The Prodigal: A Ragamuffin Story (7 page)

Jack started to say something and his father raised a hand—it was neither the time to protest or explain. “However much it is, it’s not enough time for me to pretend. You’ve accomplished great things by every measure we hold dear. But where are those great things now? You’ve stood in front of tens of thousands of people. Where are those people now? You’ve proclaimed that we are sinful to anyone who would listen. Who was willing to stand by your side and love you when you proved the truth of that?”

Jack felt his stomach clench. He had asked that same question a hundred times since that first trip to Mexico. But he couldn’t acknowledge it. It was easier to pick a different fight, not to talk about his own failures, but instead imagine someone else’s.

“You are always judging me,” Jack said, crossing his arms.

He sighed. Even to himself, he sounded fifteen years old again.

Tom looked Jack in the eyes. “I have been guilty of that, yes. I’m sorry. But I was always loving you. I hope that counts for something, son. Here at the end.”

They looked at each other now and said nothing. A pickup truck with dual exhausts rumbled down the street. Jack wondered if it was Dennis, on his way home to check on the ribs.

Perhaps his father wondered the same thing. He nodded, let out his breath, let the matter drop.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get cleaned up before dinner. You’ve been working outside all day.”

“Maybe tomorrow I can sweep some floors,” Jack said.

“And put Manny out of work?” his father said, and he smiled a little. “Heaven forbid.” He slid off his stool and went to shrug on his coat, his own father’s hat.

Jack was filled with an unaccountable love and sadness as he watched the old man dress for the cold.

“Dad,” he said.

He meant to say something else. Something more.

Something like, “I love you.”

Something like, “I’m sorry.”

But he couldn’t make that happen. Not yet.

“Yes, Jack?” Tom said as he wrapped his scarf around his neck a second time.

Jack hesitated. He couldn’t bring himself to name the elephant in the room. At last he spoke. “What am I going to do?”

His father considered. That was the question, wasn’t it?

Tom pulled on his gloves, slapped his hands together, looked over at him. “What do any of us do, Jack? The best we can.” He stepped forward, took his son by both arms, looked up into his face. “I know that this feels like a dark time. You have known your share of them. We both have. But I also know this: Your best days are still ahead.”

Jack didn’t, couldn’t, believe him. But he nodded, once, twice, three times, and a tiny smile made its way across his face.

It felt like a benediction. Like a blessing.

“Okay,” he said. “Maybe so.”

His father smiled. For him, the matter was settled, and other things loomed. “Let’s go eat some ribs.”

Because you had to keep things in the proper perspective. Maybe the world was falling down around you.

But it still admitted of this much: baby back ribs, smoked over low heat and served with a side of homemade barbecue sauce, spicy and tart, a foretaste of heaven.

A
small-town hardware store is open Monday through Saturday. Jack had remembered this in some part of his mind, and yet, he felt a momentary and ridiculous disappointment that first Saturday morning when he heard his father making breakfast downstairs and realized that this was a day like any other. He had been a working pastor for fifteen years, had gotten into the rhythm of Friday and Saturday off, even if it rarely worked out that they were totally free of church duties.

People had a way of dying or being in car wrecks or having their husbands leave them even on the pastor’s day off. And no matter how many staff he had doing pastoral care, he couldn’t remove himself entirely from that duty. It occurred to him now that he was glad of that. His best memories were of those agonizing times when his life actually intersected with another’s.

He threw on some clothes, the same jeans he had been wearing all week, another T-shirt, and bounded downstairs.

“Morning,” Jack said to Tom as he came into the kitchen. “You know, I should really be fixing you breakfast.”

“It brings me pleasure to cook,” his father said. “And I love
to eat. Couldn’t do it during the chemo. So if I want to eat eggs every morning for the rest of my life,” he said, sliding beautifully fried eggs onto the plates, “by God, I’m going to do it. A man should be able to eat what he wants!”

“I’d make eggs for you,” Jack said. Although his eggs wouldn’t be nearly so well cooked as these, the whites delicate fried lace, the yolks still runny.

“You can make the toast,” his father said. “You always had a gift for that.”

Jack popped four slices of bread into the toaster. “Done.”

“Do you mind working this morning?” Tom paused from retrieving orange juice and butter from the refrigerator. “I could really use your help making some deliveries from the lumberyard.”

“I don’t mind at all,” he said. “Really, Dad. What else would I do?”

“Well,” his father said, “I was going to pay you today. And advance you a bit for clothes. If I have to look at that same pair of tight jeans for another week, I can’t be held responsible for what happens to them.”

Jack looked down at his skinny jeans. They were black, hip, fit him pretty well, and didn’t fit Mayfield one tiny bit. In fact, truth be told, his soul patch, his ironic T-shirts, his whole look was wrong for this place.

“Anyway,” his father said, “I thought maybe you’d like to take the truck and do some driving today. Buy something in Mayfield if you can manage it. But take the afternoon and drive. I remember how you used to love that.”

Jack nodded. A day driving through the Texas Hill Country,
the twists and turns of the wooded hills, suddenly sounded like a little bit of heaven.

