. I’m not. I’m saying that I don’t like you
very much right now.”

I looked at him. At least we had something in common.

Dinner was an absolute misery-fest. Dad was deflated and silent, I didn’t have anything to
say—I couldn’t say I was sorry, because Miss Mae would reach across the table and hit me with
something—and Edward got tired of trying to celebrate their business all by himself. The whole night was a dud,
and it was completely my fault.

Later I found Edward sitting on the front porch alone, holding a cup of coffee. I sat next to him, both of
us watching the moon rise over the houses. “I messed things up,” I said.

In the darkness, his voice came soft: “Yes.”

“I’m messed up.”

Silence.

“It’s different this time, isn’t it?”

“You’re not fourteen anymore.”

“I know, but I just get so sick of the way he is sometimes.”

“I suppose that’s the way families are, you know? We’re all
different.”

“I know, but I just get . . .”

He interrupted me, his voice sharper. “I know exactly what you get, Ben.”

“What, then? Tell me, because I don’t even know.”

He shrugged, taking a sip of coffee. “When I was a teenager, before I moved to Spokane, I
remember going places with my dad. You know, like father-and-son things. One time, probably about a month before I
left, we went to a Youth Cattleman’s party at the Grange. All the men were there with their boys, and
I’ll never forget it.” He paused. “Groups and clusters of fathers and sons talked and visited, and
I remember us. Just he and I, standing by ourselves by the refreshment table. We didn’t talk, standing there with
plastic punch cups in our hands and this mutual feeling that one of us didn’t belong there. Both of us knew how
I was by then, and so did most of the town. I think it was one last effort on his part and one dying gasp on my part to
have a good relationship with each other. The kind you’re supposed to have as father and son.”

“That sucks.”

Edward shook his head, laughing softly. “Not really. My father always loved me. I knew that. I
also understood that he just plain disagreed with it, and that wasn’t even bad. We could disagree. You know
what was bad, though? At that party?”

“What?”

“The look all over his face that said he was ashamed. I’d never noticed it before, but that
night I did, and I realized just how embarrassed he was to have a son like me.” He looked my way. “You
know how it feels when a person you love feels that way about you, Ben? It’s just about the worst feeling you
can have. Like you just want to shrivel up and die.”

I stared into the moonlit sky. “How can I not feel that way, then? Sometimes, when I look at him,
I just wish he didn’t exist, you know? I do love him, but I can’t help it. It’s just
there.”

“When my mother sent me away, I wasn’t thrown out. You probably see it that way, but
it wasn’t. She knew what was best for me, and you know what? It
was
the best for me. I
wouldn’t be who I am if she hadn’t, and I still thank her for it. This place wasn’t good for
me.”

“What about your dad, though? Did he ever see things differently?”

“I think he was glad to see me gone. For my sake and for his sake. He never felt differently,
though. He couldn’t. And it wasn’t that
I
was gay. It was that
he
had a gay son. And
when he died, he told me so. It was the first time I’d ever heard my father apologize for anything.”

I thought about what Edward had said, and it made me feel even worse, because I knew what he was
saying. But I wasn’t Dad’s father. I was his son. And even though my dad might have not chosen to be
gay, he had chosen to be a gay father.

CHAPTER 14

T
he next morning, Dad and I were walking around ready to pounce on each other like cornered cats, and I was up for breakfast, dressed, and out the door after a few bites of French toast. I had no idea how to make things better, and the way Dad avoided me, even after Edward and I had talked the night before, I couldn’t help but feel he was sulking around like a kid who didn’t get dessert.

Dad had told me we were done talking about it, and even though a part of me wanted to fold over and grovel, another part wanted to tell him to deal with this like he’d made me deal with everything.

As I sat on the front porch having a smoke after breakfast, I thought about how he’d made me live with it. I hated rules and regulations and authority and all the things that Dad relied on to make his life orderly and safe, and I resented him for trying to force me to be like him. I wasn’t.

When Dad came out of the closet and Mom walked out and I flipped out, he made a plan. He would rely on all the safety nets that I considered stupid. He contacted my school counselor, he put me in major professional counseling with Dr. Fruitloops, he put us in family counseling, he bought books—he did everything he could think of to have other people solve our problems—and I hated him for it.

Back then, I hated him for it because he’d ruined our family, but after a while I hated him because
he
didn’t want to suffer the consequences of his decision. He wanted
me
to.

The first time he’d caught me smoking pot, he didn’t even catch me. There’s no catching involved when you do it on purpose, and even at fifteen years old, I knew exactly what would happen—and it did, which made me hate him even more.

