I glanced over at him. What a dumb fucking question. Then I saw the tears in his eyes. He was serious. In his little brain, the fact that our old man beat the shit out of me but never touched him meant that he wasn’t loved. I already hated my old man, but never more so than at that moment. I could take his beatings, especially now that I was putting on some muscle and size, but Kenny was just a sweet, innocent little kid with sparkling blue eyes filled with tears. And the old man was fucking with his brain. Son of a bitch.
I put my arm around his thin shoulders and pulled him in close. I rested my cheek on top of his head and sighed. “He doesn’t hit you because he loves you, Kenny,” I said quietly. “You don’t hit people you love.”
“Daddy doesn’t love you?” he asked innocently, tugging up the front of his dirty t-shirt to wipe the tears from his eyes.
“No, daddy doesn’t love me,” I said. “But that’s okay. Long as you love me, I’m good to go.”
“I love you, Shane,” he said, wrapping his thin arms around my waist and squeezing tight.
“I love you, too.” Thankfully, his red and white bobber started dancing on the surface of the lake. Kenny had a fish on the hook. He squealed and jumped to his feet, back-peddling along the dock to drag it in. I reached for the line and lifted the fish up so he could see it. It was a catfish the size of my shoe. Kenny dropped the pole and grabbed the fish. He stared at it for a moment with a grin on his face, then his eyes welled with tears again.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, kneeling beside him.
“Won’t the fish’s family be sad that he’s gone?”
I blinked at him, then looked at the fish. “I dunno, Kenny. Maybe.”
“Can we let him go home, Shane?”
“You wanna let him go?’
Kenny nodded. “He needs to go home.”
“Okay, let him go.”
Kenny held the wiggling fish at arm’s length and walked to the edge of the dock, then got on his knees and gently lowered the fish into the water. He stared down at the murky surface for a moment. Without looking over his shoulder at me, he said, “He’s gone home now, Shane. We can’t hurt Mr. Fish anymore.”
* * *
I exited the interstate and ten minutes later found myself on Main Street, the narrow two-lane that crept through the middle of Gulf Breeze like a scar on a dusty mule’s back. My parents lived on Dilbeck Street, on the seedy side of Gulf Breeze. In a town this small, the seedy side was separated from the uppity side by the Texas Railroad Company’s single tracks that ran through north and south through the direct center of town. If you lived on the eastern side of the tracks you were either a ranch hand or a day laborer or if you were lucky, a rigger on one of the oil wells that dotted the Gulf, sucking the crude oil from the ocean floor day and night. If you lived on the western side of the tracks, you were higher up food chain. And the further west from the tracks you lived, the higher up you went. That’s where the oil company execs lived. The town doctor and dentist. The more successful business owners.
Annabel’s family lived on the uppity side of the tracks. Her daddy was a tough as nails, fifth-generation Texan who had fought his way up from working on the rigs to managing them for Gulf Oil, and her mama taught English at the high school. They weren’t rich, but they could afford better than my family could. Most of my old man’s take-home pay went for beer and cigarettes. He begrudgingly gave my mama grocery money once a week and expected food on the table every night when he got home. Me and Kenny always ate breakfast and lunch at school for free.
I had not been here in over a decade, but the place hadn’t changed much. Most of the shops along Main Street were mom and pops: a barbershop, a beauty salon, several antique stores, and Miller’s Hardware, which had been there since I was a boy. Downtown Gulf Breeze was just a few blocks long, starting at the post office on the north end and ending at the Sheriff’s station on the south; a low-slung block building I knew all too well. I turned left at the only light in town and went across the railroad tracks at a crawl. The moment I felt the tires bounce over the tracks I felt a cold chill creeping up my spine, as if the ghosts that had been waiting for me had anticipated my arrival and were waiting for me just across the tracks.
Ten minutes later I pulled up to the curb at 113 Dilbeck and put the gear into Park. I left the engine running and the AC on high as I let my eyes go over the place. The years had not been good to the little house where I grew up. My old man had kept the place up when he was alive but he’d been dead for years now and it showed. The grass—weeds mostly—were a foot tall in the little front yard. The roof looked rough and the paint was peeling from the clapboard siding. My mother used to keep flower beds along the front of the house. There were boxwoods at each corner that the old man would slave over for hours trying to get them perfectly matched. There was an older model Honda Civic parked under the carport. My mother’s car, I guessed. The license plate was from 2014. My old man’s thirty-year-old pickup truck was parked in the weeds next to the carport. The tires were flat on both vehicles.
I picked up my cellphone from the console and called up Uncle Seth’s number. He answered on the tenth ring. He was out of breath. I could hear some kind of farm equipment running the background.
He shouted into the phone. “Hey, Shane. You home?”
“I’m at the house,” I said.
“Okay, sit tight. I’m on my way.”
* * *
It took Uncle Seth thirty minutes to get to the house from his place in the country. He let his old pickup truck coast to a stop at the curb and yelled at me through the open window. “Holy son of a bitch… Is that you, Shane Mavic?”
I worked up a smile and held up a hand to greet him. I was standing next to the little front porch
waiting for him to arrive. I’d walked around to the backyard and found it and the house in as bad a shape as the front. Peeling paint, windows cracked, siding falling off, shingles on the ground, weeds up to my knees. It was depressing, the amount of work the place was going to need to get it on the market. Maybe I’d just rent a bulldozer and call it a day.
Uncle Seth tugged his straw cowboy hat onto his head as he got out of the truck and started toward me. He lived outside of town on a small farm where he raised crops and a few head of cattle. He’d obviously been in the field because a cloud of dust followed him as he came my way with his arms out. I leaned down so he could hug me. He grunted and slapped his hand on my back. He stank of dirt and sweat, but I didn’t mind. Uncle Seth was one of the few people who had ever tried to look out for me. He’d squared off with my old man more than once in an attempt to defend me. Sadly, it only made my old man madder and made things worse for me when Seth had to go home.
He pulled back with his dirty hands on my shoulders and looked me up and down. “God damn boy, look at you,” he said, head going from side to side. “Last time I saw you, you were half this size. Looks like the Navy has made a man out of you.”
“I reckon so,” I said with a smile, realizing the words had come out in a Texas twang that I thought I’d gotten way from.