“I would like that,” he said. “I would like that a lot.”

The day seemed a little more promising now. He had already made his morning calls to Tracy, to Tracy’s parents, added in calls to her brother and sister. Nobody answered.

It’s like a spiritual discipline
, he thought. You make the effort, and maybe no one answers.

But nobody will ever answer if you don’t call.

He had realized that morning, though, as he paused on the verge of dialing, that he should stop calling Sally. She had apparently decided that whatever her future held, he was not a part of it—and that felt right to him too. It made much more sense now than when he was drinking on the balcony over the sea in Mexico. Misery had wanted company, and—he supposed—maybe misery had not been so particular about whom that company was.

Because now, stone-cold sober, he could face the reality that what he—they—had done was wrong.

It wouldn’t make it any more right, no matter what they did now.

And really, all he wanted was another chance with his family. Nothing else.

So he had skipped that call, breathed a silent prayer for Sally, and gone downstairs to breakfast.

“Dad,” he asked, once they’d sat and his father had said grace, “Have you seen Bill?”

Jack had not encountered his best friend from high school since he’d returned, and he wondered why. Everyone else seemed to be finding a reason to stop into the store and see him with
their own eyes. Tom had actually come home from the men’s basketball game the night before and told Jack that everyone asked about him, wondered why he wasn’t there. That made Jack smile. He could not imagine being the focus of so many eyes again, not this soon.

“Maybe when they play Llano,” he said, pronouncing their rival’s name with the proper Texan
l
instead of a Spanish y. “Those are always good games.”

“Well,” Tom said, “I saw Bill at the game last night. We talked for a good long bit, actually. But not about you.” He shook his head. “Not for a long while now. I think he feels like you left him behind.” He stopped. “I know he does. And he’s taken it kind of hard.”

“I did leave him behind,” Jack agreed. “I regret it. Maybe I can make it up to him.”

“Maybe,” his father said, spreading butter onto his toast. “But don’t be hurt if you can’t. Sometimes—” He set the knife down, thought better of saying more.

“Bill Hall is a good man,” is what he said instead. “He’s raised five kids alone, girls, all by himself. He’s worked hard on that ranch, done his best for our little church. Chairman of deacons this year.”

Jack had a vision of Martin Fox, his thousand-dollar suits, his searing judgment. Surely Bill was nothing like that.

Surely.

“Maybe our paths will cross,” Jack said. “They have to at some point, right? I’d like to at least tell him I’m sorry.” What happened after that couldn’t be forced. He either was or was not going to be forgiven. He couldn’t, he realized with something that felt a little
bit like wonder, earn forgiveness. But saying he was sorry—that was, he now saw, an important and much-neglected piece of the puzzle.

“I’m surprised he hasn’t been in the store,” Tom admitted. “And a little afraid I know why. Last week, before I went to bring you home, I saw him five days out of six.” He pondered that as he chewed. “He better not be driving over to Kerrville.”

“He better not,” Jack said. “That’s a long way. And there’s no reason.”

“Maybe you could have a tiny word with him,” Tom said. “Just to let him know that.” He shrugged. “Maybe he thinks he wouldn’t be welcome or something.”

“Maybe,” Jack said. He drank the rest of his orange juice, then the rest of his coffee. When he rose to gather the dishes, he said, “I can at least clear off the table. Those eggs are way beyond my talents.”

“And wash,” his father said. “You were ever an excellent dish washer.”

“They are good eggs,” Jack mused. “Fried eggs. Funny. In Seattle I used to have free-range organic frittatas for breakfast. I don’t guess there’s much call for that sort of thing here.”

“Jack,” his father said, rising slowly, “I believe truer words were never spoken.”

They rode in together, without a word, but the silence was not unpleasant. The cold snap had broken, the snow had melted, and they were enjoying the second day in a row of springlike weather.

“Texas in December,” Jack said. “Gotta love it.” The temperature was in the fifties, but slated to climb into the seventies that afternoon.

His father grunted. “Got to love that we’re not in Amarillo or Lubbock,” he corrected. “Those parts of Texas get plenty of hard weather.”

“Still,” Jack said, “I’ll be able to roll the windows down this afternoon.” He sighed. “How great is that?”

His father actually seemed to pause and consider the question. At the stoplight, unaccountably red with no other vehicles in sight in any direction, he nodded.

“It is great indeed,” he said. “Great indeed.”

Jack thought that his father must be developing a true appreciation for the little things. And why not? He was losing all the little things as well as all the big things. Who could say what you ultimately miss more?

Jack started work that morning by beginning to load the store’s pickup with the Saturday morning deliveries. Today it looked like a mixed bag of lumber, two dozen fifty-pound bags of fast-setting concrete—pretty much their whole stock—and a roof’s worth of brown three-tab shingles. Too much for one trip, for sure. It’d more likely be three or four.

He saw that Mrs. Calhoun was getting the shingles and nails. Someone must be putting on that new roof for her. Three hammers.
Thank God for nail guns
, he thought. He wouldn’t want to be doing roofs no matter the time of year. It was backbreaking work.

