“Twenty minutes,” I said. “But we have to pick up some things on the way back.”
“Like what?” Dad asked.
“I’ll tell you later,” I said, and hung up.
Dad’s truck was like his cabin: immaculate. Except for a few dead leaves on the driver’s floor mat, it was spotless inside, and the gas gauge was only a needle’s width from full. Dad had never let the tank on any vehicle he’d ever owned go below the halfway point, and any time I’d ever borrowed his car as a teenager, I made sure to never leave it with anything less than three-quarters of a tank of gas. “It’s simple preparedness,” he’d say. You get an overnight oil crisis, and you’re all set.
Braynor District Hospital wasn’t hard to find. It sat on a hill on the road going out of Braynor to the north, and driving into town from the south you could see the blue “H” atop the building in the distance. I swung through the entrance to Emergency and saw Dad waiting for me behind the glass doors, sitting in a wheelchair with a pair of crutches in front of him, propped on his shoulders.
I left the truck running, exhaust spewing out the tailpipe, and as the electric doors parted, Dad said, “What are you doing, leaving the truck running?”
“Dad, I’m right here, I can see the tr-”
“Someone could just run up and make off with it,” he said.
“For Christ’s sake, Dad, we’re like, twenty feet away from it,” as I reached over to take the crutches. “Can you just crank it down for a second?” I went back to the truck, slipped the crutches in the short cargo area behind the seats, then returned to my father.
“We taking the wheelchair?” I asked.
“No, just wheel me to the truck, and then you leave it here.”
I nodded, pushed the chair close to the truck, opened the passenger door, then wheeled the chair a bit closer. Dad reached out, grabbed the truck’s inside door handle, and started hauling himself out of the chair, resisting my attempts to assist him. “I’ve got it,” he said, putting his weight on one foot only. The other was clad in just a thick sock, which was pulled up over whatever bandaging they’d wrapped around his ankle.
Once he was in the truck and seatbelted in, I closed the door and returned the wheelchair to the lobby. Then I was back in the truck.
“Where’s a good sporting goods store?” I said, putting the truck into gear.
“What?” asked Dad. “You’re not going to help me? You’re just up here to do a little fishing?”
Just hold it together, I told myself. “Bear spray,” I said. “It’s like pepper spray. It was a friend of your neighbors became dinner for a bear in your woods. So I figure, unless you want to be his breakfast tomorrow, maybe we should get ourselves a can or two.”
My father considered that a moment. “That’s a good idea,” he said, apparently surprised that I could come up with one. “You can’t be too safe, you know.”
“My thoughts exactly,” I said.
6
WE DISCUSSED BUYING FIVE CANS of bear pepper spray-one for each of the cabins-but when I ran into the sporting goods store and found they were about fifty bucks each, I knew Dad would be relieved to find that they only had a couple cans of the stuff left. There was dust on the tops, indicating that the product was not exactly flying off the shelf.
I popped into a men’s shop on the main street for some extra underwear and socks, since I’d left the city without packing. When I got back into the pickup, Dad said he was thinking about inviting everyone from the other cabins to his place for dinner and beer.
“Everyone’s probably kind of shook up, with what happened and all,” Dad said. “That poor son of a bitch, getting eaten by a goddamn bear. And I don’t want everyone bailing on me either, leaving me with a bunch of empty cabins. Cabin three’s already empty. You can help yourself to that one.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Dad pointed up the street to Henry’s Grocery, said I could get everything I needed there while he sat in the truck and nursed his ankle. “You know how to buy groceries?” he asked. “Or is that something Sarah does?”
“Sometimes she takes me with her, puts me in the little seat so I can pick up some tips,” I said.
Dad said that if Bob did well out on the lake today, he’d bring some fish that could be fried up. But Dad also wanted frozen hamburger patties, buns, stuff for making salad, chips, plenty of beer. He was very specific. “Not those buns with the sesame seeds on top. They get caught in my teeth. I hate that. And get the frozen sirloin burgers, not the mystery meat stuff.”
“Okay, Dad.”
“And none of that light beer. Nobody wants to drink that pony piss.”
“Got it, Dad.”
“Did I mention about the sesame seeds?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“I don’t want you to make a mistake, that’s all.”
“Hey, what about the Wickenses?” I asked. “You inviting them to this shindig? They really took the hit on this one. It was the daughter’s boyfriend the bear decided to have for lunch.”
Dad looked straight ahead through the windshield. “I think the best thing would be to let them deal with their grief in private.”
“What’s the deal with them anyway?” I asked. “The Keep Out signs and the gate and the barbed wire. Isn’t that your property they’re on?”
Dad swallowed, kept looking out the window. I noticed him clenching his right fist. “That’s none of your concern, Zachary.”
“All I’m saying is, who are these people? The property looks like it’s going to ratshit. Old cars, a fridge outside, and Jesus, have you seen those pit bulls? They nearly took a leg off me when the chief and Bob and I went up there to talk to them. Who keeps fucking dogs like that? Nutcases, that’s who. Have you seen the teeth on those things? I’d rather go swimming with sharks than knock on their front door if-”
“Zachary!” Dad bellowed. “Enough!”
“Dad, look, they’re on your property. They’re renting your farmhouse. If you’ve got some problem with them, you should do something about it.”
He turned and glared at me. “Did I say I had a problem with them? Have I complained to you about them? Have I said one damn thing to you about them?”
I slammed the truck door and headed up the street for Henry’s Grocery. I noticed along the way, taped to the light standards, flyers for the fall fair, which kicked off with a parade four days from now, on Saturday. And some other posters, taped just above or below the ones for the fall fair, headlined “Keep the Parade Straight!”
I didn’t know what that meant, exactly. Perhaps, other years, it had taken a roundabout, serpentine route through Braynor that had somehow made the fall fair parade a less than spectacular entertainment. I didn’t bother to read the rest of the poster to find out. I was on a mission.
Once inside Henry’s, I grabbed a cart with two front wheels so badly aligned and balanced I wondered briefly whether Braynor was built on a fault line. Working without a list, I made my way through the store, picking up a head of romaine, some croutons, a bag of hamburger buns without sesame seeds, God forbid.
I was coming around the end of the aisle when I nearly ran the cart into a thin, white-coated man who at first I thought had escaped from some laboratory, but the absence of a pocket full of pens and the presence of blood splotches identified him as someone who had recently been behind the meat counter. Then I noticed the name “Charles” stitched to his jacket, and the clipboard in his hand.
He peered at me over his wire glasses.
“Hello,” he said.
I nodded.
“Charles Henry,” he said, offering a hand. I didn’t have a chance to check it for blood before I took it. “Manager, Henry’s Grocery. I don’t believe I know you.”