them while talking to us, this improvisational stuff only a small handful of people in the world can play.”
“He didn’t do anything with it?” I ask.
“What, with piano?” She shrugs. “I don’t think so. He graduated with a degree in sociology and he and Tanner moved to LA. I think he just loved playing. He probably found a little jazz bar to play in, something like that.” Her eyes flick over me. “I have a question. You don’t have to answer it.”
I nod. “Okay.”
“It sounds like you had a complicated relationship with your dad. Like, you lived out in the wilderness and didn’t go to school. Basically, you didn’t have a childhood. And I can see how you might end up feeling a little bitter about that. But yet, you said you learned to play the guitar to connect with him.”
I sit back, sigh. “Yeah, you had it right—it’s complicated. I don’t know if bitter is the right word. He was a combat veteran. He rarely talked about it, but he’d have these awful nightmares. He’d wake up screaming, thrashing, yelling names. Again, I don’t know for sure, but I think he was a POW, too. It would explain why he couldn’t be indoors for more than a few hours at a time. I think I understood this about him from a very young age, that he had…demons, I guess, that he was wrestling with. Not something for a kid to have to know about his dad, but…” I shrug. “So, no, I didn’t have a normal childhood. I spent more time learning how to track a rabbit or a deer than doing algebra or chemistry, more time learning how to build a shelter with nothing but a hatchet than reading, like, Nathaniel Hawthorne.”
“Wait, when you say track a rabbit…”
I laugh. “I mean, like, track it. Find its footprints and figure out where it went, where it is, and how to kill it.”
“You can’t track a rabbit. They barely even leave footprints.”
“But they’re predictable. You snare them, more than you’d actually hunt them.”
“What does that mean?”
“Figure out where it’s likely to routinely go, and set a trap. They walk through it, trigger the snare, and it catches them. The most effective ones break their necks pretty much instantly.”
“Poor little rabbit.”
“Yeah, but poor you when you haven’t eaten meat in a week because the deer are hiding and a rabbit is all you can get.”
“And that was your childhood.”
“Yup.”
“You seem so…normal.”
I laugh. “Thanks, I think?” I sigh. “But as regards my dad, and the guitar. I knew I had to go my own way. He expected it. He was just mainly trying to get me close to adulthood so I could figure my life out. So, as soon as I felt ready, I knew it was time to leave. My dad was difficult and weird. My childhood was difficult and weird. But my dad loved me. He just had his own way of showing it. So when I left, I missed him. I don’t hate him. He didn’t abuse me. He never yelled at me, never hit me. He taught me a lot. He taught me how to craft things from wood, how to take pride in what my hands can do. How to see what the wood wants to be and help it come out.” I swallow hard; I haven’t talked about Dad like this in a long, long time. “I missed him. I missed his voice, those songs he’d play. He always packed that guitar with us, wherever we went. We’d sit in the shelter by the fire and he’d play. Teach me a few chords, and we’d sing songs together, whatever he could figure out by ear. So yeah, once I was on my own, I really missed him, and picked up a cheap old guitar from a pawn shop and learned how to play all his favorite songs, because it made me feel…closer to him, I guess. Like maybe we were playing the same song at the same time. Him out in the woods somewhere, me in my shitty sub-level one-room roach- and rat-infested apartment.”
She blinks hard. “That’s really sweet, Nathan.”
“You asked.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
Our food comes, and we take a few minutes in silence to dig in. By unspoken agreement, we save the rest of the wine for after. The food is really, really good. The piano player is teasing out a romantic rendition of a pop song I recognize but can’t name. The sun