Danny never wanted a truck, even when the other kids in his high school made fun of his car, with its thick fabric seats and broken air conditioner. Danny didn’t give a shit. A car was for getting from point A to point B. From home to class. To the city to see the Pixies, except in those days it was just Frank Black and the Catholics. The same car got him to New York, and a few years after that, he sold it to buy a one-way ticket to Berlin.
A truck was different. A truck held the driver captive with all its utility. It demanded to be filled with tools and baseball equipment and sometimes people. His classmates got drunk in the backs of their pickups after football games, hidden away from their parents in the blackjack forests that surrounded town. Cody Masterson shot himself in his truck a year after returning from his second tour of duty in Iraq.
Now, ten years later, Danny was the one with the truck, idling away in an empty parking lot before work. He should have been in a hurry, he was already half an hour late, but he needed a few extra minutes to himself. A breath of quiet between wiping his father’s ass and his shift.
He choked down his coffee, lighting a cigarette to blunt the flavor. The sun was just beginning to peak over the hills in the east, and the clouds stretching towards him were braided with orange and pink.
His friends in Berlin used to ask him what Oklahoma was like, their curiosity hovering somewhere between lurid and condescending. He usually indulged their fantasies with images of broken-down trailers, tin-foiled windows and yards littered with washing machines and rusted fishing boats. He never thought to mention the sky.
Danny tossed his cigarette butt out the window and pulled back onto the highway. He sputtered down the road towards work, his grip tightening on the steering wheel as he approached his turnoff. He didn’t feel like going in today. Not that he ever did.
The road opened in front of him, the plains rolling through cow pastures and cedared farmlands as far as he could see. He could just keep driving, jump on 1-44 to Tulsa, then Springfield. He’d be in St. Louis by the evening. Then what? In the end, it didn’t really matter where he went, how far away he got.
***
Danny killed a kitten when he was six years old, hit it with a slingshot on a thoughtless impulse. He never imagined what would happen if he actually struck the animal, the damage a rock could do to its tiny skull, but watching it seize uncontrollably in the grass, he knew that he’d done something irrevocable.
Panicked, he hid the body under a garden stone in the backyard and hid in his bedroom. A few hours later, his parents called him into the living room. The animal hadn’t died like he thought but just gone unconscious, and when it came to, it started yowling.
The kitten didn’t die for a week. Part of Danny’s punishment was taking care of it, checking on its food and water, and at night, cleaning its soiled bed, bundled as it was next to the washing machine. He didn’t remember much about the kitten, its color, how old it was, but its meow, desperate and confused, still haunted him. There would always be a part of him that existed inside that laundry room, slumped in darkness and listening to that horrible cry, knowing that there was nothing he could do to fix it.
***
Danny woke to the chime of the nurse’s pager and stumbled towards his father’s bedroom. Unfinished dreams leapt from the shadows of the hallway. Something about his ex, Lucia. Maybe he should give her a call, try and patch things up. They were good together, when they weren’t fighting.
He opened the door to find his father face down on the floor, sheets tangled around his legs, arms splayed over his head. The first time he found him this way, Danny wished that the old man was dead. The thought shocked him at first, the sheer selfishness of it, but now it just came and went. If he was dead, he was dead.
He knelt beside his father, feeling under his nose for a breath. Still alive. He locked his fingers under his father’s midsection and heaved, pulling him into a sitting position. The hair on his chest was matted with sweat, his skin spongy and cool.
“It’s not time yet,” his father murmured. Moonlight streaked across the frozen features of his face. “Never enough time.”
“I need you to stand.” One day, his father wouldn’t be able to make his legs work enough to do even this, but they would cross that bridge when they came to it.
“Jesus, Dianne. You could have just told me to scoot over.”
“Mom’s not here,” Danny said, wiping back wispy bits of hair from his father’s forehead. She left your stubborn ass twenty years ago, he wanted to add, but that would only make him more disoriented.
If he’d learned anything from Parkinson’s, it was to never get his hopes up. The same drug that let his father button up his own shirt was fucking with his dreams now, setting him adrift in the boundary waters of dementia each night. Were the side effects progressive, too? When would these faded memories find their way into the light of day?
He got his father back into bed and sat on the floor. There was no use in going back to bed himself until the old man actually fell back asleep. Until then, he would wait. The clock on the nightstand read 4 a.m. He sighed, digging his fingers into the shag carpet. Maybe he should just stay up the two hours before the caregiver came. This was why people got 24/7 care. Not that they could afford that. Another bridge, another raging river.
