Chương 11
He was tired.
His knuckles hurt.
His jeans were damp.
His mother had driven almost an hour in a storm after working all day.
Walter looked like he had aged another decade since sunset.
Ryan said, “I’m done for tonight.”
His mother looked relieved.
Walter nodded.
Then Ryan picked up the cassette.
“I’m taking this.”
Lisa’s relief disappeared.
“Ryan.”
“It’s mine.”
She closed her eyes.
“Okay.”
The word cost her something.
He looked at Walter.
“The box too.”
Walter nodded.
Ryan lifted it from the cavity.
It was heavier than expected.
He carried it to his truck.
Nobody stopped him.
At home, his mother went straight to her bedroom.
Ryan stayed in the kitchen.
The black case sat on the table between a bowl of apples and a stack of unopened mail.
It looked ridiculous there.
Too dramatic for the room.
He opened the refrigerator.
Nothing appealed to him.
He ate two slices of cold turkey standing over the sink.
Then he found an old cassette player online for twenty-six dollars and ordered it for pickup the next morning.
At 2:14 a.m., he went to bed.
At 2:19, he got up and checked that the case was still on the kitchen table.
At 2:23, he felt stupid.
At 3:07, he heard his mother moving in her room.
Neither came out.
Ryan slept for three hours.
Mark called at 7:18.
“You alive?”
Ryan stared at the ceiling.
“Technically.”
“Storm took down a tree near Miller Road. Hayes job okay?”
Ryan looked toward the hallway.
“Not finished.”
“You can go back Monday.”
Ryan sat up.
“No, I’m going today.”
“You sound like hell.”
“Thanks.”
“You want the day?”
“No.”
Mark paused.
“You sure?”
Ryan nearly told him everything.
Instead he said, “Family stuff.”
Mark grunted.
“Those are the two worst words in English.”
Ryan smiled despite himself.
“Yeah.”
“You need me, call.”
After breakfast, his mother came into the kitchen wearing sweatpants and an old University of Wisconsin sweatshirt.
She stopped when she saw the case.
Ryan was drinking coffee.
“Morning.”
She looked at him suspiciously.
“You’re being weird.”
“I’m tired.”
“So am I.”
He slid a mug toward her.
Black coffee.
She noticed.
“When did you learn that?”
“Last night.”
Her face softened slightly.
She took the mug.
They sat across from the case.
Ryan said, “I ordered a cassette player.”
She nodded.
“Do you want to be there?”
“No.”
He waited.
She looked at the lid.
“Yes.”
He nodded.
Neither mentioned the contradiction.
The player was ready for pickup at ten.
They drove together.
On the way, his mother complained about a man in a pickup who did not use his turn signal.
For three minutes they argued about whether the grocery store parking lot had always had a stop sign near the pharmacy entrance.
It was so ordinary Ryan nearly became angry.
Then he understood that neither of them could sustain the other conversation continuously.
People still needed to discuss traffic.
At home, he put batteries in the player.
The cassette clicked into place.
His mother sat on the couch with both hands around her coffee.
Ryan pressed play.
Static.
Then a man breathed into a microphone.
Ryan froze.
The voice was deeper than his.
Rougher.
But something in the rhythm was familiar.
“Okay. I hate this already.”
Ryan’s mother closed her eyes.
Daniel gave a nervous laugh on the tape.
“If Walt followed instructions, you’re twenty-three. If Walt didn’t follow instructions, that would be the least surprising thing that’s happened in my life.”
Ryan looked at his mother.
Against her will, she smiled.
Walter had probably heard that line twenty-three years ago.
Daniel continued.
“My name is Daniel James Parker. I’m your father. You probably know that by now, unless somebody labeled this tape really badly.”
Ryan almost laughed.
Then the voice changed.
“I don’t know what you’ve been told about me. Whatever Lisa told you, start by believing her.”
His mother looked down.
Ryan stopped breathing again.
Daniel said, “She may not be right about every detail. Neither am I. But if she tells you she was afraid of me, believe that. If she tells you I put things before her that I shouldn’t have, believe that too.”
Static crackled.
“I want to explain some things. Explaining is dangerous because it starts sounding like asking for forgiveness. I’m not asking.”
Ryan stared at the player.
“I loved your mother. I also made her life unsafe. Both are true. I wanted to see you after you were born. I turned my truck around because I thought police were looking for me. Both are true. I told myself I was protecting my chance to be your father. That’s the kind of lie a coward tells himself when the truth is that he protected himself.”
Ryan’s mother covered her mouth.
The recording continued for forty-one minutes.
Daniel talked about the motorcycle accident.
About anger.
About money.
About the first stolen engine he transported because he needed eight hundred dollars.
Then another because the first one was easy.
He talked about Walter.
“He’ll make himself sound worse than he was because guilt is his favorite hobby.”
Ryan laughed unexpectedly.
His mother did too.
Daniel said, “Don’t let him do that. But don’t let him off either.”
He described the boat sinking.
Two dead men.
One named Curtis Bell, thirty-two.
One named Henry Malinowski, twenty-seven.
Ryan wrote the names down.
That mattered.
Daniel said their names twice.
“I did not put them on that boat. I did not overload it. I did business with the men who did. I knew enough to know somebody would eventually get hurt. That’s a responsibility I spent years trying to negotiate down to a smaller size.”
Ryan paused the tape.
His mother looked at him.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
He pressed play again.
Near the end, Daniel spoke about Ryan.
Not sentimentally.
He said he hoped Ryan liked baseball because Daniel had never understood football.
May you like
He wondered if Ryan would be tall.
He hoped Lisa had given him her patience.
