Page 113 of Torch Songs

“I always thought you’d sing ‘Independence Day,’” Butch mumbled.

Guthrie thought about the old Springsteen song, a memorial to the Boss’s own troubled relationship with his father.

“I think you gotta remember some tenderness there,” Guthrie said. “You never sat me up on your lap and told me to drive, old man. You grabbed me by the arm and threw me in the truck and told me to stop crying. You want Bruce at your funeral, you gotta be a redeemable character. No two ways about it.” Hewas saying these things without heat, without any anger, really, but Butch was weeping, and he started to feel bad, like he was torturing an old dog. The dog may have bit people when he was younger, but now he was just a dumb, pain-riddled animal.

“You’re not even gonna respect my last wish?” Butch mewled, and Guthrie almost… almost….

“Fine,” he huffed. “I promise—”

To what? To give up his future for duty to a man who’d just the day before tried to destroy his means to communicate with anybody who really loved him? To sacrifice every good thing in his life for someone who’d spent hisentirelife reminding him how much he didn’t matter?

“Promise wha—” Butch wheezed.

“Promise to pass that along to Jock,” Guthrie said. “He’ll be at the service.” Guthrie flipped the computer shut; he’d just finished sending out a blanket email to all his contacts, asking for their phone numbers since the SIM card to his phone was as mangled as the rest of the thing.

“Boy!” Butch gasped, genuinely hurt, Guthrie thought, but Guthrie couldn’t.

“I’m gonna go make dinner for Jock. You done with your broth?”

“But… butboy—”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Guthrie walked out of the room with his tray, dimly aware thatthiswas the nine-hundred-pound gorilla he’d feared, and he wasn’t yelling or screaming or violent. He was simply done. Any dream he’d had of having a father—his real father—who cared for him, who wanted what was best, had died a sad death in these last six weeks. The man who was washing up for dinner didn’t have any illusions of Butch telling him he was sorry and wanting to make up for all twenty-eight years of bad shit in one tear-filled reunion.

But he did have an image of Aaron George scooping his stepdaughter up in his arms so she didn’t have to walk fifty feet to her vehicle in labor. He saw Larx bringing his daughter in to hold her new niece and spill the tea about the baby’s mom. He saw Elton, holding Olivia’s hand and reminding her that she was strong, and they were going to be parents together, and it was going to be okay. And Chris Castro, who took him to IHOP to make sure he took his pain meds and then to make sure he and Tad would be okay, and who apparently hopped in the car to zip to Monterey so he could spend time with his partner and see another city.

Dads. He knew what those were about now. He knew what being cared for could feel like. He’d gone up to Colton to play for Olivia’s dads, and he’d done it for free because they were good people—good fathers.

He didn’t need Butch. He didn’t need to be mad at him for not being who he’d needed.

He just needed to get this shit done and get home to where Tad waited for him, and April, and their cats, and their life.

He had a family, one he’d made. One that would sustain him. One that had driven down here to this godsforsaken shithole and pulled him out so he could breathe.

This was like the worst job he’d ever had since being Butch’s son in the first place. He could endure. It was his signature move.

TWO DAYSlater he stood in his father’s tiny, grimy room—the only room in the house that Jock hadn’t fixed up, at least with a fresh coat of paint and some new flooring—and surveyed his father’s body.

It was small in death and twisted with pain, the once-healthy flesh converted to sallow, waxy skin. The smell of nicotine oozed from his pores even as the flies started to settle.

Guthrie swallowed hard, wondering if there was any hidden grief in the corners of his soul, but all he could find was a sweet, melancholy relief. It was over, and he wouldn’t have to leave Jock here alone to deal with the body.

With a sigh he dragged the sheet up over the head of the corpse to keep the flies from gorging and went to use the landline to call in an unattended death. When the call was made, he went outside, where Jock was already working on the last corner of the yard, hacking the blackberry bushes back to the creek. It was work that demanded hip waders and long gloves, and Jock had been doing it in the early morning to escape the heat, and resting in the afternoon.

Jock stalled the small chainsaw as he saw Guthrie approach and hauled his goggles up over his eyes in the silence. He said nothing but nodded hard, once, and then gathered his equipment and turned to trudge back to the house with Guthrie.

“You called?” he asked, winding the cord of the chargeable saw as he came to it.

“Yeah. They should be here in half an hour.”

Jock sighed. “I suppose I should go say goodbye.”

“If you like,” Guthrie conceded.

Jock sighed again. “You know, all I can think about is how sorry I’ll be to see you go.”

“I’ll be back,” Guthrie told him. “After Christmas. You’d better have a tree, and a job, and be all clean and shiny and happy for me. Can you do that?”

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