First, he hauled a delivery out the river road to the Marquettes, a family he knew but not well. They had moved to Mayfield after he graduated high school. Tom said they were members of the church—and like most members, no longer attended much. They had a sign in front of their house, next to a small American flag, that read: God loves you. Always has. Always will.

Mr. Marquette came out to meet him when he pulled into the driveway. He was a big, hearty type in his fifties. “John Marquette,” he said, offering a hand. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

“Jack.” They shook.

“Building a doghouse,” John explained, as Jack began to pull boards from the bed.

John Marquette was not one to stand around and watch. Together they pulled and stacked the lumber, and he stood watching as Jack checked it against the manifest, then handed John the clipboard for a signature.

“I need to pay you now?” Mr. Marquette asked as he scribbled.

“It’ll go on your account,” Jack said. He shook John’s hand. “Let us know if we can help you with anything else.”

John Marquette smiled. “Welcome home, Jack,” he said.

“Thanks.” In the truck on the way back to the store, Jack wondered if there was anybody in the county who didn’t know that he was back.

It was midmorning by the time Jack drove the second load, sacks of dry concrete, out to the Koenig Ranch, twelve miles west of town. The last two miles were on gravel roads, which were overhung by oak and pecan trees. White dust billowed up behind him as he drove, and goats nibbled at the rocky soil on both sides of the road.

Warren Koenig, the youngest brother, was on the front porch of the big house sipping coffee. He scrambled out of his rocking chair and to the circle drive as Jack pulled in. Jack had played football and basketball with Warren’s older brother Van, but Warren was four years behind them in school. He’d mostly been a noisome tagalong kid, cheering from the bleachers, watching practices. Jack wondered how the years might have changed him.

“Hey, Warren,” Jack called as he got out of the truck.

“Jack,” Warren said, stepping over to shake his hand with both of his. He was still on the small side, the youngest and the shortest of the brothers. “Good to see you. When’d you get in?”

“Early in the week,” Jack said. “How’re things?”

“We’re building a new fence this week,” Warren said.
“Lieber Gott!”
Warren was third-generation German-American, but some German apparently had stuck. Jack heard plenty of German in his years in Mayfield. The Germans had settled the Hill Country in the nineteenth century, planted vineyards, made beer, brought their great legacy of smoked meats that eventually became Texas barbecue.

Jack was willing to consider forgiving the Germans a lot because of beer and Texas barbecue.

“Mein Gott!”
Jack agreed, shaking his head. Putting in a fence was another backbreaking chore he’d rather not perform again in this life. “You’ve got a post-hole augur, right?”

“Oh yeah,” Warren said. “Man, you remember digging postholes by hand?”

“Oh yeah,” Jack said. He could almost feel the bruises and blisters again on his hands after a hard day of digging postholes without gloves. Because when did tough young men ever wear gloves to do manual labor? “Where should I put this stuff?”

“Over by the shop,” Warren said.

Jack pulled the truck around, backed it up to the door of a large tin shed. The shop was about the size of four oversized garages and a good thirty feet tall. Inside were a one-ton truck, a monstrous John Deere tractor, a combine, and a lot of tools and supplies. He spied a small stack of cement bags against one wall. “Over there?”

“Yeah, that’d be great,” Warren said. He grabbed a bag under each arm, and the two of them began stacking the concrete.

“Hey, Jack.” Warren grunted on their fourth trip as he tossed a bag on top of a pile that was probably a little too high now for safety.

“Yeah,” Jack said, beginning another pile.

“Are you back for good?”

“I don’t know,” Jack said, returning to the truck. He was now carrying the bags on his shoulders. Although he’d been working out until recently, this was a new order of pain.

“Van said you weren’t. He said”—his voice became apologetic—“he said you didn’t fit in anymore.”

“Did he?” Jack looked down at himself, covered in gray dust. “Was it because of my skinny jeans?”

Warren hooted as though Jack had made the prize joke of all time. “Nein. No, man.” He waved his hands dismissively. “Although ain’t nobody around here wears skinny jeans that’s not fifteen.” He suddenly became serious. “But you know what he meant. You’ve been a big shot. In the news. On TV.”

“Yeah.” Jack grunted, shouldering his bag onto the stack. “Once. I think maybe those days are done.”

“Nein,”
Warren said. “Don’t think that way, Jack. What about second chances?” He paused. “Maybe that’s it. Maybe Van thinks you’re just here taking a breather.”

At that moment, Jack actually was taking a breather, holding on to the tailgate and panting for air. “Warren,” he said, when he could. “Why would I stay here?”

“Why does anybody?” Warren asked. Then he answered himself. “For the beer. For the brisket. For the sunsets!”

“For the football,” Jack added. “The pecans. The pecan pie.”

“For the swimming hole at the creek,” Warren said. “When it’s a hundred degrees and you feel like the world is going to melt.”

Jack picked up two more bags. “I’m a little out of shape,” he said.

“You haven’t done this kind of work for a long time,” Warren said. “You were using your brain, man. Working with your brain.”