Undiscovered Country by Lin Enger

Author:Lin Enger [ENGER, LIN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC019000
ISBN: 9780316032704
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2008-07-03T00:00:00+00:00

13

This time he didn’t smell like gunpowder and beeswax, but instead like he’d smelled on those nights when he got home late from closing and came into my room to check on me. I’d be lying in bed awake, having heard the whine of the side-door hinges, his heavy steps on the stairs and the sound of the faucet flipping on and off about twenty times as he brushed his teeth in the bathroom on the other side of my wall. I never let on that I knew he was there, but I looked forward to those moments, Dad standing above me, making certain I was all right. He always reeked of cigarettes from his night at the Valhalla, but there was also a hint of his spearmint toothpaste and the soap he was partial to, a tangy brown bar soap peppered with mysterious black granules. It was this combination of smells that made me glance up now into the rearview mirror as Charlie and I neared the edge of town.

Dad was in the backseat watching me.

He looked the same as before, the dome of his head sheared off, his skin ashen, like modeling clay. I turned around in my seat to make sure it was him. He had on the gray-checked flannel shirt he’d worn beneath his hunting coat the day he died and a pair of red wool long johns. That’s all. His blood-spattered pants were gone. His khaki hunting coat was gone. His blaze-orange vest was gone. He didn’t seem confused or lost this time but knew where he was and who I was. There was recognition in his one remaining eye. His face looked troubled, though, as if something he’d seen had cracked his soul.

I swung around to face the road, but then Dad spoke. In a gravelly voice I could barely make out, he said, Don’t you know I’m waiting, Jesse?

Beside me, Charlie flinched.

I turned again on the Mercury’s bench seat and looked right at Dad. The red stubble on his face sparkled, and his single blue eye glimmered, a thing apart from the rest of him. I remembered how he used to watch me sometimes, gravely, as if my presence were a noteworthy event.

What do you want? I asked him.

Who are you talking to? Charlie asked.

I aimed my thumb toward the backseat.

Hey! Charlie shouted, snapping my attention back to the road. I corrected my drift across the centerline just in time to avoid an oncoming car, which had run off onto the opposite shoulder. The lake was on our left and the turkey plant just coming up, tents of glowing snow suspended from the high outdoor lights of its parking lot.

You’re wacked, Charlie said. You know that? You’re certified.

In the rearview mirror I saw Dad reach into the front chest pocket of his flannel shirt and take out a candy bar, not a Baby Ruth but some brand I’d never seen before, with a green and gold wrapper. It was huge, king-size and then some.

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