Wingshooters by Nina Revoyr Read Free Book Online

it wasn’t normal for Charlie to be sitting there doing nothing, as late as eight o’clock in the morning. But what also gave me pause was the way that he looked. He sat slouched over the table, leaning on his forearms, loose fists touching in front of him.
    I had been there with my father about a week and a half, and already my first thought when I woke up each day was Charlie—what he was doing, how fast I could wolf down my breakfast and join him in the weeding or mowing he did before he walked up to the coffee shop. My father, who went out in the evenings after I’d gone to bed, wouldn’t wake up until after ten. During the days he was restless, moving from front porch to back steps to attic to kitchen, avoiding my grandmother and her remarks on his shoulder-length hair, his stubble, the wide-bottom pants, the shirt with the three buttons open. In the afternoons he’d sit on the back steps with a cigarette and beer, eyes red-rimmed and watery. He didn’t fit with his own family much better than he fit with my mother’s; when Uncle Pete had come over the day before and he and Charlie had talked about hunting, my father just stared at the television and hadn’t said a word.
    Conversation over supper that evening, after Pete left, was stilted and strange, even before the nightly news came on. I already knew that the news meant arguments, or a tense quiet that was almost worse. As Walter Cronkite went through the stories of the day—the continuing fallout from Watergate and the bombings in Cambodia, the robbing of a bank by an antigovernment group, the drug overdose of a famous activist in San Francisco—I could feel the pressure building.
    “Things are out of control,” my grandfather said finally. “This country needs some order.”
    “The old order is exactly what people are trying to break free from, Dad,” said my father. “Everything’s getting shaken up now. Things are changing.”
    Charlie made a sound of disapproval. “Sometimes change is more trouble than it’s worth. Sometimes things should just stay like they are.”
    “But when those things aren’t working anymore, then it’s time for a new way. It’s not just about the war and the government, Dad. It’s about freeing people’s minds, expanding their lives.”
    My grandfather was about to cut into his food and now he stopped, fork and knife poised over his plate. “Expanding their lives? What does that mean?” he asked. “People have responsibilities. They have commitments, routines. They shouldn’t just be able to do whatever the hell they want.”
    “Yes, they should . That’s what freedom’s all about.”
    “Freedom,” Charlie repeated. “Is that what you call it?” He lifted his fork and pointed it at my father. “Seems to me like you ran off and just avoided everything. Now you’re thirty-two years old and you don’t have a job, and you look like you haven’t shaved in a year.”
    “I just got here. I still need to—”
    “You forget with all your freedom that you’re supposed to be a father . You can’t just go out drinking all night and leave your child at home. What kind of example is that? What kind of life are you trying to make for her?”
    “I’m not trying to make her life. That’s exactly the point. I want to show her that there are all different kinds of ways to live. I want her to know that she can make her own choices.”
    Charlie moved like he was about to stand up, and then lowered himself again. “She’s a child , Stewart. She doesn’t need to make ‘choices.’ She needs you to be a parent.”
    “I am a parent. I may not do things the way you would do them, but I’m still her father, and I’m still an adult.”
    “Are you?” Charlie said. “Then why don’t you act like one?”
    There was a brief, tense silence. Then my father pushed back from the table and stood up so fast his chair fell over backwards. He walked out of the house and slammed the door. My grandfather clenched his fist