Part I | Part II | Part III

I never should have forced him to come with me, Dan thinks. I never, never— but I remember my own dad and how I wished he would go to hell instead of turning me into the invisible blip in his timeline of life. Always loved Pete, left me one day at the cabin by myself because he forgot me. Didn’t he know how much I wanted to come along, how he promised to me that he would wake me at dawn and all three of us would track the eight point buck we saw from our treestand?

Dan covers his dirty face with his hands. He turns his body toward the comfort of the cold metal post. The cold seeps into him from the sidewalk, past the barrier of his orange jumpsuit, past the long pants he wears underneath. It penetrates his thighs and tickles his throat with sharp nails. A taxi drives by and flips on its headlights. Time to walk home, he thinks.

Dan slowly tries to stand up. He hears his blood rush by his ears and wishes it would hurry to his feet. He pushes his legs against the ground with his back against his lamp post. Buckling his helmet under his chin, Dan looks side to side, pretending to stretch the stiffening tendons in his neck. He catches the blue and red of the plastic lights atop a police car and lowers his eyes.

They’re still after me, he thinks. After all these years, can’t they leave me?

He quickly flops onto the sidewalk again. He pulls out the brass and red harmonica from his chest pocket and blows into it. Happy jazz tunes is all he’ll ever play. No use depressing passers-by. Make them smile, add that spring to their step. As Dan plays, the wind blows at his long, grey beard. It pulls at the stringy hair that was not swept under the neon helmet. It rips the chords and enharmonics away from Dan’s lips. Dan bows his head; immersed in his melody and countering harmony; he closes his eyes and lives through his music.

The police car drives away. Its exhaust kills Dan’s song.

Early the next morning, Friday, Bryant sat at the dining room table while his mom stacked his plate with pancakes and filled his bowl with oatmeal. Dan waited for Maggie to return her attention to the stove. He sneaked into the kitchen and wrapped his arms around her waist. He rested his chin on the soft skin where her shoulder met her neck. He whispered into her ear, grinning as he felt her skin grow warmer from his words. Maggie dropped the spatula on the speckled cream counter next to the stove and turned around on tip-toe, wrapping her arms around him and playing with tight brown curls at the base of his neck.

“Enjoy your weekend without the men,” Dan said.

Maggie laughed and kissed Dan on the cheek. “Oh you know I will. Now scoot, I need to get back to this breakfast so I can get rid of you even earlier,” she joked. She quickly flipped three pancakes as the steam rose into her face. “Did you wake Adrian? I haven’t seen him yet.”

Dan feels his song get lost in the wind and exhaust and opens his eyes. He watches the police car turn right at the intersection and hears the beginning blip of its siren as it wails more loudly than he ever could. He stands up again, habituallly looks left and right for the people in search of him, and trudges home toward the shelter.

Dan sighed and walked back to Adrian’s room. He rapped his knuckles lightly on the door. It was their secret knock. Two soft, quick taps followed by a slow, loud third and fourth. No response. Again Dan knocked, only not as softly. He opened the door, stepped in, and nearly tripped on Adrian’s duffel bag. Books were strewn across the floor. Adrian stirred in his bed. His legs looked as haphazard as his room and the sheets were twisted around his torso. Dan drew open the curtains and pulled off Adrian’s matching blanket.

“Rise and shine,” he said. “Big day today. You need a good breakfast.” He walked back into the kitchen to eat.

Adrian finally emerged from his bedroom fifteen minutes later. His music followed him and collided with the kitchen’s wafting pancakes and brown sugar oatmeal. He rubbed his eyes against the brightness of the dining room lights and sat himself down in front of a plate layered with moist, golden pancakes. His ever present journal he placed on the table, close enough to be in reach yet far enough away from the dangerously sticky syrup. He dripped the hot, homemade maple syrup onto his plate. It ran down side of the pancakes like rain down the vinyl siding of the doghouse in the backyard.

“Damn, Adrian, what’s your problem? You’ve got that gay-ass journal glued to your hand every freaking minute,” Bryant said, his mouth full of food. “I always knew there was something wrong with you.”

Adrian didn’t look up.

“Bryant,” his mom warned.

“Sorry, but look at him, I mean, what a freak, he has to write even while he eats.”

“I don’t want to hear that language here.”

“Yeah mom, whatever. Lay off anyway, there’s no reason he should tag along in the first place. He’s too scared that I’ll ‘accidentally’ shoot him or something.” Bryant quickly finished his orange juice and slammed the glass onto the table, glaring at his little brother. He shoved his chair back from the table and mumbled his way to his room.

Dan watched Bryant leave the table and wondered why he was so upset. He loaded his plate with the pancakes Bryant hadn’t touched and went through his mental check list of things to bring for the trip. Matches, new fire extinguisher, Maggie’s got the food covered thank God, spare socks, flares, warm clothes. His concentration broke when he heard Adrian ferociously flip a page in his journal.

“What are you writing, Adrian?” he asked. Adrian always told him. His sensitive boy.

“Not much. Just doing an article for the school paper, writing my thoughts in here before turning them into an opinion column.”

“I see. Opinion about what?”

“It’s not important, really,” Adrian said quietly. He set his pen on the page and closed his journal, leaving the pen as a marker. “What time are we leaving?” he asked.

“Oh, in about twenty minutes. Gotta finish packing. You ready?

“Bryant!” he called. “Everything ready? I need some help carrying our supplies out to the truck.”

The three drove five hours north to the log cabin Dan had built with his father and brother. It was furnished with castaway rocking chairs, handmade tables and a dining set, kerosene lamps, discarded hide-a-beds, and an exhausted brown leather couch. As they drove down the long, gravel driveway, they could see the red and white curtains hanging at the kitchen window. They unloaded the rusty green pick-up; their feet crunched the fall leaves as they walked to the cabin. It still smelled of the familiar mildew and fireplace ashes.

Bryant tossed his red and black checked flannel shirt on the exhausted brown leather couch. He and Adrian raced upstairs to their bedroom. Bryant won and claimed the top bunk as his own. Adrian watched the squirrels outside his window. They were acrobats flipping around the graying brown branches. They scampered from the tree’s trunk to its thin branch-fingers and danced on the few remaining leaves before hopping to their next stage. Bryant hurriedly unpacked his bags and bounded back downstairs. Dan watched both boys from outside their bedroom door before following Bryant’s lead and unpacking his bag in his own room.

I’m losing my boys, he thought. And I don’t know how I can reel them back in. Adrian refuses to tell me about the articles he writes for his school’s PETA chapter because he doesn’t want to hurt my feelings in some way. Of course that’s just Maggie’s take on it, but I think she must be right. And Bryant, Bryant’s a punk like my brother Pete. Only I see so much of myself in him, too. But I’m not letting what happened between me and my dad go on with me and my kids.