25

“You took a risk coming here.”

Flip nodded.

“They was here looking for you.”

“I figured.” Flip tasted the bourbon. He resisted the urge to toss the whole thing back against his throat in an effort to deaden what he felt sitting at this kitchen table with his father. Or to impress him, maybe.

“Said you skipped parole.”

“Yeah.”

What there was of the old man’s lips disappeared into the slit of his mouth. The harsh light over the table beat down through the sparse hair poking up from his scalp, over the furrows in his forehead, illuminating the cracks that surrounded his eyes and descended over his cheeks in a pattern mocking emotional expression. Flip looked away.

“They’re going to catch you, Philip. Why don’t you turn yourself in? They’ll go easier—”

“They never go easy on anybody.”

The old man nodded. “I guess that’s true.”

The bourbon tasted of oak. Flip felt its heat slipping down through his chest and into his empty belly.

He used to sit at this table with Jason. On Saturday mornings before Dad was up, they’d slurp spoonfuls of Lucky Charms while sitting in these same chairs on cushions that had not yet been pressed flat. Swinging legs clad in flannel pajama bottoms.

Flip wouldn’t be the one to bring up Jason’s name.

His father reached for the bottle. Its spout rattled against the rim of his glass. With both hands he held it steady enough that only a few fresh drops spilled onto the tabletop to join the others speckling the fake wood surface.

Against the wall, Max the Doberman dropped his head down onto his crossed paws.

“How come you always give them the same name?”

The old man faced the dog. “Easier to remember.” He took another swallow from the glass. “You seen Jason since you been out?”

Flip nodded. Nearly ten minutes of sitting in this house before that name came into the room. “He come by to see you much?”

“When he can. He’s pretty busy.”

“Sure.”

The old man’s drinking was mechanical, his arm robotic. The wrinkles on his throat bunched and fell as he swallowed. Flip tried to imagine the way his father had looked as a young man and couldn’t. It was as if Hank Dunn had always been this way, boxed up in a crumbling house, an outsider in his own neighborhood. Sipping from a bottle all day out of boredom and a desire to forget.

The old man shifted on the worn vinyl chair. “You know, he never meant—”

“I don’t want to talk about him.”

“Okay. Okay.” Another sip. Another clenching of the throat around a swallow of bourbon. His eyes were cloudy, the color of thinned milk, gray irises grown dim. He lifted them to Flip. “It’s just . . . you two . . .”

“Look, Dad. I just wanted to see how you were doing. That’s all.”

“Well, you seen now.” He leaned against the back of the chair and crossed his arms. He still wore the jacket. The sleeves were rubbed nearly black at the elbows.

It never went the way Flip planned it with his father. He’d started dozens of letters, but they always either reeked of sentiment his father would never understand or were shallower than the sheet of paper. So he always tore them up.

For twenty years the wall between them had stood. A wall Jason had built in one night. No words could penetrate it. Nothing would demolish it. Flip used to think time would break it down. But he was cured of that now.

This visit had to be different. This would be the last time he would ever see his father. He’d come to say good-bye. He stared into the old man’s faded eyes. The eyes of a hard old man, heart broken so many times that if it beat at all, it had to beat in pieces.

Another sip. Words Flip would never speak hovered in his mind and drifted away. He scanned the room for something they could talk about.

“Mr. Slott still live next door?”

“No. He went in for one of them retirement places. Tried to talk me into it.”

“You’d never move.”

The old man uncrossed his arms, leaned into the table. “Nah. People just go there to die.”

“But isn’t there anyplace else you’d want to live? You always liked the ocean.”

“Sure. I’ll get me a place on the beach. Mansion. Soon as pigs start flying.” He reached for the bottle again.

Flip wondered if the old man always drank this much, or if it was just seeing his convict son that did it to him. “If you had the money, though.”

“I don’t. What’s the sense talking about it?”

“But say you came into some. Say it was a lot. If one of your sons—”

“Ha!” The word came through another slug of bourbon. A drop spilled onto the crease running between his lips and his chin, and he wiped the back of his hand across it. He was about to say something but stopped, and the expression on his face drew tight. He propped his elbow on the table and a crooked finger pointed at Flip. “Don’t you send me nothing. I don’t need no stolen money.”

“No, you never needed anything. Anybody.”

“What do you know about what I needed? Anything I needed I put down for Jason and you. I raised you boys by myself. I didn’t have no help.”

“You don’t have to tell me. I was there.”

His father’s lips pursed as if a string running between them had been pulled. He took a deep breath and sagged inside his stained coat. And then in an instant, Flip saw his father clearly, all the history between them gone, their roles removed. He saw a lonely old man who’d spent his life repairing air conditioners and piecing university classrooms back together to stave off decay. All his life fixing, fixing, year in and year out, his pension hanging out there at the end of a stick. And two ungrateful boys, grown and gone and leaving him alone to rattle around in this house with his memories of what he’d done wrong, only a silent dog as company in a neighborhood as rundown as his own body.

Flip looked at the animal. Its eyes perked up to regard him, forehead bunching together. This was all Flip’s father had left.

“Philip?” His father’s hands were clenched together on the tabletop.

“Hm?”

“They’ll be coming by again looking for you.”

“Yeah.”

“I know things ain’t . . .” He looked down at his clenched hands, straightened his fingers, and tightened them again. The fists were jumbled masses, knuckles wrinkled and knotty.

“It wasn’t really your fault, Dad. I never blamed you. Forget what I said that one time.”

The old man nodded, the few hairs on his head shifting in the light. “Okay. I appreciate it.”

They stared across the table at one another. Flip wondered if his father knew he’d never see him again.

“Well. I’m glad you come by. I won’t tell them you was here.”

“You can tell them. I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

“Aww.” He passed a hand like a claw through the air. “What’re they going to do to me? I’ll sic Max on them.”

The dog lifted its head from the floor at the mention of his name.

“I’d like to see that.”

“Maybe you ought to stick around after all.” For the first time, a grin stretched out the wrinkles around the old man’s mouth.

Flip smiled back. For an instant, they held together.

“Well,” Flip said.

“Yeah.” His father used the tabletop for leverage and struggled to his feet. Max rose and came to the old man’s side. Flip followed them down the hall. His father’s pants sagged at the seat as if hanging from a laundry line. The old man turned. “You wait at the window. I go right at the sidewalk, it’s clear. I go left, you better use the back door.”

“All right.”

His father’s face rotated away, and Flip was staring at the back of an old head, two cords of muscle surrounded by lined skin propping up a skull.

“Dad?”

A hand on the doorknob, he faced his son again.

Flip wanted to say something, but he couldn’t imagine what it might be.

It was as if Jason stood watching them.

“Good-bye.”

The old man’s clouded eyes blinked. “Come on, Max.”

The dog at his side, Flip’s father moved through the doorway, and the hinges creaked against the silence. The chipped panel of the front door closed between them.