my head. No, she had just stepped onto the street when the westbound bus struck her square.
He nodded slowly, as if this was the answer he had feared. He turned toward the fireplace, his face blasting yellow. I took advantage of the moment, took a half step closer, and squinted. So this was my father. I scanned for physical similarities and was taken aback: he was me, only dragged through hell. I felt a mixture of revulsion and excitement—part of what made this man so unnerving also existed within me. A quick glance around gave me only the slimmest hints of his life: a low ceiling, rough wooden floors, a creeping darkness. Firelight flickered strangely over a multifaceted brick wall; no, not bricks but books of all shapes and sizes, hundreds of them, stacked from floor to ceiling. I grasped at it—an intellectual garbageman, that wasn’t so bad. Perhaps he rescued these volumes from trash cans and brought them back here. That would explain the pungent odor.
His hands pushed down at his knees and he was up. Fully unfurled, he dwarfed me. His forearms split the flaps of his shirtsleeves. Wires of gray hair filled in the V at his sternum. Like me, he buckled his belt on an inner notch, but his thighs left little room inside the battered pants. All I could see of his boots was that they were black and big.
There were two large gray sacks at his side, and he strapped them to his shoulders. He took a step forward, halted, and focused his eyes on my chest, as if he would rather wait me out than continue speaking. Wood crackled and snapped. We stood six feet from each other, both of us planted to the ground with added weight.
He drew snot through his nose and spat, presumably into the fire. Head down, he came right at me. I stumbled backward, outside of the cabin once more. Wrenching a ring of keys from his hip pocket, he passed me, the rotten smell briefly intensifying. His fingers nimbly isolated a key as he walked. I noticed for the first time the outline of a pickup truck at the side of the house. He was leaving. I had just arrived and he was leaving.
“Dad,” I said, realizing too late that it was my first word. In a way, it was also my last: it was a name I would never call him again.
He reached the truck. His right arm fell; the key ring jingled. After a moment he turned his head halfway, the fingers of light from the house barely kindling his cheek.
“You want someone to blame? Blame me. I killed her.”
His chest expanded, daring me to draw out the moment. I just stood there, gnats bumping against my face and neck. Satisfied that we were finished, my father tossed the cloth sacks into the truck bed. I saw a glint of keys, a hint of his clownish hair, and the moonlight shimmering from the opening and closing door of his truck. The engine coughed and headlights gave acute dimension to the trees. Tires turned. Branches snapped. I was left in dissipating exhaust lit by brake lights of diminishing red. He was gone.
A gnat made contact with my naked eye—only this woke me from my trance. I lunged inside and shut the door, releasing my green backpack and duffel bags to the floor. I closed my eyes, rolled my aching shoulders, and took deep breaths. The odor was persistent. He was a garbageman, I kept telling myself. Stinks were part of the job. So were odd hours. Maybe right now he was picking up an extra shift in the next town over. That bag he carried was his gear: pokers for loose refuse, shovels for scraping Dumpster bottoms, sanitary jumpsuits, plastic gloves. This is normal, I told myself, while my heart hurt itself against my ribs. This is exactly how a father and son interact.
There was indeed a fireplace, and I sat down where my father had been sitting. The seat was still warm and I shifted, disturbed by his alien temperature. I looked around. The cabin was dominated by this single room, anchored at one end by the ashy hearth and at the other by a sink, a stove, and a refrigerator. Between the two ends was a random topography of cardboard boxes, half-zippered bags, buckets brimming with trash, and mountains of books. Overwhelming everything else were newspapers, stacks upon musty stacks. From a glance I