***
Little things infuriated him after he moved back to the states. Stupid shit, like the way people referred to the entire world as over there. He never knew what to say when he ran into old classmates in the grocery store. What’s it like over there? And when are you going to stop traveling and come back home? His life must have seemed like one long vacation to them, a perpetual break from reality. Maybe it was, but if the reality in this town was bake sales and little league and Wednesday night church, then he wanted no part in it.
He only took the job with JM last fall to help out with his father’s medical bills. The plan was to eventually save up enough to get him into a proper home. None of that VA bullshit, where the elderly got dropped off like unwanted dogs at the pound. It would take a year, maybe two if his father’s disability checks couldn’t cover the first wave of costs, but in either case, he’d be done. Out of the country, only this time, he wasn’t ever coming back.
***
He was forty-five minutes late by the time he pulled into work. Sunlight streaked across the tops of the oil tanks ahead of him, lighting each up like the rim of a candle. There weren’t any trucks at the filling station yet, which meant Mark was still in the office, waiting to scold him.
He pushed through the front door and beelined it to the sign-in sheets. Mark sat across the room from him, hunched over his desk, the top of his enormous, bald head poking over his computer screen. He was probably pretending to work while he watched woodworking videos or one of his various conspiracy-minded channels about child trafficking and lizard people.
“Your dad called,” Mark said, clicking away on his mouse.
“Is something wrong?” Danny snapped his head around, panic starring his vision. He only put the office number on the fridge at home in case of emergencies, if his cell died or if he lost reception out in the fields. He checked his phone again. No messages or missed calls.
“No, nothing like that,” Mark said, looking up from his screen. “He just called to apologize for keeping you late this morning.”
Danny stared at Mark, trying to make sense of what he’d just said. To his knowledge, he’d never heard his father apologize, not to him or his mother or anyone else for that matter.
“I guess the old man’s just worried about you is all.” Mark shrugged.
“Well, he shouldn’t have called,” Danny said, his panic cooling to its usual simmer in the pit of his stomach. What the hell did Mark mean by that anyway? He was the one who worried, not his father.
He rubbed his shoulder, trying to knead out the dull ache that had been there for days. He’d lied on the job application when it asked if he had any experience in maintenance and landscaping. He imagined mowing circles around the oil tanks, maybe repairing damaged fences, or digging ditches. To his dismay, the job consisted almost entirely of power-washing the oil tanks, which left his hands curled like talons at the end of the day.
“Hey, you never told me you were on the baseball team,” Mark said, snapping Danny out of his misery.
Danny frowned. It wasn’t like his father to share personal details with a stranger, let alone one about his son. He could imagine Mark and his father shooting the shit down at the hardware store, debating the merits of jigsaws over oscillating tools while they talked football. The kinds of conversations that always felt like work to Danny.
“What position did you play — no wait, lemme guess, they probably stuck your ass in right field.”
“Pitcher,” Danny said.
“Pitcher?” Mark howled. “Shit, that makes perfect sense actually. Always thought you were a cocky sum’bitch.”
“Not cocky enough probably.” Danny slipped his cigarettes into the pocket of his work shirt. “Got cut my junior year.” It wasn’t entirely true, but Danny wasn’t about to explain to Mark why he’d chosen theater over sports.
When he told his father that he’d quit the baseball team, he expected him to throw a fit, or worse, put him to work. Labor was the man’s preferred form of punishment, and if Danny didn’t like it, he could always move in with his mother down in Texas. To his surprise, his father didn’t even look up from his TV show while Danny rambled on about feeling alive on the stage, more than he ever did playing sports. I guess you’re a faggot now then.
Danny dug through his locker for a pair of earplugs and his work gloves. Behind him, Mark shifted in his chair, clearing his throat.
“You know, my grandpa had Parkinson’s.”
Most people couldn’t even understand his father on the phone, the way his words got trapped in the echo chamber of his spasming larynx. Not so for someone who knew the disease, lived with it.
“Sorry to hear that.” Danny gripped his fists inside his work gloves.
Why was this conversation pissing him off so much? Couldn’t he just be fucking normal and ask people about their families? He hardly even knew anything about Mark.
“Shit fucking disease,” Mark said, rubbing the corners of his goatee, eyes darting back and forth across his desk. “They say it skips a generation.”
“Not always.” Danny shook his head. “Only if it’s early onset, and even then, it’s not always a given that it’s hereditary.”
