When Dad Came Back (11 page)

“Hello there, son,” the man mumbled, without much energy.

Gabe became suspicious at the use of the word
son.
Who was this man?

The man approached the table.

Gabe asked, not unkindly, “You want something, mister?” The stranger was hungry and homeless, a trekker or a stray, possibly a vagrant with warrants out for his arrest, or maybe just someone who had disappeared into the dry, hilly country.

The stranger set his blackened, root-like fingers on the edge of the table, mouthed an unintelligible word, and gazed at the produce. He picked up the last bunch of baby carrots, and then a single squash. He took a walnut into his hand and then set it back down like a chess piece.

“Are you from around here?” Gabe asked, although he was already sure the man wasn't. He was a drifter—or a hobo. He had no place to call home. His bed was grass, cardboard, or a dirty blanket. He was a wanderer who held up a wet finger to decide the direction he would take for the day. He was closer to dust than any man Gabe had ever seen. He could see a fine trail in the lines on his face.

“No, I'm not,” the man answered. He had picked up the tomato again and bit into it. He chewed slowly, as if he didn't have the strength to munch it into a pulp and swallow.

“You want something to eat?”

A tear shone in the stranger's eye.

“I got a sandwich,” Gabe said. “It's just cheese and tomato. But I have some crackers, too.”

“That would be nice,” the man answered plainly.

The two broke bread next to the table with its horn of plenty.

The night crackled. Wind raked the corn patch, rattling the leaves. Lightning flashed in the east. Gabe made exploding sounds.

“Give it a rest,” his uncle suggested. He was shaving the insulation from copper wire. Copper wire, he explained, was as good as gold—no, it was even better, because it was attainable. He had found a spool of the copper wire in an old truck with its nose in a ditch. The truck was probably stolen years ago, or maybe it had just been driven there for its death. Uncle Mathew had sifted through all the stuff in the truck's bed—rusty tools, corroded chrome rims, and a broken saw horse—and decided the only thing worth hauling away was the copper.

“The wind feels good,” Gabe remarked, with a grin. He stood on the porch with his arms outstretched and let the wind hit his face and rustle his T-shirt. He imagined himself flying.

The wind was warm, but at least it moved, not like the heavy air that had sagged all around them earlier in the day. It stirred the garden and forced the galvanized roof to almost dance. The chickens in the barn squawked and screamed after each flash of lightning. The horses in the far pasture neighed.

“Get over here and help,” his uncle ordered.

Gabe did as he was told. He sat on an overturned bucket and began removing the insulation from the copper wire. They worked in silence. Since Gabe's fingers were nimble, not work-worn like his uncle's, he was able to strip off the insulation more quickly. While his uncle grumbled, Gabe whistled as he worked. It was a cinch.

“How's your mom?” his uncle asked, when he stopped to rest.

Gabe wasn't sure how to answer, or how to supply the details of his everyday life in Fresno. His uncle had never really asked about his own sister. He replied, “Oh, she's fine.”

“She like her job?”

“No.”

“I'm glad that she doesn't like her job. Shows she's smart upstairs.” Uncle Mathew sucked his thumb where the end of a copper wire had bit it. “She told me you saw your father.”

Gabe nodded. His uncle waited for Gabe to say something about his father. When he didn't, his uncle remarked, “Families can be messed up, including ours. Or should I say, especially ours.”

Gabe had heard how his grandfather drank too much, and how he was killed when he drove his car into a traffic light. Gabe never mentioned his grandfather to his mother. In the photos Gabe had seen, his grandfather was tall, and he resembled his uncles more than his mom.

“I never knew Grandfather,” Gabe remarked.

“We never knew him either—or saw a whole lot of him. He worked in construction all over the country.” His uncle examined his injured thumb. He sucked it again and counted on his good fingers the states where his father had worked: Utah, Colorado, Oregon, and Arizona. “I also think he worked in Puerto Rico, but I can't be sure. He was a really smart electrician.”

Lightning cut across the sky like scissors. It outlined the trees and brought the rows of corn into view, then pitched them back into darkness. Thunder rolled through the air.

