Stealing Night Read online

  Much as I hate to admit it, I’m not entirely unlike her.

  A bag of Fritos stares back at me now, making me feel sick. I punch the vending machine. Hard. Candy bars and breath mints tumble down, and I don’t look around. Don’t care who might have seen me.

  I just walk on, ready as I’ll ever be for this moment.

  Chapter Eleven

  He looks up from the newspaper and says, “That certainly took long enough.”

  “I needed time to think,” I say.

  “Don’t you think you’ve had enough time for that?”

  I sit next to him as he folds the paper and puts it on the table.

  “Why did you come to me, Jack?” he asks. “Why now?”

  “No car,” I say. “We needed you.”

  He shakes his head slowly. “You could have gotten a ride from someone else. You realize that, right?”

  “Yeah, well…”

  “I want to think you’re ready to talk; ready to get it all out and let the past die once and for all. Can we do that?”

  “Dad, it’s…” I trail off, and he smiles. “I don’t know. It’s not that simple.”

  “If it’s about my being gay, I—”

  “It’s never been about that, old man,” I snap. “You should know better than that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not a bigot.”

  “Would it have been any worse if you’d caught me with a woman?”

  “Are you asking me to retrace my thoughts as a thirteen-year-old boy?”

  “If it helps.”

  “It won’t. I’ve done it too many times to count.”

  “Then stop.”

  “Trust me, I’m trying, but what I need to know, Dad, is why you married Mom and had a family?”

  “It’s tough growing up with the way I was—the way I am—in a town like Sunfall. You can either stand outside and get stoned, or you can get with the program. I…well, I got with the program.”

  I shake my head. “That’s not good enough. You had me and Lily. Didn’t you love us?”

  There’s a moment of silence as Dad crosses one leg over the other. He tilts his head back, takes a deep breath, then, tears beating their way out of lidded eyes, he says, “More than anything in the world, Jack. I still see you sometimes, washing cars at Bud Sweeny’s. I glimpse your sister around town, too, but…but I just keep moving. Do you know how hard it is for me not to push myself into your lives?”

  “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you. Sunfall’s not exactly Los Angeles.”

  He opens his eyes and nods. “We’re just ghosts to each other, aren’t we?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I’m not dead, son, not yet, and I still love you and Lily. That’s why I stay away from you. Why I don’t push. That’s also why I stay here, and why, I want to think, you stay here, too.”

  “We stay here because we’re trapped.”

  “Keep telling yourself that.” There’s no accusation in his voice, only sadness.

  “Why?” I ask “Why did you take me on those trips?”

  “I thought you needed out of the house, son. I wanted to show you the country, and, well, and to get you away from your mother. She went easier on Lil but put way too many demands on you. You were just a kid. You deserved to have a little fun.”

  “But then, why did you—”

  “I didn’t mean to. It just… I made a lot of connections in my travels. With people like me, and I was desperate to find something real, to fit in. I was hungry for moments of tenderness and warmth. Intimacy that made sense to me was something I’d been denied for so long.”

  “I still don’t—”

  “You’re a grown man now. Certainly you know what it means to yearn, to dream, to want something—someone—to make you whole. Don’t tell me you haven’t messed around with the wrong people for the right reasons. We all do.”

  “I have. But when I think about Nora, when I look at her, my needs, they just vanish. I can’t explain it.”

  “You don’t have to. I know what you mean, and I understand why I was so wrong. I’m sorry. I’ll apologize a million times if I have to, but you have to understand—”

  “I don’t have to do anything, other than get the hell out of dodge.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “When Lily gets well, we’re gone.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know yet. Somewhere not here.”

  “Maybe…maybe that’s why you came to me now. Did you stop to think about that?”

  I hadn’t, but it makes a certain amount of sense. Standing, I grab his empty Styrofoam cup. “Looks like you could use a refill,” I say.

  He nods, wiping tears from his cheeks. “Yeah…thanks.”

