River Rising

“Blink,” nineteen-year-old Tom commanded his father, who was seated across from him at the kitchen table.

Instead, the old man’s stiffened fingers comforted a mug’s ceramic surface with its cryptic proclamation of World’s Greatest. The coffee inside was so old it might sprout mold, but if Henry was too stupid to brew himself a fresh pot, then tough luck for him. Tom would let him drink funk.

In the living room, a panel of aboriginal people jabbered on about something crucial like melting ice packs or glue sniffing children. When Tom arrived three days ago, his father had been parked on the sofa in front of a program called Northbeat. The scene had made Henry seem normal, but he hadn’t known enough to turn the set off when he left the room for bed that night. Tom hadn’t turned it off either; he needed background noise to live his life by; even if they didn’t get stations like Much Music in the middle of nowhere.

He hadn’t minded the Yukon silence much when he was a young hick. What with the fishing trips, ball games and snowshoeing trips his father took him on, he’d always found enough to do somehow. They’d shared some great adventures, like the time Henry helped Tom land the seventeen pound Dolly Varden he’d snagged with his own handmade Woolly Bugger fly. Now, however, after his teenage years in the big city, his entertainment needs were more risky and less legal.

Tom placed his elbows on the table although he’d been taught manners in his childhood. His father wouldn’t care; it was his mother who’d been the stickler and where had that gotten her?
She’d never even left Everlasting except to die in a stinking hospital with her body stuck full of tubes.

Tom’s hands curled into tight fists. He leaned across the table to shorten the physical void that separated him from his father. Then he tried again. “You blink for that frigging caregiver. I’m your son. Blink for me.”

His father’s taxidermic eyes remained fixed on an unmade bed at the end of the trailer hallway. Above the bed was a grainy photograph Tom hated. In it his plain-faced mother sat with a tired look in her eyes while newborn Tom slept in her arms, unaware of the crap hand life had dealt him. Standing behind mother and child, old-school Henry, pre-injury, looked proud of what his sperm had produced.

A truck turned into the yard and the noise disturbed a robin scrounging through gravel for grubs.

“Goddamn it.” He aimed his eyes back at his father. The visitor was only the irritating caregiver who was paid big bucks by the government to do diddly squat for the old man. She made a big deal about being connected to the family, but Tom refused to let on that he remembered the woman who was the sister of her father’s former best friend. They’d both let him down, these
Chinese sisters—they’d never once called him or wrote him or remembered his birthday in the years he’d been gone. Nor had they stopped social services from shipping him down south when his first foster family moved even though there was plenty of room for him in the sister’s effing huge house.

“You’re a friggin’ waste of time,” he said to Henry. “I never should’ve come.”

Getting to Everlasting, Yukon, all the way from Surrey, B.C., had not been easy. He had tried twice before, when he was twelve and fourteen, but both times the police had caught him before he got too far and delivered him back to whichever foster home he was living in. This time, however, he was the
legal age to hit the road and run out of money without anyone caring. Some rides were decent enough, a few even fed him out of the kindness of their hearts. But there were others, mean sons of bitches, who’d expected payment in kind. A ride for a ride. He’d had to jump out of one slow-moving semi and hide for an hour in the bushes. And there was the lunatic granny who stunk like cats and urine—Tom’s four hour, Barry Manilow-accompanied ride in that old biddy’s creaking Camaro didn’t bear thinking about. If he never heard Mandy again it would be too soon.

The need to see his dad had pushed him on, though. During his years in foster care, dreams of an idealized father/son reunion had kept him sane. Even though the last time he’d seen his dad the man had been prostrate on the floor with his head caved in, and even though foster parents and social workers had used descriptions like ‘practically vegetative’ and ‘severe traumatic head injury’ to describe Henry’s on-going state, and even though he’d had no contact with Henry since the attack,
Tom still expected a full recovery. What was one baseball bat to the head compared to all the barroom brawls and mining accidents Henry Bose had suffered and Tom had helped him bounce back from?

So much for a happy reunion; after three days home, his father’s immobile face and soft hula dancer tattooed arms already sickened him. He hated the sight of the old man’s steel-toed boots lined up straight as arrows, going nowhere, and the familiar cleft chin and thin lips on the face of a stranger.
Even as late as yesterday, he’d hoped for a flash of recognition from the old man. Tom’s retelling of a few of their favourite jokes had fallen flat, the family photo album he’d spread open on the table before his father hadn’t drawn so much as a glance, and neither had his fit of dish-smashing rage.

“Last chance,” he warned. To prove his seriousness, he hoisted his backpack and buckled the straps.

His father’s fingers shifted on the mug, but his yellow eyes held steady.

The caregiver So-Wah Fang, ridiculous with a mess of preternaturally red hair, let herself in.

“Ever hear of knocking?” Tom crabbed.

“‘I hear you knocking, but you can’t come in,” she sang in a high, sharp voice. From her smile, it was evident that he was expected to join in the fun.

“Save it for Karaoke night,” he said.

So-Wah set a full laundry basket on the table. She checked the contents, handing a pair of socks and two pairs of briefs to Tom. Then she eased the old man’s fingers off the mug and carried it to the sink. As she rinsed out the mug, she said, “Not leaving already are you?”

Tom stuffed the underwear in a backpack pocket as he crossed into the living room. His plucked his shades from the coffee table and his Yankees baseball cap from the sofa. The bedding he had used for three nights could rot on the couch forever, for all he cared.

The caretaker trailed him into the room. She flicked off the television set just as something interesting was finally about to come on. “When people ask a question,” she said, “they usually receive an answer.”

Tom gave her his f-you look. “I’m leaving. Nothing here to stay for.”

“How about staying for him?” She pointed to the old man, still immobile in the kitchen. “Your father’s enjoying your visit.”

The sneer on Tom’s face was genuine. “He tell you that?”

“In his own way.”

Tom felt blood rush to his face. His eyes filled, but just because of the pressure in his head. He shoved his shades on his face, then kicked open the unlatched door to prove his toughness.

“It’s like I said,” he croaked as he stepped outside into the mellow sunshine. “There’s not a damned thing here.”