Mendocino Fire Read Free Page B

what, nine? Shocked. Hiding it.
    â€œYou got to lie back down, Dad.”
    Nate’s boots squeaking against the deck, the two men struggled in moonlight strong enough to contract the pupils in Shug’s devastated glare. The core of bright mind he had left refused to trust his son.
    Even now: refused.
    Under his dirty T-shirt, Shug’s collarbones were set against him like bull’s horns. Gaining secure footing at last, Nate levered his weight into his dad’s bad shoulder, and when he yielded his fury was terrifying, Shug gaping up from the deck with his hair strewn across his sweat-polished temples and crazy disbelief in his eyes at having been handled thus. This wrong somehow whistled up more wrong and Nate bent close to say savagely, “You’re fucked up, Dad. Now let me do what I need to.”
    Nate called from the hospital in Eureka to tell Louise that she should come as soon as she could. Absolutely, the doctor was the best. Yeah, a bypass, kind of thing they do all the time, they said it takes four or five hours and Shug’s chances were good but they don’t tell you more than that cause they don’t want to be liable.He had resolved not to lie for the sake of reassurance, though the impulse was strong. Nate rested his knuckles against his brow, then recognized his father’s gesture for summoning the right answer and dropped his hand, as embarrassed as if he’d stolen something small and personal from Shug. He wasn’t sure what to do and whether he should hang around here in the hospital or get back to the harbor where he had left the Louise . Nate thought of her as knowing nothing about the boat, but his mother answered that he should stay where he was, the catch could wait until tomorrow, there were plenty of buyers in Eureka and it would all work out. He had expected her to fall apart but she calmly went on. Night driving was hard for her and she wasn’t going to rush out the door. Nate heard her light a cigarette, and then she said it was ironic that it wasn’t her heart attack, she was the smoker. Nate knocked his forehead against the wall, needing to bump up against something that behaved exactly as expected, and she said she would leave early and get there by ten or eleven. When there was no reply she said, “Are you crying, honey? You did fine. You got the boat in to the nearest harbor, you got to the hospital. Nothing to blame yourself for.” At her saying this, he discovered he’d feared she would hold him responsible for Shug’s overexertion. Without meaning to, he had absorbed his father’s sense that she could not handle things, but now he got it: she had always handled things, she had seen and understood and had been dealing with god knows how much truth they believed they had kept from her. The thought that came to him was All that fucking work . Whose? Theirs. Theirs as a family. He was astonished to the point of tears—more tears. Whatever he confessed would be absorbed and answered in this same intimate, practical tone that wanted only to figure out what they should do next. Treasure was within reach, the treasure of beinglistened to and honestly forgiven, but what he came up with was “Mom, I’m so dirty. Right from the boat. I stink,” and she answered that he should find the men’s and wash as best he could because he had a long night ahead of him. He should wash his face in cold water. He’d see, that would help.
    He told her goodbye and was tapped on the shoulder. Nate could go in for a couple minutes before they put Shug under. He was led through a series of hallways into the room where his father lay on a gurney, his black hair hidden, his large ears jutting from a crinkled shower cap. Against the crisp gown Shug’s windburned forearms, the backs of his hands scribbled with fishhook scars, looked more beat-up than ever. He was not sure how he had come to be here; he was balking at the notion of