Patrick let all this rattle around his brain. He took another slug of the bourbon and felt the good warm passage of it. “You’ve never told Ted?”
“He asked me when he was eleven years old if I was his father. Once. I lied once and that was that.”
“You should tell him the truth. And forgive him for disappointing you.”
“I will. I hope he can forgive me for being such a pure and unalloyed son of a bitch for so many years.”
Patrick nodded and Archie poured more bourbon into their glasses and they touched them. “He’s got a good heart,” said Patrick.
Archie nodded and stared out past the things around him. Patrick knew what his father was going to say before Archie said it — like he’d seen what would happen to Sheffield and Lavinder. “I hope I don’t have to sell all this,” said Archie. “Your mother and I would walk away with almost nothing. Nothing for us and nothing for our sons. Sixty years of Norris blood, sweat and tears come to nada.”
“We’re doing what we can. It’s up to the rain and the trees now.”
“Farm Credit bank in El Centro turned me down today. We’ve got enough money in savings to pay the bills for four months. That’ll take us through February. No more. If we get a good survival rate, the earliest we could start selling would be two whole years from then, but we would be able to borrow against the surviving trees. Even the Farm Credit banks can’t say no to living avocados. We’ll see signs of life by February, on any trees with life left in them, and we’ll know where we stand in the eyes of God. If His curse continues and all the trees are dead, your mother and I will sell off our modest investments with Anders Wealth to buy replacement trees. That would make real a forty percent loss in the current market. Or, of course, we just sell the whole damned place and walk away.”
“I didn’t know it was this bad.”
Archie sipped. “Time is running out. This makes me fearful and angry. So I take it out on the people I love. I’ve never felt this way before, Pat. Never this low for this long. I never thought that I would prove to be a miserable failure, and turn into a furious little man. I detest my reflection in the mirror. I despise my God. I often have dreams now where Caroline has simply vanished.”
“What’s it take to stay afloat for a month, Dad?”
“Six grand or so for the basics.”
Patrick looked at his skiff and saw almost two months of living expenses for his family. He figured his pickup truck was worth maybe seven, given the low mileage. Another month plus change. So he could contribute three months. And what, ride his bike to Domino’s and deliver pizzas on it? Although, he thought, there was the old red Honda 90 over in the corner, a beloved Norris family relic. Not much more than a scooter, but it was street legal and he could rebuild the engine in a few hours, rig some sort of pizza rack to the back. He wondered how Iris would like being a passenger on it. “I’ll sell the boat and kick in eleven grand. That would give you two more months.”
“I note you don’t say give us two more months.”
“I don’t want to farm, Dad. I never did and never will.”
The silence was abrupt and complex. “No. Then don’t sell your dream to float the dreams of your mother and father. That would be ass-backwards.”
“I’ll do it if it makes a difference.”
“I pray every night it won’t be necessary. To a god that I—” Archie refilled Patrick’s glass then carried his own and the bottle to the big open door of the barn. “I see light in the bunkhouse. Maybe I’ll have my talk with Ted. I’m on a roll tonight, aren’t I?”
“We’re fishing Glorietta Bay tomorrow. You’ll have to do without us for a day.”
“That’s a good thing.”
Patrick fished out the carburetor parts and let them dry on the bench. He poured the solvent into a bucket so labeled, snapped the lid, and set it back with those for motor oil, two-stroke oil, gasoline, and diesel. He hoisted himself up on the bench and sat for a while, drinking the liquor and pondering things. He wondered how Myers, following so meticulously in his own footprints that night on patrol, December 10, 2200 hours, had tripped the IED but he, Patrick, did not? Then again the flash and for the thousandth time Patrick saw Myers come apart in all directions and Zane flayed in the light. He hoisted the memories into the hatch in his brain and tried again to close the lid forever.
After getting the carburetor back in place and their fishing gear together, Patrick stood at the workbench with a pencil in hand and his new pad of graph paper. His “business plan,” lacking college finesse, was a series of short sentences pertaining to how he’d like his guiding career to evolve. He read through some of them: By age thirty you will have three boats, and by forty, four, and by fifty, five boats and that will be enough... Remember as a guide you must be optimistic but predatory and never lose track of your purpose, which is to make sure your clients have a good time on the water... Be generous with casting tips and instruction but don’t micromanage... Remember that the fishing can be good even when the catching is bad... Invest 30 percent of your profit to build your business, and save 30 percent for when you can’t work.
This all seemed well and good but Patrick was too tired to add anything now, so he took two blankets from one of the rough-hewn storage cabinets built fifty years ago by his grandfather, folded one lengthwise twice, and laid it on the deck of the skiff. He turned off most of the barn lights but left the door open, then set a wide sheet of plywood from the low point of the boat to the floor. He climbed in and laid down and covered himself with the second blanket. The dogs came up the ramp and curled up beside him for short while, then clambered back down the plywood and trotted off. He thought of Zane and how he had loved him purely, how the war had demanded that pure love, then refused to let him take that love home. Another good reason to hate the war. And he thought again of Myers and Pendejo and Sheffield and the others, how his heart was heavier for Zane than for any of them. This was one of his several shames, and one for which he judged himself harshly. He heard the coo of a pigeon high in the beams, a flutter of wings, then nothing.
Chapter eighteen
At sunrise Glorietta Bay was a silver mirror and Fatta the Lan’ glided confidently upon it. Patrick swung into the bay and looked out to the Coronado Bridge arching from mainland to peninsula, the night lights still on, traffic steady. The eastern sky was indigo over orange. He gunned the Mercury, felt the propeller bite and the bow lift.
Ted stood on the foredeck, legs braced on the railings, a fly rod at the ready. “This thing rides sweet!” he called back to his brother.
“We’ll see how it does offshore!”
“Are we going outside the harbor?”
“After we fish the bay. You’re good with that?”
Ted turned his big body and looked back at Patrick. “Guess I better get my sea feet.”
“We’ll take it easy.”
Frowning, Ted turned and squared himself against the railing. Patrick brought the boat west and anchored almost under the bridge. He logged his coordinates on the GPU then into a small notebook he planned to keep in a plastic bag near the radio. It felt good to be inventing a future. Cars thrummed high overhead.
Ted cast out a perch fly and Patrick watched the sinking line slide deeper and deeper out of sight near one of the bridge caissons. Sea bass were ambushers and tended to cruise structure, so the caissons were a good bet. There were halibut, perch, corvina, mackerel, barracuda, occasional bonefish and sharks, and the lesser skates, rays, dogfish, lizardfish. The bigger game fish were mostly offshore and not commercially accessible in Patrick’s seventeen-foot skiff. His business plan called for a new boat, double the size and range of this one, by his twenty-seventh birthday, five years from now. He planned to keep the Mako so that a partner, or even an employee of his, could continue with the bay clientele. The offshore sharks, dorado, and tuna promised tougher fishing and bigger money, but the client base was smaller. The bay was where he’d find clients, run up some numbers, build a base and a reputation.