Me? It didn’t matter what age I was or how much I thought I loved the woman. Marriage, rings, and vows were not created with people like me in mind.
Other than Jesse, Rowen wasn’t bad to talk to, but since she was where Jesse was—spooning two states away—she was out too. There was Brandy, but she and I never did much . . . talking. At one time, Josie had been one of my most trusted confidants. Given she was the one I needed to talk about, not to mention the one I had to keep my distance from, I had to scratch her off the list, too. After that, there was no one. I had three people—well, two—I could talk to about things that needed talking out.
My dad had figured it out twenty-one years ago: I was a good-for-nothing bastard.
Pounding the wheel one last time with my forehead, I was about to punch the gas, hoping that Clay left a few swigs in his bottle before he passed out, when something in the distance caught my attention. A bright ball of color lit up the night. Almost like someone had started a huge bonfire in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of nothing but hundreds of acres of barren land and our trailer. Which meant . . .
I punched the gas so hard my truck fishtailed out of control. I eased off the gas just enough to regain control then tore down the bumpy road, watching that ball of light get bigger and brighter. I was still a half mile back when I saw the actual flames rolling off of the trailer. We had a not-quite-dried-up well, but it was clear by the time I slammed the brakes in front of the lawn chairs that there was nothing left to salvage. The entire thing was engulfed in flames, close to the point of being unrecognizable. Everything was burning. Everything was gone.
“DAD!” I yelled, throwing the truck door open and leaping out. Panic settled in my stomach. Dread soon followed. It was after two in the morning, which meant he was passed out drunk. Since he only left the trailer to restock his liquor supply, he couldn’t be somewhere else. His truck had been repo’d years ago, his license revoked years before that, and no one in our county or the next one over would loan him a car. As much as I wanted to cling to the hope that he was somewhere, anywhere else, I knew exactly where he was.
That was when an explosion rocked the trailer and vibrated the ground below my feet. Probably one of the propane tanks. My body and mind flipped to autopilot and, despite the beating I’d taken earlier, I sprinted toward that trailer like I was good as new. I was still a good ten yards back when the heat hit me. The fire was so hot it scalded my face. The bruises and slashes from earlier probably didn’t help any. A few yards closer and even if I wanted to breathe—which I didn’t because the air was so hot it burned my nostrils and lungs—I couldn’t have. The fire had sucked all of the oxygen out of the air.
As I moved closer, I squinted and covered my nose and mouth with my arm to keep the smoke from hitting me full force. The closer I got, the more I realized nothing was left in that trailer to save. The man I’d lived with for twenty-one years wasn’t going to be draped over his chair in the back, snoring and unscathed. I knew that, but the autopilot I was on wouldn’t accept it. I couldn’t have stopped moving forward even if I wanted to.
By the time I made it to the burning door, I was coughing so hard I felt like I was expecting a lung to come up. I didn’t think—I simply reacted. Grabbing the handle, I pulled on it as a scream ripped through my body. White hot pain shot from my hand up my arm, so intense I felt close to passing out. The only time I’d felt pain close to that had been when that behemoth brahma down in Casper had come down on my shin a few years back, fracturing my femur.
The smell hit me next. That acrid, metallic scent was so thick in the air I could almost taste it . . . and I knew what it was. I didn’t have to have smelled it before to know that human flesh was the only thing that could smell as unforgettable as that. I reassured myself it was my flesh, my palm, causing the smell. Nothing or no one else.
Setting my jaw, I cried out and charged for the door again, not consciously recognizing why I had to get in. My hand was inches from wrapping around the scalding doorknob again when a firm set of arms wrapped around my chest and pulled me back.
“Garth! What are you doing, son? You’re going to kill yourself!”
I struggled, but no amount of fight worked. “Let me go, Neil! Clay’s in there! He’s in there!” The fight slowly faded from me the farther Neil wrangled me away from the trailer. “My dad’s in there!”
Another explosion blasted from inside the trailer. Another propane tank. That’s when I realized and accepted that the father I never really knew I’d never know because he was gone. He’d been gone for a long time, but his body had followed the rest of him.
“No, son.” Neil stopped pulling me away but kept his hold on me. “He’s not in there anymore.”
E.R. VISITS HAD been a pastime of mine for as long as I could remember. I was about as comfortable in a hospital bed as I was in my own bed. Since my own bed was nothing but ash and soot, I suppose the hospital bed was even more appealing than it had been before. The fire department had shown up a few minutes before Neil got me into his truck and booked it for the hospital. He was the second person that night to suggest an E.R. visit, and since I was too exhausted and in shock to argue with him, I went with it.
The nurse had fixed up my hand, and the doctor stopped in a few minutes later to pump me full of pain meds. He’d seen me plenty of times growing up. My dad had threatened him when he’d recommended I take the summer off from bull riding after I broke my leg. The doc was a decent guy who seemed that much more decent as the drugs worked their way into my system. I guessed he’d given them to me more for the mental than the physical pain.
The benefit to having perfected repressing stuff was being able to do it again. My dad had just been barbecued inside our “home,” and I still hadn’t cried a single tear. I hadn’t broken down, punched a hole in a wall, or dropped to my knees. I didn’t face it; I couldn’t yet. So I repressed it. I didn’t think about what tomorrow would bring, and I didn’t think about what the day after that would. I focused on my bandaged hand, still pulsing with pain, the hospital bed I was curled on which, for all I knew, might be the last mattress my body felt for a long while, and the antiseptic smell surrounding me. Those were the realities I obscured real reality with. Those were the things I centered my attention on when my father’s funeral needed to be planned.
I was close to passing out in a drug-induced haze when the curtains whooshed open and a figure slipped inside. “Garth? Oh my god . . .” A sniffling, bleary-eyed person approached.
“Hey, Joze. What are you doing here?” Talking hurt, thanks to the fire singing my throat.
“Neil called Jesse, then Jesse called me . . . He and Rowen are on their way. They were leaving when I was talking to him.” She approached the foot of the bed slowly. “I’m so sorry, Garth. And, wow, that sounded as pathetic and petty as I always thought it would.”
“It’s okay. I get it. You’re sorry, I’m sorry, the whole fucking world’s sorry. But it doesn’t fix anything. Sorry doesn’t bring Clay back. Sorry doesn’t stop that fire from starting. Sorry doesn’t get me to that trailer before the fire started. And sorry sure as shit doesn’t make me feel any better.”
I wasn’t mad at Josie. I knew there wasn’t much else to offer than an I’m sorry when tragedy struck. I’d already heard it a few dozen times in less than an hour, and I’d hit critical mass. If I never heard another I’m sorry again, I’d be good.