The Pagan Stone Page 0,53

between father and son.

"Mr. Turner, I'm Cybil Kinski." He stood, Cybil thought, looking embarrassed, and a little scared. His hair had gone thin and gray. He had Gage's height, but a scrawnier build. It would be the years of drinking, she assumed, that had dug the lines in his face and webbed the broken capillaries over it. His eyes were a watered-down blue that seemed to struggle to meet hers.

"Sorry. I thought if Gage was here, I could..."

"Yes, he is. Come in. He's back in the kitchen. Why don't you have a seat and I'll-"

"He won't be staying." Gage's voice was brutally neutral when he stepped in. "You need to go."

"If I could have just a minute."

"I'm busy, and you're not welcome here."

"I asked Mr. Turner in." Cybil's words dropped like stones into the deep well of silence. "So I'll apologize to both of you. And I'm going to leave you alone to deal with each other. Excuse me."

Gage didn't so much as glance at her as she walked back toward the kitchen. "You need to go," he repeated.

"I just got some things to say."

"That's not my problem. I don't want to hear them. I'm living here for now, and as long as I am, you don't come around here."

Bill's jaw tightened; his mouth firmed. "I put this off since you came back to town. I can't put it off anymore. You give me five minutes, for Chrissake. Five minutes, and I won't bother you no more. I know you only come around the bowling center when I'm off. You hear me out, I'll make myself scarce anytime you want to come in, see Cal. I won't come around you, you got my word."

"Because your word always meant so much?"

Color came and went in Bill's face. "It's all I got. Five minutes, and you're rid of me."

"I've been rid of you." But Gage shrugged. "Take your five."

"Okay then." Bill cleared his throat. "I'm an alcoholic. I've been sober five years, six months, and twelve days. I let drink take over my life. I used it as an excuse to hurt you. I should've looked after you. I should've taken care of you. You didn't have nobody-anybody else, and I made it so you had nobody." His throat moved as he swallowed hard. "I used my hands and my fists and my belt on you, and I'da kept using them if you hadn't gotten big enough to stop me. I made you promises, and I broke them. Over and over again. I wasn't no kind of father to you. I wasn't no kind of man."

His voice wavered, and he looked away. While Gage said nothing, Bill took several audible breaths, then looked back into his son's face. "I can't go back and change that. I could tell you I'm sorry from now until the day I die, and it won't make up for it. I'm not going to promise you I won't drink again, but I'm not going to drink today. When I wake up tomorrow, I'm not going to drink. That's what I'm going to do, every day. And every day I'm sober, I know what I did to you, how I shamed myself as a man, and as a father. How your ma must've looked down and cried. I let her down. I let you down. I'll be sorry for that the rest of my life."

Bill took another breath. "I guess that's what I had to say. 'Cept, you made yourself into something. You did that on your own."

"Why?" If this would be the last time they faced each other, Gage wanted the answer to the single question that had haunted him most of his life. "Why did you turn on me that way? Drinking was the excuse. That's a true thing. So why?"

"I couldn't take the belt to God." Emotion gleamed in Bill's eyes, and though his voice wavered, he continued on. "I couldn't beat God with my fists. But there you were. Had to blame someone, had to punish someone." Bill looked down at his hands. "I wasn't anything special. I could fix things, and I didn't mind hard work, but I wasn't anything special. Then she looked at me. Your ma, she made me a better man. She loved me. I'd wake up every morning, go to bed every night amazed that she was there, and she loved me. She... I got a couple minutes left of my five, right?"

"Finish it then."

"You oughta know... She was-we