Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 173392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 867(@200wpm)___ 694(@250wpm)___ 578(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 173392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 867(@200wpm)___ 694(@250wpm)___ 578(@300wpm)
I listen. He’s talking, and I want him to talk.
“Little things please me,” he says, his voice gravelly. “The scent coming in through the windows. The cooler temperature tonight. The slight humidity weighing on my skin.” He swallows, and I watch the lump move down his throat. “The sound of the wind outside, and how it always felt like this house grew out of the land just like the trees.”
I grip the edge of the sink behind me.
“I don’t want to be anywhere else right now.” He almost smiles. “In this chair on this floor that’s still stained with coffee grounds caked in the cracks from when Liv broke the pot when she was four while wrestling with Army.”
He drops his eyes, his long jean-clad legs spread in front of him as he leans back in his seat.
“Next to the stove my father cooked at,” he whispers, “and always made sure I watched and learned, because he knew I’d need to know someday.”
He goes on. “I’m not worried about the Bay and how a year from now Trace will be a fucking greenskeeper at the country club they’ll build on the land his ancestors settled. Army will be living in a trailer. We’ll never see Dallas again, and Iron will be perpetually in and out of prison for the rest of his life, because no matter what I did”—he pauses, and I hear the strain in his voice—“I failed at making any kind of a difference.”
My eyes sting.
None of that will happen. It can’t.
“I love them a little more tonight, and dislike you a little less.” He raises the bottle, takes a swig, and sets it back on the table, letting his eyes fall down my body. “And maybe I can almost see what they like about you.”
The heat of his gaze warms my skin.
“And where will you be?” I ask him.
He meets my eyes again.
“You said Army will be in a trailer,” I remind him. “Iron in prison. Dallas will leave … Where are you during all of this?”
He goes still, like a statue. Then he picks up the bottle again. “Oh, I don’t think I’ll stick around here much longer, either.”
My stomach knots. If he leaves, everything will end.
He rises, heading out of the kitchen, and I stand there as his footfalls hit the stairs. There’s a moment of silence, and then his bedroom door finally closes.
I lock my jaw, closing my eyes. What the hell did that mean?
What does he mean?
I walk, drifting up the stairs, and stop, taking a look at the pictures on the wall. Family photos, not one of them professionally done or in a studio.
In the swamp. On boats. At the beach. In the living room. First cars. Birthday parties.
Not one of them taken in the past eight years, though. None of them with Liv or Trace as teenagers. Dallas had long hair at about ten years old, it looks like.
Macon and Army are in so many, because they were completely raised by their parents, who took pictures.
Army with his beautiful green eyes.
Macon with his mother’s brown ones.
Their mother. I find her in one of the pictures. Long dark hair just like Liv, and a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. Eyes that are still beautiful, despite the dark circles.
Just like Macon’s.
I scan the photographs, noticing fewer with her in them as the kids grew up, but in each one, she’s losing more and more weight.
A tear spills down my cheek, and I walk to Army’s room, but I don’t go in. Instead, I cross the hall to Macon’s.
Leaning back into the wall next to his door, I slide to the floor and listen for him in the room where she died.
16
Dallas
The first thing I ever was in life was a poet. Since I was a kid. Before the drinking. The sex. Before I dabbled in coke, started grinding my teeth more than I smiled, and constantly began looking for the next fight.
And the next one.
And the next one.
Without ever writing a word, I was a poet. I saw beauty in the unlikely places that scared my parents. In abandoned train tracks. The foster home hells where my friends lived. In house fires, motorcycle crashes, and the destruction in the wake of a storm. In living too hard and dying too young.
In tears. In bruises. In abandonment.
I didn’t hate these things, because these things are profound. Horrible.
Tragic.
But profound.
And profound is beautiful, because it changes us.
The things I hated were the things that were lazy. Things that lacked pride. Things like … Keurigs. And punch cards and restaurants that considered potato chips an acceptable side dish.
My parents never got it. Why I wanted to peer over the edge of my grandpa’s grave to watch the dirt piling on top of his casket. Why I stole the car when I was twelve to drive out and meet the hurricane as it hit the coast. Why I liked smeared lipstick, skinned knees, messy morning hair, and the sting of my mouth being raw from a night of being used. It was all so beautiful.