Cry Father by Benjamin Whitmer

Author:Benjamin Whitmer [Whitmer, Benjamin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2014-09-16T00:00:00+00:00

A few hours after he’s finished the bottle of bourbon, Patterson comes awake to the sound of a car pulling down the driveway. And when he lifts his Avrilla cap off his eyes, Laney is standing on the stairs of the porch, holding Gabe’s hand. Patterson starts coughing, coughing hard, hacking phlegm into his fist. When he’s done, he wipes his hand on the leg of his jeans and lights a cigarette. Then he holds the cigarette off to the side of his mouth to protect it while he coughs some more.

“Long night?” Laney asks, looking at the bandage on his arm.

“They’re all long.” Patterson grins a grin that he means to be rakish, but he’s pretty sure it just comes off as gutshot.

“Looks like it,” she says, looking pointedly at the bandage on his arm. Looking pointedly at things is something she does very well.

“It was a jackrabbit. Son of a bitch attacked me.”

“Were you able to take care of it?”

“I took care of it, all right. Don’t you worry about it.”

She shakes her head. “We’re having a picnic dinner,” she says. “We’ve got fried chicken. I made it myself.”

“Yeah?” Patterson has the feeling he’s supposed to remember something about her fried chicken, but he doesn’t. “How’d you know I was here?”

“I didn’t,” she says. “We were on our way up to the Sand Dunes. Gabe wants to play in Medano Creek.”

“Is there still water? I thought it was dried up by now.”

“It’s still flowing. We checked on the internet.”

“You checked on the internet?”

“Poor Patterson,” she says. “Everything’s on the internet. I could probably see if you’re home on the internet. I could probably find a satellite image of your house and check if the truck’s in the driveway.”

The idea doesn’t appeal to him. He looks up at the sky and winces as he catches sun in all that blue. “I could go with you,” he says.

“Just a picnic,” she says.

“Just a picnic.” Patterson looks at the boy. He’s small for his age, with black hair and a sharp face. A kind of strange and wary intelligence sunk deep down in his eyes. “You seen the horses?” Patterson asks him.

The boy shakes his head.

“There’s a herd of web-footed horses that hide in the dunes.”

“Stop it,” Laney says.

“It’s true,” Patterson says. “I heard it on the radio. Brother Joe.”

“I said stop it.”

“How’s about the gator farm?” Patterson says. “That’s my favorite. It started as a tilapia farm, but the owners decided they’d buy a gator to eat the tilapia remains. Then they thought that gator might be lonely, so they bought another to keep him company. And now they have a gator farm and no tilapia at all. They wrestle them.”

“I mean it,” Laney says.

“That one’s true,” Patterson says, chuckling. “All right, then. There’s another one. You can sled on the dunes. We’ll stop in Alamosa and pick one up at the Walmart.” He tries to stand, but his legs fail him on the first attempt. “And I’m going to need some beer.

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