The "What If" Guy (2 page)

Elliott raised an eyebrow. “The
bar
?”

My son had seen me drink an occasional glass of wine, but I made sure he never saw anyone drunk. I tried hard to protect him from all of the ugliness I’d seen growing up.

I glared across the street at Ramona, who’d made pretty quick time of getting into Fisk’s and situating herself near the window to watch the show. “You wait here. I’ll go get Grandpa.”

“I can’t come in?” He looked around and gnawed his lip.

I would never have left him standing alone on the sidewalk outside a bar in downtown Seattle at dusk. But this wasn’t Seattle. In the five minutes we’d been standing here, not a single car had passed, and the only sound was the frogs croaking in the creek that trickled through the park nearby.

I pressed a kiss to his head. “Sorry, El.”

“I went into bars all the time back home,” he grumbled.

“Those were called bar and grills, hon.”

He hung his head.

“And this is home for now.”

Elliott enunciated his words, slowly and concisely. “This
isn’t
my home.”

I winced. This puny little farming community was like no home he’d ever known. Elliott had grown up surrounded by galleries and music halls. But I’d fallen victim to the economy eight months ago, and lost my job at the posh art gallery I’d managed in downtown Seattle. We’d lost almost everything during my unsuccessful search for employment, including our cute loft-style apartment, most of my nicer belongings, and ultimately, Elliott’s position in the private fine arts school I’d worked overtime to send him to. For the past three years, he’d played cello in the school orchestra. He wore hats and ties and black Converse tennis shoes. I’d brought him to the land of Wranglers, boots, and flannel.

“This is temporary, honey,” I said. “We just need to make the best of it until Grandpa is back on his feet.”
And we’re back on ours.

I ducked inside Smartie’s.

“Auto.”

I bristled. The crackly voice sounded like a chainsaw on idle, just as it had over the phone. I didn’t have to know Stanley “Smartie” Guire to deduce that he’d done some hard living for the past forty years.

I hadn’t been referred to as “Auto” in a long time, and the nickname didn’t conjure fond memories. I’d been given the name Autumn Ann Cole because I was born on a crisp Halloween night. My father had wanted to name me Martha, after his mother, but he’d missed my birth. He had passed out from over-celebrating Halloween with his friends and hadn’t been able to drive my mother to the hospital. Eight years later, my mom had left and never come back. My father had promptly shortened my name to Auto, even though it infuriated me.

“Hello,” I said. I had spent many a night walking down the hill in the dark to fetch my father—so often that Smartie had stopped nagging me about minors not being allowed in his fine establishment long before I’d hit fifteen. You acquire certain rights and privileges when you’re the town drunk’s daughter.

Smartie’s was filled with farmers, still dirty from spending their day in the fields, and the men who worked at the grain elevators, equally filthy and tired-looking. They sat, sucking on dark beer bottles, vacantly watching football on the tiny television propped between liquor bottles on the counter behind the bar.

“Good to have you home.” Smartie pointed to the corner of the bar, near the wall of small, brightly lit pull-tab gambling machines that distributed small, instant lottery tickets that the patrons at Smartie’s enjoyed so much.

My dad sat slumped, his head resting on the bar among a scattered pile of discarded pull-tabs, a half-empty beer mug, and an ashtray containing a lit cigarette burning precariously close to his thinning, reddish-blond hair. I thought he was asleep, but then realized he was mouthing the words to the country song playing on the jukebox. He wore a grayed shirt, untucked, and had at least a couple of days’ dirt under his fingernails. His face appeared ashen beneath his whiskers.

The air escaped my lungs. I barely recognized my own father.

“Dad?”

No response.

Smartie shook his head. “Won’t work. You gotta shake him.”

I nodded, my face heating with a mixture of shame and gratitude. “Thanks.” I pushed on my father’s bony shoulder and shouted, “Wake up.”

His bloodshot eyes popped open. “Whaught?”

“Hi, Dad.” I tried to smile. “We’re here. Elliott is waiting outside.”

“Auto?” He sat up, a pull-tab stuck to his temple.

I plucked it off. “Did you forget?”

Smartie appeared before us, rubbing the counter with a dirty towel. “He didn’t forget. He was in here celebrating your arrival.”

I glared at Smartie. “Shouldn’t he be at home? What did the doctors say?”