He could still feel the cold tile of Lucia’s bedroom on his feet, the sleepless nights he spent at her drafting table scrolling through WebMD pages, then later, when his anxieties weren’t quelled, through a thicket of peer-reviewed articles. None of it helped. Lucia said he was displacing the grief he felt over his father, not just the diagnosis, but the decade he’d been estranged from him. She wouldn’t say that if she’d ever met the man.
“You were close with him?” Danny shut his locker and leaned back against it.
“I was.” A tiny smile drifted onto Mark’s face. “Me and him used to go bow-hunting down at Driskill’s place on the first day of the season. Caught a twelve-point down there once, first shot.” He chuckled, motioning with his finger the arrow’s arc through the deer’s neck. “Gramps said it was a lucky shot — which it was — but I knew he was proud of me.”
A tanker truck came rumbling to a stop outside the office, a cloud of red dust sweeping past it. The driver swung out of the truck and jumped down to the ground. With a quiet groan, Mark pushed himself to his feet from the edge of his desk and lumbered towards the door.
Relief washed over Danny. He’d done enough, asking about the man’s grandfather. He just wanted to get to work.
Mark stopped by the door, pressing his palm against the glass.
“Just remember to hold onto the days you got left,” he said with a little nod. “Even the bad ones.”
“Sure.” Danny said and let out an exasperated laugh. He couldn’t remember what a good day even looked like.
***
He didn’t used to believe in ghosts until he came back home. Now he saw them everywhere, howling through the oil fields or lingering in the vacant lots along main street. The old carwash where Jackie Sheehan overdosed on fentanyl. The trailer just off 4th and Elm, where Bobby Turner, in the midst of an ugly custody battle with his ex-wife, shot his two daughters in the head before turning the gun on himself.
Mostly though, he saw the ghosts that weren’t yet there. His own jumped out at him like some bad horror movie monster when he drove past the old ballpark where he played little league or the abandoned train depot where he and his friends used to drink beer. Or maybe he was the ghost, and those memories were the things that still lived on.
***
Danny’s uncle was the one who told him about his father’s diagnosis. It was the first sunny day in weeks in Berlin, and he and Lucia decided to go to Mauer Park to peruse the vintage stalls and have a picnic. The whole city apparently had the same idea, crowding atop the levee that overlooked the flea market. They settled for a spot near the amphitheater, spreading their blanket in the damp grass. It was karaoke Sunday, and a woman was singing an off-key rendition of a Johnny Cash song.
“I could never do this,” Lucia shuddered.
“Really?” Danny smiled, leaning back on his elbows. “I like your voice.”
“It’s not really about the singing though, is it?” She cracked open a beer with her lighter and handed it to him. “See?” She motioned towards the woman, who was sauntering across the stage now as she belted out the lyrics. The crowd egged her on, howling and stamping their feet to the song’s beat.
“Oh come on, you’re an actor,” Danny said with a grin.
“Don’t do that.” Lucia pulled out little wax paper bundles of walnuts and dried cherries and camembert from her rucksack.
“Do what?” He took a swig of beer. He should just drop it — it was too sunny today to be bickering — but he couldn’t stand it when she acted pretentious about her acting. It was experimental theater for Christ’s sake, not fucking Broadway.
“Did you forget the knife?” She dug through the bottom of her rucksack.
“I thought you packed everything,” he said.
“No, I told you to,” she sighed, pulling apart the baguette with her hands. “It’s fine.”
The song ended and the woman blew kisses to the cheering crowd. A hairy little man came on next and sang Prince.
“Are we still going to Ada’s thing on Saturday?” he asked.
“I guess.” She shrugged. She looked too pale in the light of day, like the weeklong rain had drained the blood from her face.
“You don’t sound so thrilled,” he said.
“All we ever do is go to dinner parties,” she said.
Danny’s stomach clenched. These conversations always ended the same way. She was right, their life had grown stale, but inserting a child into the equation surely wasn’t the answer either.
“Maybe we should go somewhere next weekend,” he said, hoping to change the subject.
“Go where?” She peered back up at him, looking hopeful. She’d just cut her hair short again, the same way she wore it when they first met. He forgot how well it framed her face, her high cheekbones and the sharp curve of her jaw. “Wait, no, I have a doctor’s appointment next weekend.” Her eyes fell back to the ground.
“I should probably pick up another shift anyway,” he said, staring back out across the crowded flea market.
There was always an excuse, some reason to stay at home instead of travel. He mistook her for an adventurous person when they first met on that bus to Copenhagen. She shared her potato chips with him, chatting about serial killers and having sex with robots. He had wished he had that kind of confidence around strangers.
