Souls - XII

He looks quite a bit more haggard than I remember him, but that’s not really a shock considering it’s been over twenty years since I  last saw him. He doesn’t look surprised to see me. He pauses, looks me up and down, then heads to the gas station.

“Car’s over here.”

“What?”

“The car, from you know who. It’s over here.”

I’m finding it hard to process any of this. Sometimes I think Satan does things just to be mean.

“I spent a little of the cash in Victoria’s there. Didn’t think you’d miss just a little.”

Shock reduces you to the stupid questions, “What are you doing here?”

My dad chuckles, it’s the first time in several decades I hear my dad laugh. I feel the heat start in my brain. I can’t do this again.

“Why are you dressed like a man? We all got questions. Let’s get a movin’”

I close my eyes and try my breathing exercises. I can’t blow up out here.

I feel the heat dissipate. I think I’m okay.

A car horn honks. I turn to see my dad in a Ford Focus, he’s waving his hand.

I guess we’re going on a road trip.

Once we hit the Oklahoma state-line he starts with the questions. 

“How’s your mom?”

“Dead.”

“Oh. Shame.” He motions to the pulsating sky, “Before or after?”

“Before.”

“How?”

“Cervical cancer.”

“Humph.” He’s stumped on this one. No more questions. Decades gone, and that seems to wrap it up for him. Fine with me, I prefer the silence.

“How’d you meet the big fella?” I was mistaken, he’s not done.

“Long story. I needed a job, he was there to offer one.”

“So you don’t…you don’t have the debt?”

“Plenty of them, but no I don’t carry that particular debt.”

Peripheral vision can be tricky, but I swear I see my dad’s eyes well up.

“Good girl.”

Back to silence. Oklahoma is even more desolate than Kansas, seems like the world migrated North. My stomach growls as we pass an abandoned “fried pie” sign.

“You hungry?” He happily responded to my stomach growl, I think he’s just grasping at avoiding silence. 

I shake my head. “He said I’d be alone.”

“You will, my stop’s right up here on the border of Texas and Oklahoma. Then it’s back to you being alone.”

“Why’d you leave?” Apparently the droning interstate pushed me into getting directly to the point.

He pauses. At first I think he isn’t going to answer. Then he does.

“I’m not even sure anymore. I felt like I was on fire. I had to run”

I don’t tell him that I know the feeling.

“Why’d you let her make me give my baby away?”

“Wanna see what’s on the radio?”

“Do you know where she is?”

Now he looks haggard and emotionally exhausted. I wish I could tell you I had a moment of sympathy, that I bonded right then and there over our communal pain, but I didn’t. I wanted to go further. I wanted him to hurt.

“Why didn’t you help me? You didn’t even give me so much as a hug after”

Tears silently fall down his cheeks, and I enjoy it.

The Texas border looms ahead, he slows the car down.

“I’ll stop here, this is close enough.”

He parks the car on the side of the road, adjacent to an old country road leading off into the distance, and opens the door to get out.

“I needed you.” I am still trying to hurt him like he hurt me.

He grunts as he stands, taking time to stretch and look around.

“Well, darlin. We all needed something.”

He shuts the door and heads down the old country road. I sit in the passenger seat watching his shape shrink out of my life again.

When his shape was just barely viewable on the horizon I make the choice to follow him. I hop over to the driver side and take off after him, half out of rage and half out of curiosity. 

As I reach him I notice he’s heading to a run-down farmhouse that looked straight from The Grapes of Wrath. As he turns into the driveway he turns back to me and the car. He’s smiling, but not with happiness. His eyes are red, his face is taught, his teeth in a fear induced smile. 

“I paid my debt.”

He pulls out a handgun and holds it up to that smile, the teeth enveloping the muzzle.

BLAM. 

I’ve gotten so used to the sound of gun shots I don’t even jump anymore.

A young woman who looks to be in her early-twenties exits the house I had assumed was abandoned. Her hair is wispy, made more so by the wind. She screams and runs towards my dad. She’s yelling something over and over again but I can’t quite make it out. I roll down my window.

“GRANDPA NO! NO!”

I feel myself fall through myself, reality bending black and hazy. She turns to me, her teary green eyes sparkling in my headlights. 

I know those green eyes, they are mine.