without sleep, if nothing else. We’d had plenty of hangovers by way of practice. And then you were gone, and we had no way of working through that.
I still don’t.
It started as a rash on your leg. It was a Saturday morning, and the house was already steaming, startlingly hot for as early summer as it was. We didn’t have air-conditioning and I was cooking breakfast with the windows open, trying to get us all fed before the heat came on hard. That’s when Laney brought you in and showed it to me. You were a little man in Aquaman underwear. Your brown hair streaked your head, sweat beading at your temples. I told her there was nothing to worry about, that you’d be just fine as soon as we got some food in you.
But you wouldn’t eat. And then you wouldn’t talk. And then your temperature spiked, and your green eyes went flat. We drove youstraight to Dr. Court’s office, but he barely examined you. He glanced at your leg, cracked a couple of jokes, and told us it was heat rash, that you had heat exhaustion.
So we stopped by Walmart on the way home for an air conditioner. But it was less than an hour after I got it installed in your bedroom that you started having trouble breathing. And it was cardiac arrest by the time we got you to the hospital.
You never came out of the coma. You lasted two weeks. I was in the bathroom at the hospital when you died, and when I was stopped in the hallway on the way back, I didn’t believe them. Not until I saw you. I had no way of knowing how to conceive of a world without you. I guess I still don’t. It’s like there’s a notch that’s been taken out of me, and I’m walking around just waiting to collapse in on myself.
When Dr. Court told you something you believed it. It was the kind of doctor he was. Because he wore being a doctor well. There are things you have to take on faith, because you don’t know enough to even ask the right questions. And it’s easy to take a man on faith if he’s always joking with you like there’s nothing he can’t control. I used to say that anybody who argued with their doctor was an idiot. They don’t tell me how to climb a tree with a chain saw in hand, I don’t tell them how to do what they’re paid to do. Now I don’t pass one on the street without wanting to cut their face for pretending they know anything.
And I’ll admit this, I’d been working sixteen-hour days, and I wanted an air conditioner. I’d been after your mother to buy one for weeks, but she kept saying we didn’t have the money. I wanted Dr. Court to be right so I could spend the day with you in your room, in the cool air. So I trusted him on that, too.
23
jogging
P atterson pulls off the side of the road outside of Questa and flips through the pictures. The fucking pictures. There are only six of them, and he doubts he could describe them even a minute after looking at them. Except for his son. In particular, one of the boy’s back as he stands staring across the Rio Grande Gorge, too near the edge. His brown hair is ruffled birdlike from the sleeping bag and, as young as he is, his shoulders are broad and square.
When he’s done looking at them Patterson has to smoke a cigarette before he can drive again. And it takes all the self-control he has not to put it out on the back of his hand.
Then his cell phone rings. He answers it quick. Figuring he can make it back to Taos and Laney inside of fifteen minutes. Figuring where he can buy a bottle of bourbon on the way. Figuring he needs that bourbon and hotel room like a white woman in a John Wayne movie needs a last bullet.
“You jogging?” Junior asks.
“Jogging?” Patterson says.
“You’re breathing hard, like you’re either jogging or fucking,” Junior says. “Jogging seemed likelier.”
“I was driving.”
“Driving. Well, good. You got a drive ahead of you.”
“I do?”
“To Denver,” he says. “I got something I need to show you.”
Patterson doesn’t have to think about it
I still don’t.
It started as a rash on your leg. It was a Saturday morning, and the house was already steaming, startlingly hot for as early summer as it was. We didn’t have air-conditioning and I was cooking breakfast with the windows open, trying to get us all fed before the heat came on hard. That’s when Laney brought you in and showed it to me. You were a little man in Aquaman underwear. Your brown hair streaked your head, sweat beading at your temples. I told her there was nothing to worry about, that you’d be just fine as soon as we got some food in you.
But you wouldn’t eat. And then you wouldn’t talk. And then your temperature spiked, and your green eyes went flat. We drove youstraight to Dr. Court’s office, but he barely examined you. He glanced at your leg, cracked a couple of jokes, and told us it was heat rash, that you had heat exhaustion.
So we stopped by Walmart on the way home for an air conditioner. But it was less than an hour after I got it installed in your bedroom that you started having trouble breathing. And it was cardiac arrest by the time we got you to the hospital.
You never came out of the coma. You lasted two weeks. I was in the bathroom at the hospital when you died, and when I was stopped in the hallway on the way back, I didn’t believe them. Not until I saw you. I had no way of knowing how to conceive of a world without you. I guess I still don’t. It’s like there’s a notch that’s been taken out of me, and I’m walking around just waiting to collapse in on myself.
When Dr. Court told you something you believed it. It was the kind of doctor he was. Because he wore being a doctor well. There are things you have to take on faith, because you don’t know enough to even ask the right questions. And it’s easy to take a man on faith if he’s always joking with you like there’s nothing he can’t control. I used to say that anybody who argued with their doctor was an idiot. They don’t tell me how to climb a tree with a chain saw in hand, I don’t tell them how to do what they’re paid to do. Now I don’t pass one on the street without wanting to cut their face for pretending they know anything.
And I’ll admit this, I’d been working sixteen-hour days, and I wanted an air conditioner. I’d been after your mother to buy one for weeks, but she kept saying we didn’t have the money. I wanted Dr. Court to be right so I could spend the day with you in your room, in the cool air. So I trusted him on that, too.
23
jogging
P atterson pulls off the side of the road outside of Questa and flips through the pictures. The fucking pictures. There are only six of them, and he doubts he could describe them even a minute after looking at them. Except for his son. In particular, one of the boy’s back as he stands staring across the Rio Grande Gorge, too near the edge. His brown hair is ruffled birdlike from the sleeping bag and, as young as he is, his shoulders are broad and square.
When he’s done looking at them Patterson has to smoke a cigarette before he can drive again. And it takes all the self-control he has not to put it out on the back of his hand.
Then his cell phone rings. He answers it quick. Figuring he can make it back to Taos and Laney inside of fifteen minutes. Figuring where he can buy a bottle of bourbon on the way. Figuring he needs that bourbon and hotel room like a white woman in a John Wayne movie needs a last bullet.
“You jogging?” Junior asks.
“Jogging?” Patterson says.
“You’re breathing hard, like you’re either jogging or fucking,” Junior says. “Jogging seemed likelier.”
“I was driving.”
“Driving. Well, good. You got a drive ahead of you.”
“I do?”
“To Denver,” he says. “I got something I need to show you.”
Patterson doesn’t have to think about it
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