The water was in front of us and the pines swayed.
I’d rehearsed whole paragraphs of what to say to him on the drive up. What came out was the smallest version of it.
“Pops. I need you to come home.”
He didn’t answer.
“It’s been over four years.”
He closed his eyes and looked down.
“Simone’s fifteen.”
“I know.” Finally, some sort of response.
“She’s the only girl in a house full of boys, trying to be a woman at fifteen, and she shouldn’t have to be. I do what I can. But there are things a girl needs from her father that her brother can’t give her, no matter how hard I try. And I’vetried. I’m not enough for her, Pops.”
His hands lay in his lap and his eyes stayed on the water.
“Zion’s in real trouble now, too.”
His head turned. “What kind of trouble?”
“The kind that puts you in a cell. Put a man in a hospital last week. He’s looking at real time if I can’t get him the right people.” I leaned toward him. “He’s drinking himself sick, swinging at men twice his size, and somebody is going to put him down for good if it isn’t you that reaches him first. He used to listen to you. He will again. I can’t get through to him. Can’t control him.”
My father’s mouth worked once and closed. When he spoke it was sideways, toward the practical.
“There’s a lawyer. Patterson — Yale Law. Reggie can put you on him inside a few days. I still know the judge in that county. Wade name still moves a few things. I’ll reach him before he reaches Zion.”
“He needsyou, Pops.”
“I’m giving what I can, son.”
“Tre’s going to need you too.”
He looked at me.
“He’s decided college isn’t for him. He’s been recording, and Pop — he’s got it. He’s got whatever you had. A band’s coming together. There’s talk of touring.” I turned my hands over on my knees. “I can run the label. I know how to do that now, I taught myself the whole business side, I can carry that part with my eyes closed. But that’s not the part I’m scared of.”
He didn’t say anything. He was listening, which was more than I’d expected to get.
“You know Tre. He’s nineteen and he’s wild and he’s got no brakes, and here at home I can watch him. I can rein him in, put my hand on his chest before he does the stupid thing. But I can’t do that on a tour bus in a city I’ve never been to. I can’t follow him from town to town.And I don’t know that world, Pop. I know how to read a contract. I don’t know what it’s like to walk out in front of thirty thousand people and then come down off that with nobody around who loves you. I’ve never done it.” I made myself say the rest. “You have. You know exactly what’s out there waiting for a kid like him — the people, the stuff, all of it. It’s worse now than when you were in it. And you got out. You came home. You used to tell us those stories like they were funny, but I’m older now and I know why you really quit.”
He looked away, toward the water.
He was quiet a long time. When he finally spoke there was something in his voice I hadn’t heard in three years — but it wasn’t what I’d come for.
“A man’s got to walk his own road, Julian. Make his own mistakes. Learn his own lessons. Nobody can do that part for him.” He said it to the water, not to me. “Tre will find his way better than I ever did. He doesn’t need me.”
“That’s easy to say from a lake,” I said.
He didn’t flinch. “Tell him I’m proud of him.”
“You tell him, Pop.”
He looked at me and tears fell down his face. “I can’t. I love y’all too much to?—”
“Pops,please. If you love us, you’ll come home. We’ll get you help. There are people, doctors, that know about these things. Simone’s been seeing somebody and it’s helped her. There’s help for what’s happening with you. I’ll take you myself. Every week if that’s what it takes. I’ll set the whole thing up. Just come back. Please.”
