Page 17 of Kinsey

“She went to bed one night and didn’t wake up.She’s been gone about eight years now.”He asked where she was buried.“Beside Grandda, where she wanted to be buried.What else?”

“Damn it, boy, don’t you want to talk to me?”He said that he didn’t, not really.“Well, that’s too bad.I want to hear about things, and you’re not telling me snot.Now, should I be expecting any of you to come up here in the system?It would do me a bit of good to be able to know that.”

“Of course it would.Then we’d be no better than you are.None of us has been in trouble with the law.In fact, we’ve all served in the Army in some way and have come out better men than when we went in.We each have an education that has served us well.”He asked about the youngest.“He’sworking at a job that he likes, all right.It pays the bills.”

“What does he do?Maybe he has some way he can quit the job and come and see me.I’d like that.”Kinsey told him that none of them were coming to see him.“You keep spouting that off.When was the last time you saw them that you could ask them?I’m betting you never see each other and you’re just making that up.”

“You and I are on speaker phone together, and they’re all right here, but don’t want to talk to you.If they wanted to, they could have by now.”That hurt, too.Right there in the room, and they didn’t want to say a word to him.That sucked.“They said if you know their names, they’ll talk to you for a minute.”

“Coyote or something like that.”He didn’t say a word.“His name is like that coyote that was on the cartoons when I was a kid.Forever fighting against the bird of some sort.That’s his name, or close enough.”

“No.”Damn it all the fuck and back.He wanted someone to like him.He was their father after all.Then he heard one of them say that they’d talk to him, but he wasn’t giving them his name.

“You can rot in there for all I care about you.You killed our momma when she did nothing wrong but to tell you no.”He said he didn’t much care for that word to be used around him.“Too bad.But I’ll say it to you now, No, I don’t want to ever have a thing to do with you again after today.I’ve been finished with you since you tried to get me to hold my momma down so that you could saw her head off.”

“The police were coming, and I had to get rid of the body.If you ingrates would have helped, I might not have gotten so much jail time.Now, as it is, I have to be here forever.Don’t that make any of you feel like you did me wrong?”It sounded to him like they all said no at the same time.“Ingrates.All of you are ingrates.Won’t even come to see me like a good son would do.Put some money in my account so that I can have a bag of chips once in a while on my birthday.Do any of you even know when that is?”

“March seventh.”Again, it sounded like they all said it at the same time, but only one of them spoke after that.“Do you have any idea when any of us were born?Or our names, for that matter?I’m betting not only do you not know, you more than likely have no idea what we look like.The color of our eyes or anything personal about us.I’m betting that no one ever called you a good father either.And they’d be right about that.”

He stood there with the phone in his hand for a good two minutes before he realized that they’d hung up on him.He’d never got to talk to them about his list, nor did he have any idea what they did for money.Christ, it was like they all hated him or something.Putting the phone back on the handle, he walked away a broken man.

They treated him like he was dirt.Worse than that, it was like he’d not created him with his own body.Walton walked back to his room and laid on his cot.His heart was hurting him so badly right now, he was sure that it was breaking in his chest.Like he’d been popped there with a gun or something.Like he wasn’t going to be all right again.

Supper was called, and he made his way to the dining room area.Looking at his food, all he could think about was that they didn’t even care if he had some chips.What’s a bag cost nowadays, a dime or something?One of them could have spared that much for their daddy.Wishing he’d not called them at all, he put his tray in the return shelf and went back to his room without touching a bit of it.

They’d been mean to him, and there was no call for it.It wasn’t like he left them without anything.He’d not lostallthe land for them.Momma had said they’d gotten it back for her.Well, he was the next in line and should have had enough for a bag of chips.He didn’t even care what flavor they were right now.

“Pennington, your son called here right after you got off the phone with him.He said to tell you that you’re not to call him again.”He asked if he’d said anything about the chips.“Chips?No, he only said for you to not call again that they don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

“I don’t want to talk to them anymore either.They were mean to me.”The guard asked himwhat they’d done.“Wouldn’t give me a lick of information about them.Not even to say about how they were doing.Said if I knew their names, I could talk to them for a bit.”