He shrugged, a hint of sympathy in his eyes. “Got no idea. When I got to the hospital this morning, he was waiting out front.”

I sighed. “Thanks for picking him up.”

I took my dad’s arm—tanned deep bronze from working outside every day. Beneath my grip, his skin stretched over his bones, little muscle mass left. “Let’s go home, Dad.”

“S’Elliott here, tshoo?” My dad slid his stick-figure frame off the bar stool.

Good lord, he’s gotten thin.
I held on to his arm, steadying him.

When I was a kid, people had feared Billy Cole. He’d been six-foot-three and had cut slits up the sleeves of his shirts to make room for his muscular arms. But forty years of hard drinking had changed him. His chest no longer filled out the front of his shirt, but was concave down to his small, protruding belly. His face and neck had turned red, his nose swollen and lumpy, just like my grandfather’s.

An unexpected wave of sadness washed over me. He no longer looked like the father I remembered. I found myself wishing that Elliott and I had come to see him more often, that I had made an effort to reconnect. Or, more accurately, to connect for the first time. I didn’t recognize my father, and I didn’t know him. And I wasn’t sure we had much time left with him.

I gestured to the door. “Elliott’s waiting outside.”

“Elliott,” he crowed, as I led him to the door. “Whereyouat, kid?”

Outside, Elliott stared at us, wide-eyed. “H-hey, Grandpa, what’s up?”

My father looked nothing like the picture I’d kept on our mantel for years. In that picture, a robust version of my dad beamed, a fly-fishing rod in one hand, a rainbow trout in the other. The man standing in front of Elliott was haggard, dirty, and swaying back and forth. Even outside of the bar, my father smelled acidic.

“Is thish the kid?” My father’s voice echoed between the buildings.

“Elliott, why don’t you grab the suitcases? Dad, I need your keys.” I cast a dirty look at Ramona, who still watched us from the window of Fisk’s, now with a phone pressed to her ear.

“WhywouldIdothat?”

I could barely understand his slurred speech. “I need to get you home, Dad. Didn’t the doctor tell you to stay in bed?”

He waved his leathery hand. “Damndoctorsareidiots.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, feeling a headache settling in. “Elliott is starving, I’m extremely tired, and you need to go sleep this off.” I nudged him toward his worn out Datsun, parked nearby.

“Whadthehelliswrongwishyourcar?” He dug into the pocket of his jeans and retrieved his keys.

Gesturing for Elliott to get in the back seat, I rolled my eyes. I was breaking every rule I had set for myself when I’d become a mother.
Please don’t hate me for bringing you here and exposing you to this.

“I had a flat.”

My dad gazed at me, confused, as if he’d just realized to whom he was talking. “Whydidn’tyoucallme?”

I grimaced. I didn’t want to be here right now, yet I needed to be. Tears welled in my eyes while I wrestled to get the seatbelt across my father’s bag-of-bones body, Ramona Fisk watching and reporting the play-by-play on the phone. What the hell had happened to my life?

“We didn’t call you because there’s no cell coverage, Grandpa,” Elliott said from the backseat. “Mom says we’ll have to find a plan that covers us out in the sticks.” He laughed, then offered me an apologetic shrug.

“You ssshhhould’ve called me.”

My father tipped his head against the headrest and immediately fell asleep, his jaw slack. I sat in the driver’s seat and watched him for a few seconds. The streetlights buzzed to life with a once-familiar sound that I had almost forgotten.

“You wouldn’t have answered, anyway,” I said.

After three tries, the Datsun’s engine sputtered to life. I put the car in reverse, backed onto the street, and headed for home.

§

“Where’s your car?” my father asked.

I drew a deep breath.
Typical.
My father’s routine hadn’t changed—get inebriated, then wake up the next morning completely oblivious to the mayhem that had gone on the night before. That was the story of my entire youth.

I rubbed my eyes. “I got a flat about four miles outside of town. The Fisks brought us in and dropped us off.”

Confusion clouded his blue eyes. “Did you find the key?”

“No, I used yours. We picked you up at Smartie’s, remember?”

He lifted his veiny hand and scratched his chin. I could tell he didn’t remember. “Oh, that’s right. So… get yourselves settled, then?”

I nodded and looked around the worn kitchen. “I took my old bedroom and Elliott’s bunking in the spare room. I told him we would paint soon.”

“Why would we do that?”

