“When I say everything, I mean everything,” Robert said bitterly. “I’m not just talking about the last two weeks when you corrupted me and made me see and do things I’d never even imagined. I’m not just talking about your great friend Leo who gave us worthless phone numbers. I’m talking about my whole life. Not to mention my entire generation. You people have ruined everything for us with your greed and your predatory consumption of all the resources of the planet. It’s like you were a bunch of drunks on the greatest bender of all time. You sucked everything dry and left us nothing but shit. When I think about it now, where I am, I think, How fucking selfish can you be?”
Stenko took it all like lashes that didn’t really hurt. Instead, he sat up enough to see clearly out of the window near his feet. Man, what a night. The long vibrant Technicolor dusk that dominated the western half of the sky for a half hour had faded into an exhausted twilight of blue-grays and midnight blue. Hard pitiless stars grew in intensity as the sky went black. The sliver of a moon looked like an afterthought.
“Do you ever think about what you left us?” Robert asked, his voice higher than normal.
Stenko said, “Doesn’t it matter that I’m doing everything I can to make it up to you?”
“It’s not enough,” Robert said with a snarl. “There are too many sins of the father.”
He was angry, manic. Stenko figured Robert was going to vent at him until he could reach some kind of equilibrium and calm back down. In the meantime, though, Stenko just let it roll. He threw his attention toward the dregs of the big western sunset and thought about how few sunsets he’d actually studied in his lifetime and what he’d missed. To think that this fireworks display occurred every night of the year-amazing. And there was no cost of admission. All one had to do was watch it. The thought of that-just watching the sunsets-hit him like a hammer. So simple. And it had taken more than six decades to experience the joy of a great sunset. How could that be possible?
It was then he knew this was it. It was crushingly disappointing for him to think that his last actual thoughts on earth might be about how beautiful the sunsets could be in Wyoming. He wanted more than that. He wanted some kind of reward, some measure of wisdom. Something from heaven. But maybe, he thought, God had priorities and a pathetic gangster from Chicago was pretty low on the list. He could live with that, so to speak. But in his hope for wisdom, he was stuck on how mundane his insights were. And when he put them into words, ah!-it was awful. They tended to resemble the phrases on the posters mounted to the ceiling he used to read in agony while on his back in the dental hygienist’s office. Crap like:
HAPPY IS THE HEART THAT HOLDS A FRIEND.
HE WHO LAUGHS… LASTS!
HARD WORK IS THE YEAST THAT RAISES THE DOUGH.
On it went. Sappy bromides from another era. Crap from hayseed publications like Grit Magazine, the only subscription his mother ever had.
Now here he was, wondering if he’d seen his last sunset and wondering if they’d always been that great. He doubted it. He wanted to think 99 percent of the time the sunsets sucked and no one noticed. That maybe this one was special.
And he almost completely tuned out Robert going on and on and on about how it was all his fault that Robert was wretched.
Stenko was ready to take responsibility for Robert’s wretchedness. It was just that he’d rather do so on his own terms. What a mistake it had been to try and reunite the family. How ridiculous it was that he’d fallen into a kind of pathetic role-reversaclass="underline" the father desperately trying to gain some kind of approval from the son. Stenko realized how stupid it had been, how quixotic. To think that he could pick up the son who hated his guts and a girl who resembled Carmen and to somehow assemble them into what he remembered fondly as his only real family… was a failure. April/Carmen died once again and Robert tuned violent and then lost his mind. Stenko smiled with cynicism when he contemplated how badly it had gone. All Robert cared about was his silly website and his vapid efforts to save the planet. He didn’t know what April had wanted, and that continued to haunt him. April was special. What had happened to her was unfair. That she’d died in the crash Robert had carelessly instigated by grabbing for the cash in the box was more than tragic.
His attention drifted back over to Robert, who was still yammering.
“Al Gore said something recently that sounded like he was talking directly to me,” Robert said, “as if he were a human oracle who could anticipate my problems and address them directly.”
Stenko said, “A Gore-acle.”
The rancher chuckled and quickly looked away.
“What?” Robert asked.
“Never mind,” Stenko said. “What did he say?”
Robert snorted triumphantly. Stenko thought it was one of the five Robert gestures that at least came across as sincere.
Robert looked him in the eyes and said, “‘Future generations may well have occasion to ask themselves, What were our parents thinking? Why didn’t they wake up when they had a chance?’ We have to hear that question from them, now.’ ”
Finally, after several moments, Stenko said, “So do you want an answer or do you just want to ask the question?”
Robert narrowed his eyes. “What is your answer, Father?” Sarcasm dripped.
“My answer is I was too goddamned busy to contemplate the question. Not everyone has the time to sit around and be bitter like your generation of thumb-suckers, Robert.”
Again, the rancher chortled.
Robert angrily raised his pistol and pointed it at the rancher’s temple. “You stay out of this. This is between me and my dad.”
“Don’t shoot him,” Stenko said lazily from the back seat. “If you shoot him, we’ll crash again. One car crash a day is my limit.”
Walter the rancher said, “Can I ask how far you boys are going to take me from home?”
Robert said, “As far as we want to. Now shut the hell up and drive.”
Stenko didn’t like the dismissive way Robert talked to the old rancher. He also knew Robert wouldn’t want to leave a witness who could tell the cops which way they were headed and describe the vehicle. Robert had turned out to be much more cold-blooded than Stenko thought possible. And so damned bitter.
“I’ve got a question for you,” Stenko said to Robert. “Why in the hell is it you feel like you’re entitled to a perfect world? No other generation ever thought they were, I don’t think. What’s so special about yours that you can blame me for your misery?”
Robert rolled his eyes with contempt. “Maybe because no other generation was handed a planet ready to burn up. Maybe because we’re better informed and we know that.”
Stenko said, “So if you’re all so smart with your computers and iPhones and technology, why don’t you fix the problems you’re complaining about? You just want to blame other people-me-and bitch and moan. It’s your turn now, so why don’t you solve all these problems?”