Gabe risked asking, “Uncle, how did you end up living here?” “Here” was the small ranch, close to the Sierras but far from any town.

“How did I end up here? Sounds like you think this is the end of the world.”

Gabe wasn't about to mention the absence of a television. For him—for his friends, and for Heather, too—no television
was
the end of the world.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” He grimaced, as if the words hurt him. “I was married—twice.”

“Twice! No way,” Gabe hollered. But his exclamation was lost in another roll of thunder.

“Yeah, and to good women.” He told Gabe how when he was in the army and stationed in Germany he fell in love with wife number one.

“She was German?” Gabe asked. He tried to picture a woman in a German military uniform, the kind in movies about World War II.

“She wasn't
German
German. She was part Turkish. Her father was from Istanbul and owned restaurants.”

Gabe became confused. The military uniform disappeared from the image inside his head. He couldn't envision a person who was part German, part Turkish, except that she probably looked like a lot of his classmates, who were half white, half Mexican. But his interest in race ended when his uncle told him how he was assigned to a parachute battalion.

“That's cool,” Gabe whistled, rising from the bucket he was perched on. He himself liked jumping from heights—trees and rooftops mostly. But that was kid stuff. What could be better than jumping from a plane, with the wind rushing past your ears until the parachute opened and rocked you slowly to earth?

“That must have been fun,” Gabe said.

“Fun? You're out of your mind, boy. It was dangerous and crazy.” Uncle Mathew looked in the distance when the lightning lit up the hills. His thoughts went far beyond the hills, to another side of the world. “But I messed up. I was drinking a lot of booze. I was stupid.”

Uncle stopped his story there. It was something that he didn't wish to share with his nephew. He told Gabe to go get them ice tea, and hurry up about it.

“Will do,” Gabe said, and he stepped to it. But when he returned from the kitchen, his uncle had left his station on the porch. He was out in the yard, a lone figure.

Poor Uncle, Gabe lamented. He had chased away his first wife. He couldn't imagine what had happened the second time around. It wasn't his place to even ponder it. Marriage, Gabe was learning, was complicated. He only had to think of his mother and his father—or a lot of his classmates' parents. Few families stuck together.

The night was filled with static. The wind blew hot. The leaves of the corn rustled, and the chickens squawked in fear.

Gabe returned home two days later, his uncle not bothering to stop and visit with Gabe's mother. He was having trouble with the truck's alternator—the battery wouldn't store power. He patted Gabe's shoulder and said, “Too bad you won't be around tonight.”

“Why?” Gabe asked, as he hugged his cardboard box in his arms.

“‘Cause I'm bringing the goat out of the freezer.” His uncle laughed. His yellowish teeth glowed.

“Uncle, that's not even funny.” Gabe pictured the goat twitching on the ground.

Uncle Mathew chuckled, pushed the stick shift into first gear, and drove away. The exhaust pipe popped and the tools in the back clanged.

Gordo was on the front lawn, paws pressed together and sitting as still as a statue. Gabe stroked his head, the chrome bell under his chin tinkling.

“How's the barrio?” Gabe asked.

The cat meowed, but didn't move a whisker. He blinked sleepily.

When Gabe pushed open the front door of his house, he discovered a heavyset man on the couch. For a second, Gabe feared that he had entered the wrong house! But he recognized the owl-shaped clock, whose tail beat time to the seconds, and the family photos in wooden frames on the wall. There was no mistaking that the Raiders blanket on the couch was his—one corner was worn from his gripping it while he watched the games on TV.

“Hi,” the man said in a low, husky voice, not bothering to rise. He was lacing up a shoe. A bald spot near the back of his head appeared pink. He was a man who worked indoors. Maybe he was one of his mom's fellow workers from Kmart.

Gabe glanced at the man—his mother's boyfriend?—and headed straight to his bedroom. Right away, he knew that he had been rude. He should have offered at least a “Hi” in return. Why did he act like that?

A few minutes later, he heard the front door open and close, and then his mother's footsteps padding over the carpet toward his bedroom. She knocked and entered.