  I turn toward the coffee machine, then stop and spin back to him. “You’re right,” I say.

  He just looks at me, more than a decade of expectation in his eyes.

  “I’m not ready to forgive you, Dad, but I don’t think it’s right that you haven’t spent time with your only granddaughter.”

  “She’s a good kid,” he says.

  “I know. The best.”

  “She told me what happened. How you stood up to Lily.”

  “Well,” I say, unable to keep the smile from my lips, “she’s got a big mouth.”

  He chuckles, but his expression remains serious. “You’re a good man, Jack. You did the right thing. It’s hard to stand up to a mother, even when the welfare of her child is at stake. That’s just… just a force of nature that no one wants to tangle with.”

  “Cream and two sugars, right?”

  His smile returns, and he says, “Thanks.”

  * * *

  I sit with Nora in the backseat. Everyone’s quiet, only the sound of the road and Johnny Cash singing about Memphis to keep us company. The man in black sure loved his Tennessee roots. Lucky bastard, that one.

  She’s just staring out the window, her expression hard to read—a rarity for any child, I suppose, but a downright crime for Nora, who always wears her emotions front and center.

  I put my hand on her shoulder and give her a little shake. “You okay, Bear?”

  “I am,” she says softly. “It just hurt seeing Momma like that.” She turns to me. “Did it hurt you, too?”

  “A lot,” I say.

  She considers my face for a moment, seems satisfied with the truth of my words, then nods.

  “Everything’s going to be all right,” I say. “I promise.”

  Then she hugs me. And everything, everything seems to go back to fine. She’s not quaking, not crying. She’s just Nora again.

  Kids are elastic, quickly snapping back to normal. But, I remind myself, stretch anything too thin and it’ll break.

  Chapter Twelve

  Nora’s in the kitchen with Dad, helping him chop vegetables for a salad, and I’m sitting on the couch. The sweet waft of barbecued ribs makes my mouth water as the TV newswoman talks about unrest in the Middle East. Using the remote, I turn the sound down and breathe deep, thinking about what I’d told Dad earlier.

  When Lily gets well, we’re gone.

  So that’s it. My mind’s made up? Even after taking the money, I still convinced myself that I’d never use ill-gotten gain toward my own purposes. I kept telling myself that I’d donate it to charity or even leave it somewhere for others to find. But when I said that shit to Dad, well…I guess I was finally letting myself in on the truth. While that’s putting no ease in my marrow, it brings me a certain amount of purpose.

  By any means necessary…

  Those aren’t my words, of course. That’s good ol’ Malcolm X. He was seeking higher ground, too—even got a little dirty along the way. But I guess, in the end, he found what he was looking for, before a bullet ended him.

  Malcolm was born in Nebraska like me. Never talked much about that, at least to my knowledge. Neither did Gerald Ford or Darth Cheney or Johnny Carson. Those guys, they had the sense to lea
ve.

  By any means necessary…

  The sound of machinegun fire crackles from Dad’s console TV, the same set on which, as a kid, I watched news stories from war torn Bosnia. These images of conflict have always been in the background of my life, thousands of miles away—people fighting for their version of right.

  The conflict never seems to end. New countries. New faces to call the enemy. But it’s all the same. Assholes vs. assholes in the constant game of my god can kick your god’s ass.

  Back in the ’90s, a fair number of Bosnian refugees settled here. I even dated one of ’em in high school. She spoke amazing English, but her folks didn’t. I always marveled at how she, at the tender age of sixteen, ran the family. She read the contracts, told her dad what to sign and what not to. She wrote all the goddamn checks. Pretty fucking amazing, that girl. A stone cold bitch, too. That part, I understood. Not a lot of folks around here cut her much slack for that, but I did. As I saw it, she had the intelligence of a forty year old and the emotional capacity of an eight year old.

  In the end, she had the sense to get as far away from here as possible. I still think about her sometimes, and I hope she found balance in her life.