He came home from work one day, walked in the door, put his keys on the table by the door, hung his coat in the closet, set the mail in the mail thing, and did what he did every single day when he got home. He called my name. I didn’t answer for two reasons. The first was that I wanted him to come to my room, and the second was that I was so baked I could barely talk in sentences.

He should have smelled it two blocks away, but he didn’t, and when he opened my door, the thick haze of smoke shrouded him in the doorway. He asked what I was doing. I offered him a hit.

Now, if that had been my mom at the door, or even my dad before he decided to come out of the closet, there would have been hell to pay. I would have been strung from the rafters for a week. I would have been grounded. I would have had to do a zillion hours of chores. I would have been monitored by the minute for the next year.

Dad turned around and walked out. I went to school the next day, and my student counselor spent an hour talking to me about using drugs. Dad had called him. That night, after Dad got home, a police officer showed up at our door. Dad had arranged a “meeting” with our school’s resource police officer, and Mr. Cop spent another hour talking to me about what would happen if I got caught. I wouldn’t want a record, would I? I wouldn’t want to start that spiral into the darkness of criminality, would I? He didn’t know me very well.

After the cop left, Dad sat me down and calmly explained to me why I was doing what I was doing, and that while he understood there would be bumps in the road such as this, if he found drugs in the house again he’d call the police and have me arrested. Apparently, breaking the law was much worse than tearing a family apart.

That was the difference, I thought bleakly. Before it all happened, the only thing my dad had to worry about was me chewing gum in class, and the only thing I looked forward to was coming home to a dad who would pat me on the shoulder, smile, and tell me there were worse things than chewing gum. Then we’d go out and play catch, and Mom would take the gum from my backpack while we did.

Now we were in Rough Butte, and I knew well enough that this town was just another way for my dad to have a problem solved by something besides himself. The last exit to normal for a family that would never be normal. He’d given up on everybody in Spokane that couldn’t make us the way we used to be, so he’d taken the whole city out of the picture. Great.

But I knew it wasn’t all that way. I knew he loved me, and I didn’t give a crap about what normal was or wasn’t, but things were different in a more serious way. A more personal way. He’d told me he didn’t like me, and for some reason, that hurt more than any screaming match we’d ever been in or any anger he’d ever shown. I’d spent so long not liking him, I wasn’t used to him not liking me.

I thought about the look in his eyes when he’d slammed me against the cupboard, and I shook my head. It was the closest thing to hate I’d ever seen coming out of him, and it was directed at me. It was almost like the true Paul Campbell showed himself to me.

After deciding I was thinked out about the whole stupid thing, I’d dug the last of the postholes for the fence and had begun nailing the boards to the frame when Billy came out. Mr. Hinks’s car was gone, and as Billy grabbed a shovel and came near the fence, I stopped working. “Hey, Billy.”

“Hey.” He picked up the stiff and dead cat with the shovel.

I watched him.

He turned, balancing the cat on the blade. “They get stiff after a coupla days.” He started walking toward the fields behind the house. I watched. Both Miss Mae’s and the Hinkses’ backyards ended with a wire fence bordering open fields. Billy opened the rickety wire gate leading into the field, humming a slow song as he walked carefully over the rough terrain, the cat’s glassy eyes staring at the horizon like it wished for something other than a bumpy ride on a shovel.

I dropped my hammer and followed, staying back. A stand of stunted pine trees, dry and dusty and off in the distance, jutted into the sky just before a hollow led down to a dry creek bed. As he entered the trees and walked down the ravine, I paused, watching him. He stopped then, as if getting his bearings, and headed to the left and farther down. Twenty yards on, he stopped again, set the cat down, and studied the rocky ground for a moment.

I crept to the edge of the trees, watching as he found the spot he was looking for and began digging. Flash floods from years ago must have unearthed and tumbled the rocks here, and they lay scattered and piled on the baked soil. Billy wiped his forehead, digging for ten minutes or so before setting the shovel down.

I knew what he was doing, but didn’t know why. He’d killed the cat as easily as wiping a booger on his sleeve, and now, seeing him gently lift the cat and put it into the grave, I wondered what this kid’s deal was. A few minutes later, he’d filled the hole and began piling rocks on it carefully, almost reverently. He finished, and the burial mound was complete.

I looked along the length of the ravine, and that’s when I noticed. A chill ran up my spine. Floods hadn’t piled those rocks, and they weren’t helter-skelter. Scattered along the bed of the dusty ground were at least a dozen other rock mounds, some bigger and some smaller, but all of them maintained and as uniform as possible.

Billy turned around and looked up at me. He’d known I was there. “You wanna say something?”

I studied the area. “Like what?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Like ‘God bless him’ or something.”

