No one bothered telling me that my father was picking me up, so when I saw him outside school, I worried someone was dead.
“Why the fuck would anyone be dead?” he said. “Hurry up, before they tow my sorry ass.”
This was back in 1991, a few years before my father died, when I was living on the brushy outskirts of Los Angeles. Rodney King had just been beaten a mile away and my school was spending textbook money on metal detectors. I had a black eye, no friends, and my mom was dating a guy named Roy. My father showing up, after a few months away, was the least of my problems.
“Fucking-a, man, how’s my little dude doing?” he said.
“Fine.”
“Fuck fine. Tell the truth. Being 12 sucks, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. It does.”
“Fuck yeah it does. Nothing sucks worse except maybe being 90.”
He was driving one of those two-seat Toyota pickups that seemed to last forever, no matter how many times you ran it into a curb. His army dog tags hung from the rearview mirror and the seats were covered in cigarette burns and balled-up fast-food bags. He drove fast and jittery, honking and swearing whenever someone took too long to gas it on a green light. When you were with him, you just had to look out the side window and try not think too hard about what was in front of you.
And that day we sped at a pretty good clip through town, past a long line of auto shops and tattoo parlors and biker bars that opened at 6am because a lot of my friend’s fathers worked nights down at the aerospace plants and needed help sleeping during the day. Those bars might still be there. I don’t know. I haven’t been back in 20 years.
He stopped at a light near Kmart, where a dozen guys from Mexico and Central America hung out in the parking lot, waiting for someone to pull up and offer work.
“Poor fuckers,” my father said. “Reminds me of this kid Jason from Alabama I served with who could really throw down. Weird dude. He was all into this pagan shit, taking a little from each religion because he was trying to make sure his bases were covered. So before we’d go out on duty we’d pray to Saint Michael and Horus and Odin. Thought it was all bullshit at first but it ended up giving me some fucking clarity. And, shit, this one time though he stole a guinea fowl from this farmhouse and cut its throat in front of our sergeant’s bunk as a curse on account of him being an asshole. Said it was an act of resistance. I see it. I think a lot of what’s wrong with this world was when we turned to one God instead of a bunch, like Zeus and Mars and shit.”
“You got a cat?” I said.
“No, why would I do that?”
Weird, I thought, because there was an old gray cat in a crate in between us. My father kept hitting the crate when he shifted into second and then the cat meowed with a sort of gurgle like my grandma before she died of throat cancer. After a while, my father pulled over at a gas station and put the crate in the truck bed. A woman filling her tires stared and my father said, “he’s got the rabies.” The crate slid into to the tailgate every time he accelerated.
“This fucking thing,” he said, slapping the dash. “No power. Have to keep downshifting just to climb an anthill but it’s cheap and there’s like five parts in the entire engine so you can fix it yourself without getting ripped off by some asshole mechanic. Fuck I love this song. Even if it’s one of their gay Lord of the Rings tunes. Ramble on, baby.”
He air drummed Zeppelin while he told me that he’d been working construction in Lancaster up in the high desert where it got to nearly 130 on a roof, but it was steady work because a lot of white people were moving out there to flee the Bloods and Crips.
“You should see these assholes,” he said. “They buy these five-bedroom houses with these huge fucking lawns they got to drop five hundred a month to water just so they can spend three hours in their car driving back and forth downtown to work. What a fucking life, right? You’re nothing more than an ass in a seat just to avoid black kids playing gangster. Man you just got to be more Zen in this world, not be so scared of shit, especially of people who got it harder than you. You know, I should you teach you to meditate. This hippie girl I’ve been going with lately really helped me calm down. Get me to focus on the moment rather than letting shit get all fucked up in my head.”
He was only back in town for a few days, he said. He wanted to see me, but he also had to settle some trouble with a guy he did some work for a while back, a man name Fred McIntyre who owned the Ford dealership the next town over.
“Used to be you did a job, you got paid for it and now you’ve got lawyers and shit fucking things up and you can’t do anything off the books anymore. Like, just because I’m an independent contractor I’ve got to pay twice as much in taxes as some guy who sells stocks, which are just make believe anyways and don’t do anyone any good except make rich people richer. You hungry?”
*
We stopped at Tommy’s and ate chili cheeseburgers on plastic benches under a cloud of car exhaust. No one walked in those days, unless you’d gotten too many DUIs, and even those guys mostly rode bicycles. So I tensed when a woman about ten years older than my dad came toward us looking like a methed-out ex-cheerleader with big blond hair and clumpy make-up. That didn’t bother me as much as her teetering, like one leg was longer than the other, so that with each step she raised her arms for balance. She walked a few feet past and then stopped and wobbled back, squinting, closing in on my dad, shaking her head, until she’d seen enough of him to speak.