  Tired of these ruminations, I brush Henrietta from my lap. She mews ruefully, then ambles away as I get up from the couch. Slowly, I pace the living room. High atop bookshelves are Dad’s trophies and awards, all of them reminding me that I’m one generation removed from the best goddamn vacuum cleaner peddler the world’s ever known. Hard to imagine a time when such a nomadic grift could be a stable, lifelong career.

  I scan Dad’s many books. Most of the spines are black: Horror, thrillers, some mystery. He was always a fan of the dark stuff, and Mom never let him keep his books in the living room. She was afraid Stephen King would “scare away the company.”

  Truth was, she did a good enough job of that on her own. She was a lot like the girl I dated back in school. Difference was, she wasn’t sixteen, and her life hadn’t been shit. As for cutting Mom some slack, can’t say I didn’t try.

  Three books grab my attention. Their author: Charles Lewis.

  As I pull them from the shelf, Nora screams. I run for the kitchen, still clutching the books, then breathe a sigh of relief when I see my Bear, doing her best not to cry but otherwise fine. Dad’s wrapping her finger in a paper towel, which is lightly splotched with blood.

  Nora glances up at me. “I just cut myself,” she says.

  Dad says, “Not too deep.” He notices what I’m holding and says, “Jack, there are some Band-Aids in the bathroom. Can you grab one?”

  “Where are they?” I ask.

  “Same place as always.”

  I start for the bathroom, but Dad stops me. “Hey, son,” he says. “Can you put those books on the dining room table? They’re pretty important to me. Don’t want to get blood on them.”

  “Did you write these?” I ask.

  He nods.

  All traces of pain leave Nora’s face as she looks up at him. “You write books, Grandpa?”

  “Something like that,” he says.

  “Cool,” Nora exclaims. She and Dad start talking as I walk into the dining room and set the books on the table.

  The cover of the top paperback holds me in place for a moment.

  The Darkest Night…

  The young man on the cover looks sad. Looks like me when I was a kid. And in the background is a man. The boy’s father? Maybe. He doesn’t look much like Dad and is wielding a bloody knife. Shivers shuddering through my core, I cringe as I look away.

  “What’s taking you so long?” Dad calls out.

  “Sorry,” I say, then I move for the bathroom.

  When I open the medicine cabinet, I laugh. These Band-Aids, I remember. Sesame Street, featuring images of Big Bird and Cookie Monster. The box is covered in a thick layer of dust, and as I hold it, my mind flashes back. It was summer. I was mowing the lawn; must have been eleven or twelve. The mower spat a rock and laid a deep gash in my arm. I remember Dad frantically opening a box of Band-Aids—this very box—and putting eight or nine of the damn things over the wound, which was pretty awful and gushed blood despite his efforts. He was hysterical, even though Mom couldn’t have cared less. He drove me to Seward and got me stitched up, then took me for ice cream.

  I look closely at the box. Brush layers of dust away. A dark red stain looks back at me. My blood from a much happier time; a reminder that my dad…he isn’t a monster. All too human, yes, but who am I to judge?

  I close the medicine cabinet and catch my reflection in the mirror. The man—still a boy in many ways—staring back at me has a secret darker than Dad’s. Is this the real reason why I’ve reached out to him now? My darkness trumping his?

  “What’re you doing in here?” he says, now standing in the doorway.

  “Thinking,” I say.

  He takes the box from me and studies it for a second, then smirks. “Guess I don’t cut myself too often,” he says. “Don’t guess these things have an expiration date, do they?”

  “None that really matters.”

  Nora steps next to him, holding out her cut finger. Dad kneels down and takes one of the bandages from the box before setting it on the floor. “Okay, Professor,” he says, “time to make you good as new.” He gently takes the blood-spotted paper towel from her finger.

  “Not too bad,” Nora says.

  “Yes,” he agrees. “Not bad at all.”