He was tired of the endless cycle of potlucks and afterparties, too. He was tired of meeting new people, trying to render sensible the series of life choices that brought him to Berlin, working at coffee shops to make ends meet. Sometimes he forgot why he was even here, beyond Lucia of course.
Danny’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and stared at the screen. It was a 405 number, but no one in his family ever called him directly from Oklahoma anymore, opting instead to use a long-distance service that routed the calls through Delaware.
“I should take this,” he said, jumping up from the blanket. Lucia said something to him, but the music drowned out her voice.
He headed towards the street, still staring at his screen. The number was almost familiar, pushing through the clouds of some distant memory. When he was far enough away from the music and the cheering crowd, he answered.
“Danny, hi.” He recognized his uncle’s raspy-thin voice. “It’s John — your mother gave me your number.”
Danny sat down on the curb. He could tell by his uncle’s voice that something was wrong. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d spoken to his uncle. His grandmother’s funeral, probably, seven years ago. They exchanged pleasantries about Germany, where John was stationed in the 50s.
“I’m calling about your father.”
The conversation lasted only a minute or two — neither were much for small talk — but the details of what his uncle told him drummed in his head as he wandered down the street. Progressing quickly. If we’d known earlier. Of course his father had managed to hide the disease from the family. He probably would have preferred to die alone in his house, have the yard guy find him rotting away in his easy chair. Better than anyone seeing you weak.
A tram groaned to a halt beside him, and passengers spilled onto the walkway. He studied the rail map for a moment, tracing his finger along the M13 to Warschauer. Lucia’s first flat was near there, with its high ceilings and overgrown balcony. He missed that place.
The last few passengers deboarded, and the tram dinged. Without thinking, he lunged through the closing doors and took a seat in the back of the car. The tram lurched through the traffic light then picked up speed, gliding past the park.
Lucia called him after a few minutes, but he didn’t feel like talking, so he turned his phone on silent. He reached Warschauer and transferred to the S-Bahn. On the ring line, the city streaked past him, the apartment blocks shapeshifting as the train passed from East to West Berlin. It never ceased to amaze him that this city of walls felt so open now. He could go anywhere he wanted.
***
He took his father to Joseph’s on his day off. They went early to avoid the rush — the man couldn’t stand waiting more than fifteen minutes for his food — but also because they were less likely to run into anyone they knew. His father had become even less social since his diagnosis, but when Danny suggested that he get out of the house more, he bristled.
“You try getting around in this thing.” His father clanked the side of his wheelchair with his fork.
He’d been acting pissy since Danny cut his steak into bitesize pieces for him. I’m not a goddamn child. Except that he was, at least when it came to feeding himself. And getting dressed and going to the bathroom for that matter. Losing control like that must have been hard. Still, he didn’t have to act bitter about it all the time.
“I’m sure Raul wouldn’t mind taking you somewhere when I’m at work.” Danny dipped his french fry into a dollop of mayo.
“And go where?”
“I don’t know, anywhere,” Danny paused. What was there to do in this town? “You could go to the movies. Matinee tickets are cheap.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he scowled.
“What’s so ridiculous about that? You used to like going.”
During his last year of high school, Wednesday night at the movies became something of an unspoken tradition between him and his father. It was a night previously reserved for church, but after his mother left, neither of them had much interest in going. The subversion secretly thrilled him, not just skipping church but watching R-rated films when he was still just sixteen.
“I’m not paying for something I can get on my damn TV. No thank you,” his father said in the tone that meant the conversation was over.
Danny swallowed his frustration. The doctor had already warned his father twice about staying active, but the old man wasn’t about to listen to a woman half his age. Why did Danny think it would be any different with him?
An elderly couple shuffled into the restaurant, holding hands as they made their way to a booth in the far corner. A pang of despair gripped Danny’s chest. What would happen when one of them was too sick to have Sunday lunches out? When they were too weak even to share a meal at their dining table together?
When he left Berlin, Lucia insisted on taking him to the airport. She cried in the back of their taxi, tears streaming down her face as she watched the city pass them by. I just wish I understood why you’re doing this. I thought you hated him.
He glanced back at his father, who was struggling to guide a piece of steak into his mouth. His trembling hand betrayed him at the last moment, and the steak fell into his lap.
“Christ,” he muttered, fumbling about to clean the grease from his pants.
“Let me help you.” Danny dipped a napkin in his water glass and circled around the table.
“You’re just going to make it worse.” He dabbed at the grease spot on his father’s crotch.
“Great, now it looks like I’ve pissed myself.”
“Nothing you haven’t done before,” Danny said, and both men chuckled.
“Thanks.” His father held the napkin in his lap to cover up the water spot. “Getting old’s no fun.”