“God bless him.” I walked down the embankment and through the maze of burial mounds, the morbidity of the place making the hairs on my arms stand up. “You make all these?”

He nodded. “They’re called cairns. Indians and stuff did them because they didn’t have no headstones. That way, people remember them.”

“You killed them all?”

He shrugged, looking off in the distance. “Strays.”

I shook my head. “I saw you play with that cat two days before you killed it.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, so?”

I swept a finger over the cairns: “All of them?” I said it knowing the truth, but hoping he’d found at least some of them already dead. Roadkill, natural causes, whatever.

He nodded; then his eyes met mine, intense in the afternoon sun. “Yep.”

“Why?”

“I told you.”

“Your dad?”

He nodded.

“This is weird, man.”

He stared at me, cocking his head. “Why? You ain’t never been to a cemetery?”

“Yeah, but I don’t go out of my way to fill them. Sort of tweaked, don’t you think?” He shook his head. “Ain’t like killing a person or nothing.”

“No, but . . .”

He picked up the shovel, glancing at the sun. “Gotta get back. Pa’s going to be home soon, and he’ll strap me if he knows I been here.” He walked past me then, slinging the shovel over his shoulder and climbing up the wall of the ravine.

My thoughts were jumbled. “He straps you if you come here?”

He turned. “Yep. Says I don’t have any business giving animals a funeral. You eat ’em, work ’em, or kill ’em. He says they don’t have no souls anyway, so it’s a waste of time.”

“Then why do you bury them?”

He walked on, shrugging his narrow shoulders. “Feel like it.”

I followed. “Answer me a question.”

“What?”

“You like killing them?”

I caught up to him.

He bit his lip as he walked, then shook his head. “My ma loved cats.”

“Your dad strap you a lot?

He shrugged. “Sometimes.”

I lit a smoke. “He ever hit you with his fist?”

He nodded. “Just once. Said he was sorry, too. Lost his temper. Strap hurts more, though. You never been strapped?”

“No. I think it’s wrong.”

Billy kicked a rock. “You called the sheriff, didn’t you? That’s why he came and looked at me.”

“No. My dad did. Did the sheriff talk to your dad?”

“No. Pa found out he came by, though.”

“Oh, yeah? What happened?”

“Nothin’.”

“You didn’t get in trouble?”

“Put me in the Can.”

“What’s the Can?”

“Hall closet.”

My stomach squiggled. “He put you in the closet?”

Billy nodded. “Ain’t that bad. Don’t have to work or nothing, anyway. Dark, though.”

“How long were you in there?”

He spit. “Ain’t no clock in a closet.”

“How long?”

He stopped, pondering the sky for a second. “Don’t know. Long enough I slept, then woke up, then slept again. Gotta pee in a jar when that happens.”

“Why’d he put you there?”

“You don’t talk family business to people. I did.”

“You mean the sheriff?”

He didn’t say anything for a minute, and we started walking again. He kicked a clod of dirt. “Thanks for the board. I never really said that.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I like doin’ tricks.”

“Been practicing more?”

“Yep. When Pa’s gone.”

We walked for a couple of minutes, reached the gate to his backyard, and stopped. He stared at the back of his house. “You ever wish sometimes you were gone?”

I thought about it for a minute. “Where to?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Just gone.”

I took a second, deciding that I didn’t want to talk about what I thought he was talking about. “If you could go anywhere, where would you go?”

He kicked a rock. “Dunno. Maybe with my mom.” He looked across the fields. “Sometimes, anyhow.”

“She just left, huh? One day here, the next day gone, right?”

He nodded. “Pa says she didn’t love us.”

“I bet she did. You, I mean.”

“Pa says she was a whore.”

“What do you think?”

He scrunched his nose up. “I don’t know what a whore is.”

I took a breath. This was out of my league. I was a stupid teenage kid with a mouth, not some shrink. “A whore is . . .” I paused. “Listen, man, I don’t think your mom was that. Maybe your dad was just mad because she left, you know? Pissed off and stuff.”

He looked at me like I was the biggest idiot on the face of the planet. “You didn’t even know her, so how do you know?”

“What was she like?”

“She used to make me peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and we got ice cream cones sometimes. We’d sit on the back porch with ’em and let the cats lick ice cream from our fingers.”

A twitch of that freakiness went through me, but I ignored it. “Well, that means she’s not a whore, it means she was a good mom. Get it?”

He looked at me. “Your mom love you?”

I stopped. Here I was, telling this kid to believe something I didn’t know that I believed. “Yeah, she did. She loved me.”

He nodded. “Ain’t no matter now, huh?”

“What doesn’t matter now?”

He shrugged. “Well, she’s gone, ain’t she?”