“Gabe,” she said brightly, “you're so tan, so skinny.” When she gave him a hug, he offered a polite squeeze. He could smell the perfume on her. “Tell me, how was it?” Her eyes took him in, from head to toe. “Look at you! Didn't Uncle feed you?”

His mother led him to the living room. Be cool, he warned himself. He could feel his mother's happiness at his homecoming. Why not return the happiness? His mother had to have someone in her life, and why not the portly fellow on the couch? She was a good mom, even though sometimes she flared up and yelled. She had to have something more than just punching the cash register at Kmart.

Gabe's mother read his thoughts: “You're wondering who that guy was.”

“Yeah,” Gabe admitted. “Is he your boyfriend?” It felt strange saying “boyfriend.” His mother had dated a couple of times since his father's departure, but it had been years since he had seen his mother with another man.

“He might be,” she answered girlishly. “We'll see.”

But Gabe could see right away—he was a boyfriend. She had a smile on her face and she seemed shapelier—had she lost a few pounds since he was gone? Her hair was also combed and her lips red with lipstick. She was dolled up, for sure.

His mother led him to the kitchen, where she made him a strawberry smoothie.

“Mom,” Gabe began. “Uncle Mathew is old school. He works really hard.” He shared with her the work he had done—the broken-down barn he had helped dismantle, the hours he had spent battling bees and killer flies in the garden, the roadside fruit stand, and the copper wire. But he stopped when Lucky trotted into the living room. The pup had grown. Instead of prancing awkwardly over his floppy feet, he was coordinated.

“Lucky!” Gabe cried, as he fell to his knees. Lucky leaped into his loving arms, his tongue busily mopping Gabe's face.

“He's been a good boy,” his mother reported, “except for one little puddle over by the pantry.”

After Gabe finished his cuddles and the attempts at shaking paws, his mother informed him that a boy had come by, asking for him.

“What boy?” Gabe's mood changed from giddiness to worry.

“I don't know,” she answered. “I was in the yard watering. He was with these other boys.”

Frankie, Gabe thought.

“He said that you owe him something. I didn't like him.” She made a sour face, and she said that he spit when he left. “He was a
mocoso,
a little snot.”

“He spit?”

“Not at me, just at the ground.”

Gabe was on full alert. He would deal with Frankie in time. For now, he rose, lifting his T-shirt off his body, and said as he left the kitchen, “I'm going to take a shower.” Lucky followed, like a sentry.

“What are you going to do, little dude?” he asked the dog. “Get in the shower with me?” He unbuttoned his pants and marched out of them. Reaching for the knob, he turned on the shower.

Lucky put his paws on the edge of the tub, but Gabe removed them. He climbed into the shower, screaming from the cold blast. He adjusted the temperature and lathered his body, which, he noticed,
was
darker. He examined his belly. It
was
flatter, with dimples of stomach muscles that impressed him. He hadn't really known they were lurking there, under a layer of fat.

He was home, and glad to be home.

When he got out of the shower, he noticed beads of water hanging from Lucky's chops.

“You were drinking out of the toilet, huh?” He was going to wag a finger at Lucky and tell him that he was a bad dog. But how could he? He toweled off and decided to let things be.

Gabe learned that his dad had come around. One early evening, he had knocked on the front door and called Gabe's mother's name, then Gabe's name. But his mother wouldn't open the peephole and look. No, she was done with him. The loser, she called him, the deadbeat. How dare he stand up
her
son! What kind of man was he?

Gabe learned this over a dinner of enchiladas,
arroz,
and
frijoles
—his first good meal in a week. He only ate one serving, and he turned down the soda his mother offered. Instead, his beverage was sugarless ice tea. He wondered what his dad was going to eat that evening, or if he would have anything to eat at all. Was he ill, maybe bedridden in a hospital, or suffering from a fever as he lay on a dirty blanket? Gabe dismissed these images. This dinner his mother had prepared was her special treat. The moment was about him and his mother. He braved the question.

“Do you really like him?” Gabe asked, hoping to open a conversation about this new boyfriend. He conjured up an image of the man lacing his shoe, and tried his best to block out the unsightly bald spot.