“You’re not that old.” Danny sat back down across the table.
“Might as well be.” He shook his head, staring down at his half-finished dinner. “No fun.”
A family pushed through the front door, looking haggard from the midday heat, the two young boys draped on either side of their parents as they shuffled into the dining area. Their father yanked the older boy by the arm, ordering him to stand straight.
“Why didn’t you ever come to any of my plays?” Danny poked at his salad. “I get why Mom never did — I mean, I don’t really get it, but at least she had an excuse with Steve and the twins.”
They hadn’t spoken of his mother since she left, certainly not of the man she’d left his father for. Steve, with his ready-made family and house in the suburbs. Danny wondered what it would have been like if he’d joined them instead of staying here to finish out high school. He probably wouldn’t be here now, waiting for his father to have one of his classic outbursts.
His father opened his mouth like he was about to say something, but nothing came out. A confused expression washed across his face, his mouth still ajar as his eyes darted back and forth across the table. A tremor took hold of his hands, vibrating up his arm and into his shoulders, until his entire torso rocked back and forth.
“I wanted to,” he finally said, his voice tiny as a child’s.
“Don’t worry about it.” Danny straightened in his chair. He would’ve called his father out — he didn’t give a shit about anything after Mom left — but the old man had fallen back into his tremor. It always got worse when he was upset, the poor bastard.
I thought you hated him.
The waiter circled around the table, collecting plates and refilling their water glasses.
“Can I get y’all anything else?” Her smile faltered at the sight of his father, still quivering in his chair. Staring at him actually, like a kid who doesn’t know any better. Hadn’t she ever seen anyone with Parkinson’s before?
“Just the check, please.”
***
He took the back roads home from work, winding through the blackjack hollows and over dry creek beds. The late afternoon sun sparkled through the leaves, dappling his face. He rolled down the windows and cranked up the radio, which by some miracle was playing Talking Heads. Dust from the road swirled into his truck cab, scratching at the back of his throat while he sang.
An animal emerged from a clearing of underbrush and streaked across the road. Danny nearly swerved into the ditch to avoid hitting it. He thought it was a dog at first, but its slender face and streaks of golden fur were unmistakable. It was a coyote.
He pulled his truck to the side of the road and killed the engine, staring at the creature through his back window. The coyote stood motionless in the switchgrass along the ditch, snout angled towards the sky, like it was pointing at something for Danny to see.
He hadn’t seen a coyote in years, just heard them yipping in the woods outside the house at night. When he was a kid, the sound terrified him. Coyotes killed his dog Millie, and every night they would return to his house to laugh about it.
He opened the door to get a closer look, but the animal bolted, darting through the barbwire fence and towards a patch of scrubby cedars. He waited a few minutes longer in the hopes of catching another glimpse of the animal, but it wasn’t going to show its face again with him there, so he started his truck back up and headed home.
What was a coyote doing out in the daylight like that? It could have been rabid, gone haywire from the lack of water and started chasing the sun. The creature didn’t seem deranged, though. Just out of place.
A few miles down the road, their house, tiny and ramshackle, emerged from a clearing in the woods. He never used to understand his father’s anxieties about keeping back the undergrowth, but for a glimpse he saw it, the bramble and saplings crowding around their fence, wisteria curling through the gaps. It would only take a few weeks of neglect before the forest enveloped them completely.
He circled around to the back of the house and parked by the dog pens. The caregiver had already left, which meant his father would be inside, waiting for him. He crouched by the dog pens, letting Lady and Chocolate lick his fingers through the chain link. Cicadas churned in the trees overhead, pushing back the afternoon heat.
He stopped at the back door, peering through the window and into the living room, where his father was curled onto his recliner, watching Bonanza reruns. He couldn’t stand those old Westerns, but maybe later tonight he could coax him into watching Goodfellas for the hundredth time. He would make them lasagna tonight, and if he was feeling up to it, he might even bake one of his mother’s famous pies. The crabapples in the front yard were just beginning to ripen.
He turned the doorknob and tiptoed inside, in case the old man was sleeping, but when he put his keys on the kitchen table, his father stirred.
“Danny?” His voice warbled up from his chair.
“Yeah, it’s me,” he whispered. “I’m home.”
Image: Oil Field Tanks by Vincent Parsons, flickr, licensed under CC 2.0.
- Passing Through - November 8, 2024
Excellent story. Thank you for writing it.
Hey ! Are you actually living in West Virginia ? I have a new friend who lives there; he told me that he is the only resident of his county who voted for Kamala Harris.