Father and Son Read Online Free PDF Page B

anything, since what they had between them could not be resolved then in that place. And maybe couldn’t be now. He smoked and drove and thought about his father, who had survived the long march at Bataan but had come away crippled, having been bayoneted through the hands and the back and the right thigh. In his childhood, Glen had heard him moan and toss and plead through his dreams, and had seen him give himself to long periods of silence when he stared off into the sky and maybe relived oldmemories that he would talk about only when he was drinking. He wondered if he still did that. He wondered why the Japs hadn’t just gone ahead and killed him when they had the chance. It would have made things a hell of a lot easier for everybody. He could have had a different daddy then, instead of the one he had now.

Jewel’s room was nearly dark, but he could see the old dresser and the bureau, a tiny rocking chair and some toys scattered over the rug. The lace curtains that had flared out billowing in a black and storm-crazed spring night of his memory when the strobic lightning illuminated them struggling against each other on the bed now hung still and unmoving. There didn’t seem to be a breath of air in the room tonight.
    He stripped off the condom and went down the hall to the bathroom where a small light was plugged into the wall socket and flushed it down the commode. Then he went back into the bedroom and lay down beside her again. The whiskey was sitting on the bedside table and he reached and got it and tilted a drink down his throat. She put her hand on his leg.
    â€œCan you stay the night?” she said.
    â€œNot tonight.”
    They listened to each other breathing in the darkness.
    â€œLord that was good,” she said. “It’s been so long. You don’t have to go.”
    â€œI got to.”
    â€œWill you come back?”
    He didn’t answer that. He found his clothes in a pile on the floor and he sorted through them for a sock or an undershirt. They were tangled with her things.
    â€œDon’t you want to see him?”
    He paused and looked over his shoulder at her. “See him?”
    â€œYeah. I bet he’d like to see you.”
    He pulled on his socks and slipped his shorts over his hips, remembering a big baby in a crib who had stared up at him with dark eyes beneath a cheap mobile that spun slowly, blue fairy horses with knurled horns on their heads, orange suns and yellow stars, little pink bunny rabbits. A silent child who looked like him.
    He sat there and buttoned his shirt.
    â€œHell, he don’t know me.”
    â€œHe’s four. He knows you. I showed him the picture.”
    â€œWhat the hell did you go and do that for?”
    â€œI’ll go see if he’s awake,” she said. The lamp came on and he saw her arm pull back from it. She got up from the bed naked and pulled her robe off the chair nearby. She put it on and went barefoot out the door, down the darkened hall. He took another drink. It felt like something near death in here to him. He put the rest of his clothes on and combed his hair in front of the dresser next to the bed. When he turned to face a small noise at the bedroom door she was standing there holding the boy on her hip.
    â€œThere’s Daddy, see Daddy?” she said to him softly. He was not a baby anymore yet he looked small for his age. He fixed Glen with a look of intense interest and rubbed at one eye with a dimpled fist to see him better maybe.
    â€œAin’t he growed?” she said. “Look what a big boy.”
    Watching this Glen reached and got the whiskey off the bedside table.
    â€œPut him back in bed. It’s late.”
    â€œI just wanted you to see him.”
    â€œTake him back.”
    She spun quickly and went down the hall almost running. Glen walkedthrough the living room and out the front door. He stood on the porch and took another drink of the whiskey. Then he went and sat in