“Did you know their names, Pennington?”He said that wasn’t the point.“Sounds like it was to me.You have six sons, and you can’t remember one of their names?That’s terrible.You should have known at least the name of the kid that was in the accident, Coyote or something, didn’t you say?”

“That’s not his name—Wylie.Like the coyote.Wylie Coyote was his name.”He asked if he’d called him that.“No, it’s not Coyote either.Damn it, why should I have paid attention to their names when I’m their father?It’s not that big of a deal if you asked me.”

“I believe it was to them.”He moved on, and Walton told himself that he didn’t care anymore.That he’d not eat any chips if they were to bring them to him themselves.He didn’t care if he ever saw them either.Damned ingrates.

“I hope they all get the clap and die.”He didn’t want that either, he told himself.“Well, you’d think that a one of them would have felt a little sorry for their old man and gotten him a quarter or two in his pot.It would have been a bit to get me some chips.”

He didn’t know why he was so obsessed with chips.He didn’t normally care for snack food.Especially chips.It was the principle of the thing.He deserved them, and they should have wanted him to have them.

“Instead, they have to act like I didn’t have a part in them being alive, like I had nothing to do with it.”He thought of all the things that he could have gotten if they’d just put a couple of bucks in his pot.“Like I know what I can buy.I don’t want your money anyway, you little bastards.You’re nothing but little bastards.”

Walton wanted to be pissy with someone, to start a fight with one of the younger bloods that were still in the dining room.But he didn’t.He wasn’t nearly as stupid as people believed him to be.Being an old man like he was, there was no way he could match himself up with the kids that were in prison nowadays.They were not just smarter than him but more than likely knew ways to kill him that wouldn’t require a gun or a knife.No, he wasn’t going to be messing with them kids out there.

Thinking about how old he was, it took him nearly too long to figure it out, and he lost interest in what he’d been thinking about.The nearest that he could figure was that he was nearly seventy years old or thereabouts.He might well have been older, but certainly no younger than that.It made him sort of sick to his belly when he thought of being ninety years old someday and still being in prison for a crime that had been pushed on him by his wife.

“Damn her.She should have said yes to me.”He tried to remember what he’d wanted her to say yes to, but it was all confusing with the thoughts of how old he was.Then he thought about how his boys should have done right by him, and they’d not.“What did we even have them for if they were going to be treating me like this when I needed them most?”

At lights out, he was on his cot but not ready to sleep.So long as he wasn’t causing any trouble, they didn’t care if he slept or not.So long as he wasn’t bothering the other inmates, he didn’t have to sleep.Instead, he decided to write a letter to his boys, at least to the girly-sounding one.Walton didn’t spell all that well, but he knew what he wanted to say.He was going to be putting down the law to them, and they’d listen by god.Damned ingrates.

After three hours of just trying to spell the boy’s name, he gave up.There wasn’t no point in him writing to him if he didn’t know how to spell his name.In fact, he wondered if any of them knew his name.That would have been a kicker, them bitching about him not knowing their names when they didn’t even know his.Getting into his cot, he thought of all the times that he’d been home with the kids and never bothered with them.

“They’re lucky that I didn’t beat them all to death when I had the chance.”He wouldn’t have done that.He never once hit them.Or Martha, for that matter, until that night.“I’m more of a gambling man than a beater.They should have known that about me.”

It did get him to thinking about how much they knew about him.He’d never been home all that much, and when he was there, he never bothered with any of them.He’d been looking for his nextbig stake and how he was going to win all the money in a good game of poker or whatever other card game was going on.Hell, he would have playedGo Fishif there was any money involved.Now that he thought on it, he really had been in prison or jail more than he’d been at home.Laughing slightly to himself, he thought that should have made him Father of the Year for them.He’d never disciplined them, nor had he touched them once in any kind of harmful way.They should have figured out that he was the best daddy in the world for all that he’d done for them by being in jail all the time.

“Damned ingrates.Didn’t even realize how good they had it made until now.I should have told them that when I had them on the phone.Kids?Who needed them.”He fell asleep knowing that he’d been a good dad to his kids, not like some of the others in here.He’d not tell them that, of course.That was his own good story that he was going to keep for himself.“Yes, sir.I was the best, and they should have known that.”

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