Thinking back on it now, Ani and her father were probably right. He was a lunatic, and his son saw it. Jack Kind, this man who called himself Dad even though he was never around, swaggering up the porch steps bleeding and smiling and smeared with soot. He’d become what he loathed, what he feared.
His own father was an engineer and an alcoholic. All summer long, he’d sit out in his toolshed where he stashed his liquor and get so drunk he’d sleep the night out there. Jack’s brother said he was just avoiding their mother, that she had somehow worn him down. She was seeing other men, Terry would say. “Dad told me.” She was the one who screamed and threw dishes, hit their father with closed fists, and he took it. For a long time, Jack believed Terry’s view of things—their mother had lost her mind, hated their father, and tortured him until he could hardly stand to live in the same house. One night, when Jack was maybe ten years old, his father set up a second chair and invited him to sit. It was a cool night with a clear sky. His father swirled a glass and tipped it to his lips. Everything stank of wet cigars. They watched the sky for a long time before the old man patted Jack on the arm and said, “Never be like your mother, Jackie. She’s weak. Have no patience for weak people.” Jack wasn’t sure what this meant. Eventually his father shooed him to bed. Through the wall, he heard his mother crying.
She left just before he turned seventeen. No note. Just gone. They all knew it was coming. Terry was right about her seeing another man. It had been going on for years. Maybe he finally convinced her to sneak away. At first, Jack was glad she’d left. He thought things would improve. The old man might come inside, spend time with his sons. By that point, Terry was always off at Greene’s place ten miles down the road, taking cars apart and putting them back together. Jack occupied himself thinking about girls he didn’t stand a chance with. It was a very lonely time, and the house was especially empty without his mother. In her absence, he saw what he couldn’t before. She was the one who set and cleaned the table, cooked the meals and filled the serving bowls, paid for Jack and Terry’s autocar tickets when they needed a ride. Without her, the house barely existed. She had not been the force driving them apart like Terry thought. And the old man still spent his evenings by the toolshed muttering angry mantras and kicking empties. He’d gotten worse.
About a year after she left, Jack confronted his father. Stormed out to the shed and stood with his hands on his hips, glaring. It was his mother’s pose, and he spoke with his mother’s accusatory words: “What would it take for you to be happy?” His father would not look at him. He burped loudly and pulled gulps straight from the bottle. He’d developed a massive gut and the lawn chair conformed perfectly to his body. This was his ruin. Unmown yard, garden bursting with weeds, the shed roof slumping in the center and covered in moss. There were no answers here. Whatever plagued his father, it was incurable, or at least the man would not seek its cure. He wanted to die sad and lonely. Considered it a badge of honor. So Jack did all he could do. When he turned eighteen, he enlisted.
The war had been going strong for nine months. It would take him across the solar system, far from that broken home. And they’d pay him. He would never be stationary like the old man. His mother had tried to wait things out, but realized in time that her own survival meant moving on. By that point, Jack and Terry were old enough to take care of themselves. She did what she had to. Jack understood. Respected it, even. He vowed that if things got bad in any one place, he’d take off too. He did not foresee being stuck in a POW camp for two years, a pretty big wrench in his plans. Yet it was the promise to keep moving that kept him alive. He saw what despair did to people. It got his father and it got men in the camps, guys who traded the morning work detail for a life-threatening beating, who remained in their bunks and smoked their last cigarettes and downed their last crumbs, the final burst of pleasure before their bodies began shutting down. Soon they would catch some disease or simply die in their sleep. He could not blame them. They had had enough. But he was not that way. He would outlast everyone. Stay alive till rescue came. He’d kill if he had to, and he did. Sitting now in the sinkless bathroom with the weird suction cup toilet under his ass, revolver plugged against his chin, he is not so sure he made the right decision. The ones who died had it easier. They didn’t have blood on their hands. Didn’t have to suffer through the nightmares. Didn’t have to question. If he never returned to Ani, they never would have had Kip. He’d never have pushed her into the arms of another man the same way his father did to his mother. He’d never have seen his crew trapped in a panic pod with a monster ramming the door.
If he died all those years ago, how much misery would these people have been spared?
They aren’t friends. They’re coworkers. He is alone. Like always.
He’s lost his chance at being a father. That’s true. He’ll never grow into that idol of paternal warmth he sometimes daydreams about. But there are people that matter more than him now. He can give his son a future and he can protect his crew. They have to get back to civilization with Dandy alive. Somehow.