  “Cool,” she says, admiring the bandage. “Sesame Street. You like Sesame Street, Grandpa?”

  “Of course,” he says. “Who doesn’t?”

  “But…” Confusion peppers her face. “Where’s Elmo?”

  Dad and I laugh together, and it feels right.

  * * *

  I can easily say this is the best meal I’ve had in a long time, and I say it often as I eat; so does Nora. Dad thanks us in a modest manner, not a quality I remember from my childhood. Nor do I recall him being a great chef. Most of our meals were Mom’s, bland and flavorless, nothing like this. The meat falls from the bone, tender and sweet. The corn on the cob is fresh, which is rare even here in farm country, where the stuff mainly gets harvested for Ethanol and is unfit for human consumption.

  I’m three plates of food and four glasses of wine in when the sun starts to set. Full, a little buzzed, and, for the first time in a long time, in a place that shares an area code with something approaching happiness.

  Nora dominates the dinner conversation. She wants to know more about Dad’s books.

  “They’re really not books for kids,” he says. “But I hope you’ll read ’em someday, Professor. I can always use another set of eyes.”

  “It’s funny,” she says. “Uncle Jack is always telling me I should be a writer.”

  “Oh?” Dad says, shifting his attention to me.

  “I never knew you wanted to write,” I say to him.

  “Never knew it myself,” he says. “But when Kirby sales went soft, I had to do something.” He gestures to the bookshelves. “Surely you remember how much I read.”

  I take a sip of wine. “All the time.”

  “You still read a lot?” He asks.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Non-fiction, mostly.”

  Dad turns to Nora. “Your Uncle Jack here was interested in everything when he was growing up. Smartest kid ever, and I’m not just saying that ’cause he’s mine. Jack here knew more about current events and history and science than most old folks around these parts.”

  “That’s not saying much,” I offer with a dismissive wave.

  “Uncle Jack’s still smart,” Nora insists.

  “Shame he didn’t go to college,” says Dad.

  I finish off my glass with a gulp and refill it, then I get up and walk across the room to the place where Dad keeps his the books he authored. I grab The Darkest Night and open it. Turn to the copyright page, see that the book was published in 2007, then flip to the dedication.

  To Jack and Lily, wit
h love.

  “Why didn’t Uncle Jack go to college?” Nora asks.

  “Oh,” Dad says, “lots of reasons, I guess.”

  I skim the first page of prose, immediately impressed; Dad’s one hell of a wordsmith, even if the subject’s a bit pulpy for my taste.

  “This is pretty incredible,” I say.

  Dad turns to me and laughs. “I had a good editor.”

  He’s being modest again, and I like it. I remember how boastful he used to be on the road. How he called his leads “fresh blood.” How he bragged that he could sell ice to an Eskimo. Clichés were a big part of my youth. Anyone who grows up with a salesman for a dad knows what I’m talking about.

  I read more. On the page, Dad’s not working in clichés. The protagonist, a guy named Rex, takes shape. I already like Rex, and I recognize him as my father. Not the guy I knew, but the man I’m seeing now. Perhaps the man he always yearned to be.

  I slide the book back in place and take another long drink of wine.

  “It’s getting late,” Dad says. “And you’ve been putting the Merlot down pretty fast.” He’s looking at Nora but talking to me.

  “The Merlot?” she says.

  He picks up her half-empty glass of chocolate milk. “The hard stuff, young lady.”

  She giggles.

  Dad smiles at me and says, “Why don’t you two stay here tonight?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “Please,” Nora whines.

  Dad says, “Nora can stay in Lily’s old room, and you can stay in yours, Jack.”

  I walk back to the table. “It is getting late,” I agree. “Do you have a toothbrush Nora can use?”

  “I think I can rustle one up,” Dad says. Then he smiles at Nora. “But you best be getting to bed, Professor.”

  “Already?” she says.

  “Bear,” I say, “your grandpa and I need to talk.”

  * * *