“Jesus, Shawn, where the hell you been?”
My dad looked up with a big game-show host smile. “Miss, you got the wrong man.”
“Fuck you. You said your name was Shawn.” His name was Shawn. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you aren’t Shawn. I bet you’re actually a Kevin. You look like a goddamn Kevin.”
“Hey lady, my kid’s here so could you dial back on the cussing?”
“You said you’d come back and you just fucking lit out. What kind of man does that? Promise someone they’d get donuts and then just disappear. Must have been fifteen years ago.”
“I was in Germany then, holding the line against the Soviets.”
She grabbed her crotch. “Suck this, GI Joe.”
A police car pulled up, sirens flashing but muted, and then two cops got out and led the woman to the car without a listing of rights or locking of handcuffs and no one struggled or said anything and then they drove off before I’d even finished my fries.
“Little dude,” my father said, “if that don’t keep you off drugs, nothing will.”
*
We bounced around town, running errands. He had to get money out of the bank, buy kitchen gloves, and then go see my grandpa, where I asked to wait in the car.
“I know he’s an asshole, but he’s family, so you just got to suck it up and at least say ‘hey,’” my dad said. “Jesus, look at this shithole.”
The screen door was on the weedy lawn next between a few cinder blocks and a couple of dead squirrels.
“What time is it?” my father said. “Ah, he’s going to be pretty hammered. We’ll make this quick.”
My father knocked a few times and when no one opened, he turned the knob and yelled, “It’s Shawn, don’t shoot.”
“Why’d you say that?” I asked.
I figured it out when we stepped inside, the house stinking of cat shit, the curtains drawn, my grandfather on a La-Z-Boy, a pistol on the side table next to an open bottle of Old Crow. General Hospital was on the television.
“Who’s the kid?”
“Your grandson.”
“I don’t got money for you.”
“You never have. I just came for some of my stuff.”
My father told me to wait there, while he headed toward the back of the house.
I looked for a place to sit, but the couch was covered in kitty litter. The cats kept jumping on my leg, crying.
“You ever see this show?” my grandpa said. “No? It’s good. See the cans on that broad. Name’s Lucy or Lisa or something. Your grandma had cans like that. You enlisted yet?”
“I’m only 12,” I said.
“Sissy, aren’t you?” he said, squinting toward me. “Yeah see that shiner on you. Army would toughen you up. It’s fun, don’t worry. You wouldn’t believe how much tail I got after Iwo Jima. Not like your dad who just stood guard like a faggot.”
My dad came out holding his army knife.
“Iwo Jima? Man, you’ve never even left the state. Lay off the hard stuff, will you?”
*
We headed into the canyon, which was surrounded by blackened hills, the smoke smell lingering months after the last spark. My father kept talking about McIntyre.
“Hell, did an extra day’s work, no charge, just cause his wife decided she didn’t like the color on the trim. I mean, he gave me the damn swatches and …ah, the fuck ever. I told her the color wouldn’t work and she didn’t believe me and then it looks like crap and it’s my fault? Then he stiffed me. Believe that shit? Look, when you’re older you got to keep your word. It’s important. You hear me? How’d you get the black eye?”
“This guy Greg at school.”
“What’d you give him?”
Nothing, I thought. He hit me and I ran away.
“Got sucker punched,” I said. “Didn’t see it coming.”
“That’s a bitch move,” he said, before swerving down a dirt road that led to the little league field. It was probably the nicest place in town with two diamonds, well-watered and mowed, and brand new lights for night games. It was McIntyre who paid for the lights, as long as they put his business name on the outfield fence and let his kid play shortstop even though he sucked.
“Your mom’s boyfriend said you hit a home run a couple weeks back.”
“Hit three this season.”
“Wish I could’ve been there.”
It was nice of him not to mention that he hit more when he played here. He was really good. He went onto play varsity in high school, and then a year in the minor leagues before he hurt his shoulder and joined the army.
“Here we go,” he said, parking in front of the snack bar. “Look, you’ve got be a warrior to survive in this world. You got channel the Lakota when they’d get all revved up to hunt bison or fuck up some redneck motherfuckers like Custer who should’ve just minded his own goddamn business. You hear me? It’s all in the fucking mind.”
We got out, checked on the cat, and then and my father held up his palms. “Okay, take a swing. Imagine you’re Rocky and I’m that old fuck who helped him. What’s his name? Not Apollo. That was the black guy. Whatever, take a swing.”
“Dad.”
“Seriously, your mom’s boyfriend, what’s his name? He ain’t going to teach you. Shook his hand and it felt like silk underwear. Fuck’s he do anyway?”