“The walls in the spare room are lined with fishing rods and old beer calendars.”

“Doesn’t the boy like beer?”

“He’s
twelve
.”

“I liked beer when I was twelve.”

I slammed my coffee mug on the counter. “Oh, good grief….”

“Don’t have a fit. I’ll take the calendars down.”

“Thank you.”

We faced each other in silence. After a spell, I cleared my throat. “Dad, I’m concerned about your health. When Smartie called me, he said you wouldn’t tell him what was wrong.”

He grunted, then gulped some coffee. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong. Just an old man, I suppose.”

“There’s got to be more—”

“So, does the kid know how to run a chainsaw? I’ve got a tree out back needs pruning.”

I tempered my frustration. “No, Dad, he doesn’t know how to run a chainsaw. And since Elliott and I are staying here, we need to set some ground rules. Elliott is absolutely not allowed to drink. No beer calendars. No offering him a smoke—”

“Now listen—”

I put up my hand. “No giving him ten bucks to walk down to the store for your beer—”

“Auto—”

“No letting him drive the car—”

“I only did that once, and you were fourteen.”

“No falling all over yourself. And, so help me, if the cops come to this house while Elliott is home…”

My dad’s lips tightened into a line—a sign that the conversation was over. It felt wrong to discipline him the way a parent would a child, but I didn’t know how to make this work, otherwise.

“Do you think Smartie can help me change my tire?” I asked.

My father’s expression twisted into a snarl. “Me and the kid can change a damn tire. We don’t need Smartie for that.”

“You just got out of the hospital. You can’t be—”

“Yes, I can.” His steely gaze settled on mine and dared me to contradict him.

After Elliott woke up, we drove to my car and parked the Datsun behind it on the shoulder of the highway. Using his rusty tire iron, my dad changed my flat, grumbling to himself because Elliott couldn’t lift the spare.

“We’re gonna have to toughen you up, kid.” His voice had a hard edge, and I winced for El’s sake.

Elliott stood next to the car, scuffing the toe of his sneaker in the dust. Earlier, he’d emerged from the spare room wearing skinny jeans and a black fedora. My father had snorted out a plume of cigarette smoke and shook his head.

“I took a cardio class at my old school.” Elliott puffed up his chest. “Mom says there might be a class like that at my new school.”

Dad’s mouth twitched. “Yeah. It’s called
P.E
.”

Elliott’s face reddened. “Well, maybe you could show me how to do some stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?” my dad grunted, tightening a lug nut.

Elliott pursed his lips, and looked at his grandpa carefully. “Maybe you could teach me how to change a tire?”

“We could start there,” Dad replied. “Can’t lift things the way I used to.”

I smirked. “This from the man who used to juggle gallons of milk to make me laugh?”

“Always was a high-maintenance child.” He turned to Elliott. “She was a real pain in the ass.”

“Dad.” I lowered my eyebrows.

“S’cuse the swear. She was a real pain in the butt.” He rolled his eyes, making Elliott snicker.

“Not much has changed, huh, Mom?” Elliott razzed.

“Har, har,” I said, glancing at my father. He wheezed with each breath. “Maybe you should sit down, Dad.”

“I’m just tryin’ to catch my breath. Stop fussin’ over me. I have one little accident, and everyone wants to
help
.”

“You were lying in your garage all night. You mean to tell me you didn’t need help?”

His face tightened. “I fell asleep.”

I flared my nostrils.
You mean, you passed out.

“I got the breath knocked out of me. That’s all.”

“They don’t keep people in the hospital for two days because they get their breath knocked out.”

“They did this time.”

Why was he being so tight-lipped about his health? Every time I looked at him, my heart pitched. He was a quarter of the man he’d been when I was a kid, and he wanted me to believe that his deterioration was attributable to “falling asleep” and age? “Dad, I’m here to help. I—”

“Glad you’re back, Auto. But I don’t need any help.”

“Mom, what’s that?” Elliott asked in a sorrowful tone.

I followed his line of sight to a coyote that had been hit—and consequently smashed—on the highway. The dog’s guts had spilled out of its abdomen, and blood was spattered for twenty feet. A typical sight for rural roads in these parts. My heart tugged for my vegetarian son.

Before I could speak, my father stood, groaning as he straightened his legs. “Want me to grab my shovel, kid? Maybe your mom can cook it up for dinner.”