The sun ain’t even risen over the mountaintops when Daddy comes to talk to me the next morning.
I couldn’t sleep. Not after what I heard. So I just been sitting here, staring out the window. Besides the smoky hills, surrounding the town like an army of shadows closing in, this place don’t look too different from Mursey. Trailer homes, houses that look like they’re about to fall apart, a church right down the road …
It’s almost like I never left.
Like I did all that running and only ran myself in a circle.
“Bo,” Daddy says.
I look up from the window and see him standing there in his old T-shirt and boxers. He ain’t even gonna get dressed for this.
“You’re kicking me out, ain’t you?”
He sighs. “I’m sorry.” And the way he says it, like he means it, like he thinks it makes a difference at all, makes it so much worse.
“How come?”
He scratches the back of his head. “I gotta think about my family, Bo. I gotta think about what’s best for them.”
“But I am your family.”
He opens his mouth, about to answer that, then shuts it again. Swallows. “Sorry.”
“Where am I supposed to go?” I ask. “They’ll put me in foster care, Daddy. Last time I went it was … it was so scary.” I didn’t wanna start crying. Didn’t wanna beg. But without warning, there are tears streaming down my face, and a tiny voice scrapes out of my throat, against my will. “Please don’t make me go.”
“Look, your mama and I had a deal.” He just sounds annoyed now, and it makes me cry even harder. “She was gonna take care of you. That was what we agreed on. You living with me was never part of the deal.”
I wipe my eyes and take a few shaky breaths. “Was you not paying a dime of child support part of that deal?” I ask.
He ignores me. Just like I expect him to.
“Brent’s gonna wake up soon,” he says. “If you’re here, he’s gonna have … There’ll be questions, so …”
“So you want me to leave right now.”
He opens his mouth again, then shuts it. The man’s got a lot of words he ain’t saying, it seems. Instead, he just nods.
“Can I at least eat something first?” I ask. “I ain’t had nothing to eat since … night before last, I guess.”
He hesitates, like this might be asking too much. But then he sighs. “There’re Pop-Tarts in the cabinet over the stove.”
I almost say thank you out of habit, but I bite my tongue. I ain’t thanking him. I ain’t thanking him for nothing.
I find the Pop-Tarts in the kitchen. I also find an unopened bottle of bourbon sitting next to the fridge.
I ain’t sure why the thought crosses my mind. But when I look back and see that Daddy ain’t in the living room no more, I decide I’m taking that bourbon with me. I grab the bottle and my Pop-Tarts and run to the front door, where I left my bag last night. I shove the bottle into the bag and zip it up real fast.
When Daddy comes back down the hallway, I’m sitting on the couch, eating my breakfast.
He watches me until I finish. And when I finally stand up, he looks relieved.
I walk back to the door and sling my bag over my shoulder. I ain’t gonna say good-bye.
I ain’t gonna say good-bye, and I ain’t gonna break down. Not again. Not for him.
My hand’s on the doorknob when he says, “Bo?”
I stop. And for a stupid, breathless second I think he’ll ask me to stay. I think he’ll realize how awful he’s being. I think he’ll say, “Fuck Vera,” and put me first. I’ve been waiting so damn long for him to put me first.
But when I look back at him, he’s holding his hand out. Handing me something.
Money.
“Just … in case you need it,” he says, giving me the hundred-dollar bill.
I look down at it, wadded up in my hand. A crumpled piece of paper that’s supposed to make this better. To make him feel better about kicking his kid out the door.
“Don’t … don’t tell Vera, though,” he says. “She don’t know about this or the Christmas money I sent you growing up. She wouldn’t like it too well.”
I look at him. At that nervous shake of his hand as he scratches his head again. At the red in his cheeks. Agnes said I was a coward, and it seems like I get it honest. Because Wayne Dickinson is the biggest coward I ever met.
As I step out on the front porch, with the flimsy hundred dollars in my pocket, I suddenly think of all the poets we read. Of the writers behind those words I’d read aloud to Agnes and quiet to myself so many times. People who could turn pain into art.
I always wished I could do that. And especially right now.
I wish I could turn to my dad and say … something. Something beautiful and biting. Something that’ll rock him. Make him feel this awful hurt I feel.
I wish I was a poet.
But I ain’t never been real good with words. Ain’t never been able to turn my own pain into nothing but tears and trouble.
And when I look back at him, with the door already closing on me, the only words I can manage sure as hell ain’t poetry.
“Fuck you.”