The Summer Son by Craig Lancaster Read Free Book Online Page A

violently forward. My mouth crashed against the steering wheel.
    “Shit, Mitch.”
    “Sorry.”
     
     
    I drove the rest of the afternoon, with Jerry riding shotgun. By the third attempt, he didn’t need to tell me what to do. I had figured out the clutch-release-and-give-it-gas rhythm, and I could arrive at a smooth stop. There was no indication that Dad had a clue what was going on—or he just didn’t care, as Jerry predicted.
    Jerry and I were laughing and talking as I guided the Ford up to the drill site of the last hole of the day, and I’d grown cocky at my blossoming expertise.
    When Jerry said, “Shit,” I looked up and saw Dad running at us, waving his arms. I slammed on the brakes—again forgetting the clutch—as Dad reached the driver’s-side door.
    His face crimson, Dad grabbed the handle and yanked the door open, then pulled me out by the front of my shirt and threw me into the dirt.
    “Do you see that motherfucking thing?” he yelled. “Do you see it?”
    In front of my face sat a full box of explosives that Toby had set on the ground. I was maybe five feet from running over it.
    “Oh fuck,” Jerry said. He had come around to where I lay and knew just how lucky we were. Relief was short-lived, though, as Dad’s tongue began carving us up.
    “What was he doing?” Dad thundered, his face inches from Jerry’s, his fists balled up.
    “I was teaching him how to drive. It was an accident.”
    “No, asshole,” Dad said. “It wasn’t an accident. No thanks to you, though.”
    I started crying. Dad wheeled back on me.
    “Shut up. Don’t fucking cry here, Mitch. Don’t do it. You’re going to be a man, you’re going to drive a truck, then you don’t get to fucking cry here.”
    I couldn’t stop. The tears came harder, faster, cutting tracks into the dust that had painted my face when he had pushed me down.
    Dad loomed over me, grabbing me by the shirt and pulling me to my feet, then spinning me and kicking me square in the ass, which knocked me down again.
    “We don’t cry here. If you’re going to cry, you big fucking baby, you go do it somewhere else.”
    I loped around to the side of the water truck, out of earshot and out of sight. After a few minutes, while I fretted that Dad might follow me and yell at me some more, I heard the mast go up and the first segment of pipe go down. The mechanical roar drowned out everything else, and I returned to my whimpering in solitude.
    The job went quickly. Dad, Jerry, and Toby finished fourteen holes that day, the best day we had that summer. We marked the occasion by riding to town in silence.

MILFORD | LATE JUNE 1979
     
    I WORRIED THAT D AD’S anger would splash over into the after-hours, but I guess I was fortunate. Larger frustrations awaited.
    We dropped Jerry and Toby off at their place on the west side of town, then drove down the hill to the trailer park. Marie’s Skylark, which we hadn’t seen in a couple of days, was out front. Dad sighed.
    “OK,” he said.
    Marie bounded out and threw her arms around Dad, who tolerated a kiss before shaking her off and heading toward the door. If an army stood between Dad and his bath after a day’s work, he would find a way through it. A wife was no match.
    I followed closely as he galloped up the steps of the trailer. The dining area and the couch that folded out into my bed were filled with shopping bags from seemingly every department store in Salt Lake City.
    “What’s this?” he said.
    “Just a few things I needed,” Marie said.
    “What you need and what we can afford are two different things.”
    “Really? You haven’t seen me in two days, and this is what you’re going to start in on?”
    Dad’s shoulders slumped.
    “I’m taking a bath. Put the receipts on the table.”
     
     
    It’s funny the memories that survive the years, and the ones that don’t. I can remember the exact layout of Milford, and if you dropped me on a corner there today, I could find every place that