“I figured.”
“Some people don’t like to hear the truth.”
And, Hank thinks as he watches Ken drive off, some people don’t like to tell it. Hank, for instance, hasn’t told anyone about the old man who has taken to following him. He didn’t even notice at first, but for the past week or two he’s felt someone watching him. He heard noises when he brought old Geronimo and Coop’s ornery pony out to the pasture. A branch breaking. An intake of breath. He has taken to looking over his shoulder, even when he and Gwen are walking home from school on the deserted High Road. Recently, he’d begun to see bits and pieces of the old man. A footprint in an icy field. A thread snagged on some witch hazel.
Hank tried to train his eyes to look beyond what he saw. A twisted oak had hands. A stack of hay wore worn leather boots. Then. one day, Hank looked behind him on the road and there was the old man, thin as a stick, pale as winter, with an unkempt beard and clothes far too big for his frame. Hank felt panic rise in his throat. He had the urge to grab the old man or to run away, but he did neither. He kept walking, and before long he realized it was his father who was following him. He knew because the old man would not cross onto Hollis’s property; instead he disappeared into the Marshes, without a sound.
What would be the point of having a father now? Hank’s all but grown, he’s managed without; he’d be embarrassed to be claimed by a pathetic drunk who doesn’t seem to know when his boots are on the wrong feet. It makes no sense; not now. It’s Hollis who raised him, Hollis to whom he owes his allegiance. All the same, Hank finds himself thinking of his father, the way he used to examine a bottle of gin before he began to drink, as if there was some promise deep inside. Well, there are no promises, that was the problem; not in drink and not in life, not now and not ever.
The door to the empty house is rattling as the wind picks up; March must have forgotten the latch. Hank is on his way to check when he sees the old man. He just won’t stop. He’s everywhere.
“What do you want?” Hank shouts.
The Coward is wearing a thick black coat Louise Justice brought him one year when the Judge grew tired of it.
“Stop following me around.” Hank can feel his face flush with anger. He doesn’t owe this guy anything, after all, not even courtesy.
The Coward is tall, like Hank, but he weighs perhaps a hundred and twenty pounds. He wants to say something, but instead he stands there, silent, his hands in his pockets.
“I want you to cut it out.” Hank’s actually sweating. Crazy, but he’s nervous being alone with his own father, not that he thinks of him that way. “Okay? Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Hank wishes he could be nastier, but it’s not in his nature. He could, if he wanted, blow this old man over with one breath. He could break him in two.
“Do you understand?” Hank asks, and for some reason he feels a burning behind his eyes, as though he might cry.
The Coward finds his son to be so beautiful it seems inconceivable that they could be the same species. Yet they are; they’re flesh and blood. What he would not give to embrace this boy, to be a father for a minute or a day. But they are at a standstill, with nowhere to go. Here is the most difficult aspect of forgiveness: You have to ask in order to receive it. This, the Coward cannot do. He can stand there, on this cold November day, but he cannot ask for what he needs. And so it is his fate to wait in silence for another day, done in by his own fear, once again.
By the time Hank is done latching the door, the Coward has disappeared back into the woods. Since the hour when Hollis came for him, Hank has never looked back. But he’s looking back now, and when he does he sees that the man on the floor they stepped over when they left that shack was consumed with grief, sick with alcohol. Hank can’t help himself, he pities his father. He almost wishes he hadn’t chased him off. Oh, he knows Hollis would consider this a weakness in him. Pity is for women, and babies, and fools. Your father got what he deserved, that’s what Hollis would say.
No one gets what he deserves, that’s what Hank is thinking now. Things happen, and sometimes it all goes wrong. An entire life can become a dead end. Hank considers this for a very long time, and by the time he’s done thinking, he’s no longer sure that Hollis has all the answers. Before he leaves, Hank goes to the garden shed for the ladder he always used for cleaning out Mrs. Dale’s gutters. It’s a heavy old ladder, but reliable and strong. He leans it against the chestnut tree and climbs up carefully. By tomorrow, Ken Helm will finish lopping off most of the branches, in the hopes that the blight will be stopped and new growth will begin in the spring.