Son of a Gun Read Online Free PDF

horizon. I knew rural places, but this emptiness was something else: I was alone out here, like a pioneer or a survivor, the first man on a new planet or the last one on Earth. In the half hour it took to drive to Mom’s property I didn’t see another car, only shotgunned signs warning of road hazards. After the mile marker she had mentioned in her directions, I slowed down and watched the side of the road, but still she shocked me when I saw her, a wraith at the edge of my headlights, standing on the shoulder of the road and waving. I stopped and she walked out of the void into my yellow headlight beams. She got inside and hugged me and guided me the rest of the way.
    In their claustrophobic trailer we sat in the light of a lantern and the three of us had a long talk. I was there to see her, but there was nowhere for Ray to go, pitch dark outside and cold as it was. I told her I couldn’t make sense of anything, that I was afraid of something I couldn’t name. A panic attack, she said; she’d had them during hard times in her life, before giving birth and after Dad left, during airborne school and her divorces. Ray claimed to have known something similar in boot camp and at the police academy, but I didn’t know if he was telling the truth or if he was just trying to be part of the family. Mom told me the way to deal with times like these was to focus on the present and not to think about what’s still to come. Soon it will pass. It always does. After talking to her, Ifelt lightened and relieved, calm for the first time in days. When I left that place out in the desert, it seemed like what they must have wanted it to be, a refuge away from the world.
    A few months later, for my birthday, Mom and Ray showed up at our house in Tucson with a new tailgate for my truck to replace the one I’d dented backing into the telephone pole. They’d found it at a wrecker. It was the most redneck present I could have gotten, and normally I would have cringed, but after that night out at the property I understood what it meant: even now that I was grown, she could still make things right.
    In the clearing by my mother’s trailer, we formed a circle by instinct, as if preparing to ward off an attack. I met my brother’s eyes and we went to the door. The hinges creaked as a gust of wind blew it open a crack. Josh went first, opening the door and ducking through the entrance. I filled my lungs with fresh air and followed him.
    Inside it was dim and warm. The smell wasn’t as bad as I’d expected, musty and rich and a little sour, like the desert after a rain. A miniature kitchen ran along the far wall and sunlight slanted in from a small window above the sink. The cupboards and drawers had been emptied, their contents scattered across the countertops and floor. The cops had left a receipt for the evidence they’d taken: documents, pictures, a computer, a rifle, shell casings.
    To my left a narrow hall led to the bathroom. To my right was the bed. I thought I’d get it over with and followed the buzzing of the flies. The mattress was gone, removed by the police. Past the headboard, a shelf stretched beneath the sloping roof of the trailer to form an alcove. The flies had gathered on the shelf. As I walked closer, I saw a milk crate full of papers, a few books, a small stereo I’d bought them for Christmas,and a large shadow that spread across the wood. The dark patch was larger than it looked from across the room, a rough circle a few feet in diameter. There was nothing else it could have been, but I didn’t believe that it was blood, because there was too much. I touched the surface of the stain and my fingers came back caked with a brownish paste. I rubbed my fingertips together; it turned to powder and stained my skin. Where the pool was darkest, I noticed clumps of brown hair, and fragments of something I didn’t want to identify.
    A fly alighted on a photo album at the edge of the pool. I reached without thinking and picked