“He manages the Sizzler.”
“Huh. I like their shrimp. Now swing.”
I swung.
“Take your thumb out of your fist, little dude. Again.”
I swung.
“Keep your elbow a bit bent. Don’t want to break it. And follow through. You’re not aiming for his face. You’re aiming for the inside of his brain. You’re punching the inside of Greg’s fucking brain. Fuck, that’s a stupid fat kid name. Now swing.”
I swung.
“Good. You fight a man, you got to want to hurt him. You’ve got to fight like he’s going to kill you. You do that, you got a chance. Don’t worry about your permanent record. That’s all bullshit. Get good grades and colleges won’t mind that you beat the shit out of some fat fuck named Greg when you were in the 7th grade. Now again.”
*
We headed deeper into the canyon until he turned down a road that led to an iron gate like the ones you’d see in movies about rich people. A nearby sign said, “The Hacienda.”
“Only assholes name their houses,” he said. “And this McIntyre guy is a real asshole. Like, if there was a club for assholes, he’d be the president, have his portrait on the wall next to all the assholes who came before him, like a row of assholes stretching back to Benedict Arnold or some asshole like that. Man like that should be in jail, not a bunch of Black kids who sell a dime bag and then get life. Reagan really fucked us there. But fucking McIntyre’s got all the lawyers you could want and what can I do about that? So he doesn’t have to pay me the grand he owes. Fuck, man, I could really use it for your college fund. And you will go to college. You’re smart. And I’ve been saving up some money. Bought some treasury bonds. I’m going to help you. Promise. But, man, another grand would have gone a long way. Look at those hills.”
They were charred, like all of the hills.
“His house should be fucking gone, but he got like a dozen fire crews up here protecting his goddamn hacienda, meanwhile the fucking trailer park down the road is just ash now. Jesus. A man’s just got make his own justice. You know?”
Patches of gray dotted his beard, even though he was only 37. He lit a cigarette, rubbed his forehead and then crossed himself, as if he was praying. Only 37. The cells splitting already. The mass just beginning to grow on the left side of his brain. Three years left.
He popped open the glove compartment and took out his army knife and the kitchen gloves.
“Wait here.”
He grabbed the cat crate and then started up the driveway until he disappeared behind a curve. I counted to ten and then followed. When I caught sight of him, he was at the front door of one of those faux-colonial mansions with a Spanish tile roof. The beige paint looked good, but the window trims were a sort of flat olive. My father was right. It did look like shit.
I hid behind a eucalyptus tree and began peeling at the bark. Meanwhile, my father put on the kitchen gloves, took the cat out of the crate, and then pet it a few times before running his knife across its throat. He spread its blood over the front door and left the cat on the welcome mat.
When he got back to the car, I was looking out the window, acting like I was daydreaming.
“Fuck, I could really go for some ice cream.”
*
We ate our ice cream on a mountainside above the old graveyard. You could tell it hadn’t been looked after from all the cocks and swastikas spray painted on the headstones. But it was a nice view from up here. Jets descended through the red, smoggy sunset into Burbank airport and the town looked almost peaceful, like a scene out of E.T.
“Ever tell you about the flood of ’78?”
“No,” I said. The strawberry dripped down the cone and onto my knuckles.
“Man, it rained so fucking much Noah would’ve gotten out a goddamn umbrella and then this whole fucking hillside went and washed down about fifty fucking bodies. People were finding leg bones in their fucking kiddie pools. Just gnarly ass shit. Anyways, I remember your mom was real pregnant at the time and we were making house for you when your grandpa calls all freaked the fuck out and has me come over and there’s goddamn body under his truck. And what’s worst is that it’s like a fucking kid. Maybe three feet tall but most of its still there just fleshy and shit. Fucking grossest thing I ever saw. And I ask him what the fuck he wants to do about it and he says ‘fucking clean it up’ and then he went into his house and didn’t come out for a month. Just got fucking hammered and never seemed to stop like it fucking broke him.”
“Whoa.”
“Whoa is fucking right,” he said. He crumbled the napkins and threw them into the brush. “Still got a good arm, don’t I?”
“Yeah you do.”
“Fuck, little dude, you got be careful otherwise this town will really fuck you up.”
Michael Keenan Gutierrez is the author of The Swill and The Trench Angel and earned degrees from UCLA, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of New Hampshire. His work has been published in The Guardian, The Delmarva Review, The Collagist, Scarab, The Pisgah Review, Untoward, The Boiler, Crossborder, and Public Books. His screenplay, The Granite State, was a finalist at the Austin Film Festival and he has received fellowships from The University of Houston and the New York Public Library. He teaches writing at the University of North Carolina.